As RTC heads into its 10th season — Season X, if you will — covering college basketball, it’s time to begin releasing our annual compendium of YouTube clips that we like to call Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball. These 30 snippets from last season’s action are completely guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight rather than 30 days from now. Over the next month you’ll get one reason per day until we reach the new season on Friday, November 11. You can find all of this year’s released posts here.

#18 – Where A Valentine’s Classic Happens.

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 preseasons.

And away we go, headfirst into another season heralded by our 2012-13 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball, our annual compendium of YouTube clips from the previous season 100% guaranteed to make you wish games were starting tonight. We’ve captured here what we believe were the most compelling moments from last season, some of which will bring back the goosebumps and others of which will leave you shaking your head. The entire series from #30 to this point can be viewed here. Enjoy!

#5 – Where Messed Around and Got a Triple Double Happens

We also encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11, and 2011-12 seasons.

Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor to RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter. Night Line will run on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

Kansas’ Bill Self is making a strong push for National Coach of the Year recently, putting his Jayhawks in position for their eighth consecutive Big 12 regular season title despite arguably the least talented team he’s had during the streak. Monday night’s road victory over Kansas State, 59-53, improved KU to 21-5 and 11-2 in the Big 12 to keep pace with Missouri in the loss column of the conference standings. But this time the win wasn’t the result of a dominant Thomas Robinson night or the game strategy of Self. Instead, it was the powerful performance of center Jeff Withey that led the team to another victory. This new leading Jayhawk is playing out of his mind and has emerged as the major threat that has put KU back in the driver’s seat in the Big 12 race. As the season progresses, the 7’0” Withey is getting stronger in all facets of the game, turning Kansas into an even tougher matchup than before.

Jeff Withey is a Defensive Force With a Newly Found Offensive Game for KU (AP Photo)

Just 10 days ago, Kansas dropped a road game to Missouri to fall into a tie with the Tigers for first place in the Big 12, and it looked like the Jayhawks just might be missing something to propel them to another conference title. In that game, only Robinson and Tyshawn Taylor were able to score consistently and play at a high level offensively. Elijah Johnson had 11 points but wanted nothing to do with the ball on the final possession that could have tied the game. Withey played his usual strong defense, but failed to score and was a complete non-factor offensively. Even though Kansas nearly won that road game, the Tigers seemed to have more scoring options on that night.

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