1. While Seth Davis is one of the better college basketball journalists out there he normally is not one that you find taking controversial stances, but this week he decided to shake the hornets’ nest by doing the unthinkable–defending the RPI. Seth’s defense is not an attempt to say that the RPI is a perfect tool as it is far from it, but he believes it is a solid tool that should be used with a variety of other tools including your own eyes when judging a team. Still Seth’s column generated quite a bit of discussion on Twitter yesterday, which for the most part was fairly civil. We are sure that this will continue to be a point of contention going forward, but with the way many bubble teams are playing late in the season if they don’t make the cut they have no reason to complain.
2. In his latest blog post, Nerlens Noel talked about his recent visits to Syracuse and Kentucky and his impressions of those visits, but the bigger news is that he has still not officially reclassified as a member of the class of 2012. He says that his paperwork should be finalized by early March. Other than that it is mostly a couple of anecdotes, talking about visiting schools in the future, and his decision to turn down an invitation from Duke, which is what most Kentucky fans will probably fixate on.
3. With the season winding down and their NCAA fate hanging in the balance, Anthony Grant finally made a decision on his two leading scorers/rebounds. Yesterday, Alabama announced that it was suspending Tony Mitchell for the rest of the season while allowing JaMychal Green return to practice. We still do not know what Mitchell did that led to his eventual dismissal for conduct detrimental to the team while Green, who has been suspended twice before, was allowed to return after being held out for three games for violating unspecified team rules. Although Green is able to practice with the team he will not play on Thursday at Arkansas so the earliest he would return to action would be this Saturday against Mississippi State.
4. Florida, which has struggled to find enough guards to fill their minutes, may get Mike Rosario back for their game tonight against Auburn. Rosario has missed the last three games after sustaining a hip pointer in practice. We are not sure what Rosario’s role is on this team going forward as he is probably their 7th man and he was pretty far behind the top three guards even before he was injured. Perhaps he can fill in when he has a hot hand or if they have foul trouble, but we would not expect too much out of Rosario going down the stretch.
5. Since this past October, Connecticut has been waiting to hear from the NCAA on its potential 2013 NCAA Tournament ban due to its low APR score. The committee that would make that ruling met yesterday and. . .they pushed it off to the next meeting, which is from April 23 to 25. The decision is particularly big for the Huskies because they already had their waiver brushed aside and a postseason ban would probably mean a departure for several key figures including Jim Calhoun, Andre Drummond, Jeremy Lamb, and Alex Oriakhi.

1. If you are in the group of people who does not pay for cable television and planned to watch the NCAA Tournament on CBS and March Madness on Demand you may be out of luck. In an announcement yesterday, Turner Sports announced that they would be charging a staggering $3.99 for online access to their games. While this initially caused a few moments of unease online (since you know everything should be given away to the public for free) it is even less burdensome than it seems as those who have TBS, TNT, and TruTV from their cable provider will be able to gain access to the games online for free through the channel’s website by proving that they have the channel on their home cable package although how you will do that is a little unclear. The games that are broadcast on CBS will continue to be provided free of charge.
2. In this week’s edition of his power rankings Luke Winn takes a look at all aspects of how Anthony Davis blocks shots, the role of Fab Melo on defense, and the usual other statistical nuggets that he always brings us. We usually spare Luke of any criticism (mostly because he usually does not deserve it), but we are perplexed with his ranking of New Mexico as he has them as the #16 team in his rankings, which seems pretty lofty except that he had them at #12 before they won at San Diego State. We understand that he moved four other teams up quite a bit, but the reason/justification for the drop at least merits a mention.
3. We have seen a lot of strange coaching moves in the past few months, but the announcement that Mount St. Mary’s was putting Robert Burke on paid administrative leave per his request is one of the more odd ones. A school official citing university policy refused to release any more information about the leave. Since the school and Burke are not providing any information, the rest of us are left to speculate on what the reason is (assuming you want to spend that time thinking about a NEC team that is 6-19 overall), but the most likely (and least libelous) reason is the on-court performance of the team as Burke is 17-40 since taking over during the 2009-10 season.
4. Remember our link yesterday talking about how some conferences will need to merge or expand to survive? Apparently, new Sun Belt Conference commissioner Karl Benson got the memo because when he was announced as the incoming commissioner yesterday he immediately began discussing plans to expand the conference. Benson declined to name any specific targets, but it would seem like needs to act quickly as his conference has schools located in the southeastern United States from Florida to Texas making them prime targets for other conferences looking to get into or consolidate that market.
5. Ever since Nerlens Noel reclassified to this year’s graduating class, the interest around his recruitment has grown exponentially. The 6’10” center, who will probably end up being the #1 recruit in this year’s class when the final rankings are released, went on-air with Jeff Goodman yesterday to discuss his list of schools, which were (in no particular order) Kentucky, Connecticut, Syracuse, North Carolina, Providence, Florida, and Georgetown. [Ed. Note: He initially did not mention Providence, but tweeted a clarification soon after the show.] Much like Shabazz Muhammad, the other player in the running for #1 overall recruit, Noel does not appear to be in any hurry to announce where he will be going so we could be waiting for a while.

1. Last week we mentioned the possibility of a Mountain West/Conference USA merger and yesterday the two sides moved closer to “a new association” with the start of combined play happening as early as the 2013-14 season. With both conferences seeing a significant number of their former constituents departing for greener pastures the move is one of self-preservation. This move probably will not have the domino effect that other major moves have had, but should take some potentially interesting target schools off the market for the time being.
2. Santa Clara has suspended Kevin Foster, the West Coast Conference’s leading scorer (17.8 PPG), for the remainder of the season after his arrest for driving under the influence. Foster has been suspended by the team following his arrest in the early morning on January 22. Since that time he has missed seven games with the Broncos losing all seven. To be fair, the team was only 8-10 with him on the court. Since this is Foster’s junior season, there is a possibility that the team could bring him back next season, but now he will have to deal with the legal system first as he is scheduled to be arraigned March 7 as he has been charged with a misdemeanor.
3. With Connecticut sitting on the NCAA bubble and its Hall of Fame coach Jim Calhoun still on an indefinite medical leave our faith in a rally by the Huskies is fading by the day. While Calhoun could theoretically come back any day now, it looks like that day will not be tomorrow when UConn plays DePaul. In fact, it could be quite a while as according to reports Calhoun is still meeting with medical specialists to get second- and third-opinions on how to manage his spinal stenosis. Calhoun is apparently still deciding whether to go with conservative management or undergo a surgical procedure, which would probably keep him out for the rest of the season. With just six games left in the regular season and the hopes of a promising season growing bleaker with every game, we would expect Calhoun to make a decision in the near-future.
4. It was not quite like Larry Bird calling his Celtic teammates “sissies” in the 1984 NBA Finals, but after looking at tape of their home loss to Michigan State, Jared Sullinger criticized the entire team for playing like “spoiled brats” for their constant arguing with each other and the officials. Sullinger was careful not to simply call out his teammates as he included himself in the comment since along with his impressive totals of 17 points and 16 rebounds he also had 10 turnovers. It will be interesting to see how the Buckeyes respond to the loss moving forward as they have the potential to stay a #1 seed or drop down to a #3 seed with a tricky close to the regular season.
5. Tonight’s Florida–Alabama game will have a vastly different look than what we expected coming into the weekend. Coming off back-to-back losses the Gators will be without the services of Will Yeguete after he suffered a concussion and required 10 stitches as the result of  a fall in Saturday’s loss against Tennessee and will also be without Mike Rosario as he continues to deal with a hip injury. Meanwhile, the Crimson Tide will welcome back two of the four players who had been suspended last week for the catch-all conduct detrimental to the team. While Tony Mitchell and JaMychal Green will continue to serve their suspensions, the team will “most likely” have Trevor Releford and Andrew Steele back for tonight’s game. Anthony Grant has not released any more information about if and when Mitchell and Green would return, but if he wants to avoid being on the bubble on Selection Sunday he might want to consider reinstating them fairly soon.

Rush The Court is back with another edition of One on One: An Interview Series, which we will bring you periodically throughout the year. If you have any specific interview requests or want us to interview you, shoot us an email at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

This time our interview subject is Clark Kellogg. Most of you probably just know Clark from his work at CBS first as a studio analyst, but eventually taking over as one of their lead college basketball analysts replacing Billy Packer. While that is impressive by itself, just saying that would be selling Clark’s on-court accomplishments short. Clark was a McDonald’s All-American, All-Big Ten, and was the #8 overall pick in the 1982 NBA Draft by the Indiana Pacers. In his rookie year, he averaged a ridiculous 20.1 points and 10.6 rebounds per game while being named All-Rookie First Team, but his career was cut short due to knee injuries. Clark joined to talk about college basketball and the Capital One Cup.

Rush The Court: One of the big topics in college sports recently has been the issue of paying athletes, whether it is the $2,000 stipend or more radical proposals. What are your thoughts on what has been proposed and how realistic do you think the proposals have been?

Clark Kellogg: I think it is a worthwhile proposal and it is realistic. Obviously, you have to look at the budgetary constraints of different programs, but I think that every Division I player in the major revenue-producing sports (men’s basketball and men’s football) because the demands of the scholarship are a full-time job should be able to supplement that with the cost of attendance, which is what the stipend is attempting to close the gap on. I think it is reasonable and practical. Obviously, it raises a question as to how you do that and what’s the right amount, but I think it is a good proposal and one that should be implemented and I think it will be in some form and fashion. I think it is a positive step because of the nature of those two sports and because of the demands on the time and minds and bodies of those student-athletes it is a full-time job and the cost of attending college is more than the cost of tuition, food, room, board, and books. That is a wonderful blessing to have that covered. All three of our children have been Division I scholarship athletes and we understand the blessing that is, but at the same time I was in a position to send each of my kids a certain amount of money each month to cover some of the incidental expenses. I think it makes sense for the universities to try and cover some of those incidental costs.

Kellogg Believes Schools Should Cover Cost Of Living

RTC: Getting back to basketball itself, one of the topics that after UNC got blown out by 33 points at Florida State people started to suggest that they are not a championship team. [Clark laughing in the background.] That championship teams don’t get blown out like that [more laughter] and they cite all these figures about how no championship team has ever lost by that much.

CK: Can you tell by my reaction? [Even more laughter] I think that is nonsensical. You play 30 to 35 games in college basketball and everybody is going to get drummed. I don’t care if you are championship caliber or not. There are a lot of factors that go into being drummed. One is being on the road. Two you play against a good team that has a terrific performance. Three is you are human; there are all kind of things: travel, finals, schools, 18- to 22-year old guys being brain neutral and not there. It happens in the NBA. Teams that win the championship get beat badly sometimes. That doesn’t change who they are. Now if it becomes a pattern then that is different, but a one-game situation I just chuckle when people say that. It is part of the context of our culture because we so want to analyze something every five or 10 minutes and make a conclusion about it. A season is indeed a season. It is made up of individual games and some games are going to be better than others. It is about consistency. It’s about being healthy. It’s about getting better. Every now and then you are going to have a game that is inexplicable. You could go crazy and make 8 out of 13 three-pointers. How often is that going to happen? So it goes both ways. It was comical to me that people automatically started thinking that Carolina was unworthy of being one of the favorites to get to New Orleans. Now they have got issues with [Dexter] Strickland being out. Who steps into his role? That is more something to analyze than the fact that they got blasted in Tallahassee.

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Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address, and since the President is known for possessing a solid left-handed jumper, we found today as good a day as any to assess the positions of the 12 SEC basketball programs. Paraphrasing roughly every president ever: “I come to you tonight to report the state of our union is strong” (wait for prolonged applause). Now when speaking of the SEC as a whole, it would still hold true, as the league against boasts the #1 team in country, Kentucky, and has five teams solidly in the NCAA Tournament field as this moment. For some teams however, calling the state of their program “strong” would be in insult to their fan bases. For Kentucky, Vanderbilt, and Florida, the three schools picked to finish atop the standings, each move into the final six weeks of the regular season looking to hold on or improve upon their NCAA statuses.

John Calipari Thinks The State Of The SEC Is Strong

In Kentucky, the lone blemish remains that buzzer-beating loss at Indiana. While the Hoosiers have dropped out of the Top 10 of late, no one can complain about year three of the Calipari era. Anthony Davis has become the most menacing defensive inside presence in the league since perhaps Shaquille O’Neal as the Cats eye a #1 seed in March.

Both the Gators and Commodores have two cracks at the Wildcats coming up. At Florida, the Gators missed scoring big non-conference wins at Ohio State and Syracuse then suffered questionable losses to Rutgers and Tennessee and the combined record of their first four SEC opponents is a meager 38-36.  Road games at Ole Miss, Alabama, and Arkansas could shape their NCAA future.

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1. Over the weekend it was reported that former Pittsburgh freshman Khem Birch was going to announce on Sunday night, but after giving it a little more thought he decided to postpone his decision until today. According to reports, Birch is deciding between Florida and UNLV. Both programs would appear to be a good fit for Birch as he could potentially pair up with either Patric Young or Mike Moser for the next two seasons. We are not sure what the real reason was for Birch’s decision to leave Pittsburgh, but either school would be just about as good of a landing spot as you could hope for when you are a transfer.
2. After initially suspending Keala King for its games at USC and UCLA, Arizona State dismissed King, its starting point guard and leading scorer. Playing out of position due to Jahii Carson being academically ineligible, King averaged 13.7 points, 4.9 rebounds, and 3.7 assists per game, but as Doug Haller points out he had not fully adapted to running the team as he averaged 3.9 turnovers per game and often held the ball too long. We are assuming that was not the reason for his dismissal and the fact that the other two players (Kyle Cain and Chris Corvin) who were suspended with King remain on the team suggests that King did something in addition to his prior “unacceptable conduct” that led to his dismissal. Like Birch, King should have no shortage of suitors as he was a top-50 recruit coming out of college and plenty of Division I schools would be interested in a high-level point guard who can score and will have at least two years of eligibility remaining.
3. Less than two years after transferring from Illinois (he left the team once before deciding to rejoin them then finally leaving the school), Jeffrey Jordan has decided to transfer from UCF citing “personal reasons”. Neither Jordan nor anyone affiliated with the school has gone into further detail about what those reasons are, but this appears to be the end of his college basketball career as this was his senior year and we doubt that the NCAA would grant him another year of eligibility. It appears that his younger brother Marcus, who is the more talented of the two and leads the team with 17.2 points per game, will remain with the team. As for Jeffrey we assume he will continue working on his website along with his brother and some friends called Heir-Jordan.com and whatever other business possibilities are open to an heir.
4. Since the Crosstown Shootout Brawl Xavier has been in a freefall going from a Final Four pick by some to out of the top 25. While many people have been perplexed by the precipitous drop, Luke Winn thinks the Musketeers need to embrace their old mentality. We are sure that some people are going to take this the wrong way like they do with some of Winn’s statistical work, but in essence what he is saying that the team may have become too passive after all the criticism it received. As usual, we tend to agree with Winn on this and it reminds us of how the old Miami Hurricane football teams used to talk about playing with swagger. Playing with too much gets you in trouble by picking up fouls or penalties (or having brawls), but playing without it makes you vulnerable especially if you have grown accustomed to playing that way.
5. Looking for football analysis after the Wildcard Round of the NFL Playoffs? Well you came to the wrong place. If you were trying to get it this weekend at the Siena–Niagara game you were also out of luck. After Siena initially told fans that they would simulcast the New York Giants game on the scoreboard during their game against Niagara to enable them to follow their favorite college team and favorite NFL team and getting the green light from the local FOX affiliate, Siena was informed by the NFL that doing so would violate the league’s copyright interest so they had to cancel the promotion. As for the actual game, the Saints won 72-60 while the Giants won 24-2. Unfortunately, this could be an issue again next week as the Giants game, which starts at 4:30 PM on Saturday, will probably run into Siena’s next game, which is at Manhattan and starts at 7 PM.

1. Khem Birch has started to set up visits before deciding on where he will transfer to after his departure from Pittsburgh. The McDonald’s All-American will visit Florida today, New Mexico State tomorrow, and UNLV on Friday. Adding a big man of Birch’s abilities would obviously be a big deal, but typically players who transfer in a way that Birch did transfer down from a program of a higher caliber. In Birch’s case it appears like that will end being the case unless he ends up at Florida who may be so desperate for a big man to pair with Patric Young that they are willing to take on Birch so they are not quite as guard-heavy.
2. We have heard of teams forfeiting parts of their season due to a variety of circumstances, but few have done so in as spectacular a fashion as Southeastern Community College men’s basketball team. Late last week the school announced that it was forfeiting the last 12 games this season after 10 players were dismissed from the team for violating school and/or athletic department rules and another two players were ruled academically ineligible. That left the school with just two members of its original 14-member team eligible to play. Consequently, the team, which was 13-3, will forfeit their remaining games. Meanwhile, the affiliated athletic conference is still trying to figure out how to deal with the school’s decision and its impact on the other teams in the conference.
3. We didn’t think that there would be much of a storyline going into tonight’s Connecticut–Seton Hall game other than George Blaney coaching in the last game of Jim Calhoun‘s three-game Big East suspension. Then the Huskies met with the media after their Monday morning practice and Andre Drummond revealed that he didn’t know who Herb Pope was before that practice. While this didn’t make a lot of waves in the mainstream media you can be sure that Pope was made aware of Drummond’s comment. While Blaney and the rest of the Connecticut coaching staff is very familiar with Pope’s work (18.6 points and 10.9 rebounds per game), the Pirates will probably be  using this as motivation. For his part, Drummond replied on Twitter stating that he meant no disrespect, but he had never watched Seton Hall play before.
4. Ken Pomeroy followed up on Matt Norlander’s piece from last week discussing the decrease in scoring this season. Pomeroy goes a little deeper into the numbers breaking it down into offensive efficiency, pace, and effective field goal percentage while also offering up three potential solutions. All of Pomeroy’s suggestions seem reasonable and are not really radical departures that most college basketball fans would object to although we can see some people having a hard time getting used to an Olympic-style trapezoid lane. If you are looking for more detail on Pomeroy’s work on the subject of Division I scoring we encourage you to take  a look through some of the older articles he links to in yesterday’s piece.
5. With the New Year upon us many people are taking a look at their portfolios and deciding whether or not they should reallocate their assets into different investments. For those of you with college basketball portfolios (both literally and figuratively) Seth Davis is here with some investment advice in his annual stock report. While Seth is no Jim Simons, we tend to agree with most of his buy/hold/sell ratings although we are a bit confused by his decision to “Buy” the top three teams in his rankings. If you have been slacking a little bit on your college basketball viewing this season and are trying to get back into it after being devoted to college football, you could a lot worse than reading Seth’s report.

1. For a freshman who had minimal impact in his one semester on the court Khem Birch is making quite a bit of news. Birch, who decided to transfer from Pittsburgh at the end of the fall semester, has released the list of the schools that he is considering: Florida, UNLV, Gonzaga, Washington, Xavier, and New Mexico State. Birch also attempted to clear the air on his departure saying that he “didn’t think it was the best place” for him and that his departure was not due to disagreements with Jamie Dixon or what people around him were telling him to do. One school that is noticeably absent from Birch’s list is Missouri after there were rumors circulating that the school had “tampered with” Birch before obtaining a release based on tweets from Jeff Goodman (#1 and #2) earlier in the day. Frank Haith denied these allegations, but it is interesting that Missouri was mentioned as a leader for Birch on December 19 and now they are not even on his list.
2. Pat Forde published an excellent column yesterday on St. Louis coach Rick Majerus discussing the program he inherited and how he helped build it up into the borderline top 25 team that it is today as well as his difficulties dealing with the declining health of his mother. Surprisingly one thing that Forde did not touch upon was Majerus’ health including the cardiac surgery he had over the summer in Salt Lake City. Outside of that missing element this is a good review on Majerus and the St. Louis program in case you have not been paying close attention to Majerus after his stint at ESPN. If the Billikens continue to perform at the level they have so far this season, this will be the first of many pieces on Majerus that you will be seeing in the coming months.
3. Those of you who remember the 1994-95 Duke season will remember the name Pete Gaudet. A long-time assistant to Mike Krzyzewski, Gaudet took over midway through the regular season when Krzyzewski took a temporary leave of absence to deal with back issues. Gaudet guided the Blue Devils to a 4-15 record, which included the memorable double overtime loss to North Carolina, during his temporary stint as head coach. Duke eventually had the NCAA assign these wins and losses (mostly the latter) to Gaudet. St. John’s appears to be taking the opposite approach with Mike Dunlap, who is acting as an interim coach while Steve Lavin, as the NCAA and Big East have advised the school to continue adding the victories and losses under Lavin’s name even if Dunlap is coaching. We are not sure how the NCAA will handle this at the end of the season, but we imagine that there are large groups of people in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Lexington, Kentucky, who will not view this favorably even if it is only temporary.
4. It is a little late for Christmas, but we think that Connecticut will be happy with a belated $4.5 million gift from Peter and Paula Werth towards the construction of a new basketball practice facility. The donation puts the school halfway to its goal of raising $30 million for the new facility. This isn’t the first major donation that the school has received as you may remember the Burton family donating several million dollars to the school then sending a scathing letter to the school demanding their money back before eventually agreeing to let the school keep the previously donated money. The Werths made their family fortune through Chemwerth, which manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients that are sold to pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Interestingly, neither Peter nor Paula attended UConn, but all three of their children did and the Werths have been season ticket holders for football and both men’s and women’s basketball. We are assuming that they will get their season tickets comped by the school from now on.
5. Since this is the last Morning Five of 2011 it is a good time to look back at the past calendar year and look forward to the coming year. Luke Winn recaps the past year by ranking the top 10 stories of 2011 and as usual is right on the money. We are sure several people will argue that “Jimmertime!” should be higher on the list, but when we believe that when we look back on this year in 20 years at least three of the four stories above it will definitely be more memorable (perhaps not #3). While Winn is looking back, Seth Davis is looking forward to the new year and offers up 10 bold predictions for 2012. As you would expect these are not as detailed as Winn’s recap stories since they are basically just educated guesses, but Davis does make some predictions that will certainly get a few fan bases worked up.

1. Yesterday the Big Ten and Pac-12 announced a “collaboration” that would enable them to have frequent inter-conference match-ups. As Gene Wojciehowski notes this agreement “could have far-reaching ramifications for both leagues.” Essentially the deal would enable the conferences to get some of the benefits of having a mega-conference and more national exposure without all the legal battles and huge exit fees. While most of the talk was centered around football and the possibility of a bowl game run by the two conferences outside of the existing bowl system, the effects on the basketball schedule could be felt as early as next season with more inter-conference match-ups. We are not sure how this would effect some of the current inter-conference match-ups like the Big Ten-ACC Challenge, but we hope that the schools cut out some of the cupcakes and guarantee games rather than some of the mid-majors that are given a shot against the “big boys”.
2. Anthony Davis is featured in ESPN Magazine’s “Next” Issue along a handful of other athletes who are on the verge of becoming household names as well as Cam Newton, who is already there. The article does not really say much that our average reader doesn’t already know about Davis (growth spurt and really long, but not anywhere near his ceiling). Still it is a nice form of recognition that might get Davis noticed by basketball fans who might not otherwise pay attention to his game like those fans who only watch NBA basketball including some foreign fans. We have not seen anybody do an analysis on how often these “Next” athletes pan out, but we suspect when they pick athletes that are as far along as Davis much less Newton they have a pretty good track record.
3. Former St. John’s commitment Ricardo Gathers (class of 2012) has “narrowed” his list to Kentucky, Duke, St. John’s, Baylor, LSU, and Florida, but has not set a date to announce yet. Meanwhile two highly sought-after class of 2013 recruits appear to be narrowing their lists more as Aaron Gordon is being pursued hard by Kentucky, but according to Josh Gershon of Scout.com they still trail Washington and Arizona while Julius Randle has not officially narrowed his list, but appears to be more focused on Duke, Kentucky, and North Carolina in a recent interview. We do not expect Gordon or Randle to commit any time soon, but the clock is ticking on Gathers.
4. As we noted earlier this week Virginia has lost quite a few transfers recently. One of those was power forward James Johnson, who has started to look at schools to transfer to and appears to be starting with San Diego State, Washington State, and New Mexico. Any of these schools would certainly welcome an ACC level recruit particularly a 6’9″, 240-pound power forward even one who put up unremarkable numbers in his short stay there (left midway through his redshirt freshman year). We have not heard any information about where Johnson is leaning, but if being close to home is a factor then San Diego State would have be the heavy favorite as it is only about an hour away from where he grew up.
5. Richard Deitsch of SI.com handed out his media awards yesterday and some college basketball media members were prominently featured. As you would expect, Jay Bilas got the most nominations thanks to his all-out media blitz as a studio analyst, working courtside, and on Twitter. However, there were a handful of other prominent media members who made various lists (mostly good, but a few of them bad). While we could do without some of the stuff in there like all the non-college basketball talk, it is an interesting read especially for some of the media politics.

1. Mississippi received a nice present under the tree as forward Murphy Holloway‘s MRI revealed that his injury against Middle Tennessee State University was only a bad high ankle sprain. Andy Kennedy said that Holloway can return to practice as soon as he regains “strength and mobility.” Kennedy and the Rebels will need Holloway back as soon as possible. Holloway is the team’s leading rebounder with 9.6 rebounds per game, and he adds in 9.9 points. The Rebs have lost their last two games in a row, and hit the road to face a tough Dayton team that already knocked off Alabama earlier in the year.
2. Mississippi State freshman Rodney Hood may not have come in with the hype that many SEC freshmen had, but his play is making quite the statement. Hood has come along quickly averaging 12.5 points and 5.2 rebounds per game. He has focused his practice on mid-range jumpers and it shows. Hood has connected on 62% of his two point field goals this year. “The first part of the season, I was just finding my way,” Hood said. “Now I’m coming into my own.” Rick Stansbury obviously likes what he sees as Hood leads the team in minutes at 33.2 minutes per game.
3. Georgia has struggled in the second half of games this year, blowing halftime leads against Colorado, Cincinnati, and Georgia Tech. Just when it looked like the Bulldogs may let another lead slip out of their grasp, the players dug a little deeper to put together a non-conference win against Furman. “Our team executed very well tonight,” coach Mark Fox said. Freshman Kentavious Caldwell-Pope stepped up big, showing a major display of leadership. “I realized that we were starting to slack on defense,” Caldwell-Pope said. “So I just tried to help my team by creating steals, help on the drive, and rebound and I did that.” Georgia will need more than just Caldwell-Pope to step up though. The Bulldogs have struggled on offense (131st in adjusted offensive efficiency) with only one other player averaging double figures in scoring (senior Gerald Robinson at 13.6 PPG).
4. Patric Young is a freak of nature. We all know that, right? But did you see his block on Thursday night? It is clear that Young is beginning to turn some heads with his tremendous play as of late. It is clear that he is a much better player this year than the developing freshman that averaged 3.4 points and 3.8 rebounds per game last year. Sometimes, a SportsCenter type highlight is all we need to remind us of that. “Whenever you block somebody’s shot and pull it down with one hand, that’s making ‘SportsCenter,'” Young said. Yes, it will. The highlight reels are nice, but I think Billy Donovan will be more impressed with Young connecting on 63.3% effective field goal percentage, and snagging a solid 11.6 offensive rebounding percentage. Those numbers should lead to Young getting more than the 18.9% of shots (sixth on the team) that he takes in the Florida offense.
5. LSU‘s play of late is putting the team in good company. The last time a Tigers’ team won three road wins in non-conference play was 1985-86. You may remember that LSU team was the lowest seeded team at the time (#11 — now tied with VCU and George Mason) to go to a Final Four. The Tigers have won on the road against Houston, Rutgers, and North Texas. Defense has been the key to the Tigers’ successful run. LSU has held six straight opponents under 60 points, in what is believed to be the first time since the 1952-53 Tigers held six straight teams under 60. This team also has a couple of bad losses to go with those wins — a loss at Coastal Carolina and at home against South Alabama. Which version of Trent Johnson‘s squad will show up when the Tigers get the opportunity for quality RPI games against Virginia, Ole Miss, and Alabama in the next two and a half weeks will be a big determinant in how successful the Tigers are this season.