Chris Johnson is an RTC columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Tonight’s Lede. I Can’t Predict This Stuff. It is never wise to judge college basketball teams on one game; you need a comprehensive data set to make an accurate assessment. Teams win and lose games out of character. It’s the common denominator that underpins college hoops competition: unpredictability. There are a variety of reasons for this – energy levels wax and wane, road trips bring unfamiliar sight lines and the environmental pressures. Some are unexplainable. Often times, shots just don’t fall, defense fails and game plans are picked apart. If you were to watch the first half of Indiana’s game against Minnesota Saturday, you would have fairly called the Hoosiers the best team in the country. And if you happened to flip on Wisconsin’s 47-41 slog at Nebraska, or pretty much any other game the Badgers have played this season save a recent blowout win over Illinois, you would have come to the reasonable conclusion, based on a reliable body of work, that the Badgers aren’t destined for the same good fortune they have enjoyed so long so consistently under Bo Ryan.

Arguably the best team in the Big Ten couldn’t deal with their stylistic opposite, Wisconsin (Photo credit: Getty Images).

You would have been even more shocked to learn that the low-scoring, defense-minded, grinding Badgers not only kept pace and challenged No. 2 Indiana, but straight flummoxed the Hoosiers into a five-point loss at a supercharged Assembly Hall. That’s the thing with conference play: you just don’t know. At this point in the season, it’s a trite rhetoric, but it bears repeating. Before laying down any proclamations about league races or contenders, remember to account for the whims of 18-to-22 year old college students, the natural ups and downs, energy highs and lows and everything else that goes into making conference competition – particularly in a year without any single dominant team – an enduringly spectacular winter thrill ride.

Your Watercooler Moment. Starting To Look like “That Kind of Year” For Ole Miss. The SEC would very much like to send four teams to the NCAA Tournament this season. Florida and Missouri are virtual locks. Kentucky is teetering on the margin. Ole Miss, after 11 years of missed tourneys, might be the league’s saving grace. If it continue on this path, Andy Kennedy’s team will saunter its way into the Big Dance, no late-February/early-March bubble anxiety included. When you get players making shots like this, the type that avoids those brutal in-league losses that pile up in the spiteful regions of the selection committee’s collective mind, you start to get the sense that maybe, just maybe, the Tournament gods are here to offer some assistance. Vanderbilt isn’t any good (except on nights where they are knocking down a ridiculous 17 three-pointers including 11 in the first half), but escaping pitfalls is just as crucial as toppling giants. But for a late-season collapse, the Rebels are on their way to the NCAA Tournament. It’s games like this that help secure that road.

(A Note: Marshall Henderson has drawn his share of criticism (fair) for having a loose trigger. I won’t try and impeach that claim. But hey, if Henderson can make that 35-footer with any type of regularity, cease the shot selection critiques and let him fire away.)

Read the rest of this entry »

We are admittedly well late to the party with this question, but amidst all of the fawning articles and celebratory columns remarking on the incredible 900 wins that Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim has amassed, there was one turd in the punch bowl — CBS Sports college basketball analyst and noted Syracuse agitator Doug Gottlieb. Gottlieb has contended for quite some time that Boeheim is a great coach, but not an “elite” coach, especially when compared to some of his contemporaries who have had more success in the NCAA Tournament such as Tom Izzo and Jim Calhoun. Now its true that Gottlieb has a rather testy history with Syracuse, its fans, and its famed head coach, but for the sake of this argument, we will ignore the suspicions of personal bias and just take his argument on its face. So without further delay, we posed the question to the three microsite writers and here is what they came up with.

Will Tucker: It’s hard to pass up an opportunity to lampoon Doug Gottlieb, especially when his subject is a coach with whom he seemingly has an ax to grind. But it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. As Mike points out, when you compare Jim Boeheim’s postseason accomplishments to those of his peers, his 900+ wins––amassed disproportionately early in the season––serve as an indictment in their distribution as much as a milestone in their volume. And Gottlieb’s accusation that Boeheim’s soft nonconference schedules have been a disservice to his team’s toughness is a fair criticism that merits further investigation. But Doug’s aversion to nuance is on full display, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. While Boeheim’s nonconference scheduling is and should be fair game, Gottlieb further attributes Syracuse’s postseason stumbles to feasting on an overrated Big East schedule. This seems more ad hominem than intellectually honest, and Doug conveniently ignores the 2010-11 UConn and 2011-12 Louisville teams that reached Final Fours with nearly ten Big East losses apiece. He also summarily mocks Boeheim’s zone defense as an inferior system nobody else uses with any success. In doing so, he ignores that Boeheim’s protégé Rick Pitino took an offensively stunted group to a Final Four with a variation of that zone last season, and the Cards retain the most efficient defense in the country again this year (Syracuse is hot on their heels at #3). Rhetoric notwithstanding, at the crux of this discussion is a fan’s aesthetic preference between regular season success and tournament success. Sure, the two aren’t mutually exclusive (paging Mike Kryzyzewski), but most coaches fall somewhere toward either end of the spectrum. Knowing all too well how a team’s struggles in the winter can exacerbate my seasonal affective disorder, I’m philosophical about the whole thing. I’ll take a Sweet 16 preceded by four months of big wins, high rankings, and conference championships over an agonizing regular season capped off by an Elite Eight––every time. Gottlieb subscribes to the notion that tournament success supersedes any other measuring stick, and the rigidness of his assumptions leaves little room for us to meet in the middle. Ultimately, I think it detracts from the salient questions his raises about what makes a coach great.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Another day has passed and we don’t know anything more about the shady eligibility issue that is keeping Syracuse forward James Southerland off the court. Jim Boeheim spoke about the suspension with ESPN while he was on the network’s campus in Bristol and while he wouldn’t elaborate on what Southerland is actually suspended for, he did call the suspension “troubling” while also noting that “James will get through it”. While Orange fans anxiously await Southerland’s reinstatement, those of us on the outside looking in are left with an insatiable curiosity about the cloud of mystery surrounding the suspension. One would think that if this was a by-the-book suspension for academic issues, Syracuse would have just come out and said that, it isn’t the team’s first rodeo in that respect after all. Instead the program has chosen to keep everyone in the dark and there is a chance we will never know what is keeping Southerland suspended.
2. As expected Louisville survived the war of attrition and ascended to the top spot in the latest Associated Press’ Top 25 poll Monday and they celebrated by stomping out a potential upset bid from Connecticut on the same night. The Huskies have already proven they are going to be a tough game for any opponent, and they actually led the Cardinals by six points at halftime before Louisville dialed up the defense and swarmed over the younger Huskies in the second half. At this point the only thing that keeps Louisville from dominating is their own intensity and effort. When the Cardinals play with max effort, they are better than nearly everyone else in the country, but as they showed in the first half Monday, the switch isn’t always turned on. For now that will work, but a lackluster half in March will be a lot more dangerous.
3. The Providence Journal is right, this is a big week for Ed Cooley and Providence . The team is coming off its first conference win in four tries and plays middle-of-the-road teams Georgetown and Villanova. If ever there was an opportunity to potentially climb out of the basement, now, against beatable teams, is the time to do it. The Journal correctly points out that the team is still adjusting to a few new faces in the lineup and of course the familiar face of Vincent Council as well.  The Friars have almost no depth or chemistry right now, so not a lot is expected of them, but if they can win both games, it will send a statement to the fan base and the rest of the conference that this team still has a pulse.
4. At this point we are really just piling on, but Pittsburgh has not had a great start to conference play and part of it is because they aren’t winning close games the way that they used to when Jamie Dixon was regularly making NCAA Tournament runs with his teams. Most of the advanced metrics support the fact that Pittsburgh should be a lot better than they have shown so far and the team seems to think it is just a matter of taking advantage of opportunities to seize the game. The Panthers are about to hit a four-game stretch of winnable games before they meet Louisville at the end of January, and if they have any NCAA Tournament aspirations they are going to need to win more of those games than they lose.
5. There was some good news for UConn fans today as coach Kevin Ollie landed his first recruit since officially becoming the team’s head coach in Miami-area big man and Ghana native Amida Brimah. Brimah is basically a really long and really athletic 6’10” center with raw offensive skills and present defensive ability. The Huskies have had some notable success with similar players and they desperately need big men, and big men who can develop into elite rim protectors are even better.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Tonight’s Lede. A staple of my childhood hoops watching fandom has and will forever be “Big Monday.” It never gets old. Finish up a quick dinner, find that comfortable spot on the couch, flick on your television (or, to be technologically correct, your ESPN3 Ipad app) and take in two quality matchups. ESPN’s Monday night special has always aired games from various leagues, but to me at least, there’s a strong connection to the Big East. That 7 PM ET window will always be associated with Big East hoops, and all the great memories it’s brought us over the years. As you already well know, the once-proud northeastern league is edging closer and closer towards extinction. Next year’s Big Monday (if it continues) will not be the same. Tonight’s Big East matchup, Louisville at UConn, won’t rank among the all-time greats. It probably won’t even classify as one of the better Big East games of 2012-13. But it was Big East basketball on a Monday night in January at 7 PM, riding out what’s looking evermore like the last year of its existence. That is good enough, as far as I’m concerned.

Your Watercooler Moment. The Cardinals Are Number One For A Reason.

The Cardinals may won’t keep the top ranking for the rest of the season, but for now, they’re playing like the best team in the country (Photo credit: AP Photo).

After a wild weekend of conference play, the coveted summit of the AP Poll got its first major shakeup of the season. Three unbeaten power clubs (Duke, Michigan, and Arizona) had fallen in the past seven days, so there was no obvious choice at number one. Louisville had a legitimate claim. The Cardinals’ only loss of the season came against the last month’s top dog, Duke, with defensive anchor Gorgui Dieng still nursing a wrist injury. All Rick Pitino’s team has done since that defeat was win, and do so in convincing fashion, excepting a tense second-half in a late-December win over rival Kentucky. Some clamored for Duke to retain its top ranking. Others vied for Michigan. For whatever reason – proximity of loss, per possession analysis, last year’s Final Four run – the Cardinals ended up with the majority of AP first-place votes. Maintaining that perch required Louisville to fend off a feisty UConn team in Storrs Monday night. All Louisville did was go out and show why some of the nation’s brightest hoops writers marked them atop their Monday ballots. The Huskies got out to a hot start, powered by tremendous guard play from freshman Omar Calhoun, and carried a 34-28 lead into the break. Then Louisville ratcheted up the defensive intensity and UConn withered under the Cardinals’ smothering pressure. Russ Smith added 23 points to outgun Calhoun, and the Huskies – energetic and confident as ever in the opening half – ran out of steam. That’s what number one teams do – they string you along for a while, keeping your team and fans invested in the flow of the game, waiting for the moment to seize on any misstep or sign of fatigue. Then they take control of the game, which is what Louisville did somewhere around the 10-minute mark in the second half. Louisville is as deserving of number one as any team in America. Everything about tonight’s performance (specifically, a four-minute run midway through the second half where the Cardinals opened up a 13-point lead) was foolproof evidence.

Tonight’s Quick Hit.

• The Kansas We Know. Had Ben McLemore not pulled off one of the finest banked-in three-pointers in recent memory to send Iowa State into overtime and preserve a home victory, this game would have felt something like a must win for the Jayhawks. Baylor, for all its flaws and inconsistency, was a bigger challenge for the Jayhawks. You almost had the sense that if the Bears caught Kansas sleeping again, and Isaiah Austin could put together an all-career game, and Pierre Jackson found holes on the perimeter, and a bunch of other favorable contingencies fell into place, the Bears had a real chance to hand Bill Self’s team its first home loss of the season. Well, no, you didn’t. Instead, you looked at the Bears, saw an incoherent and disparate group, and realized that Kansas is far and away the better team, and far and away the class of the Big 12. If the Jayhawks lose in conference play this season, it won’t happen in Lawrence.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. The big off-the-court news in the Big East this weekend was the mysterious suspension of Syracuse forward James Southerland for an eligibility-related issue. The Orange were still able to handle Villanova without their second-leading scorer, but if Southerland is going to miss an extended period of time, Syracuse will be in trouble. Southerland is one of the team’s best outside shooters and scorers and replacing his production and athleticism will be nearly impossible, That is why it will be important for freshmen Jerami Grant and Trevor Cooney to step up and replace some of that production. As longtime Syracuse Post-Standard columnist Bud Poliquin noted, this marks yet another season marred with off-the-court controversy for Syracuse and coach Jim Boeheim and the fact that the program has announced what the eligibility issue is that Southerland is being suspended for is rather ominous. This is obviously a story that is still developing and we will have more on where Syracuse goes from here later this week.
2. After an impressive start in non-conference play, things have gotten markedly worse for Pittsburgh. The losses are one thing but now the Panthers will be without the services of its playmaker and point guard Tray Woodall as the senior suffered a concussion thanks to a head-on collision in the team’s loss to Marquette. The good news is that freshman James Robinson is mature beyond his years and an excellent point guard already. The bad news is that now Robinson will be playing a lot more and could burn out down the stretch, and Woodall is one of the best playmakers and passers in the conference. Coach Jamie Dixon played Lamar Patterson and Trey Ziegler a bit at point guard and both are relatively versatile, so it will be interesting to see if they can adapt. How much playing time Woodall will miss is anyone’s guess at this point, but its likely he will miss a good chunk of the conference schedule, not good news for a Panthers’ team struggling to find its way.
3. There is no question that one of the main reasons Connecticut is overachieving is because of the newfound consistency of junior point guard Shabazz Napier. The Massachusetts native was terrific in the team’s huge road upset win over Notre Dame this weekend and he has been the heart and soul of the team this year. Napier is leading the team in scoring, shooting as well as he ever has from beyond the three-point arc, and cut down on his turnovers all while leading a young and undersized team with no hope for postseason play this season. Those are all compelling reasons why some folks are outraged that Napier didn’t make the final cut for the Bob Cousy Award. The junior has better statistical numbers than most of the field and has dramatically cut down on the maddening inconsistencies and questionable shot-selection that plagued him last season so it is a little strange that the committee didn’t give Napier the nod. It doesn’t matter much to Napier but it would be nice for the Huskies to have something to look forward to.
4. The Big East will likely boast the No. 1 team in the country when the new rankings come out as a few top-ranked teams went down over the weekend and Louisville will likely stand alone at the top when all the dust is settled. More importantly, coach Rick Pitino is in rare form already, calling his team a bunch of Michael Jacksons when they don’t talk on defense and finding new and creative ways to motivate his team, which he has done effectively. The top billing is not always a welcome place to be but if any team has the mentality to hold onto it, its Louisville. The Cardinals are deep and their defense is downright scary good. As long as they are giving full effort, there is no one better, in the conference at least.
5. The start to conference play has been rocky for Cincinnati as well. Coach Mick Cronin felt his team needed to toughen up and they responded by playing the best defense of the season in a 10-point win over Rutgers. The Bearcats do not have a lot of interior scoring options and often struggle offensively, so playing suffocating defense like they did Saturday will be crucial if they want to have success in the Big East. Of course beating the Scarlet Knights by 10 isn’t going to impress anybody for long, it is a step in the right direction for Cincinnati and if they can carry that over into the rest of the season, there is still a chance they can finish atop the conference.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

The Weekend’s Lede. Embrace a New National Champion. The hustle and bustle of conference play boils down to one of two objectives: 1) scramble and fight and scrap your way into the NCAA Tournament; or, for the elite teams, 2) pile up enough evidence to be deemed worthy of a favorable draw and seed. The goal that ties those two together is reaching the championship game and, ideally, winning it. Kentucky made it look easy last season, and based on the way Calipari reloaded with another top recruiting class (albeit less heralded than the 2011 group), it was not unwise to believe he could do it again. That avenue remains open, in the crude sense that the Wildcats are still eligible for postseason competition. In actuality, the fate of their title defense season was sealed this weekend, when Kentucky allowed Texas A&M – a low-rung team in an uncharacteristically weak SEC – to deliver the Wildcats’ second home loss of the season. Given the talent at his disposal, and his experience in grooming, molding and motivating said talent, John Calipari could well propel his young team back into the national conversation. I just don’t see it. Saturday’s loss marked the unofficial retirement of UK’s faint repeat hopes. But don’t worry, next season’s rejiggered squad, anchored by what some are calling the greatest recruiting class of all time, can bring everything full circle. The championship trophy will not return to Lexington in March. That’s not official; it’s what my eyes tell me. There will be a new champion in 2013, and the weekend’s action shed more light on the race for that top prize.

Your Watercooler Moment. Number One Goes Down. (Wheelchair, Ahoy!)

The hyperbolic reviews surrounding Duke’s sterling nonconference performance were completely warranted. The Blue Devils navigated a minefield of ranked opponents, including three top five teams in a two- week span, and the conquest of an absolutely loaded Battle 4 Atlantis Field. Few teams have ever pieced together a November and December stretch with so many quality wins against so many good teams – wins that, in regard to Minnesota, VCU, Temple, Clemson and Santa Clara, are looking better and better by the week. The totality of accomplishment is almost immeasurable. The Blue Devils were thrust atop the polls and praised for their offensive efficiency. Mason Plumlee seized the early lead in the National Player Of The Year race. Seth Curry’s toughness (he has battled chronic leg pain all season) and resolve was eulogized. The outpouring of national praise almost made it feel like Duke was the only real team that mattered in the ACC. UNC had fallen off the map. NC State got tabbed with the “overrated” tag. Florida State was a sinking ship. What many seemed to conveniently forget was that the Wolfpack – the same team that (gasp!) lost to Oklahoma State on a neutral floor and at Michigan, causing large swaths of college hoops fans to write them off as a specious product of the preseason hype machine – were selected by the coaches and media in separate preseason polls to win the league outright. Those two early-season losses threw everyone off the Wolfpack bandwagon, which, come to think of it, might just be the best thing that ever happened to NC State’s season. While the nation fawned over Duke’s top-50 RPI wins and Plumlee’s double-doubles and Rasheed Sulaimon’s youthful verve, the Wolfpack were slowly, surely, methodically rounding into form. When the opportunity presented itself Saturday, as a Ryan Kelly-less Blue Devils team strolled into Raleigh, the Wolfpack did what every coach and media member predicted they’d do before the season began. They took care of the gaudy Blue Devils, and afterward, in the midst of a delirious post-game court-storming, the Wolfpack reveled in the culmination of their roller coaster season.

Also Worth Chatting About. Take Your Pick: Indiana or Michigan.

The Hoosiers’ offense didn’t miss a step in Saturday’s home win over Minnesota (Photo credit: AP Photo).

It required less than two weeks for conference competition to slay college basketball’s remaining unbeaten teams. Michigan had looked flawless in its first two Big Ten games, blowout wins over Northwestern and Iowa, generating all kinds of national championship hype along the way (the home win over Nebraska wasn’t as pretty, but it didn’t discredit the Wolverines’ glowing stature). Ohio State, meanwhile, exposed real flaws in a 19-point blowout loss at Purdue earlier in the week. Their faint hopes of pulling an upset at home against Michigan were, well, exactly that: faint. Michigan’s seeming invincibility, Ohio State’s disproportionate offense – any discussion of the Buckeyes invariably panned to a common concern over a lack of complementary scorers to supplement DeShaun Thomas – and the matchup advantages that implied, conveniently glossed over the fact that the Big Ten is a ruthless, rugged, unforgiving road, particularly when rivalries are involved. Ohio State’s victory proved, if nothing else, that the most extreme evaluations of each team to date – that Michigan is the best team in the country, and Ohio State a middle-pack-to-lower-tier Big Ten outfit – were a bit ambitious on both ends. In fact, the former trope may have been discredited before Michigan even took the floor Sunday, because Indiana, in its first real test since losing to Butler in early December, reminded everyone why the national consensus settled so firmly on the Hoosiers as the preseason number one team in the country. The final score at Assembly Hall Saturday will skew the reality of Indiana’s home toppling of Minnesota. The first half showcased an overwhelming offensive onslaught, fueled by rapid ball movement, aggressive and attentive defensive work, can’t-miss shooting aggressive and a booming home crowd. It was the epitome of Indiana’s basketball potential, bottled up into a 20-minute segment, unleashed on one of the nation’s best and most physical teams (Minnesota). An informal poll measuring the Big Ten’s best team following this weekend would favor Indiana, but I’m not so sure we can make that assumption based off two critical games. The conference season is a long and enduring grind. We’ll gather more evidence and draw that distinction later this winter. Deal?

Read the rest of this entry »

1. When asked after Louisville’s road win over Seton Hall about the five-year contract UConn finally wrote up for Kevin Ollie, Rick Pitino called the situation “a perfect match” and a “tremendous marriage.” He believes Ollie is the kind of charismatic “player’s coach” who can keep a team focused and engaged in the face of an impending postseason ban. “Kevin is the perfect segue into an APR situation… He’ll keep it fun for this team and he’ll have them motivated in the future.” The UofL coach also had some interesting comments about playing in Big East road venues, so check out the linked article.
2. Seth Davis took a look at 20 potential bubble teams and whether their non-conference strength of schedules will help or hurt each of them in March. Davis subscribes to the school of thought advocating tougher non-conference schedules, and Big East schools don’t fare well in his appraisal. Pitt (SOS: #257) and Seton Hall (SOS: #260) are the only two conference schools to appear on Davis’ list, and he predicts both will suffer with the selection committee because of their soft non-conference slates. Seton Hall, in particular, “will need to at least finish in the top eight of the conference to feel good about their at-large chances.”
3. That UConn out-rebounded DePaul by 20 boards the other night wasn’t an accident, but rather the product of a blue-collar rebounding ethic Kevin Ollie is trying to instill in the Huskies. Ollie was excited to see his guards in particular contribute more effort on the glass: “They’ve got to come down and get their nose in there and get dirty and box out and hit somebody. I saw that, and I want to continue to see that.” With no Andre Drummond or Hasheem Thabeet types around to clean the boards with their size and natural abilities, the coaching staff’s focus has become “to condition guys to play more physical, to hit their man first.” But they concede that process will take time before it pays dividends, and rebounding will likely remain a major weakness of the Huskies as they hit the most brutal stretch of their Big East schedule.
4. Tray Woodall played with “a lot more emotion” after Pittsburgh’s recent loss to Rutgers, and it paid off in a big way when he orchestrated Tuesday’s 73-45 win at Georgetown. “This is my last year. It‘s my team. I‘m a senior on the team, me and Dante [Taylor]. There‘s more pressure on me. I want it. I embrace it.” Most importantly, Woodall embraced the challenge Jamie Dixon issued to him to play with the defensive intensity that has eluded his game throughout his career. He held scorer Markel Starks to six points on 2-of-8 shooting, with no assists and four turnovers.
5. The ever-affable Jim Boeheim is going out of his way to make new friends in the ACC. Speaking nostalgically of his final Big East road trip to Providence after his team beat the Friars on Wednesday night, Boeheim lamented that he’d have to negotiate the new physical environments in his next conference. “I know where all the good restaurants are now, and now I’ve got to go down to Clemson, South Carolina. I’m sure there’s a couple of Denny’s down there.” The millionaire coach either believes Denny’s is actually a “good restaurant” or he’s painting Clemson with the podunk brush. Knowing Jim’s flair for the cynical and alienating, it’s probably the latter. Bret Strelow and Stephen Schramm at the Fayetteville (NC) Observer provided Boeheim with a helpful map. The good news is that the nearest Denny’s is 14 miles from campus –– a veritable hop, skip and a jump by ACC scale. Closer examination on Google Street View reveals that Jim is one step ahead of all of us:
   

   Boeheim to the ACC: a real GRAND SLAM?

1. DeAndre Daniels went off against DePaul in UConn’s 99-78 win last night, pouring in a career-high 26 points on 9-of-12 shooting. More importantly, the 6’8″ Daniels grabbed eight rebounds, marking the first time he’s collected more than five in a game since November. The Huskies rank #307 in the country in rebounds per game, and last night was their first dominant performance of the season on the boards, out-rebounding the Blue Demons by 20. In thumping DePaul, UConn scored its most points in a league game since the six-overtime battle with Syracuse in the 2009 Big East Tournament. After failing to eclipse 70 points in six of their first nine games this season, the Huskies have become more prolific since mid-December, scoring 80 in three of their last five.
2. DePaul certainly didn’t help its cause against UConn last night when news broke hours before tipoff that Donnavan Kirk and Charles McKinney had been suspended for a violation of team rules. Kirk is the Blue Demons’ tallest player at 6’9″, and appropriately leads the team in blocks at 1.9 BPG. The suspensions also left a combined 11.4 PPG on the bench. It’s unclear how long the players will be out, and it will be interesting to see who picks up the slack on both ends of the floor. DePaul returns home to face Cincinnati and St. John’s next week.
3. Just when it seemed as though Louisville had returned to full strength at the perfect time, we learned yesterday that Chane Behanan would miss seven to 10 days with a high ankle sprain he suffered in practice on Monday. He will be replaced in the starting lineup by freshman power forward Montrezl Harrell, who acquitted himself well in extensive play during Gorgui Dieng’s injury but lacks Behanan’s aggression on the boards and polished footwork in the low post. As Card Chronicle’s medical advisor points out, high ankle sprains require, on average, “three to six weeks” to fully heal, so there’s no guarantee we’ll see Behanan in the Syracuse game in 10 days.
4. After dropping its first two Big East games, Jamie Dixon’s Pittsburgh squad rebounded by traveling to D.C. and handing Georgetown its “worst loss of the JTIII era” last night. The 73-45 drubbing, which was statistically over with six minutes left, “exposed Georgetown’s limitations like none of its predecessors,” says Casual Hoya. The Hoyas have scored 46.5 PPG through two straight Big East losses, and it’s hard to visualize JTIII’s team as the contender we envisioned in the preseason given their many offensive handicaps.
5. The Big East reportedly hit up ESPN for $300 million in annual television rights during their exclusive negotiation window this past fall. This revelation was obviously met with derision and mockery across the Internet. Lost in the Big East’s implosion and subsequent media rubbernecking is the fact that the league was in the midst of negotiating a pretty lucrative television contract before the wheels finally came off. As The UConn Blog pointed out on Twitter, such an exorbitant request would have only been made to force ESPN’s hand in closing its exclusive negotiation window with the Big East, allowing the league to shop around with other networks.

As our ACC brethren noticed earlier, the NCAA released its initial RPI ratings this morning and there is plenty to note. Of course the first thing to observe is that the RPI is not the most comprehensive metric for evaluating teams and should be taken with a grain of salt. But the NCAA still uses it and you will hear plenty about it as March creeps closer, so why not give some of our early impressions of the teams from the Big East and where they stand. Some teams such as Cincinnati, which checks in at No. 34, should be content with where they are, but others in the Big East might feel a little more strongly about the current RPI.

Who Should Be Happy

• Connecticut. They won’t have the NCAA Tournament to look forward to so I guess the RPI ratings are a moot point for UConn, but they should feel pretty good about landing at No. 27 especially considering they have just one marquee win (Michigan State) and a pair of solid non-conference wins (Wake Forest, Washington) while playing just one true road game. I think KenPom — who has the Huskies ranked all the way down at No. 61 — is closer to the truth when it comes to evaluating the Huskies. And after tonight’s tilt with DePaul, they play a difficult four-game stretch that could see this rating take a tumble quickly. Of course all of this speculation is worthless because the Huskies’ RPI rating matters not this season. Why did I just write that paragraph again?
• Marquette. Not far behind UConn is the team that beat them in overtime on January 1, Marquette at No. 31. The Golden Eagles should probably also be pretty pleased with their current standing since their best win is the one-point eyesore over Georgetown on Saturday and they have another eyesore that they lost to Wisconsin-Green Bay staining the resume. My guess is they probably weren’t dinged much for losing to Florida and Butler, both of whom are in the top 20 when it comes to RPI, and the Golden Eagles do have 11 wins which can’t be ignored no matter how ugly some of them have been. Marquette’s young team will have to hold up over the course of the conference slate, but if they can do that, they will be right in the thick of the NCAA Tournament discussion.

Despite Ugly Wins, Buzz Williams’s Team Is Sitting Pretty In The RPI Ratings

• Seton Hall. The NCAA’s RPI ratings work in mysterious ways sometimes and Seton Hall — a team without any impressive wins and one of the least-difficult non-conference schedules in the entire country — is an excellent example. The Pirates are inexplicably ranked No. 49, something I am sure coach Kevin Willard won’t complain about, and it’s not obvious why. I mean, they don’t have a bad loss on their resume yet, but their best win is a 71-67 squeaker over a middling Wake Forest team. The Pirates might have enough on their roster to earn bubble consideration come March, but the better bet would be that the conference schedule will help correct this issue in short order.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. So that whole thing about the ‘Catholic Seven‘ breaking away from the Big East?  That’s looking like an even better decision than we initially thought. According to ESPN.com‘s Darren Rovell, the seven schools have an offer from FOX, which is looking to launch its own sports channel next summer, for 12 years and $500 million. According to the report, the schools would look to bring in three to five additional members who would receive lesser shares, and the seven schools would each make around $5 million per year. In the current Big East, non-football members now make between $2-$3 million per season. These schools may not have powerful football programs, but Georgetown, St. John’s, Villanova, and the others still hold some weight in the basketball world, as FOX’s reported offer shows.
2. Meanwhile, Big East commissioner Mike Aresco is having a rough go of things. In a Hartford Courant article, he compares the last six weeks to “drinking from a flood”.  That time period includes the departures of Louisville and Rutgers, the news that Boise State would remain in the Mountain West, and the announcement that the ‘Catholic Seven’ would breaking away from the Big East. Unfortunately for Aresco, it is really less of a flood and more of a drought in terms of viable programs remaining in his conference. San Diego State, which was planning to join as a football-only member, may now turn its back on the conference with Boise gone, and there seems to be real questions as to whether Navy ever ends up joining for football either. To wrap this all up, there does not seem to be many other qualified programs in the east, and schools like Cincinnati, UConn, and USF will jump ship as soon as another viable conference comes calling.
3. CBS Sports‘ basketball guru Gary Parrish recently penned his mid-season review for the Big East, and everything seemed to line up until his pick for ‘freshman of the year favorite’. Parrish chose Pitt’s Steven Adams as his selection, a players who is having a decent year, and he mentions Villanova’s Ryan Arcidiacono as another candidate, but as Pitt blog Cardiac Hill notes, by far the best choice for this award is St. John’s forward Jakarr Sampson. Sampson is averaging 13.9 points and seven rebounds per game to Adams’ 7.3/6.2 numbers, and has definitely been the conference’s most impressive rookie so far.
4. Speaking of the Johnnies, they got what may end up being a signature win against Cincinnati on Saturday. Sampson had a solid night, scoring 16 points and grabbing eight boards, but in crunch time Steve Lavin gave the ball to D’Angelo Harrison. Harrison was having an off night for the Red Storm, but came through in the clutch regardless, scoring the final five points in a 53-52 win over the Bearcats. Harrison was benched by Lavin earlier this season when he wasn’t living up to his potential as a team leader and role model… and it certainly seems like his disciplinary tactics are now paying off.
5. Brandon Triche has always been somewhat of an enigma to Syracuse fans.  He is a four-year starter, and his statistical lines read like those of a consistently good-but-not-great player. However, many people, including Jim Boeheim, envisioned more from Triche, and it seems like the senior guard may be breaking out at the right time for the Orange. In the first two Big East games of the season, Triche has scored a total of 45 points on 16-of-24 shooting, and has taken some of the play-making pressure off of point guard Michael Carter-Williams. Syracuse does not have great depth at guard, especially when freshman Trevor Cooney struggles to score, so Triche’s ability to provide consistent scoring and spell MCW by running the point has proven to be invaluable this season.