Throughout the season, the Other 26 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, including team, player, coach and whatever else strikes our fancy in that week’s edition.

O26 Team of the Week

Pepperdine. Entering last week, you know how many WCC teams had beaten BYU in the Marriott Center since it joined the conference in 2012? Four, and Pepperdine wasn’t one of them. In fact, the Waves had lost their previous three contests there by an average of 25 points per game. So when Marty Wilson’s team went to Provo and beat the Cougars in wire-to-wire fashion on Thursday night, yeah, it was kind of a big deal. The six-point win turned heads and garnered Pepperdine some positive national attention for the first time in a long while (the game was on ESPNU). And as for the Waves’ encore victory at San Diego on Saturday? That win may have propelled Wilson’s club into the upper echelon of the conference.

Pepperdine stunned BYU in the Marriott Center on Thursday. (AP Photo/The Daily Herald, Ian Maule)

Defense has been Pepperdine’s M.O. this season and it put that stinginess on full display against BYU. The Waves, which entered the contest tops in the country at taking away the three-point line, held the oft-scorching Cougars (15-of-28 threes in their previous game) to just 23 percent (6-of-26) from behind the arc. BYU’s high-scoring, hyper-efficient attack had trouble finding consistent offense all night long, ultimately winding up tied for its lowest point total of the season (61 points). “We talked about our discipline and our toughness and we showed that from the tip,” Wilson said afterwards. Yet, his best coaching move of the night had nothing to do with an instilled mindset or strong defensive principles. Instead, it was probably his decision to bring top scorer and rebounder Stacy Davis (15.7 PPG, 7.7 RPG) off the bench for the first time. The 6’6’’ junior responded with a 23-point, eight-rebound performance that included a couple big free throws to ice the game. “They got us a little bit out of rhythm and they got us to take tougher shots out of our sets,” BYU guard Anson Winder said after the game, summing it up perfectly. “They scored on the other end and it’s hard to beat a team when you can’t stop them from scoring.”

But Pepperdine wasn’t done. Despite having not won back-to-back WCC road games since 2007, the Waves promptly travelled to San Diego two days later, put forth another excellent defensive effort and beat the Toreros by 12. No San Diego player – not even Johnny Dee, the conference’s fourth-leading scorer – ended up with double figures, as Bill Grier’s crew mustered only 0.75 points per possession. In a matter of three days, the team that had been picked seventh in the preseason outdid the second and fifth-place picks in their own gymnasiums. Now at 4-1 in WCC play and cracking the top-100 in KenPom, Pepperdine appears to have staying power among the top half of the WCC.

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One of the lessons that most people learn fairly early in life is that sometimes it is just better to take your punishment rather than trying to run from it. It appears that Kaylon Williams, the starting point guard at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has not learned that yet (at least not as of this morning). Williams, a transfer from Evansville, who averaged 8.3 PPG, 5.6 RPG, and 5.4 APG (1st in the conference) in his first season in Milwaukee while leading the Panthers to a three-way split of the Horizon League regular season title and a runner-up appearance in the conference tournament to Butler, was arrested on a drunken driving charge at 1:40 AM in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Unfortunately, the UWM administration wishes it was that simple.

Lesson: You can't run from the law

After initially being stopped for not having a front license plate, Williams reportedly drove off swerving in and out of the grass before getting out of the car, which was not put in park, and then tried to run away. Williams was initially able to lose the police, but a K-9 unit dog was able to find Williams and tackle him. Williams, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.228 (nearly three times the legal limit in Iowa), was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated, attempting to elude and interfere with official acts (running from the cops), driving without a valid driver’s license, violating his driver’s permit regulations, and driving without insurance. After he was finally apprehended, Williams was taken to a county jail (no word on what the bail situation is). While Williams has not released a statement, his coach, Rob Jeter, has. In a statement from UWM, Jeter said, “We are aware of the situation involving Kaylon Williams. We are disappointed and will take appropriate action as we gather more information and the legal process runs its course.”

We have seen enough athletes get in trouble with the law to know that this is the standard response from school officials (you could probably find the exact wording in several other recent press releases), but you have to assume that Jeter and the school’s administration will come down pretty hard on Williams. Outside of the obvious embarrassment of the DUI arrest, the way that Williams handled it will make him and the program a joke around basketball circles for at least the next few weeks. Jeter probably will not throw Williams off the team, but at the very least Williams should be looking at a very long suspension along with whatever community service and jail time he has coming.

Andy Katz and Dana O’Neil filed a report today that pretty well destroys the argument that Bruce Pearl’s self-described ‘mistake’ in having former Tennessee recruits Josh Selby and Aaron Craft over to his house was a one-time thing.  This new information begs several questions, not least of which is whether this is a modus operandi for Pearl in his usual recruiting strategies, and how many other unknown occurrences might there be?  According to the story:

Kevin Fitzgerald, the compliance director at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — where Pearl previously coached — confirmed that the university self-reported a violation on Aug. 19, 2004, after “Coach Pearl invited a prospect [and his parents] to his daughter’s graduation party hosted at his house, a violation of 13.05.5.3.”

Pearl Seems to Have a Lot of Secrets

The recruit in question was independently confirmed as 6’9 forward Mike Shachtner, a three-time academic all-american who graduated from Wisconsin-Green Bay in 2009.  Schachtner is currently playing ball overseas and refused to comment for Katz/O’Neil’s story, but it’s fairly clear that if UWM reported it to the NCAA and Pearl later confirmed it today, it happened.  We honestly have no idea if the NCAA will use this information to punish Pearl, and by proxy, UT, for violating the same rule twice (and lying about it the second time — at least we have a better understanding as to the ‘why’ now), but it would seem incredibly difficult to believe the NCAA won’t at least take it into consideration when meting out its punishment.

The other thing that we have to wonder about is whether Tennessee brass were aware of this violation when the school hired Pearl back in 2005.  It’d be astonishing if UT as part of its due diligence failed to request all self-reported violations under Pearl’s tenure at UWM, so we have to assume that they did.  Imagine if Pearl somehow was able to keep that information to himself during his original interviews and subsequent contract negotiations?  Given that Pearl’s existing deal with Tennessee is extremely restrictive in terms of  the elements of “cause” for the program to justify firing him, it would seem to our untrained eyes that if he kept secret that rather relevant information, they would have grounds to void the contract for misrepresentation under false pretense.  A lot of speculation here, but an interesting thought nonetheless.

Pearl Needs to Step Up His Housing Game

No matter what comes out of this, we wonder if anyone else sees the obvious problem here?  Put simply, Pearl needs to trick out his casa a little better.  We now know of three players he was recruiting during their junior years who visited his crib, but none of the three ultimately signed with the guy.  Put in the infinity pool, buy a Bose stereo system for the deck, go for the 66-inch 3D television, offer free iPads to the first hundred visitors if that’s what it takes… because whatever he’s doing when he takes recruits to his house for a short visit isn’t working out too well.

Damon Lewis, a reporter and play-by-play announcer for the Horizon League Network, is RTC’s Horizon League correspondent.

FINAL STANDINGS
1. Butler 15-3 25-4
2. Green Bay 13-5 22-9
3. Cleveland State 12-6 21-10
4. Wright State 12-6 18-12
5. Milwaukee 11-7 16-13
6. Youngstown State 7-11 11-18
7. UIC 7-11 15-14
8. Loyola 6-12 14-17
9. Valparaiso 5-13 9-21
10. Detroit 2-16 7-22

First things first…the Horizon League announced it’s all-league teams and award winners on Monday. A complete list can be found here, but we have the 1st-teamers:

ALL-HORIZON LEAGUE 1st TEAM
Matt Howard – Sophomore – Butler (Player of the Year)
Gordon Hayward – Freshman – Butler
Ryan Tillema – Senior – Green Bay
J’Nathan Bullock – Senior – Cleveland State
Josh Mayo – Senior – UIC

Study this list closely, and you’ll have an idea why Butler should continue to dominate the Horizon League for the foreseeable future. Zoiks, Scoob.

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After my trip to Chapel Hill last weekend where rtmsf handled all of the duties for Boom Goes the Dynamite while I mingled with ESPN personalities and college basketball stars, I will be in charge of today’s edition while rtmsf does relationship stuff with his significant other. Pretty weak if you ask me. . .

11:00 AM: Although we are a men’s college basketball site, we feel that it’s appropriate to mention the passing of Kay Yow, the former NC State coach, to breast cancer (or more precisely complications related to breast cancer). We can’t really do justice to her impact on the women’s game so it’s probably better just to refer you to a chronology of her life.

11:10 AM: The Notre Dame GameDay crowd looks a lot larger than what I saw last weekend at UNC. I am not sure if it is just a bunch of camera tricks by the GameDay crew, but they definitely have more signs. It may be that UConn is much, much better than Miami was last week or that the UNC crowd may be a bit jaded, but the Chapel Hill crowd was not as into the GameDay experience as I expected them to be.

11:45 AM: Digger Phelps has been doing a good job of working the crowd, which he also did last week at Chapel Hill (even off camera), taking the homer pick of Luke Harangody as his choice of tough player after the other analysts picked Blake Griffin, Tyler Hansbrough, and Stephen Curry to boos. As expected the crowd went wild with Digger’s pick. A little later in the show, the crowd gave the stereotypical college crowd response to a Duke segment by chanting “overrated”. Not surprisingly, the analysts all defend Duke. Appropriately enough, Bobby Knight calls out the Notre Dame students by questioning their education. It looks like he is getting more comfortable with his role on ESPN.

11:50 AM: Another awful half-court shot. Where does ESPN find these guys? He deserved to be embarrassed like that on national TV for popping his collar. Someone should tell him that hasn’t been cool since. . .actually it has never been cool. Congrats on the airball.

Noon: Wow. All of the GameDay guys except Knight picked LSU to beat #13 Xavier. I guess it’s in Baton Rouge, but Xavier is definitely the better team. Least surprising pick of the day: Digger picks Notre Dame. Knight abstains from picking a team.

12:15 PM: Duke is off to a good start against Maryland after Jon Scheyer opens the game with two 3s. What’s going on with Brian Zoubek? He actually looks like a legitimate center today. I have seen him play several times this year and he certainly has improved from last year, but he has never played like this. If he can do this even for spurts this year, Duke might have a legitimate chance to win the title this year instead of their usual great regular season and flop in March.

12:20 PM: Villanova is tied at 10 with USF 6 minutes into the game. Dante Cunningham has 8 of Villanova’s 10 points. I don’t have much else to say about this game since I don’t have ESPN360 available since I am out of town. If anybody has this game on TV, let me know if anything interesting happens.

1:00 PM: Duke goes into halftime with a 25-point lead despite having one of the ugliest possessions I have ever seen to end the half. Do you remember when the Duke-Maryland games used to be the best games of the season? I still remember trying to figure out where I could go to watch the game on TV my freshman year of college. (My school didn’t believe in providing cable to dorm rooms.) Meanwhile in Tampa, Villanova is struggling against USF (tied at 32 at halftime).

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