THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Shark Week Continues

Privately, we hoped that in our day off (done with school woot!), the O.J. Mayo mess would calm down, and some other story would take over the headlines. We weren’t alone - in a small act of sanity, Ben Taylor at the Daily Bruin says, “Um, don’t all of you have anything better to cover, like college athletes dying in practice?”

NO! Silly us. Each minute factual revelation merely served to throw more chum in the water, which inevitably leads to nastiness.

On Tuesday, the attacks centered on Mayo and the USC leadership. As the story ages however, like a fine wine, more subtle variables gain strength to create layers of flavor for the well-heeled to snoot about.

Signal to Noise points out that USC may pay a price in recruiting long before sanctions come down. His local paper says Mayo has daddy issues (like any good southern boy). Wilbon says Mayo is a sweet kid caught up in the dirty system of agents. DeCourcy over at the SN goes a step further and says the entire sport of basketball is broken. (Though DeCourcy’s piece is less “subtle flavor brought out by age” and more “what happens when you toss the bottle against the wall in disgust, because the world is death.” Let it all out, Mike. Why, oh why did Celeste leave you and take both le chat and all the zigerettes?)

But at least O.J. and his former compadres won’t lose a high school title over this mess.

We’ve been asked our opinion, but we don’t view this as a forum for our “take” - we offer commentary only to be funny or make a valid point, and we’re so sick of this topic we’re not sure we can do either. We’ll try better tomorrow.

We now move onto to non-O.J. topics - but first, twins.

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The off-season sometimes provides you with slim pickins - and when that happens, ain’t nothing you can do by ride that bomb all the way to the ground. Plus, real life has made strong demands on us today, so a-blogrollin’ we will go.

Today’s theme music - the exact opposite of how we feel these days as nuptials draw near:

Jarrett Carter may be our new favorite blogger, with two worthy posts at two worthy blogs - first, five reasons to keep the best D1 HBCU conference tournament in the Cackolack. We agree with him on all points, though we are saddened that the ACC Tournament won’t be in Greensboro, its rightful location. Atlanta is for bad traffic, gun crime, Tech fans, and SEC affairs - the ACC has no business dragging itself to such depths.

In worthy post #2, Carter asks if Gary Williams wants out of Maryland. Based on the offseason he’s had, as thoughtfully collected by the boys at DBR, who could blame him for wanting to get out with his reputation intact?

This is a bit old, but so is recruiting obsession - Mike DeCourcy breaks down the five spring signings that actually matter over at the SN. That one of said five impact players signed with Fresno Freakin’ State says all that is necessary about the current importance of the spring signing period.

In further evidence that as statistics increase, the result equals one, Yet Another Basketball Blog attempts to quantify coaching success based on recruiting and tournament play. Coach K underperforms! Tom Izzo does better than expected! Northwestern sucks! Oliver Purnell can’t beat competition with five breathing players! Surprises all around! (We kid. It’s a good piece that gives evidence to the conventional wisdom. But don’t expect a revelation.) (HT: RTC.)

Finally, while totally unrelated to college basketball, we love when two worlds collide - Above the Law, the preeminent blog in legal snark, links to Clay Travis, he of the CBS Spin on Sports column, as he gives law school selection advice. We link to this without comment, other than to say that given that Messr. Travis has abandoned the law to become a full-time sports writer, UVA Law should retroactively grant him admission.

Re-defining “big” in Durham.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Hey, Wojo? Maybe You Should Sit This One Out.

Coach K’s recent recruiting failures with big men - see Patrick Patterson and Greg Monroe - have sparked a chicken-and-egg argument. Are the trees not interested because no Duke big man has succeeded at the next level, from Jay Bilas to Christian Laettner to Sheldon Williams with every Cherokee Parks in between? Or is it because the coaching triumvirate of Dawkins, Collins and Wojociechowski (most recently in charge of post players) had no idea how to coach bigs?

Consider the egg scrambled - in the wake of Dawkins’ departure for Palo Alto, Coach K hired former Blue Devil forward Nate James to fill his spot on the bench. What remains to be seen is if this will have any discernible impact, as James comes in with no coaching experience. In fact, this resume looked better suited for reality television:

After graduating from Duke and playing in the Carolinas Basketball League, James spent parts of five seasons playing in Bosnia, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, Poland and Russia.

While some might consider the career a world history tour, James didn’t exactly praise the vagabond experience. Instead, he talked about eating nothing but rice and noodles — with chopsticks only — in Japan for several months; playing in a freezing gym in Bosnia; and having to eat cow tongue in Russia.

So, future Blue Devil recruits, know what Duke can now offer. Even if your playing experience can’t get you in the NBA and your Duke degree can’t get you a job, Coach James can help you parlay your experiences in Durham into a spot on The Amazing Race.

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
Something is Afoot in the District

Player movements galore in our nation’s capital yesterday, as Karl Hobbs kicked two players off GW’s team. Role players, true, but two players nonetheless from a team that only managed nine wins last season. Which makes one wonder what “certain expectations” they failed to meet to warrant dismissal, since one could argue that Hobbs and all of his charges failed to meet the basic “certain expectation” of finishing higher than next-to-last in the A-10.

Meanwhile, further into the snooty part of the Northwest Quadrant, a second potential starter transfers away from the Hoyas. With the announced transfer of Doc Rivers’ kid, Georgetown will be down to four returning players with any significant playing time. Greg Monroe better be really, really good, or JTIII will need to bust out celebrity dance moves again.

Theme music for this morning’s quick post, as we prepare for another ill-advised road trip:

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
More Schools That Couldn’t Fake Academic Achievement
Buzz around the interwebs continues to center on the APR ratings released yesterday. Rush the Court broke down the numbers in much greater detail than us, with some interesting findings:

1) Davidson had the best overall APR (a perfect 1000) amongst hoops programs, while Carolina had the highest amongst BCS programs. There is a safety school joke in here somewhere, but damned if we can find it.

2) The total list of teams suffering scholarship losses: Kansas State, Purdue, Seton Hall, South Carolina, Tennessee, and New Mexico State take a hit of one scholly apiece, while Southern Cal and UAB will lose two apiece for their historic incompetence.

3) The ACC and the Big East had the highest conference APR averages. If that isn’t evidence of the worthiness of the APR as a measure of academic success, we’re not sure what is. (That, or Big Ten programs are even worse at finding decent educations for their players than we already suspect.)

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With the deadline for players to file papers as early entrants for the NBA draft having passed on Sunday, it’s time for the annual handwringing over the policies of the NBA and the NCAA on how this is handled. This year, the focus has been on the so-called “one-and-done” rule. Thoughtful pieces on the policy and its effects have come from Bruins Nation, Conquest Chronicles, Doug Lesmerises of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer), and surprisingly, Gene Wojociechowski at tWWL. (Even a blind squirrel finds a nut.) Contrast these thoughtful pieces to, say, a certain famous “real” journalist. Tell us which are better, Mr. Bissinger.

To a man, though, they seem to endorse one shared policy of the NBA and NCAA - the “testing the waters” loophole that allows players to attend pre-draft workouts sans agent to figure out their likely draft spot and weaknesses, giving players until ten days prior to the draft to withdraw their names and return to school. (Though everyone seems to hate the term “testing the waters”.) Team gets more information. Player gets more information. Everybody is happy, right?

Not Jay Bilas - no no no. He doesn’t like this one bit, and writes a few pages of scrill saying that players should either stay or go pro, no takebacks. (Insider, natch. Stupid tWWL.) What was fantastic, though, was this:

To me, there are three reasons why an underclassman should declare for the draft: (1) if the player is truly ready to be an impact player on the next level, (2) if the player is in dire financial need, or (3) if the player is a fraud and wants to enter the draft and be selected before he is found out.

That’s what seven years with Coach K and three years at Duke Law teach you, apparently - fraud is a-OK! (Though we would have expected such a stance to come from Doug Gottlieb.)

In seriousness, we take no strong stance on such issues - after spending far too many hours drunkenly debating such points with friends, we’ve come to the conclusion that whatever rule you have screws somebody, either by being too paternalistic or by giving young men just enough rope with which to hang themselves, so the particular rule in question matters little so long as it is consistent. (Needless to say, law school has worn us down.)

We promise (well, sort of) that this will be our last Psycho T post for a while. In yesterday’s Roundup, we featured a picture of Sen. Obama driving on Tyler Hansbrough during their pickup game in Chapel Hill Tuesday, with Hansbrough in a clear position to block his shot. Our caption - “This likely won’t end well.”

Well, video is now available from the pickup game … and it didn’t end well for either man. (Key clip at the 0:40 mark.)

Hansbrough gave Obama a free look at the basket instead of swatting him like a fly, and Obama couldn’t finish the deal. Both lose points for the fiasco, though Obama gets them back for (a) recognizing that Hansbrough went easy on him and (b) playing the post despite being way undersized against the Tarheels.

Seriously, no more posts involving Psycho T for a while. Unless he does something really funny.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
End of Semester Rules at Chapel Hill

As seen yesterday at Rush the Court with 850 the Buzz, some Carolina basketball players spent the end of the semester blowing off some steam earlier this week with a little roof hopping. Now, it was enough for Ol’ Roy that his presumptive starting point guard for next year, Bobby Fraser, was diving from two stories up when he is supposed to be rehabbing his knee. But we have to imagine that seeing his All-American take the high-gravity dip would send him into a tizzy:

For Tyler’s sake, we hope the pool is filled with Chi Omega girls.

In case yesterday’s conversation with his brother didn’t do it for you, that picture above is all the evidence you need of why Psycho T is staying in college as long as he can. (HT for the photo to the Deadspin commenters, you profane bunch of cellar dwellers.)

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In a Chapel Hill apartment house, around 3am…

Psycho T: [on the phone] I don’t know what to do, Dad. Do I go pro? Do I stay here?

[chewing noises]

Gene Hansbrough: Andrew Tyler, are you eating a got-damn puppy again?

Psycho T: …..yes.

Papa H: Put that shit down. It’s not good for you, especially at this hour.

Psycho T: But it’s the only thing I can eat when I’m upset like this!

Papa H: That’s just pathetic. You think that if you go to the NBA, teams are just gonna put a puppy mill next to your house like they did in Chapel Hill?

Psycho T: [thinks for a long second] Yes?

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This likely won’t end well.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Campaigning in North Cackolack The Effective Way

The old story in our home state is that if Dean Smith wanted to be Governor, all he’d have to do is run, so rich is his cachet with the Tar Heel faithful, who comprise a bigger potential voting bloc than soccer moms and NASCAR dads put together. (Which is good, since NASCAR dads couldn’t get Richard Petty elected Secretary of State in 1996, nor could the soccer moms prevent Mia Hamm from marrying Nomar Garciaparra. ‘Cause that should have required a vote, right?)

With the North Carolina primary coming up next week, one candidate was smart enough to try to tap into that voter base. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL, in case you’ve been living under a rock) showed up in Chapel Hill early yesterday morning to play pickup with Psycho T and his Funky Bunch while Roy Williams watched from the sidelines. Which kind of makes it a coach-observed scrimmage. Which kind of makes it a NCAA rules viola … oh, bother:

“This was a unique situation and not an NCAA issue,” NCAA media relations director Erik Christianson said in an e-mail message to The News & Observer on Tuesday. “It certainly was a great opportunity for the student-athletes to interact with a presidential candidate.”

Dammit - the one time we WANT the NCAA to be nitpicky, overly-sensitive, by-the-books dweebs, they actually recognize a situation for what it is! But realistically, yeah, it was just a pick up game. We can’t blame Obama for using his notoriety to get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity most would kill for. But it certainly didn’t constitute an endorsement or anything, right?

Williams, who watched the play from a chair on the sideline, called out at one point: “You’ve got the future president of the United States wide open.”

Ahem.

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Smile while you can, Johnny.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
If You Love Something, Set It Free

When word first broke that Johnny Dawkins would be the new head coach at Stanford, we wondered when the weather changed in Durham. Dawkins has long been considered Coack K’s consigliare and logical successor when he retires. Had something changed? Had Chris Collins or Steve Wojchichowski passed him in the eyes of their shared mentor? Was Johnny taking a graceful exit while the gettin’ was good? Not according to Stanford’s AD Bob Bowlsby:

Bowlsby said one of the first people he spoke to about the open job at Stanford was Krzyzewski and that he asked Krzyzewski about both Dawkins, who was Krzyzewski’s right-hand man for 11 seasons, and Duke assistant Steve Wojciechowski.

“At that time, Coach Krzyzewski said that Johnny was a likely successor to him [at Duke],” Bowlsby said. (HT: Fanhouse)

That’s right - the Pac-10, where ACC assistants are sent to gain head coaching experience before they take real jobs back home in the Cackolack!

Some people on the Stanford beat don’t think this is such a great match for either party, and we understand and even second their concerns. (Color us nervous about another Duke assistant flopping as a head coach, especially the presumptive heir to the throne.) But Johnny D is a talented Xs and Os guy who is used to working under academic restrictions, so Stanford could have done a lot worse.

SLIPPING OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
Screw You Guys, I’m Going Home

Homesickness? Frustration with a coach? Inability to find decent eats or trim in the D.C. Metro Area? Whatever the reason, two perplexing transfers over the last week - Vernon Macklin leaving Georgetown, and Shane Walker leaving Maryland. While neither player put up monster stats this past season, both were poised to become major contributors in their respective front courts in 2008-2009 - if they had the stones to deal with a little competition from incoming freshmen. To be fair, though, Walker is British, so we can forgive him for being frustrated and confused by a meritocracy - or, for that matter, for wanting to get the hell out of College Park.

TWIDDLING THUMBS
Because It’s a Long Offseason

Even though the national championship game was only three weeks ago, we already feel the cold, dead hand of summer touching us in all the wrong places. Midnight Madness won’t start for another five months, and until college football kicks off in August, all we have to keep us warm are the NHL and NBA playoffs and, after June, nothing but baseball. (Unlike Orson, we actually enjoy baseball, but in the same way we enjoy hummus - fine as a small bite before a real meal, annoyingly bland as the only offering on the table. Needless to say, we don’t enjoy the summer months.)

We’ll do our best to keep busy around these parts - humor pieces, draft coverage, maybe a little bit of recruiting news if we are feeling particularly evil, and plenty of hate mongering. Got a tip, question, or snide remark? Email us here. (We’ll add a link to the sidebar soon.) Right now, though, we’re preparing for the last set of final exams we’ll hopefully ever take - which, of course, means we’re trying to figure out what to do with all of our newfound free time. Which leads to debates like this:

Take the money and run.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Off on the Road to Rhode Island

After getting turned down by (seemingly) everyone and their brother, including UMass’ Travis Ford and George Mason’s Jim Larranaga, Providence College announced yesterday that they had poached Keno Davis, the 2008 AP Coach of the Year, from Drake.

The legal term for this is “huge f’in save.” We’ve seen a program get an excellent candidate after public swings and misses - see: Alabama (2007) and Michigan (2008) football coaching searches. But that is football, and Bama and UM are Bama and UM, and have the gravitational pull of black holes - even if they miss one star, they are sure to suck in another. This is basketball, where coaches in small conferences have far more opportunities to succeed than their brothers in the fall - and Providence is no guaranteed ticket to fame.

Will the gamble work for PC? Probably not. Davis has only been a head coach for one year, and spent his entire career as a player and assistant in the Midwest, and thus brings no relevant recruiting base to the Friars. In the dog-eat-crap Big East, he’ll be waiting for the scraps of more big programs (and other small programs from the A-10, like URI up the road) than he was in the Valley. Even the best coaches can’t succeed in the Big East without Grade A talent. We wish Davis luck (though not too much - he can finish 2nd to the Hoyas any year he wants), but we aren’t holding our breath.

HYPERBOLE GONE WILD
DBR Defends Krzyzewski, Patriotism, Puppies

The fine folks over at Duke Basketball Report published a retort to a New York Times story regarding Coach K’s statements regarding the US Olympic team’s place in the current political debate regarding Beijing and human rights:

Sometimes, through a performance you show more than by what you say. This is a tremendous opportunity to show camaraderie as teammates, serve as the ultimate example of people working together.

NYT says Coach K is in naive loony land. DBR says he recognizes that the best role the team can serve is as a quiet (hopefully successful) model of what is good, rather than a loud model of what we think is good. DBR is much closer to the ball, we think … but they we have to get off the bus when DBR makes the following analogies:

There are a couple of precedents for this: first of all, Jesse Owens, who just humiliated Adolf Hitler (we originally had Rupp here, which has to be our best typo of the year) when he tried to use the Olympics for his own ends. And secondly, the Czech water polo team, which pretty literally beat the everloving crap out of the Soviet team following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia after the Czechs had the audacity to challenge the power structure the Soviets imposed on Eastern Europe following World War II.

We love the guys at DBR - really, they do a fine job covering the team, players, coaches and alums. But … this is a little much, guys.

DBR: Making Duke fans sound like, well, Duke fans.

THE STORIES NO ONE CARES ABOUT
Players Leave for NBA Who Everyone Knew Would Leave for NBA

Derrick Rose. O.J. Mayo. Michael Beasley. Thanks for your one year stay in college, guys.

We agree with Bobby Knight that these one-hit wonders make an even bigger joke out of the “student” part of “student-athlete”. We wonder how these guys approached spring classes, knowing they wouldn’t return for a second year. Did the professors admit they would mail it in? Did they even bother attending? Or did they go to scout for trim?

A SERIOUS WORD
You Are The Pride of V.P.I.

Our distrust and dislike for all things Hokie is documented and still stands. But we set down the Hatorade for a moment to wish everyone down in Blacksburg a peaceful day.

Shouldn’t … be … this … winded …

Odd news coming out of Starkville today - Ben Hansbrough, the sophomore guard for the Bulldogs and younger brother of Carolina star Psycho T, announced he will transfer away from Mississippi State at the end of this semester.

What, pray tell, would convince a young man to leave a big conference (O: ESS-EEE-SEE!) program when a) he was a starter who averaged double digits in points, and b) his team not only made the tournament, but won a game this year? Apparently, we’re talking about practice:

In an interview with the Clarion-Ledger Tuesday, Hansbrough said the lack of a dedicated practice facility influenced his decision.

“That has a lot to do with it right there, just that simple stuff right there,” he said. “As simple as that may sound, that’s a huge thing.”

We understand that some other schools have much better practice facilities, Ben … not to mention that an NBA salary can buy a pretty sweet gym for you as a Christmas gift. But we think we know the real reason Ben is leaving - he’s prepared to join his brother in Hollywood to create the best brother act in show biz since the Stallone brothers warmed all of our hearts with their meathead antics.

In a few short years …

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - In response to demands from coaches and fans of college basketball, as well as rising rancor from media coverage of the sport, the NCAA promised that it would make changes to the way in which college basketball chooses its national champion starting in 2009.

“We didn’t want to throw away seventy years of tradition on a whim, but tension against the tournament-style format has been building for years,” said NCAA President Myles Brand on Monday morning after a three-hour meeting with university presidents. “Ultimately, we think that it is time that college basketball came into agreement with our other major revenue sport so that the fans can finally be satisfied with end-of-season matchups that are both satisfying and will conclusively determine the best team in the sport.”

The new Poll of Objective and Observable Percentages (POOP) system*, designed by ACC Commissioner and BCS President John Swofford and a team of trained monkeys, is based on the successful Bowl Championship Series used in Division I-A football. Teams will be rated on a weekly basis, starting Jan. 1 of each year / season. The rankings will take into account three factors: the team’s rank in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), the team’s rank in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, and the team’s average rating across eight computer-based ranking systems. Each of these three sources will be treated equally, and the average of the three values will constitute the team’s straight POOP score.

“Our hope is that by using POOP to determine who plays for the national championship, rather than the current haphazard system of the NCAA tournament, we’ll be able to restore some normalcy to the proceedings,” said Swofford. “I mean, the whole March Madness name is a double-edged sword, ya know?”
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Where posterization happens.

THE GAMES EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Country 1, Hollywood 0
Memphis 78, UCLA 63

We’re guessing that whatever team ends up drafting Kevin Love in a few months will wish that this picture didn’t exist. With just under five minutes to go and UCLA fighting back against a seven-point Memphis lead, Chris Douglas-Roberts (or CDR, because apparently everyone needs an abbreviation) ran a perfect backdoor cut and slammed the ball down onto UCLA wunderkind Kevin Love. If we were Gregg Easterbrook, we would have written “game over” in our notebook. As we are not (and thank God), we enjoyed another delicious bite of honey chicken and resumed conversation with our family.

A nip-and-tuck game throughout the first half, Memphis pulled away early in the second half and never looked back. Both Sadie and Jamie were correct last week - the battle in the paint determined the outcome. We were just surprised that it was Memphis and Joey Dorsey that won that battle.

And Now Kansas Really Doesn’t Give a Damn About North Carolina
Kansas 84, North Carolina 66

In this game’s waning moments, Jim Nantz and Billy Packer described the match as “a play in three acts.” We think Jim was getting a little overdramatic, perhaps in preparation for the Masters this coming weekend. The better analogy was to a debate between two moody mean girls:

First 15 Minutes
Kansas [models in mirror]: I’m fierce!
Carolina [gorges on Doritos]: I’m a hiefer!
Result: Kansas 40-12.

Second 15 Minutes
Kansas [cries into pillow]: Why did he leave me?
Carolina [shoves pins into voodoo doll]: Serves you right, bitch.
Result: Carolina 38-14.

Final 10 Minutes
Kansas [beams as it applies blush]: He still loves me!
Carolina [gobbles antidepressants]: I hate you, God! I hate you! I wish I were dead!
Result: Kansas 30-16.

And everyone lived happily ever after. And, yes, we were visiting our teenage cousins this weekend. How did you guess?

Each day for the rest of this week, we’ll be previewing one of this year’s Final Four participants, little gunners that they are. Ooops, we’re about to drop something. What? Knowledge. (That’s deep, but true.) But since we’re babbling idiots, we found another blogger who knows a lot more about the team than us. Today - The North Carolina Tar Heels, with the help of Brian from Tar Heel Fan.

You know, they’ve been overrated all season. They got bonked by a terrible Maryland team at home, and depantsed by a deeply flawed Duke team. And who cares that they blew out their first four opponents in the tournament? Two of those teams were barely mediocre, and every squirrel finds a nut. Maybe Pitino was drunk Saturday night. We’ll never know.

Ah, dammit, who are we kidding? We’ve said it before, so we might as well say it again (and again through clenched teeth) - Carolina has put on an absolute show during the first two weeks of the tournament, and comes in playing better basketball than any other amateur team in the land.

But that doesn’t mean much once the ball is tipped, and frankly we’re gonna feel weird saying anything else positive about our sworn enemy. So for a better bead on what to look for from the Tar Heels this weekend, we asked Tar Heel Fan for some expert biased opinion. His responses to our questions come after the jump.

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