With the holiday season in full swing, last week’s slate of games did not significantly alter the Top 25. Syracuse remains perched atop the rankings with Ohio State and Kentucky lurking close behind. In fact, there was virtually no movement in the Top 10 at all. One team that continues to spiral downward thanks to suspensions following the Crosstown Brawl is Xavier, who was once a legitimate Top 10 team, but now sits at #20. The Quick ‘n Dirty after the jump…

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1. We hope all of you had a Merry Christmas or are enjoying whatever holiday celebration you partake in and if you don’t celebrate any we hope you had a good weekend anyways. If you were one of those attempting to get a last-minute holiday gift over the weekend, we hope you were not trying to get the Air Jordan Retro 11 Concords because apparently they were a very hot ticket item over the weekend with hundreds of people and in some cases over a thousand people lining up at some stores to buy the shoes. Unfortunately, demand appeared to exceed supply as some consumers ended up fighting leading to a handful of arrests across the country. Some readers, who may remember reports of violence associated with the shoes in the 1990s, may have heard about a reported murder with this release of the shoes, which fortunately appears to be false. The shoes, which sold for $180 at stores, appear to be going for 2-3 times as much as that on eBay today. While they are more expensive to purchase online you get to avoid the potential violence. Or you could just wait a week for the next shipment of the shoes to come in.
2. While Virginia is off to its best start since the 2000-01 season at 10-1, it appears that not everyone on the team was happy as redshirt freshman James Johnson and sophomore KT Harrell have both decided to transfer. The school has not released any information as to why the players are leaving or where they are looking at going, but it is interesting to see that two more members of Tony Bennett‘s first class at Virginia leaving. To date, four of the six members of his inaugural class have left the program. We are not sure if this is a reflection on Bennett’s style of coaching or on the players in that class, but it is something worth watching going forward for the program.
3. Former Seton Hall player Robert Mitchell sentenced to five years of probation for his role in robbing eight students at gunpoint on March 15, 2010. Mitchell, who has already served a seven-month jail sentence, claimed that he was unaware of the initial intentions of Kelly Whitney, another former Seton Hall player, when the incident took place. Mitchell testified against Whitney earlier this year and although the victims recounted both former players as active participants it was Whitney who was sentenced to a three-year prison term, which he is currently serving, while Mitchell was given the seven months in jail and the aforementioned probation. Whitney, who eventually pleaded guilty, is eligible for parole next fall.
4. Coming into the season the Big 12 was considered as wide open as it had been in years particularly with seemingly perennial champion Kansas having a down year, but one team that nearly every analyst left out of the conversation was Kansas State. While we are not ready to call them the favorites or even legitimate contenders yet, the Wildcats certainly appear to be better than the sixth best team in the Big 12 as they were rated in the conference’s preseason poll. The Wildcats may not be ready to contend with the big boys (Baylor, Missouri, and Kansas) in the conference yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they stay in the top 4 and maybe a bit higher if one of the aforementioned three teams slip a little. In any case, after winning the Diamond Head Classic the Wildcats should be getting serious consideration in top 25 polls.
5. Xavier put a temporary halt to their post-brawl freefall when they beat Southern Illinois in the 7th place game of the Diamond Head Classic. The fact that Xavier went from being #8 team in the country a few weeks ago to finishing 7th in a very mediocre tournament should tell you plenty about how hard they have fallen. While some of their recent struggles can be attributed to the immediate loss of Tu Holloway, Mark Lyons, and Dezmine Wells (for varying time frames) it also appears like they may be struggling to find their identity and edge after being ripped apart by the media and the public following their fight with Cincinnati and more specifically the post-game comments of Holloway and Lyons. Fortunately, they have plenty of time to right the ship before their season is lost and with Gonzaga coming to town on New Year’s Eve they will have a chance very shortly to reestablish themselves with their entire team back from suspension for the first time since the fight.

I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will bring you his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences each Friday during the season.  Follow him on twitter at @IRenkoHoops.

The biggest and most impressive result — but also most perplexing — of the past week was Davidson’s 80-74 win versus Kansas. The Wildcats are a genuine contender in the Southern Conference this year, but they haven’t proven to be one of the best teams in the TO26.  Indeed, the win in Kansas City was sandwiched between a 23-point drubbing at Charlotte and an eight-point loss at UMass, two teams that are hardly the caliber of the Jayhawks.

Nik Cochran Led Davidson to a Truly Shocking Upset

Yet for one shining moment in their non-conference schedule, Davidson went toe-to-toe with one of the best teams in the country in one of the toughest road environments and in the process, managed to avenge their loss to Kansas in the Elite Eight in 2008.  Nik Cochran led the way with 21 points on just six field goal attempts.  He was 4-5 from three-point range and 7-8 from the free throw line.  But it was a fairly balanced effort for the Wildcats, who also received double-digit scoring from Jake Cohen, De’Mon Brooks, and J.P. Kuhlman.  Perhaps most importantly, they were able to contain Thomas Robinson on the defensive end.  Although the Kansas star notched 21 points, it took him 18 field goal attempts and 12 free throw attempts to get there.

More on the week that was after the updated Top 15 rankings, after the jump.

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Brendon Mulvihill is an RTC contributor. You can find him @themulv on Twitter.  See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

Tu Holloway is back from suspension to face Casper Ware and Long Beach State

There are too many three and four star games tonight to count, so in the interest of analyzing a few teams we have not touched on before, we picked three neutral court games that should be great.  Let’s get to the action.

Missouri vs. Illinois – 9:00PM EST on ESPN2 HD (****)

• There are two reasons Missouri is flat-out destroying opponents this season — they shoot lights out and they protect the ball. The Tigers are first in the country in eFG% at 60% and first in the country in offensive turnover rate at 13.6%.  It is very difficult to beat a team that hits a majority of its shots and does not have empty possessions.  The Mizzou offense will be matched up against a solid Illinois defense. The Illini gets on the defensive boards and blocks shots.  Unfortunately, Bruce Weber’s guys are a little soft on their perimeter defense giving up 35.5% from three. Tiger guard Kim English, who shoots a ridiculous 53.2% (33-62) from beyond the arc, could have a field day tonight if not checked.
• Illinois cannot try to outshoot Missouri tonight.  They will get blown off the court if they do.  They must focus on defense if they are to have a chance.  Keep an eye on 7’1” Illini center Meyers Leonard and what impact he has on the game against a small-ish Tigers team.  The tallest Mizzou starter is the 6’8” Ratliffe, who will have to check Meyers.  However, there is still a significant size difference.  Meyers will need to have a career game to lead Illinois to a victory.
• Missouri’s shooting will dictate who wins this game.  If the Tigers shoot their average, they should take the victory.  Expect them to shoot a few more threes than normal against a weak Illini perimeter defense.  If Illinois is to keep this game close, Meyers will have to find a way to dominate on both ends of the floor.  Illinois needs to slow the game down and D.J. Richardson needs to continue to protect the ball against the Tiger press for the guys in orange to have a fighting chance.

Baylor vs. St. Mary’s – 10:30PM EST on ESPN3 (****)

• In Baylor’s last game against a West Coast Conference team, it barely escaped 86-83 at BYU.  Despite being outshot by Baylor by a significant margin, the Cougars kept the game close by dominating the offensive boards.  St. Mary’s is a better offensive rebounding team than BYU, so keep an eye on how many offensive boards the Gaels grab in this game.  With Baylor blocking so many shots and creating steals on 13% of opponents possessions, their long and athletic front line makes scoring on them very difficult. Speaking of front lines, keep an eye on the Bears’ forwards Perry Jones, Quincy Miller, and Quincy Acy on offense as well.  St. Mary’s does not have the same level of athletes to match-up with the trio.
• Baylor is by far the toughest test of the season for Randy Bennett’s team.  Keep an eye on how the Gaels handle the initial Baylor onslaught.  In order for the Gaels to stay in this game, they need to own the boards on both ends.  They are currently one of the top defensive rebounding teams in the country and solid on the offensive boards as well. St. Mary’s guard Matthew Dellavedova is going to have to shoulder the offensive load.  Keep an eye on how he responds to the pressure.
• St. Mary’s appears to be outmanned in this game, so hustle will be the key for them.  The size of the Baylor frontcourt could be too much for the Gaels.  Rebounding will be the key factor.  Baylor shoots the ball very well, but SMC can keep in close if they hit the boards.  Baylor needs to hang on to the ball and take advantage of their athleticism and length to win.

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Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing or different things you’d like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Lead Story: Elite Class of 2013 Shooting Guard Selects Kansas

Bill Self Must Have Dazzled Brannen Greene On the Junior's Unofficial Visit (Jeffrey Greene)

Brannen Greene Not Satisfied, Recruiting Others To Join Him. Class of 2013 shooting guard Brannen Greene announced his commitment to the Kansas Jayhawks this week which makes him the third highest rated recruit to come off the board. The 6’6″, 180-pound Georgia-native joins shooting guard Conner Frankamp as head coach Bill Self‘s two commitments in the junior class and will see playing time at both guard positions and small forward. Greene is a guy who has good athleticism and versatility and shoots the ball very well from the perimeter. He’s also a very intelligent player who has great character and is supremely coachable. The good news for Kansas fans is that he has already started recruiting guys to come join him. A trio of top-10 juniors is currently at the top of his wish list which includes shooting guard Allerik Freeman and power forwards Chris Walker and Julius Randle. The Jayhawks are also very close to getting a commitment from Class of 2013 point guard Isaiah Lewis who could verbal Monday (see more below). In addition to Lewis, Kansas looks to be in the lead to land Walker’s services and could get Freeman as well. Perhaps the only recruiting trouble Bill Self could run into in the Class of 2013 is if he will have enough scholarships available.

What They’re Saying

• Senior Shabazz Muhammad on who’s standing out to him: “UNLV stands out, Kentucky, Duke and UCLA, all really stand out to me from a player’s standpoint. Kansas also really has a great program too, and I’m excited to take my official [visit] up there and see [head] coach [Bill] Self and his staff.”

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Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish on Mondays throughout the season. In this weekly piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED….that Xavier went down in flames against mighty Oral Roberts thanks to the multiple suspensions from the Cincinnati brawl – including Tu Holloway. Not that I ever want to wish ill upon others, but it seems so much more helpful when players really get to see the consequences of their actions. Perhaps an embarrassing loss like this will make the Musketeers think twice before entering any other on-court confrontations.

I LOVED….Billy Donovan signing on for five more years. I had so much respect for Donovan when he passed up the lucrative offer with the Orlando Magic to stay on with the Gators and continue building a legacy that will be one of the finer tenures in college basketball by the time it ends. I don’t think anyone questions whether the Donovans, Williams, Calhouns or Krzyzewskis of the world could coach at the NBA level, but it’s so nice to keep them in the college game.

Donovan in Gainesville For Another Several Years is a Good Thing

I LOVED….Butler’s under-the-radar win against Purdue. Look, this isn’t a great Butler team. They’re 5-6, and they’re not reaching the NCAA Final again (I promise…). But it’s these normal, ho-hum wins against quality big-conference teams that continue to legitimize Brad Stevens’ squad as much as the crazy Cinderella wins in March. That’s how you keep stealing recruits from the big boys in the long run.

I LOVED….some alley-oop aerial acrobatics. For my money, there’s almost nothing more impressive than a player turning an alley into some sort of innovative slam. To intentionally twist your body while in the air and adjusting for a ball that is moving toward the hoop takes a combination of coordination and athleticism that most of us will never experience. This week we got a disgusting reverse alley from Oregon State’s Jared Cunningham (arguably the nation’s best leaper), and a 360 version from Terrence Ross of Washington (at the 6:13 mark).

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With final exams taking places at many colleges throughout the nation, it was a relatively quiet week in the college basketball world as there were only a handful of games. One major change in this week’s poll is Syracuse’s elevation to the #1 team in the country as they garnered five first place votes. Meanwhile, Xavier has fallen out of the Top 10 after dropping their first game of the season against Oral Roberts—mind you, the Musketeers were without the services of Mark Lyons and Tu Holloway. You may have heard that they were in a minor altercation with Cincinnati not too long ago. As 2011 winds down, so do many of the marquee non-conference games leading into league play as no Top 25 games grace the slate this week.

The Quick ‘n Dirty after the jump…

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Voices of the Big East is an ongoing feature intended to capture the essence of the conference through the words of those involved and those impacted. This will come in the form of quotes, Tweets, videos and anything else we feel like sticking in here. It’s perfect for you multitasking short attention-spanners. If you find something you think is a candidate for this feature send it to us and we might even give you credit!

Fake Gimel Kept it Real

RTC’s Gerald Smith (a.k.a @fakegimel) picked up a few Twitter followers and one significant TV mention as a result of his insightful and instinctive coverage of the Cincinnati – Xavier brawl.

Not So Calm Before the Storm

Bulletin board material from Cincinnati’s Sean Kilpatrick, in a radio interview with Andy Furman of Real Talk 1160 WQRT, grabbed headlines and set an unfortunate tone.

Furman: “Are you better than Tu Holloway?”

Kilpatrick: “I’ll let the fans decide…”

Furman: “I need to know. No one’s listening. Just between you and me.”

Kilpatrick: “Yes I am.”

Furman: “Would Tu Holloway start for UC?”

Kilpatrick: “Would he, with the players we have now? I would say no.”

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I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will bring you his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences each Friday during the season.

It was supposed to be a quiet week in college hoops, but as you know, when you’ve got more than 340 teams playing 30-game schedules over the course of four months, it’s never that quiet. And we found that out in a big way this past week as the fallout from the melee at the Crosstown Shootout reverberated through the college hoops world.  Lots of ink has been spilled on this, and there’s little that I could add to the various rounds of media condemnation and outrage.  So rather than trying to piggyback on all of that commentary, I thought I might take moment to, well, comment on it. 

It should go without saying that college basketball players should not throw punches at each other, stomp on people, or otherwise let the emotion of a high-intensity rivalry spill over into extracurricular violence.  That’s an easy enough point on which we can all agree.  But what has sparked an unusual amount of outrage among the commentariat is not the physical altercation itself so much as the post-game remarks about it by Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons.  Journalists have been tripping over themselves to decry Holloway and Lyons with as much self-righteousness as they can muster.  In this race to prove just how indignant they are, sadly, many observers have obscured the content of what Holloway and Lyons said.

Commentators have oversimplified Holloway and Lyons' post-game comments

To be clear, it didn’t seem like Holloway and Lyons had processed just how unacceptable the ending of the game was.  And they certainly didn’t choose their words carefully given the national audience.  But some of the more inflammatory language that media has seized on has been badly misconstrued and inaccurately portrayed.  Some have condemned Holloway for declaring his team to be a bunch of “gangstas.”  Others have criticized him for throwing around the word “thugs.”  And still others have suggested that the senior guards thought that the fight was simply an acceptable demonstration of their toughness.  It makes me wonder if they watched the whole press conference or simply seized on the most sensational statements that most easily lent themselves to moralizing outrage.

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We’re a little over a month into the 2011-12 season and most teams have played somewhere in the range of eight to ten games. That’s enough time to get a decent sense as to teams’ potential for the rest of the season, rather than relying on little more than preseason guesswork and conjecture. At the end of October, we went through an exercise analyzing Vegas futures odds and came to the conclusion that North Carolina and Kentucky were the odds-on favorites to cut down the nets next April (a normalized combined total chance of 20%). As of December 15, Vegas still thinks similarly, although with two key differences — first, Kentucky, at +300 and a 14.6% normalized chance to win the title, has moved ahead of North Carolina, who still sits at +350 and now has a 13.0% chance. Secondly, the two favorites have a combined 27.6% chance to win it all according to the oddsmakers, which basically means that if you played the NCAA Tournament four times, either UNC or UK would win it once.

Here are your preseason odds for the sake of reference. Note that these odds came from The Greek and this discussion is for entertainment purposes only. The table below provides the futures odds (e.g., +300), which converts to a percentage chance to win (e.g., 25.0%), but also a normalized change to win if all chances added up to 100%. We also provide a simple up (blue)/down (gray)/even (white) stock measurement based on whether a team’s odds profile has risen or fallen since October. We provide some analysis of this table after the jump.

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