1. We hate to start out the week’s Morning Five on a somber note, but when an incoming recruit or any player is murdered we have to lead with it. On Thursday, Iona recruit Michael Haynes was killed while apparently trying to break up a fight over a stolen necklace near his home in Chicago. Haynes, who was a prep school star in Chicago, had worked his way through the junior college ranks and was just weeks away from realizing his dream of playing Division I basketball. Initial reports indicated that Haynes might be able to make it because he appeared fairly strong immediately after the shooting, but he died in the operating room shortly afterwards. We have not heard anything about funeral arrangements for Haynes, but given some of the players he played against there should be some prominent names present.
2. The biggest surprise of the weekend for us came out of Orlando where the Magic announced that  former Kansas star Jacque Vaughn would be their next head coach. To be honest, we had lost track of Vaughn’s whereabouts over the past few seasons, but apparently he had been serving as an assistant for the San Antonio Spurs. The choice is a curious one in the sense that the Magic could be a playoff team (depending on the whims of Dwight Howard) and Vaughn has no head coaching experience. We like seeing teams hire coaches who are not the same retreads, but we can see how some individuals like Shaquille O’Neal might not be fans of the move. Vaughn’s first order of business should be figuring out what to do with Howard who has been holding the franchise hostage for quite sometime. Only after he does that can he think of moving forward.
3. Jeff Goodman got the #SCOOP on who Gonzaga‘s newest coach-in-waiting and while it is interesting at some level we wonder if the title really means anything. Goodman reports that assistant Tommy Lloyd has been given the designation to follow-up Mark Few in Spokane. The issue is that Few has not even turned 50 yet and Lloyd is the third coach-in-waiting at the school after the other two decided they had waited long enough and took head coaching jobs at other schools. The position on the Gonzaga sideline is no doubt among the most coveted in the country especially for coaches who are not established enough to get a position with a blue-blood program, but we don’t see any movement coming any time soon there.
4. For our part we don’t particularly care for the culture associated with the AAU scene, but when we heard that the legendary Sonny Vaccaro had returned to Las Vegas we were intrigued. Vaccaro, the man who has been credited with making the summer basketball scene what it is today (for better or for worse), had not been on the scene since the summer of 2006, but returned to film scenes for his upcoming 30 for 30 documentary. The documentaries in the series that we have seen appear to be fairly balanced so we will be interested to see how they deal with Vaccaro’s creation and the effects of the world that he helped create as well as his (hopefully candid) comments on it although we suspect that he will place the blame for the unseemly aspects of it on other people.
5. Divorces are rarely amicable and often the people hurt the most by them are the children particularly when issues of child custody are raised. In that vein, when a Syracuse fan was looking through the division of custody based on holidays he felt that it was unequal so he inserted a clause that would allow him to have visitation rights for his kids if the Orange were playing for the national championship on the first Monday night in April. The request might be made fun of in some circles, but compared to some of the other requests we have heard of in these cases it seems fairly benign and sweet even if it is a bit quixotic as it has only happened three times and not since 2003.

Kevin Doyle is an RTC contributor.

Introduction

This was a banner week for the Other 26 teams in terms of wins against the BCS. It is for this reason that I am pleading with you not to jump all over me if I have omitted several victories for Other 26 schools over the BCS in my “Beating the BCS” section. There were probably 25 games that featured the little guy winning, but it would not be feasible to list every one of these games. It should be known, however, that on any given night most teams from BCS conferences are capable of losing to an Other 26 team with high energy and unwavering confidence. Predictably, I love watching smaller conference teams play and beat the BCS schools, so having this problem of not being able to list all the important victories comes as an enjoyable issue for me. To give you an idea of just how impressive the Other 26 was this week, here are the wins for the Other 26 ranging from December 17-26:

Presbyterian Has Two Power League Scalps This Year

• December 17: Charlotte 49 Tennessee 48
• December 18: Central Florida 84 Miami (FL) 78, Illinois-Chicago 57 Illinois 54, Butler 83 Stanford 50, James Madison 66 South Florida 61, George Washington 87 Oregon State 79, Wichita State 70 LSU 69, Presbyterian 62 Auburn 59, UTEP 82 Texas Tech 71
• December 20: Jacksonville 71 Florida 68 (OT)
• December 21: Maine 74 Penn State 64, Presbyterian 66 Wake Forest 64, Idaho 69 Oregon 65, UNLV 63 Kansas State 59
• December 22: Seattle 59 Virginia 53, Siena 62 Georgia Tech 57, Furman 91 South Carolina 75, Dayton 69 Seton Hall 65, Cleveland State 69 South Florida 62, Northern Iowa 67 Indiana 61, North Texas 75 LSU 55, New Mexico 89 Colorado 76
• December 23: Butler 67 Florida State 64, Colorado State 68 Mississippi 61
• December 25: Butler 84 Washington State 68
• December 26: Richmond 69 Seton Hall 61

By my count, that is 26 wins for the Other 26 over the BCS.

The Other 26 Rankings

Tidbits from the Rankings

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