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.

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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QEDMF.

Each time you pay a bill, a little part of you dies. We get it. It happens to us too. Every time we pay a bill, we need a half hour of Rock Band and a pound bag of pretzels to get back to a good spiritual place. (And we’re not even married yet. Should we start the Xanax now?)

So we can forgive John Beilein for making a little bit of stink when he sent the first payment of his $1.5 million contract buyout settlement to WfVU last Thursday:

Beilein wrote that he made the first payment under protest, calling the buyout clause “unenforceable” and “grossly disproportional” to actual damages incurred by the university. …

“I urge the University to stop using the liquidated damages provision in its employment contracts because such provisions are illegal, onerous, and violate public policy,” Beilein wrote.

We applaud John Beilein on his legalese* - somebody paid more attention during their legal writing class than we did. (Attention employer: we kid. You know as well as us that no one pays attention in legal writing.)

Without belaboring the point, his argument holds no water. And since he’s already in Michigan, it’s not like he can secure PR points by bad mouthing WfVU now. But for such strong worded advocacy for a lost cause, we tip our cap towards John Beilein, and award him honorary lawya status for the day.

Give WfVU credit though - no strong worded response, no PR games, no silliness. They took the high ground and simply passed every cent of Beilein’s money on to his more successful replacement, as Huggy Bear signed an eleven-year extension that “guarantees” (promise!) that Huggins will remain at the school for the remainder of his coaching career.

Note to Morgantown Police: y’all know no danger like Huggy Bear with job security. Set your stun guns to “weird”.

No one can accuse him of discrimination.

* - Yes, we know his lawyer wrote it. We hope to write such letters some day for our clients. Trust us when we say they will be twice as wrong on the law and five times as snarky.

Sans Annie Liebowitz.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Recruiting - Even More Strangers with Candy-esque

Late last week, Michael Avery, a guard from Encino, CA, committed to play for Billy Gillespie at Kentucky. A good late-signing season get for the Wildcats? We’ll know when Avery starts playing college ball … in 2012. Sure, he doesn’t know where he is going to high school, or how to drive, or where (or what) the clitoris is, but dammit all, he is proud to be a Wildcat!

Every child has to take a step towards adulthood at some point, and perhaps Avery truly is ahead of peers in this regard. In that case, he’s doing a nice job of following Miley Cyrus’ lead - build up expectations amongst a fan base, then bring them crashing to the ground when you act like the budding adult that you are. We’ll see if the analogy holds when he backs out of his verbal in three years and goes to UCLA.

TWO STORIES THAT INTERESTED US FOR NO GOOD REASON
Character Problems + Fuzzy Math = Profit?

We searched for “addition by subtraction” images, hoping others had better luck than us visualizing the concept. Dane Cook was the closest we could get, though we admit that without the all-important knife through the torso, leaving a vastly improved romantic comedy or HBO special in its wake, it’s not quite apropos. (Though we roundly enjoy Cook’s evil twin on Heroes.)

Douchy sign of the apocalypse? Sexually immature? Why not both?

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Absolute badass.

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT
Excuses, Explanations, and Honest-to-God Reasons

When Tennessee’s Chris Lofton struggled early this season even against cupcake opponents, some wondered what was holding the 2006-2007 SEC Player of the Year back. At the time, UT’s head trainer Chad Newman said, “These people that are questioning Chris are going to feel pretty stupid when they find out what’s wrong with him.”

Yes, yes we do - turns out that Lofton was catching up physically after fighting cancer in the offseason:

“When I first heard that word, ‘cancer,’ I thought I was going to die,” said Lofton, whose cancer was detected through an NCAA-mandated random drug test following the Vols’ 121-86 victory over Long Beach State on March 16, 2007.

The results of the drug test were positive; UT officials were informed that if Lofton wasn’t using drugs, the positive result could be a sign of cancer.

More tests followed, and Lofton underwent surgery on March 28 to have the cancer removed. Four weeks of radiation treatment followed, from late April into May.

We’ll admit that our first reaction was shock at Lofton chose to (and succeeded in) keeping this under wraps the whole season - especially with noted media whore Bruce Pearl as a coach. But apparently, Pearl was the only one, besides trainer Newman, who was in on the secret in Knoxville.

“When people are first diagnosed with cancer, sometimes the first thought is to tell everyone close to you, so you can feel all the support and be surrounded with the love you need to battle cancer,” said Pearl.

“But Chris didn’t want anyone worrying about it or our fans using it as an excuse for him.”

Lofton said he appreciates his school and the media for respecting his privacy.

And we respect you for fighting the good fight, Chris Lofton. Best wishes going forward on staying cancer-free.

We now return to our regularly scheduled dick jokes.

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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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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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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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Stockholm Syndrome!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Alright, We Give Up - We Love It
Bradley 83, Tulsa 74

After careful consideration … and the prospect of no more college hoops until November … we’ve been turned around on the College Basketball Invitational. We were initially skeptical since the abject goal of the tournament was to make money off exhibition games, and the sham justification offered was, “Hey, more teams would kill to play in the postseason, even if its completely lame and no one watches!” (Which describes many regular season games as well, FWIW.) We fought against this load of crap, until sleep deprivation and a family sized bag of Funyuns forced us to accept that while their argument was a sham, it was also correct.

Players and coaches, as a general rule, enjoy games. Fans enjoy attending games. And no one is tying the rest of us down and forcing us to watch, so we can’t think of a person who is being harmed by another post-season tournament, even if we all have to admit that it’s kind of ridiculous on its face. Plus, we remembered that we like people making money. (Well, everyone but the noble amateur student-athlete, of course.)

So, Bradley and Tulsa, we embrace your battle to determine which of you is #98 - especially since you seem determined to keep your season going as long as possible. Faced with elimination at home, Bradley rushed out to a 14-point lead in the first half, then held on for the win.

OTHER HEADLINES, JUST FOR KICKS

This Doesn’t Bode Well: Memphis has suspended backup guard Andre Allen for this weekend’s games. As we covered with Sadie yesterday, Allen was a key part of Memphis’ plan to defend Darren Collison and Russell Westbrook. Plus … you know, Calipari has never had a reputation for having a quick hand with punishment, especially when the stakes are high. So our guess is there is more to this.

The Offseason Starts Early: We have no intention to do a Fulmer Cup-style tracking of all the offseason legal transgressions in college basketball (mostly because - Christ, we don’t know how Orson does it, either.) But this was too good to pass up - Penn State guard Stanley Pringle was masturbating in a library. Now, we’re not saying that such library activity is necessarily wrong - everything has a time and inappropriate place - but Pringle started the jackin’ while actively trying to engage a woman in conversation, so it’s a little more funny “oh shit” than funny “ha ha”. But we just … can’t … resist …

Once you pop, you can’t stop - even in the face of arrest.

Now with more Buckeye flavor!

THE GAME EVERYONE SOMEONE? IS TALKING ABOUT

So Much for the Repeat
Ohio State 81, Ole Miss 69
UMass 78, Florida 66

We can’t even pretend to be excited about the NIT. Such excitement, however, is what we are paid to do (and by “paid”, we mean “spared from Orson’s mighty whip”), so some quick takeaway thoughts from the games:

1) No rematch between OSU and Florida - which as we covered last week, would have mattered just as much as Roy Williams playing Kansas again, since approximately the same number of players were around for each of the previous rounds of those battles.

2) We really respect the fans that turn out of the NIT games, making the trip to MSG for the finals. While we were at Georgetown, the Hoyas were stuck in NIT purgatory for a few years - and we’ll be damned if we didn’t tune those teams out as soon as Selection Sunday came and passed. We’re impressed by the fans whose loyalty extends beyond disappointment and follows their team straight into the mouth of oblivion.

3) Hahahahaha - SEC iz Da suckz!! (Really? No. But it’s fun to say, no?)

4) For reasons we cannot begin to explain, we think UMass will beat tOSU tomorrow night.

AND NOW, ONTO MORE FUN TOPICS

Not So Much with the Pillaging, Fellas …

What happens in Mexico apparently must stay in Mexico, until diplomats intervene or charges are cleared. Two Portland State players were hauled into a Mexican jail after one beat the snot out of a fellow American tourist while the other fled the scene. We enjoy this - two American college students are involved in battery against a fellow American college student, but because they do it at a Mexican resort, they will get to be a punchline for years months some indeterminate time.

Just to confirm, young high school recruits when you sign on to play with a team, do not attempt to emulate their mascot. Fellow PSU players now stand on notice that raping and pillaging are strongly discouraged. Centenary players … well, same rule, but don’t feel like you have to tuck the shirts in.

Hardy har har, funny men
The boys at PTI decided to open yesterday’s show with a patently obvious April Fool’s prank. The joke wasn’t terribly funny - sure, tug at our heartstrings - but we appreciated the effort all the same for the unintentional comedy. (Don’t sue, Simmons!)

Further, it confirmed out belief that you could come up with a topic off the top of your head, hand it to Tony and Mike, and the exact same debate would occur regardless: Factual description, Wilbon defends “his boys”, Tony sounds old, Wilbon makes half-informed point that sounds fully-informed because he’s Mike Wilbon, Tony makes crass remark and/or does penguin dance. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, we aren’t sure why we watch this everyday still either!

On the heels of our scathing review of the quality of the Indiana program this morning, breaking news this evening out of Bloomington - Indiana has reached an agreement with Marquette’s Tom Crean to become the next head coach of the Hoosiers. (Link goes to Yahoo! Sports, if only because tWWL pulled the same “Well, we actually had it first, but we embargoed it - promise!” crap as always.)

Instant analysis - this is a tremendous hire by Indiana. Crean has earned (and we choose our word carefully there) a rock solid reputation in his nine years in Milwaukee. Reinvigorating a long-dormant basketball school and fan base? Check. Recruiting above his weight class? Check. Nine winning records in nine seasons and a Final Four appearance? Check and check. Survived (and thrived) with a move to a much tougher conference? Check. Perhaps most important of all - a squeaky clean record? Major, major, absolutely necessary check.

Crean brings this reputation to a hurting Bloomington, and the announcement today helps clean up the mess left by both Sampson and his fill-in Dakich. IU now stands a chance of retaining their recruits, and avoiding basketball purgatory for the next two years.

As for Marquette - gentlemen, welcome to the cellar of the Big East. We have a tough time believing that MU will find a coach as good as Crean within their budget - but we suppose they struck gold with a young assistant before, and we have to imagine that will happen again.

Motor City Dust Bowl Basketball!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Tulsa is Champion! Something!
Tulsa 73, Bradley 68

Conference USA fans, we owe you a distinct apology. We’ve bashed your conference from the moment we started writing for this here blog. But now, it appears that was all in haste, for CUSA’s own Tulsa Golden Hurricane (do not confuse with Broken Arrow Golden Shower) has clinched a championship by beating the Bradley Braves last night!

[receives a note from off stage left - pauses, and clears throat]

Excuse us - we heard “One Shining Moment” and thought there people were playing in a tournament that actually mattered. Instead, Tulsa continues to play in the College Basketball Invitational, a tournament known only to us, its owners, the fans of the home team, and creepy message board trollers in Rolla, Missouri. And further, their win clinches nothing, since CBI uses a three-game series to crown its champion. Sorry for the confusion. CUSA, go back in a corner and think about what you’ve done - trying to fool us like that. Makes us want to call in that golden shower for you.

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There was not a single thing to dislike about this game. A nip and tuck first half that featured slick play and hard defense. The underdog pulling away while the favorites watched in horror and protested in waste. A mid-major star who is about one win away from crossing from underhyped to overhyped. And the full result - Davidson 73, Wisconsin 56, and the little #10 seed that could is one win away from wiping George Mason off the maps.

On the flip side, Wisconsin … and Big Ten basketball by extension (given Michigan State’s paltry performance) … got knocked on its ass, and we couldn’t be happier. Wisc plays a style of basketball that would better be described as “football”, since they rely almost entirely on post play, penetration, and beating the ever loving bejesus out of each and every opponent. Elbows, butt rams, subtle shoves, blatent shoves - this is Big Ten basketball, and it’s thoroughly unfun to watch. Unfortunately, it has also been successful in tournaments past - in fact, Davidson’s win was the final blow struck to our brackets, since we had Wisconsin in the Final Four. We’ll gladly forfeit our measly entry fee to see a fun team like Davidson advance instead.

We know that three other games happened tonight - all were, for the most part, boring blowouts and unworthy to report. (Stanford tried to keep it close with UT, but apparently, putting together a program with 1/6 the money of Texas means you get the Lopez twins, but no discernable offense.) So we head to bed tonight with visions of another double digit seed making the dance … and, since they are playing a Bill Self coached team, you have to like their chances, right?

Hooray mediocre post-season play!

THE GAME EVERYONE NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Same Bad Time, Same Bad Channel
Ohio State 74, Dayton 63 (West)

We have to admit - Ohio basketball fans, we’re impressed. According to reports, Value City Arena in Columbus (and, really, is there any better city to host Value City Arena than Columbus?) was filled to capacity last night. Pretty damn good for a surprisingly good NIT Quarterfinal matchup between two schools from Central Ohio.

But that last sentence holds the key to the NIT - we’re pretty sure that we’re the only person we know who watched a nanosecond of this game. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, we have family in Central Ohio.) In the interest of saving on team travel costs and generating ticket interest, the lower tier post-season tournaments have no choice but to encourage regional matchups (though this one, of course, wasn’t planned.) But regional matchups have regional appeal, and regional appeal means no big advertising dollars, so it should surprise no one that the NIT had to be taken over by the NCAA to remain financially stable.

Meanwhile, a fun storyline that has been picked up already - with tOSU and Florida on opposite sides of the NIT Final Four (with tOSU playing Ole Miss - thanks for beating VPI, Rebs - and UF playing UMass), we could be treated to a rematch of last year’s championship game. I’ll be just like last year! Noah! Oden! Horford! Conley! Brewer! It’s the NCAA championship game on CBS The Deuce!

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We would say we’re sorry, but …

THE GAME EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Please make the room stop spinning
#2 Duke 71, #15 Belmont 70 (West)

[clears throat] Excuse us for just a moment. [walks into hallway, curses, destroys furniture, punches wall, kicks dog, returns] OK, much better.

Now, imagine what that would have been like had Duke lost. We didn’t see the game (poorly timed obligations this week have me working very, very late each night away from a computer), and that’s probably for the best. By all regards, Duke didn’t play poorly - just at a pedestrian pace. Meanwhile, Belmont played like a team that wasn’t afraid of Duke (and needn’t be, because it’s a game after all) and knew it needed to play the game of its life (and went out and did just that). A small part of us is disappointed the Bruins didn’t pull of the upset. A very small part.

Post-game, the MSM seemed to trip over themselves in a race to decide who could write the most poignant “But what does this MEAN for Duke???” piece. Ugh. These are the times when it is useful that these folks are paid to write articles that create emotional reactions (and thus forwards and page views), not necessarily articles that make a lick of damn sense. So, to them I say - Belmont played a great game, Duke played a ‘meh’ game, Duke barely won. This happens to some team in the tournament every g*ddamn year. Don’t oversell it just because it’s Duke.

TWO OTHER STORYLINES JUST FOR KICKS

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