Thanksgiving in Maui – perfect.

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Key Preseason Tournaments Announce Matchups

If the NFL preseason has taught us anything – unlikely at best, but roll with us for a minute – it is that “meaning” does not guarantee priority viewing. Preseaon NFL games may be both meaningless and poor in quality, but they’re still more entertaining to watch than Game #120 in the MLB season. (And, jeez, we actually like baseball.)

But that dirty secret is a double-edged sword, and it cuts football harshly around Thanksgiving. As anyone who has suffered through watching the Lions with a belly full of tryptophan should admit, the best sports on television during the Week of the Bird has nothing to do with a pigskin. Nay, it is the exempt preseason college hoops tournaments – they of the meaningless games and odd locales – that take the cake. And the pie. And whatever other deliciousness is left in the Thanksgiving cornucopia of metaphor.

The WWL released the schedules for three of this season’s premier exempt tourneys, and each features a few can’t miss early season matchups:

In Maui – Trendy pick Notre Dame faces off against Tom Crean’s Indiana(ish) squad, but undisputed preseason #1 North Carolina leads the field and will face host Chaminade in their first game. Given the air of infallibility surrounding this UNC team, pardon us if we cheer for the Silverswords to … ya know, pull a Chaminade.

In Anaheim – In its second year, tWWL’s own tournament might be labeled the Up-and-Coming Classic. Wake Forest, coming off a Top 10 recruiting class, will face the defending Big West champs and hosts Cal State Fullerton. The winner takes on a field consisting of former bottom-dwellers like Baylor and Arizona State, punched up with solid mid-majors like Saint Mary’s and Charlotte.

In Orlando – Also owned by tWWL but with two years of history, the Old Spice Classic pulls in an impressive field of solid teams from last year with major question marks. Tennessee post-Chris Lofton? Georgetown post-Roy Hibbert? Siena trying to become the new Gonzaga? Gonzaga trying to do better than … ya know, Gonzaga? This is literally anyone’s tournament. All we know is that Neil Patrick Harris better be there.

Three more headlines, including a lot more travel for teams and coaches, after the jump

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The mood music for this week’s final post, courtesy of Violent Femmes:

Sure, this might be a month old, but if Gary Williams lives by “better late than never”, then so shall we. While most teams are finalizing their recruiting Class of 2009 and getting started on 2010, Williams is still scrambling to find 12 guys to suit up for this season. Seems like he could just walk the streets of Baltimore with a pack of Cluck-U Chicken certificates, but what do we know?

Speaking of additions to the ACC, Raleigh jock-talk host Joe Ovies looked at the five-year results of the ACC’s expansion to 12 teams. Basketball? Meh. Profit? ¡Sí! Thanks to new football revenue, the nine pre-existing members of the conference can’t hear your complaints about the drop in basketball quality, what from all the money they are bathing in.

In a much more sad development, Jamar Smith has been kicked off of the Illinois basketball team after violating his probation. Eamonn reported Smith’s off-court woes with proper due diligence, but we’ll chime in to say that Smith appears to have a problem of some variety – might be booze, might be mental, might just be a case of incredibly immaturity. Whatever it is, we hope he gets help.

Meanwhile, his departure leaves the Illini in rebuilding mode for another year. Somewhere at New York’s offices, a emo-banged gentleman is crying in his drink.

Gin-and-tonic, or pure tears? Also, we actually believe he wears a tux to work now.

Wondering if a zebra is on the take? Our friends at A Sea of Blue point out that, with so many off-court relationships between refs and teams, you might be right – and the NCAA might be a-OK with the relationship. Nico Bellic doesn’t see what the big deal is.

Finally, Matt Smith at Bleacher Report believes he has found the evil among us, and it is a 17-year-old at a prep school in North Carolina. John Wall, previously known to college football fans as Mitch Mustain, is the number 1 point guard in the Class of 2009 – which makes his decision to attend Baylor make oh-so-much sense. Oh, wait, they hired his AAU coach as the “director of player development”? Must have been a coincidence.

Have a great weekend, folks, good to be back.

We always know the strength of an oncoming storm by the reaction of our dog. Minor shower? She doesn’t move. Thunderstorm? She’ll hide under the bed. Hurricane-force shitstorm? She bolts to the back of her crate and whimpers, wishing she could just get the hell out of the way.

In a move unsurprising for Hoosier fans, IU athletic director Rick Greenspan was content to play the role of the dog to the Sampson scandal’s shitstorm, as he took the “get the hell out” option by resigning on Thursday.

And not a moment too soon – in news buried under Greenspan’s resignation, the NCAA added a fifth major allegation to the case against IU. The latest charge is a doozy, claiming that IU failed to monitor the basketball program adequately. It’s not a “death penalty” inducing charge like “lack of institutional control”, but if the NCAA finds adequate proof of the allegation, it could result in a postseason ban for the Hoosiers.

Hoosier fans, based on our experience with hurricanes, all we can say is – the dog’s reaction is right. Allegiance may prevent you from running away, but all you can do is duck and cover until the storm passes. And perhaps try to rock out to German hair rock while doing it.

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Sadly, the biggest – and, for the most part, only – story in college basketball today is actually a story about pro basketball:

How old school are we? 2006 old school, that’s how we do.

The draft is melancholy for us. On one hand, we will watch any draft of any sport because we are … how do you put this … addicts. There is something intensely interesting about watching the future unfold, not to mention that we, like Bill Simmons’ and his dad, roundly enjoy reviewing the suits each year. Plus, if you can’t enjoy watching Stephen A. Smith interview someone who doesn’t speak English – well, brother, we just don’t know what to tell you.

(Oddly, we now have a taste for cheez doodles. Which are delicious.)

On the other hand, however, the draft is where we bid a fond farewell to college players we enjoyed because … well, we just don’t give a damn about the NBA. We’ve tried, and we just can’t. It’s not because we think the quality of play is poor; we don’t think that’s true in the slightest (at least, not anymore). It’s not that we don’t find the games entertaining, or that we have a problem with the NBA “culture”. It’s that we have no blood on that field; we have no stake in what happens at that level.

We grew up as Cleveland Cavaliers fans, which was fun during the glory years with Mark Price and Brad Daugherty. (See, Carolina fans? We can let grudges go.) But then Daugherty got hurt and starting caring more about racing than playing. Price got traded. The Cavs acquired Shawn Kemp (and future negotiation rights with all 329 of his children), who promptly got fat and terrible. The team sucked. And then the 1998 lockout happened.

Even as college kids, there was only so much time we had to devote to following sports – there were things called “Goldeneye”, “beer” and “trim” to which we wanted to devote our attention. And at that time, with our team in shambles and the league thumbing its nose at its fans – well, we just couldn’t care anymore.

We’ve tried to go back to it – it’s not like we’re unaware that the Cavs have the best basketball player alive right now – but any devotion we may have had to our team is gone. As Simmons put it – like him or hate him, he sometimes finds a nut – when you cheer for a team these days, you are essentially cheering for laundry. And you know what? We just don’t care about that laundry anymore, because it’s so evident that those wearing it don’t care either. And without a rooting interest, frankly, just about any sport becomes difficult to follow with any sort of regularity.

Is it that much better at the college level? We’d like to think so – after all, a player chooses where to go to play his college ball, and part of us really wants to believe that players who choose to attend our alma maters share some of the same hopes and dreams we had when we first stepped on campus years ago. It can’t ALL be based on booster gifts, coaching personalities, and co-eds, right? (Though, in fairness, we had hopes and dreams for the same co-eds. We just had no chance.)

No one knows for sure, of course, and we’ll admit that our view is a rosy one, especially as it pertains to top level players. But we’d rather cast our lots with the guys who, at the margins, are playing for fun rather than the guys who are, at the margins, playing as a job.

So, we’ll be watching the Draft tonight – partly for fun, but partly to say goodbye to players that we won’t see or read much about again. It’s the cyclical nature of college sports, but it’s still kind of sad.

A friend gets an apartment. The apartment is in a shitty part of town, in a way-too-old-but-still-miraculously-meets-code building. Your friend KNOWS its a dump, but can’t stop talking about how good of a deal he got on the rent, how easy it is to park there, and how close it is to the subway. And, for that matter, the Subway, because that’s the only place to eat within a ten-block area.

Even McDonald’s got the hell out of here.

How do you handle this? You don’t want to avoid the friend – but you sure as sin avoid the apartment. “Come over and watch the game? Why don’t we try the new place downtown? Oh, and you are hosting a party? Yeah … I’m gonna be out of town.” And so forth. After a while, your buddy starts to wonder what’s going on. He might even get a little annoyed about it.

But then, eventually, he moves … maybe because the management encouraged him to leave, because he gets a little loud when he gets drunk, and he gets drunk a lot … and, voila! Suddenly, you’re back on his couch like a blonde co-ed looking for extra credit in Philosophy.

Transform into – COLLEGE BASKETBALL ANALOGY!

Bob Huggins spent two seasons in Columbus as an assistant coach for the Buckeyes. A few years later, he took over as head coach at Akron, and would occasionally schedule a game against his old employers. Then he took over at Cincinnati – and for sixteen years, no games between his squad and tOSU. “But, hey, maybe next weekend? Actually … wait, I’ve got conference games … well, we’ll figure something out.”

But Morgantown? Now that’s a neighborhood that Columbus can relate to! Sure, we’ll come over and watch some rasslin’! And come on over tonight … bring the new girlfriend.

Cincinnati – consider yourself insulted. In the meantime, it goes without saying that police in both states have already penciled the scheduled game dates into their calendars.

Emmanuel Negedu, the last top-level recruit available for the Class of 2008, faced the same difficult choice as other top recruits: which major program will he give his soul for the next four three two some indefinite period of time?

After commanding the full attention of four top programs for the last month, Negedu finally made his decision yesterday, committing to play in Knoxville for Bruce Pearl and the Volunteers.

For Memphis and Arizona, two of the programs Negedu jilted, the news makes this week bittersweet. Both programs went 50-50 with players leaving early for the pros, and both could have used the services of the small-in-size but big-in-game power forward. For Indiana … Tom Crean’s search for any bodies willing to throw on an IU uniform continues.

But for Pearl, it’s celebration time, and for the media’s favorite coach, you know that can only mean one thing:

Time to hit the lake! Where’s Pat? Call Erin!

Is nice!

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Late Recruits Give Ringing Endorsements

With the draft intrigue now long passed (well, unless Mbah a Moute doesn’t hire an agent, then goes undrafted, then returns to school … [sigh] … ), we return our attention to the players who actually want to play college basketball.

With the recruiting season all but finished, only a few big names from the juco ranks remained up for grabs – and boy, they all committed to their new schools with unbridled joy! Just look at these statements:

From Charles Garcia, Jr., the newest member of the Washington Huskies: “I just didn’t want to deal with the whole recruiting process,” he said. “I wanted to get it out of the way.” That’s the spirit! Go UW!

From Roburt Sallie, now a Memphis Tiger – which isn’t too bad considering that the only reason he was available now was because Nebraska – that’s right, NEBRASKA – was forced to boot him under Big XII rules due to an administrative error. “For some reason, God didn’t intend me to play for Nebraska. I was dedicated to them and I still wish today I’d have the opportunity to play for them because they’re great.” See? A Tony the Tiger reference! He’s gonna love Memphis! And it’s natural to be pining after your homely ex after you start dating the cheerleader!

Finally, Kentucky transfer Derrick Jasper finally determined where his new home would be – and it will be in the desert, playing for Lon Kruger’s squad in Vegas. His supporters say he wanted to be closer to his Cali home. UK fans think he might have been too soft for Lexington. We think, given the destination, the reason behind the transfer is more basic:

Four more headlines, including plenty of legal action for the week, after the jump.

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IU Gets Their Day in Court, For Good or for Ill

Perhaps a little too far with the hyperbole, no?

The long-awaited trial is finally coming. For months, we witnessed the gathering of evidence, heard public statements from shady characters in the saga, questioned the competency of the prosecution, and wondered if the right verdict and punishment would be handed down. Yes, for months we watched a noxious stew of sports and justice with a tinge of racism.

But today is the day the trial of O.J. Simpson will finally start.

Wait, wait … damn Google News, why do you display stories that are 14 years old? Unlike Billy Clyde, we’re not interested in things born in 1994.

[adjusts tie] Ahem. Let’s start over.

All that stuff in the first paragraph? Still true. The only changes: the trial is before the NCAA Committee on Infractions, with Indiana University and Kelvin Sampson playing the role of the Juice. And don’t try to tell anyone in Bloomington that the stakes are lower. For Hoosier fans, this trial – considering all that has already happened and punishment likely to be levied – is about the murder of IU basketball.

Mark Alesia of The Indianapolis Star has an excellent summary of the charges against IU and the procedure for the hearing. His colleague Bob Klapisch does his best Daniel Day Lewis, predicting there will be blood in the Athletic Department in the fallout from the trial. And our friends at Inside the Hall will have open thread coverage of the hearing all day.

There is a silver lining to this – no Court TV, and no Nancy Grace. At least we hope not, since she doesn’t exactly have the best record on cases involves college athletics.

Three more headlines, including some mid-major love for the weekend, after the jump.

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Hey, Gary? Can I have a word?

Hey, Gary? Yeah, it’s Tom Crean. Good to talk to you too. Oh, yeah, Joani is great. Looking forward to getting out your way this fall to see her brother with the Ravens. We should get together for dinner or something. Sure, Phillips would be great. Joani loves crabs!

Look, Gary, that’s actually not why I’m calling. I wanted to touch base after I heard about all the stuff you’ve been going through – the bad recruiting moves, the players transferring away, the struggles to make the tournament. Gosh, Gar, the local media really seems to be making a “woe is me” story out of this for you. And I just have to say – God, quit your f***ing whining.

Now, Gary, I hardly think that kind of language is called for. Hear me out.

You know how many players I have left from last year’s team at this point? TWO. And only one of them is on scholarship. I’m having to recruit members of the water polo team to fill out my roster. Water polo, Gary. Don’t bitch to me about needed to get guys from jucos.

And boo hoo, your athletic director doesn’t like the players you recruit. I JUST GOT HERE and the program is probably about to get slammed with sanctions because of the dickhead before me. I had to cancel a damn father-son camp so I could drag my ass out to Seattle for the compliance hearing. Gary, I don’t need to tell you that those camps are the best part of my job. The hours are light, the participants are all happy and grateful … it almost makes the rest of the job tolerable. And I had to cancel it. Did you have to cancel any of your camps, Gary? Huh?

You know what? Maybe you should go get crabs by yourself. And by that, I mean, go sleep with a hooker and get VD.

No, seriously, we feel terrible.

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Fear Pity the Turtle

If you are looking for a ticket out of College Park, best book early – some very tall gentlemen are taking up all the good seats. If you trying to get into town, however, feel free to browse – all seats are free.

In the wake of the Tyree Evans saga and the transfer of Gus Gilchrist, wouldbe bench player Shane Walker finalized his transfer by announcing his move up the road to Loyola. If you are keeping score at home, that’s -1 outside shooter, -2 post players, and +3 open scholarships for Gary Williams.

But with the recruiting well for the coming season now dry and expected stud Sean Mosley struggling to qualify academically, the Terps may be down to nine scholarship players for next year. Williams’ options to fill out the roster: more land mine ju-co transfers, unsigned risks who can’t qualify academically or physically, or walk-ons. All are terrible choices for Williams; all are fantastic possibilities for those of us who love watching Maryland and Williams squirm.

The roster problems come on the heels of a rough stretch for the Terps … [snickers under his breath] … having missed the tournament three of the last four years . The program’s struggles seem strange, given that Maryland won the national championship only six years ago – which was so forever ago that Juan Dixon is now collecting Social Security.

But perhaps there is now a six year curse. Six years after winning 2000 title, Michigan State lost to lowly George Mason in the first round. 1999 champ UConn got upset in the 2nd round by NC State in 2005. As for 2001 champ Duke … ugh:

Four more headlines, including some moderately NSFW work, after the jump.

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