T-minus one week until the first games…

• Pitt’s Sam Young may be changing positions (from PF to SF) to shore up the Panthers’ three-point shooting.
• Xavier’s presumptive PG, freshman Mark Lyons, was ruled ineligible to play this season, putting XU in a pinch at the PG position unless IU transfer Jordan Crawford’s waiver to play immediately is approved by the NCAA. 
• AP All-Americans – Hansbrough, Harongody, Griffin, Collison, Curry  
• Some exhibition games – Notre Dame, Louisville (who struggled), and Purdue.
• A fine interview with a player who almost pulled off one of the greatest first-round NCAA upsets ever.  Here’s a hint – Alonzo Mourning was involved.
• Parrish’s non-BCS top 15 and all-americans.  Jameson Fleming provides us with his nine sensational sophomores – where’s Patrick Patterson, JF!?!
• In case you missed it, SI had an in-depth article outlining the mess that Tom Crean inherited at Indiana, including allegations of drug use and 19 “F”s on the Hoosiers’ report cards last year.
• We’re still not sure if this is a joke or legit, but the idea of PETA getting involved in a Memphis player’s weight issues is simply bizarre.

Prediction:  by the end of the first week of December, UNC will no longer be #1 in the major media polls.

No way, there’s too much pressure and they have too many good teams to handle before we even get our advent calendars.  Oh, and did you hear, a small piece of their offense will be out for a while with a stress reaction?  Even if this substantial piece never misses a game, which is extremely unlikely, he’s going to miss practice and be out of ‘game shape’ for a while.  And no, we’re not talking about Marcus Ginyard, but his loss hurts too.

Here’s Carolina’s early schedule – you tell us how they’re going to come out of this unscathed…

• v. Penn  (11.15.08) – easy enough at home, right?
• v. Kentucky (11.18.08) – this home game suddenly becomes extremely interesting if TH is out or still ailing – Patrick Patterson will wipe up the inside.
• @ UCSB  (11.21.08) – UNC fans will remember the west coast stopover game before Maui in 2004-05 well.  Trap game.
• @ Chaminade  (11.24.08) – Maui Invitational first round – easy W.
• v.  Alabama (probably) (11.25.08) – UNC should be careful to not sleep on an athletic Bama team, but will probably win regardless.
• v. Notre Dame/Texas (probably) (11.26.08) – either of these teams could defeat a less-than-full-strength UNC in Maui.
• v. UNC-Asheville  (11.30.08) – easy home win.
• @ Michigan St. (Detroit) (12.03.08) – 40,000 people could watch this game at Ford Field, and UNC will absolutely need to be at full strength to win this game vs. MSU.

There are at least three opportunities for the major upset here, and if Hansbrough and/or Ginyard are out for any of those games, go ahead and mark it down.  UNC will not enter the second week of December #1 and unbeaten.

Now, on to the polls, where UNC was a unanimous #1 in the AP Poll for the first time EVER (nope, not even 1991 UNLV, 1992 Duke or 2007 Florida), and also unanimous in the Coach’s Poll.  No pressure or anything…  FYI – UNC has been preseason #1 six times in its history (incl. this year) – the results of those seasons are: 1982 (Natl. Champs), 1984 (S16), 1987 (E8), 1994 (R32), 2008 (F4) – all that’s missing is a first-round loss or a title game loss.

Here are the polls.

We plan on doing some broader-based analytics of preseason polls in a general sense next week, but for now, here are a few things that we noticed right away.

• Biggest jumps from AP to Coaches – Georgetown (+4) and Duke (+3)
• Biggest drops from AP to Coaches – USC (-3) and Wake Forest (-3)
• Coaches tend to vote by available talent + belief in other coaches’ abilities – what does this say about Tim Floyd and Dino Gaudio in relation to JT3 and Coach K?
• Overrated – UConn, Duke, Oklahoma, USC
• Underrated – Wisconsin, Florida, Georgetown, Gonzaga
• All 25 teams in both polls are duplicates, but it’s interesting that Xavier was #26 in the AP vs. #30 in the Coaches.
• We’re a little surprised to not see St. Mary’s and Baylor ranked over teams like Villanova and Kansas, but whatever, that’s their poll, not ours.
• Alabama gets 16 AP votes but a donut in the Coaches – Mark Gottfried, much?  And LSU is getting too much love for simply getting a new coach.
• Conference Breakdown – Big East (7 + 2 others receiving votes); ACC (4), Big 10 (3), Big 12 (3), Pac-10 (3), SEC (2), CUSA (1), SoCon (1), WCC (1).

What are you going as for Halloween this year?  We hear the Kelvin Sampson costumes are boss in Bloomington…

• You heard about Hansbrough… Tennessee’s JP Prince will also miss the next 3-5 weeks with a shoulder injury. 
• Nevada’s leading returning player Brandon Fields was cleared of any wrongdoing in his shoplifting case – still no word on his suspension, though.
• And the Billy Gillispie Rule is instituted…
• Billy Donovan got a huge pickup with Kenny Boynton’s commitment today.
• Andy Katz gives a fantastic analysis of the Arizona mess on his blog – looks like Mike Dunlap made a stupid mistake in not accepting the head coaching job.  Oh, and former recruit Abdul Gaddy is going to Washington.
• Goodman’s Top 20 freshmen.  Here are CHN’s all-american frosh teams and their mid-major all-americans.  Parrish gives his Top 20 Games to watch before Jan. 8th.
• “The most egregious lack of institutional control ever seen.” 
• In the wake of Lute Olson’s retirement, Arizona loses another player, Jeff Withey, from the freshman class.
• Creighton is the preseason pick by the media and SIDs in the Valley.
• With Demar DeRozan in tow and a weaker Pac-10, we might not want to write off USC just yet.

Big breaking news out of Chapel Hill tonight…  The nation’s top returning player on the unanimous #1 team will be out indefinitely with something called a ‘stress reaction‘ of his right shin.  Although the injury isn’t serious as of now, without appropriate rest it could continue to inflame and deteriorate into a much more serious stress fracture of the bone.  From ESPN:

The reigning Associated Press player of the year did not practice Thursday. Instead, he underwent an MRI that revealed the stress reaction, which if not properly treated could lead to a stress fracture, team spokesman Steve Kirschner said.  “He’ll be ok,” Hansbrough’s father, Gene, told ESPN.com’s Andy Katz. “His leg’s been bothering him for a couple of weeks. It’s a stress reaction and he needs to rest a bit. He just needs time to let it heal. There is no reason for him to limp through it.”  According to ESPN medical analysist Dr. Michael Kaplan, the MRI likely showed increased uptake in tibia (leg bone) suggesting a stress reaction. An overload or overuse type phenomenon occurs with inflammation and, ultimately, fatigue failure with stress fracture. This is a precursor condition to stress fracture. A period of rest is mandatory for tissues to quiet down or worsening injury will result.

Psycho T Can’t Wear a Mask For His Shin (Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

The timetable for Hansbrough to return to action is officially “indefinitely” but the realistic timeframe sounds like a month or so, which means the Heels will be without two starters (including Marcus Ginyard, out with – what else – a stress fracture) for their game vs. Kentucky, an away game at UCSB, the Maui Invitatonal games (Notre Dame, Texas, Alabama) as well as the ACC/Big 10 Challenge game against Michigan State at Ford Field.  These weren’t going to be easy games for UNC anyway; assuming Hansbrough is out for all of them, they might just lose several. 

More importantly, UNC fans can’t feel comfortable with this news even if Hansbrough appears to be at full strength by January.  Call us a pessimist, but these are the kinds of nagging injuries that warriors like Hansbrough invariably try to come back from too soon, which end up recurring or at minimum never completely healing throughout the rest of the season.  Stay tuned on this story, because if Psycho-T is out or even at half-speed, the 2008-09 season is wide open…

For the third consecutive weekend we have Midnight Madness celebrations going on around the nation, and frankly, we’re tired of it.  Will the NCAA please dictate that all MMs need to occur on the same weekend, or better yet, the same night?!!?  This is getting ridiculous. 

Anyway, here are the remaining laggards.  As always, we’ll try to have some photos/video up later on this post…

• Florida – Shooting with the Stars
• Villanova – Hoops Mania  (who will be the special musical guest this year?  update:  it was T-Pain, BizZ and Lupe Fiasco – not to sound old and out of touch, but who?)
• UNC – Late Night with Roy

Here’s some pics from Florida’s Dancing with the Stars knockoff, featuring some next-gen Erin Andrews knockoffs and Nick Calathes in some kind of ridonkulous afro wig…  (photo credits:  GatorCountry.com)

The Vanillanova kids looked like they were having a good time last night (btw, it’s sad that we’re scooping not 1, not 2, but 3 VU sports blogs and their student newspaper on coverage of this event…)  (photo credit: Villanova Athletics) ed note: the photo we took directly from the VU Athletics site was from 2007 – we guess everyone at Nova was a little slow after the festivities of Fri. night

Last but not least, Late Night With Roy…  (photo credits:  NewsObserver.com)

Only two weeks left (no, not the election… the first games!)…

• Remember Nate Miles?  He’ll be playing for the College of Southern Idaho next year. 
• Gary Parrish all-americans:  Curry, Collison, Hansbrough, Harongody & Griffin.  We only disagree on one (wanna guess which?).  While we’re at it, here’s his top 40 guards. 
• Big East media picks – UConn, Louisville, Pitt, Notre Dame in that order.  POY – Harongody.  ROY – S. Samuels, G. Monroe.
• The Stephen Curry show at Davidson’s Midnight Madness. 
• Georgia Tech’s D’Andre Bell will miss the season after getting diagnosed with spinal stenosis (the same injury TJ Ford had a while back) – he averaged 7 ppg last year and is considered one of the Jackets’ top defenders. 
• This will be a fantastic story if Santa Clara forward John Bryant has a great year after being stabbed in an altercation last month. 
• Don’t know how we missed this one, but UCLA great John Wooden turned 98 last week, and subsequently had his car taken away from him by his family.  Ouch.
• Must… Resist… Urge… 
• Basketball Interview Challenge does a great job interviewing hoops personalities.  For example, we had no idea that former Michigan great Cazzie Russell was coaching for an art school in Savannah, GA.   Keep it coming, JZ. 

Let’s see if we can get through some of the news piling up…

• CHN averages the rankings from the three preview magazines that are already out (Athlon, Lindy’s and TSN/S&S).  UNC still #1.  CHN gives us the mid-majors to keep an eye on this season as possible NCAA Cinderellas.  And here’s your EA Sports NCAA Basketball 09 Top 25 (now partnered with Blue Ribbon).  We know you were waiting for it.
• Hahahahaha, so it appears the ACC is cooking the books Wachovia-style in an attempt to act like it has more televised games this year than it actually has. 
• North Dakota Fighting Maize?  According to the North Dakota state legislature, the Fighting Sioux are out. 
• Syracuse had best hope that Jonny Flynn doesn’t get hurt this season, as the Orange’s backup PG Scoop Jardine is redshirting.
• Nevada starting guard Brandon Fields and two freshmen were charged with petty larceny last week, and suspended indefinitely.  Brilliance.  Oh, and Fields was all-academic WAC, proving that good grades doesn’t necessarily mean you have a brain. 
• Seth Davis asks twenty questions as we get started with the 2008-09 season.  Gary Parrish has 24 things that he can’t wait to see this season, and his Top 26 teams.  Mike DeCourcy offers five things he hopes to see this year.
• Katz hints on our issue with UConn as a F4 threat (zero postseason wins since 2006) in this story about Stanley Robinson.   He also provides us with a nice update of open questions as we head into the first week of practices. 
• Yep, this is going to get old real, real fast.  Tyler Hansbrough, the symbol of all things good and merciful.   
• Dan Hanner over at YABB throws us some love (thanks, Dan!), and does a breakdown of the preseason tournaments by school participation – cool concept. 
• Truly, the most Epic Post of all-time.  Maybe the author wants to be an RTC correspondent???  Our fave blurbs were Florida and Colgate, fyi.
• Being Cinderella (Davidson) can pay dividends.
• This is pretty awesome over at STF – Drake U’u and Da’Veen Dildy are our favorites.  Honorable mention to An’Juan Wildnerness (isn’t that in Alaska?).

One of the cooler stories we posted last year involved the emergence of the ridiculously oversized 7’7, 360 -lb Kenny George at UNC-Asheville.  He gained notoriety for his well-publicized duel with UNC and Tyler Hansbrough early last season (dropping 14/11 on UNC in a relatively close loss), and we kept an eye on him the rest of the year.  Led by George’s 12/7/3 blks on nation-leading 69% FG shooting, UNCA had its best season in a generation, winning 23 games and the Big South’s regular season championship.  We were rooting very hard for the Bulldogs to make the NCAAs, but they got upset in the Big South title game by conference stalwart Winthrop.  Notwithstanding the comical interest we had in George based on his cartoonishly freakish features, we also wanted to see him succeed due to the chronic injuries that a person his size has sustained (multiple knee problems resulting in several missed seasons).  Now comes the sad news that George underwent surgery in September for a staph infection that reportedly resulted in the amputation of part of his right foot, and is definitely out this season (if not for good).  From the AP report:

The source said the amputation, which occurred three weeks ago, was the result of George’s battle with MRSA, a difficult-to-treat and sometimes life-threatening antibiotic-resistant staph infection.  In August, George returned to his Chicago home from Pete Newell’s Big Man Camp in Las Vegas with an infection in his foot.  Doctors there suggested that George immediately see a specialist. He’s been hospitalized in Iowa since then, the source said, enduring several surgeries and at one time battling for his life. He’s expected to remain in the hospital for at least another month.   “This is a terrible setback for his basketball life but there is so much more to him than basketball,” [UNCA coach Eddie] Biedenbach said. “The students at this school think the world of Kenny George outside of basketball. We’re looking forward to him coming back second semester — that’s what he wants to do — and complete his degree. At that point, we’d still like him to be a part of our basketball program and part of this school.”

We’re Really Rooting For The Big Guy  (photo credit: Inside Carolina)

We love Biedenbach’s positivity here, and we’re certainly not a member of the medical profession, but we have to believe that having a partial foot amputation effectively ends George’s basketball career.  We love the underdog stories (inasmuch as George could be considered an under-anything), but this is really disheartening news, and we’ll just leave it at that (along with a couple of ESPN features on George from last year).

 There’s a lot of news out there today…  which only means one thing…

• Goodman continues on his crusade to expose the underbelly of the game with today’s lead – the father of UK’s new hotshot recruit, Daniel Orton, was paid three times over the summer to give talks at Billy Gillispie’s camp.  This is completely legal, by the way.  Discuss. 
• Too many preseason/holiday tourneys?  ESPN announced today that the Diamond Head Classic will begin in 2009 at the University of Hawaii.  It will finish up on Christmas Day, which will provide a nice collegiate alternative to the annual Shaq-Kobe matchup in the NBA.
• Please read this, “conference fans.”  It’s even truer in basketball.
• Is it sad or compelling that this endorsement could tip North Carolina to Obama in three weeks? 
• Ok, great.  Players are graduating more than they used to.  But is that because they’re committed to the degree program or schools are making it easier to get that degree?
• A quick Class of 2009 recruiting update from NW Wins, as well as a nice overview of the likelihood of Carolina running the table in the regular season this year.
• WAC coaches pick Nevada to win their conference, while Big South coaches/media picked Winthrop to win it again. 
• NBCSports picks AJ Price, Stephen Curry, James Harden, Tyler Hansbrough and Luke Harongody as its all-americans.  We’re just not feeling Price, sorry UConn fans.
• Parrish thinks that this year’s Florida squad will be quite a bit better than last year’s, and we can’t say that we really disagree with that.
• Andy Katz assures us that KU’s 2008 national title is safe in light of the re-opening case of Darrell Arthur’s HS transcripts.  You know, because we were worried, or something.
• He also gives his preseason view of 37 teams that he thinks can make a run next March.
• Hey, we’ve always been Stacy Dales fans, BC!  Even when she was married to someone named Schulman.  Looks like we may not be able to root out Psycho T for her attention, though. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if this were Oct. 19 instead of Sept. 19?

• Which Great White Hope is actually a better player? – maybe we’ll delve into that sometime soon.  Gary Parrish takes a look now.
• The seemingly snakebitten AJ Price from UConn is supposedly all the way back from offseason ACL surgery.  In completely unrelated news, UConn has added Lojack to all of its campus laptops. 
• In a somewhat odd twist, the NCAA directed Indiana to delay its response to the latest allegations from the Kelvin Sanctions scandal last spring.  The university now has until Sept. 26 to craft its response.  Someone go on vacation?
• Seth Davis writes a pretty good recount of what five teams – Kansas, Missouri, Purdue, S. Illinois and Notre Dame – did on their Labor Day weekend trips.
• Remember Illinois guard Jamar Smith? – he received 18 months probation for his alcohol violation stemming from his DUI arrest last spring.  He plans to play for S. Indiana next season (yeah, that’s what we said too).