1. Finally.  UConn’s Jim Calhoun will receive his long-awaited extension this morning, which will keep him employed in Storrs through the 2013-14 season.  The five-year deal is retroactive to the 2009-10 season and will reportedly pay Calhoun over $13M.  Where’s Ken Krayeske now?
2. With just a little over 36 hours until the early entry withdrawal deadline passes, a few more players have made their decisions.  UTEP’s Arnett Moultrie will stay in the draft even though he is not considered a first round lock, while Seton Hall’s duo of Jeremy Hazell and Jeff Robinson are returning for another season of Big East basketball.  Mike DeCourcy points out that there are several teams sweating out decisions today and tomorrow as players who probably shouldn’t be in the draft pool are still considering the draft process — most notably, Purdue, Mississippi State and Illinois.  Check back over the weekend for updates on the final decisions of many of these players.
3. Houston starting point guard Desmond Wade is transferring out of the program, preferably to a school closer to his home base of the New York area.  He started 31 of the Cougars’ 35 games this year in an NCAA season, averaging 6/5 APG in a productive season.  With new coach James Dickey and all but one starter now moving on, UH will have to rebuild quickly to compete again in CUSA next year.
4. We know that the Wear twins are moving back west after their single season in Chapel Hill, but where will they end up?  Our completely unsubstantiated rumor of the day suggests UCLA’s Ben Howland will be the winner here.
5. Duke’s inestimable Cameron Indoor Stadium could be getting a significant facelift in the near future.  A two-story building attached to the front of the arena is proposed to act as a hospitality space for alumni and fans to gather before Duke basketball and football games.  Wait, Duke has a football team?

This has been discussed repeatedly since the late April announcement that the NCAA Tournament would be moving to a 68-team design beginning in 2011, but we’ve yet to come across a piece that outlines all of the iterations that the new four-PiG format might take.  Hashing it out on the phone with The Kiff (a longstanding member of the Cult of 64) last weekend, we ultimately settled on two major bones of contention — who gets to play in the four play-in games, and how do you structure it so as to maximize interest, revenue and bracketing?  We’ll discuss each of these questions in turn, but first, it’s interesting to read a quote from one prominent member of the NCAA Selection Committee for insights as to what may or may not be on the table here.  Laing Kennedy, the Kent State athletic director who will finish up a five-year term as a member of the NCAA Selection Committee, has this to say about it:

Going from 65 to 68 means four first-round games. Our committee, when we meet in May, will look at some models on how to bracket that. For example, you can have two afternoon and two night games in Dayton, or two games at two different sites.  But the big question to be decided by the committee is which teams should play those play-in games, and how the winners will be seeded into the field.  Speaking individually, I would look at the last eight, and rewarding the AQs [automatic qualifiers].  Those would be highly competitive first games. But those are things we have to look at in May.

Additionally, Greg Shaheen, the NCAA Senior Executive VP who got lit up by the media in the week leading up to the Final Four, said during a radio interview with Doug Gottlieb recently that all options are on the table with respect to logistics but one of the primary considerations of the committee in structuring the new games will be to remove some of the stigma from them.  A noble endeavor, indeed.

How to Avoid the Dreaded Stigma?

With the hope that reasonable minds ultimately will prevail, here are our thoughts on the matter.

Who Plays In It?

This is the part most fans care about, and with good reason — they want to know whether as standard practice they can continue to ignore PiG Tuesday.  As it currently stands, roughly 99.9% of America* fails to so much as recognize that there is a Tuesday night game ostensibly involving NCAA Tournament opponents.  Only the truly anal among us wait until Wednesday to fill out our bracket on the ridiculous off chance that the winner of the PiG is the “right” matchup to give its corresponding #1 team trouble (and you know who you are).  So let’s cut right to it.  For the last ten seasons, there have been only four groups of people who care about this game.

* unscientific sampling of the three guys walking around the office hallway

1. #16A’s fans, players and families.
2. #16B’s fans, players and families.
3. Overly nervous fans of the corresponding #1 seed waiting on an opponent for Friday’s #1/#16 game.
4. The good citizens of Dayton, Ohio, who keep attending this thing year after year.

Just about six weeks ago, we saw this played out in real time as the “Opening Round” of the NCAA Tournament between Arkansas-Pine Bluff-Winthrop competed directly with the first round of the NIT and several interesting matchups that included UConn-Northeastern, UNC-William & Mary, Texas Tech-Seton Hall and NC State-South Florida.  From that night’s ESPN coverage to the trending Twitter topics and later to the Nielsen ratings, it was painfully clear that on this mid-March evening, the NIT games were the preferred matchups for college hoops fans.  As anyone working at 700 West Washington Street in Indianapolis is surely aware, that should NEVER happen.  Even on its worst night, for an NCAA Tournament game to be overshadowed by another basketball-related sporting event in March should be an impossible achievement, and yet on that particular evening it was not.

This NIT Contest, Not the NCAA Game, Was the Featured Event of the Night

And therein lies the problem.  Most people, even hardcore college hoops fans like us, don’t consider the Tuesday night PiG to be a legitimate part of the NCAA Tournament.  It involves the two worst-rated teams in the field, which means nobody knows anything about them; and it has zero impact on our brackets, which means there’s no corresponding reason to care to learn about them either.  So the question for the NCAA becomes: how do you legitimize it?  How do you remove that stigma that Shaheen mentioned as problematic?  How do you make people care about the (now) four play-in games on Tuesday so that random NIT games involving struggling national powers don’t take priority over NCAA games on the sports page?  Here are the two viable alternatives as we see them.

Status Quo (x4)

Keeping things as they are now where the #16s play the ‘other’ #16s (or possibly #17s in the new scheme) wouldn’t seem to do much to enhance the legitimacy of the PiGs, but there is precedent for this.  From 1978 to 1985, the NCAA Tournament doubled in size from 32 to 64 teams (can you imagine the outcry in today’s environment??).  There were several fits and starts along the way as it expanded a little more almost every year in-between, but suffice it to say that in 1983, the NCAA invited 52 teams to the ball with the final eight automatic qualifiers slotted as #12 seeds into four play-in games (or the “preliminary round” as they called it then).  In 1984, there were five play-in games with an additional #11 seed added to the mix.  In both of these years, all of the play-in games were played on the Tuesday prior to the first round games, and the teams were sent to PiG sites of Philadelphia’s Palestra or Dayton’s UD Arena depending on relative proximity to the school(s) involved.  The winners advanced to play #5 seeds in the true “first round,” with the one exception of the #11 seed (Northeastern) in 1984 who played a #6 seed in that round.

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1. It’s not often that you see a BCS-level coach leave his position for a mid-major job (even a very good one), but that’s what will happen today when Iowa State’s Greg McDermott takes over for the departed Dana Altman at Creighton.  McDermott was clearly on thin ice with a 59-68 (18-46 Big 12) record in four seasons in Ames and little prospect for improvement in the near future, so this has every hallmark of a pre-emptive strike.  McDermott of course was at Northern Iowa in the MVC for five years prior to taking the ISU job, and he did very well there, going to three straight NCAA Tournaments from 2004-06.  He said that one of the primary reasons he wanted to take the Creighton job was for an opportunity to coach his son, an incoming freshman who had signed with UNI but will be allowed to move on to Creighton to play for his dad.
2. As for Altman’s move to Oregon, it became official yesterday.  He’ll roughly double his annual salary to $1.8M per year in a seven-year contract that will include some seriously high expectations.  As we said before, though, we expect he’ll do very well there.  Gary Parrish and Jeff Goodman give their takes.
3. Good weekend in the Big 12 for a couple of Texas teams — Baylor picked up UCLA transfer center J’Mison Morgan, a talented but enigmatic player who never seemed to be able to find a role in Westwood; and the Horns got a commitment from highly touted point guard Cory Joseph, the #7 overall player on the Rivals rankings in 2010.
4. Well, DePaul’s Oliver Purnell is off to a rousing start with the Chicago Public League high school coaches.  You know, the ones who control all of the great talent coming out of that city every year.  We’re sure this is all going to work out famously.
5. Love this stuff.  A well-done photo montage from the 2009-10 season from CHJ.  What is your favorite?  Gotta say that the Randy Culpepper dunk attempt is ours, with the second-prize going to the Lebron photo at Kentucky.  Creepiest pic?  The Jon Scheyer one in the Carolina-bluish warmups.  Great stuff — check it out.

1. Happy Earth Day, everyone.  Take care of it, folks.  Yesterday’s NBA Draft entries are getting even more obscure.  Ole Miss’ Eniel Polynice joined UTEP’s Arnett Moultrie in putting their names into the NBA Draft pool, which is now bigger than the NBA Draft itself.  Polynice is not projected as a draft pick, but he is due to graduate this spring and has decided that his college career is over.  At 6’11, Moultrie is a very raw but intriguing prospect who had a disappointing sophomore campaign but still could be worth a look in the second round for some team.  Whether that will be enough to keep him in the draft is unclear at this point.  It’s going to be a fun May 8 this year (the early entry withdrawal date).  One player expected to stick around is Kansas State’s Jacob Pullen, who feels that he needs to handle the ball more to improve his draft stock for next year.
2. New Wake Forest head coach Jeff Bzdelik was able to convince all five of the Demon Deacons’ top ten ranked recruiting class to stay with the program, a somewhat impressive feat given the negativity surrounding his hiring.  Clemson’s Brad Brownell is finding a little more trouble hanging onto star recruit Marcus Thornton, who is said to be considering many options other than the Tigers at this point.
3. The big guns are coming out, as the Big East hired former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue to help the league navigate the NWO of conference superpowers and whatever shakes out residually from Big Ten and other expansion in the coming years.  This is a very strong hire, and the rest of the major conferences should take note of this move.  If the Big East knows one thing, it’s marketing and business savvy.
4. This is a cool piece at Fanhouse that describes the unknown connection between the two mid-majors who crashed the Final Four party in the last five seasons — George Mason and Butler.  Who knew that Dick Bennett had any part of this, but he did.
5. In a possible Q-rating litmus test of Calipari vs. Pitino in the recruiting world, junior superstar guard Marquis Teague is expected to announce his choice of school this afternoon, and apparently Cardinal Nation is already throwing itself into the Ohio River over the following tweets from Tony Wroten, another junior guard who is claiming that Teague told him his choice last night on the phone:

The big news today is that Oregon and Mr. Moneybags Phil Knight have made a formal offer to Minnesota’s Tubby Smith, which (you know the drill) Smith vehemently denied.  In an effort to keep Tubby in Minneapolis, the Minnesota president has gotten involved and said that they hope they can put together a contract extension that will result in Smith retiring from basketball at the school.  Another source near the Duck program says that Pitt’s Jamie Dixon has been offered the job.  We’re really not sure what Oregon is thinking here.  Sure, they want a big name, but they need to be realistic about this.  Oregon may have gobs of cash to throw at a prospective coach, but they’re not nearly as important as they must think they are.  Just within the Pac-10, this is probably the fifth best basketball job (behind UCLA, Arizona, Cal and Washington), and if you’ve ever been to Eugene it cannot possibly be the easiest place in the world to recruit mostly african-american players to.  Ernie Kent probably did as well as he possibly could do there.  The play that Knight and friends should make is to scour the nation for the hottest mid-major coach in America and throw whoever that may be (Randy Bennett?  Brad Stevens?  Ben Jacobson?) a wad of cash and the keys to the new Matthew Knight arena.  Give him four years and watch him work his tail off.  You’ve probably got a better shot at long-term success with that strategy that you would ending up with someone like Tubby who has gotten comfortable with his career arc.

Moving on to other coaching news, there were two more interesting items today.  First, former USC coach Tim Floyd has been hired at UTEP to replace Tony Barbee.  Yes, this is the same guy who as head coach at USC was responsible for the OJ Mayo fiasco and other self-reported NCAA violations that ended up costing a promising Trojan team its season.  It’s nice to see that UTEP brass thinks that Floyd will be cleared to coach when the NCAA sanctions come down next month, but mixed messages are coming out of El Paso about what the school expects to hear from the NCAA.

The other piece of news is that Boston College fired Al Skinner after thirteen seasons at the helm in Chestnut Hill.  Citing “philosophical differences,” the BC athletic director said that the information was kept quiet last week as Skinner applied for the St. John’s job that went to Steve Lavin.  Rumored candidates for the job include Harvard’s Tommy Amaker, Cornell’s Steve Donahue and Richmond’s Chris Mooney.

Seton Hall lost its third player to the NBA Draft today when guard Jeremy Hazell decided to test the waters.  Hazell averaged 20.4 PPG this year, which was third-best in the Big East but he is currently projected as a late second-rounder on the current draft boards.  One player who will not be heading to the NBA Draft this year is UCLA’s J’Mison Morgan who was dismissed from the program today.  Morgan’s complete lack of production in two years in Westwood has been nothing short of confounding — the onetime top-50 recruit scored a grand total of 36 points in the 2009-10 season.

One other interesting rumor coming out of the McDonald’s All-American Game is that Kentucky is apparently telling recruits that all five of their NBA-possibles — John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Daniel Orton, Eric Bledsoe, Patrick Patterson — are expected to leave for the NBA Draft.  Is UK lying to these players in the hopes that they’ll lure them into the Wildcat fold, or is there any truth to this?  Everyone expects Wall, Cousins and Patterson to be gone, but Bledsoe and Orton as well?

Pete Thamel of the New York Times is reporting tonight that Steve Lavin is set to be hired at St. John’s soon, as an unnamed source familiar with the proceedings labeled today as a “productive and positive dialogue” between the two parties.  Lavin has spent the last seven seasons as a commentator for ESPN after being fired from UCLA after a disastrous 10-19 season in 2002-03.  He was reportedly close to accepting the NC State position in 2006, but ultimately decided against it to remain in television.  This is a solid hire in our view.  Lavin has name-brand recognition with high school kids who have grown up watching him on ESPN, and he’s always been a strong recruiter anyway.  So long as he can connect with NYC-area kids, he should be successful there.  St. John’s has been down for so long that merely getting to a Sweet Sixteen level of success with regularity would probably give Lavin lifelong job security in Jamaica, NY.  And we’ve always had a bit of feeling that Lavin feels he got a raw deal in Westwood, so he should be all the more motivated to prove his doubters wrong there.

The other big news today was a report out of Eugene that Oregon was prepared to offer Michigan State’s Tom Izzo the richest head coaching contract in college basketball history — greater than Kentucky coach John Calipari’s $32M/8-year deal he received last spring.  Phil Knight is backing the search financially and this squares with the rumors that UO was going to attempt to hire a big name this year.  Izzo said today that he was happy where he’s at, which is currently coaching yet another Spartan team into the Final Four.  It probably won’t be Izzo, but someone will bite on this.  The numbers are simply too large to pass up.

In other coaching carousel news, Marshall’s Donnie Jones has taken the head coaching position at Central Florida.  He replaces Kirk Speraw, who was fired two weeks ago after compiling the all-time wins record in eleven seasons at UCF.  So… does this mean that CUSA FrOY and DPOY Hassan Whiteside is going pro? His mother says that early reports of his going pro are premature and that no decision has yet been made.

We’ve already discussed Kansas center Cole Aldrich and Michigan guard Manny Harris’ decisions to go pro in other spaces, but two other prominent players announced their intentions to go pro today.  Seton Hall sophomore center Herb Pope will test the waters, but is likely to stay in the draft, and UTEP junior center Derrick Caracter will also leave school for professional opportunities.  Pope is projected as a late first rounder, but Caracter at this point is not seen as a legitimate prospect given some of his previous offcourt troubles.

The big news today in this area was of course the news that Tony Barbee is leaving UTEP to take the Auburn job.  We handled that separately here.

The other piece of coaching news is that Hofstra’s Tom Pecora has signed with Fordham for a non-puny sum of $705,000 per year.  Wow.  In the same New York Post article, Joe DeLessio says that Paul Hewitt is still the leading candidate to take the St. John’s job but a hefty buyout of $3.5M is holding up things.

In a pre-emptive strike by Northern Iowa to try to hang on to their hot commodity coach Ben Jacobson for as long as possible, the school offered him a big raise and a ten-year contract extension yesterday (which he accepted).  With each passing win in this Tournament, Jacobson’s stock will continue to rise.

Moving from the world of fact to the rumor mill, let’s start with one even more ridiculous than the Tubby to Auburn one last Friday: UCLA’s Ben Howland to DePaul?  Excuse us while we clean up the water we spit out all over the computer screen.  At first blush, this is borderline insanity.  Notwithstanding the fact that Howland is a SoCal guy who has taken that team to three Final Fours in his tenure there, it’s… freakin… DePaul.  We’d give this a 1% chance if we were talking about another traditional powerhouse, like, say, Indiana.  But DePaul?  How can anyone take this seriously?  What are they going to offer him — $10M per year?  And yet, even the Bruin faithful believe there’s more to this than just rumor.  For what it’s worth, Ben Howland stated today that he has “zero interest” in this job, which is about the amount we would expect him to have.

And thus ends those ridiculous rumors of Tubby Smith bolting Minnesota for the basketball backwater of the Plains of Alabama.

Tony Barbee Instructing His Star at UTEP

UTEP’s Tony Barbee will be the next contestant attempting to navigate the football-obsessed geography of the SEC West.  He brings a solid resume to the job, having rebuilt the UTEP program in his four years emphasizing pressure defense with a host of athletic guards and forwards.  Barbee’s record of 82-51 and 39-25 in Conference USA included one conference regular season championship this year in addition to an NCAA appearance last week (the Miners lost to Butler).  What you like if you’re Auburn brass is that his program improved in every one of his four seasons from a losing record in 2006-07 to the point of reaching the Big Dance this year.  He brings a Calipari commitment to defense (as both player from 1987-91 and assistant coach from 1999-2006) and a knack for recruiting to the job — his acceptance of and ability to get former Louisville headache Derrick Caracter to play hard was amazing.

Still, even with Barbee’s pedigree and a new arena to sell on recruits, getting Auburn to the level of a serious player in the SEC West is no easy task.  If you created a list of BCS basketball mediocrity, the War Eagles would undoubtedly rise to the top that list very quickly.  Only four times in the last seventeen years has Auburn won more than 20 games, and yet they’ve never won fewer than 12 in that period.  A typical Tiger season is around 16 total wins, a 6-10 SEC record and a borderline NIT/CBI type of team.  Good enough to pull one upset against the likes of Tennessee?Vandy and the SEC West team du jour in a given season, but never consistent enough to do much more than that.  Part of the reason for this is an almost universal apathy for the basketball program in eastern Alabama — you’d be hard pressed to find a BCS program that cares less about the ‘other’ sport that pays the bills.  We’ve heard anecdotes that many Auburn alumni were angry that the school planned on building a new basketball arena in the first place, instead preferring that the money be spent on upgrading the football program’s facilities.  Furthermore, the level of coaching talent in the SEC West has improved significantly in just the past two years.  Instead of mediocre coaches such as John Brady or Mark Gottfried running the show at LSU and Alabama, respectively, you have up-and-comers Trent Johnson and Anthony Grant at those places.  Rick Stansbury is solid at Mississippi State and Andy Kennedy is steadily improving the Ole Miss program.  The only truly weak link at this point appears to be John Pelphrey at Arkansas.  We’re sure that Barbee will be paid handsomely in his new position at Auburn, but we’re just not sure how successful he can be there.

We’ve got two pretty cool matchups today here in San Jose.  First, we’ll start with the strange situation of everyone’s favorite giant-killer, #5 seed Butler, acting as the heavy favorite over #13 seed Murray State, who of course advanced on Thursday when Danero Thomas’ shot at the horn against Vandy dropped.  In the second game, we’ll enjoy the Pac-10 renaissance for at least another game, as #11 Washington will try to continue its hot streak (now eight Ws in a row) against #3 New Mexico.  We’ll be checking back in throughout the day with our thoughts on the games.

Game 1: #5 Butler vs. #13 Murray State

1st Half

• Getting ready to come out for the tip of this game, I got into a conversation with two of the young female intern-types who were helping out with the drinks for media.  They were discussing whom to root for in this game, and one said to the other: “well, you have to go with the underdog, Murray.”  Sensing a teaching moment (hey, Scottie), I said, “yeah isn’t it interesting that Butler is the favorite when they’re usually the giant-killer and Murray is the underdog now?”  They were both amazed with that role-reversal and asked a bunch of questions about it.  But it illustrates a point about programs such as Butler and Gonzaga — there comes a tipping point where you’re no longer viewed as the plucky little team anymore, and I think Butler is close to getting there (Gonzaga has been there for years).
• Butler came out off to a great start 12-3 as Murray State looked a little off kilter, which is to be expected coming off a great win like they had on Thursday.  But eventually they got their sea legs under them and were able to start getting some stops.
• It’s always interesting to watch The Butler Way…  they take care of the ball; they look for open teammates; they crash the boards; they contest every shot.  Rarely will you see a shot out of the offense, although I did count a couple of them this half.
• Murray’s defense really picked up about mid-half and it showed in that Butler ended up shooting a horrid 8-28 from the field (29%).  The Bulldogs were held scoreless for the last 6:24 of the first half.  In that time, Murray went on a 9-0 run.  That may not sound like much, but in a game trending toward the 50s, that’s a huge disparity.
• It took a while to figure out, but the crowd is definitely pro-Murray State.  Again, that’s just weird.  Usually Butler is the team that has the non-partisans on their side.  Ed Daniel’s follow jam with about a minute left on the break really brought the house down.  If this stays close down the stretch, definite home advantage to Murray.
• I’ve been very impressed with Murray’s Isaiah Canaan in this pod so far.  He has 8 points and has a real swagger about him like nobody can stop him offensively.  Only a freshman and six feet tall standing on a phone book, he is undoubtedly going to be a star in this program the next few years.
• Coming into the second half, I’m reminded of how Butler had played so poorly in the first half on Thursday, but then used the first five minutes of the second half to completely put UTEP under.  Will that happen again today?  I somehow don’t think it will.  I just don’t see Murray getting as frustrated into making poor decisions as UTEP did the other day.  I really like the poise of this Racer team.

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Best first flight of games ever?  It just might be.  Right now the Selection Committee are looking like a bunch of geniuses.  We have confidence in the second flight of games bringing some excitement, too.  We popped for the DirecTV package so we’ll be monitoring every game:

• Ohio vs Georgetown
• East Tennessee State vs Kentucky
• Northern Iowa vs UNLV
• Washington vs Marquette
• San Diego State vs Tennessee
• Wake Forest vs Texas
• Lehigh vs Kansas
• Montana vs New Mexico

After what we saw this afternoon, we suggest you join us for our live-blogging feature this evening.  Get that refresh-button finger warmed up, and by all means let us know in the comments section what you’re watching and how you’re celebrating this unofficial national holiday.  We’ll start at around 7 PM ET.  See you there!

7:00: That’s OK Hemogoblin.  Though scheduling a fantasy baseball draft TODAY??  Hmmm…  Anyway, Butler is polishing off UTEP in a game that is going to screw up a lot of brackets.  UTEP was a popular upset pick for the first round, and sometimes beyond.  Frankly, I expected more from Arnett Moutrie at the forward spot.  Zero points today.

7:30: OK, sorry there, folks.  Had a quick  dinner break, which I tried to time right so it would happen during the single-game interval.  Didn’t hit it.  We haven’t missed much.  Kentucky has started pretty hot against ETSU and UNLV has taken an early lead over Northern Iowa.

7:52: Kentucky is shooting 70% to start this game.  YEESH.  They’re already up 41-16 against ETSU.  At what point do you pull the starters to rest for the second game against either Wake or Texas?

7:58: Anyone want to wake up Georgetown?  The Armon Bassett/D.J. Cooper tandem has been quite effective for the Bobcats, so far a combined 6-12 and 15 of Ohio U.’s 33 points.

8:02: Goodness.  John Wall already has seven assists.  Let’s see what else is on…

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