Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…. Arizona‘s balance. So far, this year has been all about the fantastic freshmen and the individual talents that have really driven early-season interest in the college game. But I have yet to see a team that looked as consistently balanced across the floor as the Wildcats did against Duke last Friday night, particularly down low with stud freshman Aaron Gordon and veterans Brandon Ashley and Kaleb Tarczewski. That tripod of length, skill and athleticism spells two things — high quality shots in the paint, and rebounds galore. And it’s really cleaning the glass that will be toughest on opponents in March and April, as we saw with Louisville’s run last season.

I LOVED…. a reasonable contract extension. Dana Altman has done a great job at Oregon, no question about it — he’s brought the Ducks back into the national picture, won NCAA Tournament games, and really put an exciting roster on the floor in Eugene (and hey, let’s just assume for argument’s sake that he had absolutely nothing to do with that horrific floor design). But while it seems like we see so many contracts these days that give out too much money/years on just a season or two of success, Altman’s three-year extension seems just right. Good job, here’s a cookie, and more to come as the program keeps growing.

Dana Altman Remains One of the Most Quietly Effective Coaches in the Country

I LOVED…. UMass back in the AP rankings for the first time in 15 years. You know, just another one of those programs John Calipari hit and ran on. Somewhere, someplace, Dr. J is smiling.

I LOVED…. seeing Villanova put in a solid performance in the Bahamas to outlast Kansas. I’ve always liked Jay Wright as a coach, and it seems like he’s nearing the point where he needs a solid NCAA Tournament run to reinforce that the program isn’t too far removed from the 2009 Final Four squad. For Kansas, that game seems to just reaffirm what is true for so many of these uber-talented, uber-young teams — any given night they can go down.

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1. We hope all of you had a relaxing Thanksgiving break. We also hope you managed to catch some basketball as well as there were quite a few interesting results. For those of you who missed some or all of be action, here is a quick recap of the more significant results: Arizona proved it belongs in the discussion as a national title contender against a Duke team that is having more flaws exposed early in the season; Villanova moved into the top 25 by winning the Battle 4 Atlantis knocking off Kansas and Iowa in succession; Memphis exacted a measure of revenge by knocking off Oklahoma State after getting blown out in Stillwater a two weeks ago; Wichita State picked up a big non-conference road win at St. Louis that could be worth a line or two on Selection Sunday; and Roy Williams did a favor for former assistant Jerod Haase by bringing UNC to UAB and Hasse repaid him by upsetting the Tar Heels.
2. We are still waiting on an explanation as to why Georgetown dismissed injured junior Greg Whittington from the team. Whittington, who averaged 12.1 points and 7.0 rebounds per game in 13 games last season before being ruled academically ineligible. He was expected to return to the Hoyas this season, but those plans were halted by a torn ACL in his left knee. Given Whittington’s prior academic issues it would not be shocking if that was the reason for his dismissal. Assuming this is not some significant legal issue we would expect Whittington to be among the most highly sought-after transfers this year.
3. Last week we mentioned Cody Doolin‘s strange departure from San Francisco. It turns out the reason that he left was an altercation with a teammate. We have not heard many details on what happened, but since Doolin started all 103 of his career at San Francisco we assume it was either a longstanding issue or he felt that the team had turned against him. Either way it is a significant loss for the Dons, who are using Penn State transfer Matt Glover as a replacement for Doolin.
4. It appears that Louisville is comfortable with Chane Behanan‘s explanation as to how his 2012 Final Four ring ended up on an online auction site. After an investigation the school announced that it had cleared Behanan of any wrongdoing in the case. According to Behanan and his family the ring had been left with Behanan’s grandmother who believed the ring was safe in a box in her bedroom. When the ring ended up on the auction site she went back to check on it and said it must have been stolen. While it is possible that Louisville has had very bad luck with suspicious incidents recently when they start adding up you begin to wonder.
5. Last week, when Tom Izzo voiced his displeasure with the new rules and the way they were being enforced we stated our desire to wait to see the data before making any comment. We still think it is too early to make any definitive decision on it, but Ken Pomeroy has put some preliminary data together on scoring, free throws, turnovers, and pace. Some might argue that the differences back up what Izzo and others have said, but we would like to see if they are statistically significant and even if they are as long as the rules are being enforced consistently to create a better product we have no problem with the changes. Also as Pomeroy notes, the more interesting changes might be the ones that Izzo and others have not been harping on.

Brian Goodman is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report from last night’s CBE Championship game between Wichita State and BYU.

Some of Wichita State’s biggest questions entering the season surrounded the players who hadn’t yet spent a lot of time in Gregg Marshall‘s program. After the Shockers’ Final Four run, the secret was out about Cleanthony Early‘s legitimacy as an NBA prospect, but how would Ron Baker transition from a role player into a full-time wing? Was Fred VanVleet ready to shoulder a heavier workload, too? How quickly would transfers Nick Wiggins and Darius Carter pick things up? For a team returning as much talent as the Shockers retained, there were still plenty of unknowns, but three weeks into the season, we have a much clearer picture after they took down DePaul and BYU in this week’s CBE Classic.

Wichita State captured a hard-earned banner Tuesday night in Kansas City.

Wichita State is a team that can win playing any style, not much unlike last year’s group. They were unstoppable on Monday against the Blue Demons, capitalizing on nearly every mistake Oliver Purnell’s team made (and there were a lot of them) en route to a 90-72 win. But it was a much different story Tuesday night against the Cougars, a team that prides itself on an uptempo pace and sweet shooting. The match-up began exactly the way BYU wanted. The Cougars pushed out to a 21-8 lead on the hot hand of Matt Carlino while Wichita State clanked 13 of its first 15 shots from the floor. Nothing was easy for them in the early going; even one of the Cougars’ weakest points, rebounding, showed surprising life. “We weren’t great on the glass. It seemed like 10 times we had the ball with one hand or didn’t secure it the way we should,” Marshall said after the game.

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Eli Linton is a RTC correspondent. He filed this report after Wednesday night’s game between Wichita State and Tulsa in Tulsa. 

While the search continues for the mid-majors that have the talent and chemistry to emerge as this year’s Wichita State, the actual Wichita State is looking to build on its Final Four success and reach the next level of sustained excellence, much like Gonzaga and Butler from recent years. On Wednesday night in Tulsa, the Shockers improved to 5-0 after a convincing 77-54 win over the home town university. But a key trend is noticeable — the Shockers have struggled to establish a rhythm in any of those wins until the second half, and they have looked very beatable along the way. For nearly the entire game against Tulsa, they didn’t even remotely look worthy of their #14 national ranking.

Fred VanVleet and the Shockers are feeling what it is like to get everyone’s best shot. (USA TODAY Sports)

Gregg Marshall alluded to the fact that this road game would be the first big test of the year and he was right. The Shockers looked sluggish and a little sloppy right out of the gate as they only managed eight points in the first five minutes of play. Tulsa was clearly outmatched in talent, but they were aggressive and gained confidence as the game wore on. The Shockers couldn’t figure out the Hurricane’s zone defense in the first half, and their own full-court press was ineffective, leading to some easy buckets for the home team. The game was tied at the half, but it wasn’t until nine minutes left in the game did the Shockers finally gain the lead for good and take momentum by forcing Tulsa into some turnovers and knocking down some three-pointers. The only time the Shockers showed flashes of that Final Four team came with 5:30 to go when Tulsa made one last surge to cut the lead to 63-53, but threes by Fred VanVleet and Ron Baker, a dunk, and a steal on four straight possessions sealed the game and emptied the seats. It lasted just two minutes, but it was the only time the Shockers were in complete control. VanVleet and Baker were outstanding, both scoring 21 points each on a combined 14-of-23 shooting.

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Week one is in the books. One of the reasons college basketball is so great is because elite teams choose to play other elite teams early in the season. This was the case last week, as Michigan State played Kentucky and Kansas played Duke in Tuesday’s Champions Classic in Chicago. The Spartans and Jayhawks were victorious in these marquee match-ups, and as a result, they both leaped the Wildcats and the Blue Devils into the top few spots of our poll. Losing to top competition did not impact Kentucky and Duke’s positions too much, as they both remained in the top five. Michigan was the only team that fell out of the preseason top 10, as the Wolverines were victim on the road to Iowa State and Hilton Magic on Sunday afternoon. Due to the victory, the previously unranked Cyclones also moved into this week’s RTC25.

This week’s QnD after the jump…

Quick ‘n Dirty Analysis.

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And so it begins. The time of year where we hear familiar voices on the television, see the faces on the floor, and our favorite teams finally playing games that count in the standings. It is a beautiful time, indeed. With the games commencing on Friday evening, we officially unveil RTC’s 2013-14 Preseason Top 25. Starting November 18, you can expect our weekly poll to come out every Monday morning. Along with the rankings will be the usual quick and dirty analysis that dives deeper into how the teams shake out from top to bottom. To see how we did last year, check out our 2012-13 preseason poll — we nailed some (Louisville, Michigan, Indiana, Kansas), and swung and missed on others (Kentucky, NC State, Missouri, UCLA). We promise to do better this time around.

Quick n’ Dirty Thoughts.

• A Majority Likes Kentucky – Four out of our seven pollsters are in agreement that Kentucky is the top team in the country, while the other two teams that were picked first were Louisville (one #1 vote) and Michigan State (two #1 votes). It is really difficult to argue with any of the three selections, but Kentucky reigned supreme due to the star-studded recruiting class of Julius Randle, James Young, Andrew Harrison, Aaron Harrison, Marcus Lee and Dakari Johnson that John Calipari was able to lure to Lexington. Do not forget that Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein also return for the Wildcats. Defending national champion Louisville is once again loaded with talent, led by preseason All-American Russ Smith and 2013 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Luke Hancock. Michigan State is a squad that was helped immensely when both sophomore Gary Harris and senior Adreian Payne bypassed the NBA Draft to return to East Lansing.

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Over the next two weeks, the Big 12 microsite will preview each of the league’s 10 teams. Today: Texas.

Where We Left Off: The 2012-13 edition of the Texas Longhorns featured the first losing season in the Rick Barnes era. Barnes’ squad struggled to a 16-18 overall record and a 7-11 conference mark, ending the streak of 14 consecutive years that Barnes had taken Texas to the NCAA Tournament. Texas was one of the youngest teams in college basketball a season ago, and was without point guard Myck Kabongo for all but eight games as Kabongo spent much of the season in limbo awaiting an NCAA eligibility ruling. Perhaps many saw the disappointing season coming after the Longhorns were ran out of the gym by lowly Chaminade in the Maui Invitational. Regardless, it would be fair to classify last year’s Texas season as a disappointment, to say the least.

A disappointing 2012-2013 season leaves Rick Barnes looking for answers.

Positives: Unless you’re a Longhorn optimist, this becomes difficult heading into this season. With Kabongo out for much of last year, sophomore point guard Javan Felix earned valuable experience as the Texas floor general. Felix underwent hip surgery on October 1 with no timetable for his return, but showed an ability at times last season to break down defenses and get his teammates open shots. Joining Felix are newcomers Isaiah Taylor, Kendal Yancy, Demarcus Croaker and Martez Walker. Croaker figures to make perhaps the biggest impact this season as the 6’2″ guard is considered a quality shooter, something Texas severely lacked last season. Returning sophomore Cameron Ridley was a highly-recruited player out of high school, but struggled to 4.1 points and 4.3 rebounds per game last season. The 6’9″ center will need to provide a boost to the Texas frontcourt for Barnes’ team to take a step forward this year.

Negatives: You don’t have to look far to identify why many aren’t high on Texas heading into this season. Kabongo decided to enter last April’s NBA Draft but went undrafted and is now a member of the Austin Toros. In addition to Kabongo, Sheldon McClellan, Julien Lewis and Jaylen Bond all opted to transfer. McClellan and Lewis contributed significant minutes a season ago, averaging 13.5 and 11.2 points per game, respectively. As if that wasn’t enough, former freshman guard Ioannis Papapetrou, who averaged 8.3 points per game in his first season in Austin, decided to leave Texas to play professionally overseas. The plethora of offseason transfers, coupled with an underwhelming recruiting class and the disappointing 2012-13 campaign, and it’s no wonder head coach Rick Barnes finds himself firmly on the hot seat heading into this season.

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During their run to the Final Four last season, Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall relied heavily on junior college products. Players like leading rebounder Carl Hall, starting point guard Malcolm Armstead and leading scorer Cleanthony Early all spent time in junior college during their playing careers before playing vital roles for the Shockers. They came from places normally reserved for those with some sort of problems — exposure, physical make-up, grades or off-the-court issues — and banded together to make a run that became one of the best stories of the 2013 Big Dance.

Wichita State Rode Some JuCos All the Way to the Final Four in 2013

Every year, the nation’s top junior college talent heads to new, big-time programs and, at least in the case of most of the the upper-tier players, they’ll be asked to contribute right away. So who are the JuCo targets that will be asked to do the most this season? The options are plenty, and so are their talents. The first that comes to mind has to be Louisville point guard Chris Jones. The national junior college player of the year last season helped Northwest Florida State College to back-to-back JuCo national title game appearances. He’ll be asked to step into the role left open by the graduation of Peyton Siva. Jones’ is a better scorer than Siva (21.8 points per game), on par with him as a distributor (4.2 assists per game vs. Siva’s 5.7) and is a better rebounder (5.1 boards per game vs. Siva’s 2.4). If Louisville wants to reach its third straight Final Four appearance and win a second consecutive national title, Jones will be relied on heavily to help get the Cardinals there.

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1. With the college basketball season getting closer by the day now is good time to start getting familiar with the new faces coming in. RTC’s own Chris Johnson with the help of Evan Daniels of Scout.com has a solid take on the ten biggest impact freshman this season. Most of these rankings have a tendency to regurgitate the recruiting rankings and while there is usually some truth to that the better ones (like what Chris produced) feature some players who did not necessarily at the very top of the recruiting rankings, but could play key roles on their teams and influence the college basketball season because of the situations that they are placed in.
2. Few things inspire as much outrage as ranking programs and most of those rankings tend to be poorly thought out, but given Andy Glockner’s track record we are going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Over this week, he will unveil his top 20 programs (presumably in order since he isn’t Jeff Goodman), but yesterday he began with the honorable mentions. Most of the teams in the honorable mention seem like they would be worthy candidates of inclusion in the top 20 (particularly Marquette, Pittsburgh, and Xavier) although if you look at all of his criteria, which are not necessarily 100% based on on-court success, you can understand why those programs might fall out of his top 20. We will be interested to see how Glockner’s top 20 compares to one that we would be put together (as long as he doesn’t ruin this by doing a dumb slideshow).
3. It appears that Connecticut and Tyler Olander have dodged a bullet  as prosecutors in Connecticut dropped a DUI charge against him after he pleaded guilty to driving without a license. Olander, who was charged with a DUI on September 7, failed field sobriety tests, but passed two breath tests after he was taken into custody. As The Courant notes, Olander claims that he was merely serving as a designated driver (presumably for someone more drunk than he was), but this was his second arrest in six month (the other was trespassing during Spring Break in Panama City, Florida). This second arrest led Kevin Ollie to suspending him indefinitely. It remains to be seen whether Ollie will let him back on the team, but given the lack of interior talent the Huskies have on the inside and the reduced charges we suspect that Olander will be back before the season starts.
4. Mark Emmert’s statements yesterday that he expects “a lot of change” in NCAA governance structure during the upcoming year led to quite a bit of debate about what those changes will be. Having read plenty of articles like this over the years you will have to excuse us if we are waiting for something more substantial before we start singing the praises of the NCAA. And if you expect this “change” to be about the overall structure of college sports and how revenue is generated Emmert’s comments from last week (see our Morning Five reaction the following morning) should make clear that is not on the NCAA’s agenda at this time. Still we would support any more towards transparency by the NCAA. We are just waiting to finally see it.
5. We are guessing that Mike Krzyzewski will not be a fan of the Missouri Valley Conference’s unique solution for Deontae Hawkins and his transfer dilemma. Hawkins initally signed with Wichita State, but failed to qualify academically so he went to prep school for a year before signing with Illinois State. This would be fine except the MVC has a rule prohibiting intra-conference transfers within two years of attending college classes. In the end, the MVC agreed to let Hawkins, who never actually went to classes at Wichita State, play for Illinois State in the 2014-15 season except when they play Wichita State. While we can appreciate the attempt to make Hawkins eligible to play earlier, the uneven application of the rules is part of what drives administrators, coaches, and fans crazy.

1. We usually do not pay attention to the announcements of recruits moving teams off their list, but Cliff Alexander‘s announcement that he was taking Kentucky off his list caught our eye. Alexander, the #2 overall recruit in ESPN’s rankings, claims that he took Kentucky off his list because they were no longer expressing interest in him. While it is possible that Kentucky might not be interested in the #2 overall recruit we have to wonder if Alexander’s expressed interest in being a package deal with Jaquan Lyle, the #22 recruit on ESPN’s list, may have been the driving force in Kentucky’s decision to stop pursuing Alexander. We wouldn’t feel too bad for Alexander as the list of schools–Kansas, Arizona, Memphis, and Connecticut–currently pursuing him and that are still high on his and Lyle’s list is pretty impressive, but the package deal may eventually turn a few others off.
2. Indiana fans can rest a little easier after Robert Johnson committed to Indiana on Friday. Johnson, a 6’3″ guard from Richmond, choose Indiana over North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida State. The addition of a 4-star recruit might not seem like a big deal for a program the caliber of Indiana’s, but given the rough recruiting week the Hoosiers had just experienced (losing out on Isaiah Whitehead and having Ahmed Hill and Stephen Hurt take them off the list) the announcement was a big deal for the program especially when combined with some earlier decommitments by even more highly regarded prospects. The Hoosiers will still need to do some more work to make this year’s recruiting haul a success, but Johnson’s commitment should at least calm down the Indiana fan base.
3. Even Travis Ford knows that Oklahoma State caught a break when Marcus Smart decided to return for his sophomore year instead of being a likely top-5 pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, but even he cannot hope for a repeat occurrence next spring. So the announcement that Jeff Newberry would be committing to Oklahoma State is a big one for the program as he appears to be the successor to Smart at the position. Newberry, one of the most highly sought-after point guards in junior college, plans on entering Oklahoma State in time for the 2014-15 season after picking the program over Connecticut and Texas Tech. He originally committed to Ole Miss where he redshirted his freshman season before bouncing around junior colleges.
4. The news that the medical staff at Wichita State had denied D.J. Bowles medical clearance should not be considered much of a surprise given the fact that he had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator inserted on September 12 after collapsing during a team workout on September 3. To their credit, the school has already stated that they will be honoring his scholarship, which not every school would do. What is unknown is whether Bowles will attempt to go to another school and get clearance as Emmanuel Negedu did when he moved from Tennessee to New Mexico.
5. Many members of the media latched onto Mike Krzyzewski’s statements to Dana O’Neil and focused on his statements against transfer waivers as an outright statement against student-athletes being able to transfer. What was largely ignored and what Gary Parrish decided to focus on was the second part of Krzyzewski’s statement that he would be ok with transfers being eligible immediately as long as everybody is treated equally. As Parrish points out letting the student-athletes transfer freely wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. We seem to let every other college student transfer freely without any penalty regardless of their scholarship situation (yes, schools do hand out academic scholarships too). Obviously there will be concerns about the system being abused, but it already is and the ones who are being punished are almost always the students. Would it really be that bad if a school got the short end of the stick once?