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.

Mess with the bull …

We have a certain friend - we’re guessing many of our readers know someone similar - who is just a f***in’ moron with women. He misses signals from interested women. He goes after the wrong type and drowns in flames. When he does land a girl, she is insufferable, and causes friction between him and his friends as he devotes himself to attending vegetarian cookoffs with her. By the time he comes to his senses, his buddies are pissed from five straight missed poker nights and a dozen unreturned phone calls, and he pretty much has to start from scratch in every aspect of his personal life.

We tell the tale of this friend because, after each crash and burn, we tell him, “Dude, maybe you should just be single and NOT looking for a while.” And we feel that someone needs to offer the same advice to Lute Olsen because … well, things aren’t going so hot out in Arizona:

Either way, the byproduct is this: A 73-year-old man (Olson) whose health has been questioned for years is coming off a leave of absence and trying to lead a program that is expected to lose its top two players (Jerryd Bayless and Chase Budinger) from a squad that just finished seventh in the Pac-10.

That’s a tall order, and that Olson will likely do it without a single returning assistant — while going through a publicly nasty divorce — should make it even taller, and if McDonald’s All-American Brandon Jennings doesn’t qualify (he still has some serious work to do, I’m told) then Wildcat basketball could be headed toward its worst season in many decades.

Lute, our advice - stay off the dating scene and spend that time reconnecting with your players and assistants. We’re told the young folk these days like to play video games. Maybe you could try that.

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.

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.

(more…)

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:

Reeeeeemix!

THE STORY EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT

Second Verse, Same as the First

Honestly, we could cut and paste everything we wrote yesterday about Providence hiring Keno Davis, replacing “Providence” with “Oklahoma State”, “Keno Davis” with “Travis Ford”, “Big East” with “Big XII”, and … OK, that’s just a lot of replacements, so we’ll write something new.

Obviously, T. Boone Pickens (who should really go by T-Bone) wanted to land a name, and a name he landed, with the added bonus that Ford turned down two big conference jobs in the past few weeks before accepting this one. T-Bone likes it when you make his dick … erm, his alma mater … look bigger than it actually is. We find ourselves wondering, though - why didn’t the Cowboys go after Davis? Had Ford not already turned down the Providence job, we would suggest that Ford and Davis swap new jobs to stay within their recruiting territories. In fact, we’ll suggest that anyway.

No doubt that UMass to Okie State is a step up, but Ford will need to win and win fast. Pickens barely let Sean Sutton last two years, and Sutton had the advantages of a) being an alum and b) being the son of a school legend. Past service as Rick Pitino’s bucket boy won’t help Ford here.

NEXT YEAR’S ONE YEAR WONDERS

Who said anything about academics?

Just as another freshman announces his intent to head to the pros after one year in college, news came out of Philadelphia yesterday that Tyreke Evans, one of the top recruits available this year (#6 Rivals, #4 Scouts), would sign with Memphis. Except he didn’t. Evans announced his decision to “attend” Memphis, but put off signing a LOI for a little while - presumably to ensure that John Calipari doesn’t bolt for the NBA.

Over at The Dagger, MJD ponders why Evans chose Memphis over hometown Villanova, showing that Evans was interested in getting out of Chester after witnessing a gang-related murder. On the list of good non-academic/athletic reasons to attend one school over another, “not wanting to get shot” ranks high. Good luck to Evans with the Tigers.

And Because I Know You Are Wondering, Too …

While we are admittedly afraid to dip our toe into the murky water that is recruiting, we always say “in for a penny, in for a pound”. With that - Scouts’ and Rivals’ Top Classes of 2008 as of the end of the early signing period back in November. Both sites say that the rankings wouldn’t shift much in the spring due to so many top players signing early, so these are good to go for now.

We give these rankings with no commentary or insight at this time. Well, except for … Florida State? Really? And we thought the Harvard kerfluffle was just Brian Cook making shit up. Scouts actually ranked them #25? What’s next, Duke signing a big man? (We kid, we kid - that will never happen.)

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

Having been all business and no play up to this point, we feel an obligation to bring you awkward Japanese reality show dancing. That’s just how we do.

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.

The theme song for today’s coaching moves - only the finest slice of awful ’70s rock, reintroduced to us through the beauty that is Rock Band.

The big coaching story, of course, is where there was no change at all: Bill Self rebuffed his alma mater to stay at Kansas. We stated our policy on this earlier this week, so we say to Self that he had no wrong choices, and that if his heart told him to stay in Lawrence … well, then he must know something about Lawrence that we don’t. But, you know, championships are the best love like hunger is the best sauce. Rating: Chalky.

The biggest change, however, saw Trent Johnson leave a pretty damn good gig at Stanford to take over at LSU. We assume that Trent saw the Lopez twins head for the NBA, remembered he was at a school famous for its chemists and not its ballers, and took the all-expense paid trip to “Recruit Whomever the Hell You Want”-town. (We also don’t know what this says about the relative strengths of the conferences involved - is he leaving the ultra-competitive Pac-10 for calmer hoops waters, or does he view the SEC as a greater challenge?) Regardless of the reasoning, a strong move by an LSU program that has looked rudderless since making the Final Four in 2006 - kind of like it did for the fifteen years before that, too. Rating: ESS-EEE-SEE! ESS-EEE-SEE! WOOOOO BAYOU BENGALS WOOOOOO!

Because nothing says “opportunity” like “dump your new girlfriend for your ex-wife”, Mike Montgomery denied any interest in the new Stanford opening. Probably not a tough decision, given that Cal had literally just backed the Brinks truck up to his doorstep to sign him as the new coach of the Bears. While we understand angst over Cal’s decision to fire longtime coach Ben Braun, we can’t say we disagree with it. Home of hippies that it may be, Berkeley is the state flagship, and hates to lose ground to its little brother in Los Angeles in any category. You want to win big time ball? You hire big time coach. And Ben Braun seems like a nice guy, but not a big time coach. Rating: Golden.

Apparently learning a lesson from his own playing career, UMass coach Travis Ford turned down the opportunity to become a small fish in the Big East Pond at Providence to stay in Amherst. We know that the Friars were a founding member of the Big East, but the times seem to have passed them by, and we can’t help thinking time has come for relegation. That said … it was a Big East coaching opportunity. Ford reportedly passed up an interview with LSU as well, for a team that made the NIT finals. We’re going to work on the assumption that he knows something that we do not - either that his job is oddly secure at UMass, or he has a better grasp on his own Peter Principle than anyone we’ve studied. Rating: Feisty like an undersized point guard.

Recognizing that our Hoyas are the exception that proves the rule, it is never a good thing when you are having to poach from the Ivy League for your new head coach. It is worse when you are hiring an Ivy League assistant. But when you are the New Jersey Institute of Technology, oh ye of your 0-29 record - well, you take what you can get, even if that means hiring an assistant from Columbia as your new coach. So welcome, John Engles! And, for once we mean this with no risk of jinx - you can’t POSSIBLY have a worse year than the last guy. Rating: There can be only one - and the Highlanders would take even that.

0-29 is the new pink.

We hope to not take too many controversial positions on this here blog … doesn’t sit well with management when you piss off the readers … but we couldn’t help saying something about the angst-ridden pieces about Bill Self post-championship. It was like a couple of these guys got together at a bong bar to smoke unfiltered and bitch about reality:

Wojciechowski: It’s like - why do you have to be a slave to the corporate master? Huh? All they want to talk about granfalloons, like “alma mater” and “money”. Those things are false groups, man. They are false. They aren’t real.

Shanoff: Yeah, man. I mean, who the fuck tries to turn SUCCESS into MONEY? That’s just the corporations talking, trying to keep the little man down.

Whitlock: Who the fuck let you in here?

[adjusts tie] Are these guys fucking serious? Really? We know that a couple of them have axes to grind (Whitlock works for a KC paper; Gene W. grew up in central Kansas), and we hate to be found agreeing with Simmons (a capital crime in the blogosphere to be sure), but what a bunch of hypocritical crap. More bitching after the jump.

(more…)

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?”
(more…)

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.

Carousel - a term tossed around to describe movement in the coaching labor market, but why? Upon further review, it’s oddly accurate - constantly in motion until some pimpled, power hungry AD teenager throws off the gears, needlessly detailed, exciting to kids and their parents while alternatively boring and creepy to everyone else. Properly cited, we’ll pick up the nomme d’art and talk about the school’s who lack the courtesy to save their coaching news for next week when we have nothing else to write about.

After bolting Iowa for the calmer … plateaus? … of New Mexico, Steve Alford was rewarded Monday with a three-year extension with the Lobos, putting him under contract through 2016. All of this for one season of work that got the Lobos to 24-9 and a first round loss in the NIT. When notified of the extension, Charlie Weis nodded his head with approval. Combined with Herb Sendek’s desert revival at Arizona State after leaving the boobirds in Raleigh, one has to think there is something to the whole “life is easier in the Southwest” theory, even amongst the coaching ranks. Outlook: Sunny, even with those killer cacti.

(more…)

The regular season isn’t even over yet, and already the coaching carousel is underway: news comes out of Little Rock this morning that ne’er-do-well Arkansas State has held preliminary talks with Nolan Richardson for the former Razorback coach to come on board as coach of the Indians Red Wolves.

We understand the push from the perspective of A-State - bring in a guy with huge positive name recognition in state for fans and recruits alike. But we don’t get the motivation for Richardson. For the last three years, he’s been living the high life in retirement as the head coach of basketball-third-world national teams, first in Panama and now in Mexico.

Just because the conference says “Sun Belt” doesn’t mean that this is a lateral move back into D-I basketball, Nolan. Go get yourself another margarita, find yourself a girl, and try not to accuse anyone of racial animus along the way to the beach.

(HT: Yoco.)

Can u hr me now? Good.

Kelvin Sampson: OK … can’t catch any flies without putting out a little honey. Time to get started on the call list for the day!

[dials]

Eric Gordon: Hello?

KS: Hey Eric - how are you holding up? You feeling good? You feeling strong?

EG: Um, hey Coach.

KS: Nice win over tOSU on Tuesday - nice win. You and D.J. looked great out there. You always look great, you beautiful boys, you.

EG: [mildly weirded out, but used to it by now] Thanks, Coach. Look, it’s good to hear from you, but are you really supposed to be talking to us?

(more…)

A few updates after a relatively light night of games:

The Game Everyone Was Talking About (sort of)

Beasley Cries Himself to Sleep, Wants His Huggins - #5 Texas 74, Kansas State 65: Put yourself in Michael Beasley’s shoes. Every night you step on the court, you drop a double-double (last night’s line: 30 points, 15 boards with 5 on offense, a pair of dimes and a steal). On any given night, your teammates MIGHT show up. More likely, as they did last night, they will actually vomit on the court. (Taking out Beasley’s stats, the Wildcats shot 26% from the floor and 45% from the line.) There are millions on the table in the NBA. Oh, and you are stuck in Manhattan, Kansas. I’m a big fan of higher education, with the student debt to prove it, and even I want Beasley to go to the NBA for his own sanity.

Meanwhile, the Longhorns showed the type of balance you need to win games on the road. Connor Atchley, who is unsurprisingly Caucasian, contributed 14 points and 7 boards despite spending most of the game in foul trouble after vain attempts to guard Beasley. D.J. Augustin and A.J. Abrams contributed 24 and 13 respectively thanks to 45% accuracy behind the arc. (The Longhorns may struggle against faster teams with better perimeter defense, but that’s a problem for another day.)

The Game You Should Have Watched

More evidence that student government causes harm than good - Texas Southern 77, Arkansas-Pine Bluff 76: The unfortunately-abbreviated APB sent the game to overtime when Marcelle Goins nailed a shot from half court as the buzzer sounded to tie the score at 68. Texas Southern, however, had a two point lead going into overtime thank to a technical foul called on APB as time expired. What gave? After Goins’ miracle lob, the home crowd celebrated by littering the court with cups, Frisbees, and pens given out pregame by candidates for student office. The two gimmes were the difference, keeping APB three games behind Alabama State in conference standings. Video courtesy of tWWL after the jump, that suggests that the refs may have overreacted just a bit: (more…)