I can't make it much more plain than that. Buried 10 graphs in this K.C. Star story about Missouri's exhibition opener Thursday night is the rather revelatory fact that Missouri guard Kim English spends his nocturnal hours sleeping in Mizzou Arena. The explanation:

No Missouri basketball player has likely ever spent as much time practicing his game. A year ago English frequently slept at Mizzou Arena, so as to be able to shoot after practice and before class the next day. The practice has been catching. A lot of players are doing the same thing now.

This is insane. Like, it's one thing to be a college athlete, putting in the long morning hours before and after classes, spending basically every waking hour in the gym ... but to spend every sleeping hour in the gym so you can spend more waking hours in the gym borders on the fanatical. I'm almost worried for Kim English. He seems like a very nice, well-rounded young man, and this isn't healthy.

This isn't the first time the Star has written about English's unusual work ethic, either. From last June:

“On my recruiting visit, they told us this was a 24-hour practice facility,” English, a 6-foot-6 freshman guard from Baltimore, said Wednesday. “We’ve got a key and it works at 12 p.m., it works at 1 a.m. It works 24 hours a day.”

English sleeps in a leather chair that he drags from the players’ lounge to the locker room, allowing him to work around the clock. “To help this team win this year, I’ll do anything,” said English. [...] “I’ll sleep outside if that’s what it takes.”

Again, dude, not healthy. But it's also pretty cool, and the sort of thing Missouri fans and notoriously demanding head coach Mike Anderson will appreciate. And hey, maybe English gets a break on room and board. Win, win, and win.

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Far fewer people know about West Virginia freshman Deniz Kilicli. But Kilicli is having eligibility issues of his own. His suspension is far more serious than Wall's. And if Bob Huggins is to be believed -- hold your laughter for a minute here -- that suspension has far more to do with luck and circumstance than with any wrongdoing by Kilicli. Mike DeCourcy explains:

Kilicli, who is 6-9, 260 pounds, was suspended because the club team he played for wound up with a pro in the lineup after that player was dropped down from a higher division, Huggins said. NCAA officials consistently have applied a game-for-game penalty against international players who have competed alongside pros. Iowa State's Lucca Staiger, from Germany, missed the entire 2007-08 season because of a similar punishment. Kilicli got 11 games for that, and another nine for accepting expenses from his club.

There appears to be no chance for Kilicli to pay back expenses he received from his club in exchange for a lesser penalty, and an Kilicli's appeal has already been denied by the NCAA. Huggins says Kilicli is "struggling" with the decision, and that if "he wanted to be a pro, you don't think anyone would have paid him to stay over there?" It's a pretty valid point.

There's also an argument to be made that Wall's situation is potentially more damaging to the ethic of the NCAA. Theoretically, Wall could be in the pocket of an agent while enrolled at school, which leads to all sorts of problematic college sports issues too common for me to explain here. Kilicli's association with a pro gets him ... what, exactly? A pro was bumped down to an amateur club while Kilicli was also on the roster, and now Kilicli's amateur status is corrupted by osmosis? This makes zero sense.

The Bleacher Report has been quick to blame this on the NCAA looking to punish the little guy while preserving the star status of the game's elite. Maybe that's true, but I doubt it. More than anything, this is just a bad rule. It was a bad rule when it cost Iowa State player his entire 2007-08 season. It's a bad rule now. Free Kilicli! Or at least let him pay back the money and start paying. To use an expression you're more likely to hear from Bob Huggins: for chrissakes, this is silly.

Cincinnati's Mick Cronin was in a position to take a gamble. Yesterday, the gamble paid off: Stephenson was cleared to play by the NCAA and will miss no games. Cronin confirmed Stephenson's status with a simple text message: "Clear. No games." (Good thing reporters can read between the lines. A little more detail, coach?)

Of course, this is not to say that Stephenson's troubles are over, or that Cronin's gamble is over. Stephenson has only just begun his career. As we've learned from numerous recent one-and-done players (which Stephenson could be; he's that talented, though he isn't thought of too highly by draftniks yet), oftentimes the troubles come after the player's already packed his bags for the NBA. Or maybe Stephenson hits a rough patch and gets pouty, the sort of thing he's been criticized for before. Anything could happen; there's a reason elite programs didn't roll these dice.

But Mick Cronin did. So far, it's snake eyes, or whatever a good roll is when you play dice. I'm not really sure. I don't throw bones very often. The point is that Cronin has done well here so far. Now comes the easy part: playing basketball.

Last year's record: 27-8 (14-4 MVC)

2009-2010's toughest games: at Dayton, at Michigan, at New Mexico, at George Mason

Primary attraction: Spurned by the NCAA tournament in 2008, Creighton figures to be right in the thick of the Missouri Valley race, even with the loss of the reigning MVC Player of the Year.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Hello, my name is Dana Altman. You killed my 2008. Prepare to die. -- Revenge on the selection committee should be a big motivation for Creighton this year. The BlueJays were the co-champs of the MVC but failed to earn an NCAA tournament invite for just the fourth times since 1998. Should Creighton have made it? Winning the MVC last year was every it as impressive as winning the SEC and I'm always partial to giving bubble spots to the good mid-majors rather than the mediocre majors (Maryland), but you can't lose a conference tournament semifinal by 24 points to a team bound for the NIT and expect to get the 65th bid. You just can't.

2. The return of Cavell Witter -- The senior guard left the team last spring but reportedly asked to rejoin Dana Altman's squad. He played 13 minutes in Creighton's exhibition game Wednesday night, scoring six points. There's been no word on what caused Witter to initially leave the team, but I bet it had something to do with that loudmouth Whit.

3. P'Allen Stinnett -- Look, I'm going to level with you. I don't know the first thing about P'Allen Stinnett's game. All I know is that his name is P'Allen and that's totally enough for me. (But in the interest of fact-finding: Stinnett is Creighton's leading returning scorer, finished 5th in the MVC in steals and was named second-team all-conference.)

Creighton basketball's leading scorer, 1955-57:

Yes, Bob Gibson -- that Bob Gibson -- played guard at Creighton in the mid-1950s. He averaged 22 points per game in 1956 and also led the team in rebounds. 

Last night, Jordan took to the floor in his father's brand anyway. Adidas, none too pleased at this development, summarily canceled its deal with Central Florida.

This is not as disastrous as it might sound, because, duh, Marcus Jordan is Michael Jordan's son. I think we've covered this before. And being Michael Jordan's son, it seems likely that Nike would be willing to swoop right in and take over UCF's sponsorship, especially since Michael Jordan's son is now on the team. Sports By Brooks's Brooks Melchior has already talked to two "prominent sports marketing execs" who say the wheels on a Nike partnership are already turning. See? No big deal.

It is a big interesting from a purely marketing perspective, though. Nike gets to be the hero; adidas looks like a petulant corporate overlord; and Jordan Brand gets a momentary boost in profile, the sort of old-school brand-loyalty marketing gimmick -- Mickey Mantle prefers Viceroy! Marcus Jordan's feet won't touch adidas! -- dreamed up by the ad whizzes of yesteryear.

You could even go one step further (as Brooks does) and speculate that UCF knew, whether intuitively or through conversations with Nike, that if Marcus Jordan refused to dress in adidas, Nike would come riding in. It makes sense. What athletics budget can afford to drop $1.9 million in sponsor money? Not even elite programs can manage that; UCF certainly can't. And yet the school was all-too-willing to let Jordan walk right out onto the court last night in his father's shoes.Weird, right?

(Screw you, I'm an anteater!)

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 20-13, 10-8 Big Ten

2009-10's toughest games: Duke, at Michigan State, at Purdue, at Ohio State

Primary attraction: Wisconsin is boringly awesome, each and every year, which ironically makes them interesting. But is 2009-10 the year they're just boring?

1. Bo Ryan, model of consistency. You've watched Wisconsin basketball games before. You don't need me to tell you. There's something about them, isn't there? Something about the players they recruit. Not the stars, like Alando Tucker and Devin Harris; those sorts of guys could fit in anywhere. I'm talking about the Joe Krabbenhofts and Brian Butches and Marcus Landrys of the world, the guys that, for whatever reason -- whether a lack of athleticism or a quiet productivity or whatever it is -- somehow seem like they belong only at Wisconsin. They're Wisconsin players. It's weird and difficult to define, but you've watched Wisconsin basketball. You know what I mean.

That sort of weird, boring productivity is still productivity, and Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan milks it for all it's worth. Each year, despite a seeming talent deficit, Wisconsin competes in the Big 10 and makes the NCAA tournament and often goes further than expected. But what about 2009-10? This year, the Badgers are more talent-bereft than usual. Does Ryan's streak of boring NCAA tournament victories end? Do the Badgers -- gasp -- become just one of 20 or 30 untalented NIT teams you wouldn't flip back to even if nothing else was on?

2. Marcus Landry and Joe Krabbenhoft leave big shoes to fill. Former Wisconsin forward Landry and Krabbenhoft got things done. They scored on the offensive end -- Landry with an outside jumper and effective seal-off post moves down low, Krabbenhoft with putbacks -- and they rebounded. And now they're both gone. Who steps up? Wisconsin does have an interesting prospect in Jon Leuer scored 8.8 points per game last season in relatively limited minutes off the bench; a starting spot should see him blossom into a productive guy. The Badgers also have their top recruit of 2008 (who was No. 75 overall in his class, which doesn't bode well for Wisconsin's immediate future), 6-foot-10 center Jared Berggren, ready to run.

3. It ain't the thing if it don't have that swing. The swing offense! Fun! Actually, the swing offense isn't all that fun. It's very methodical and slow; that sixth-grade team you volunteer coach will not adapt well to its intricacies. Yet, thanks to the premium it puts on inside shots from big, tall dudes, the swing offense is very effective, and no one runs it better than Bo Ryan and Wisconsin. What the offense also manages to do, besides get good shots on the offensive end, is force opposing defense to switch a ton of screens and beware of all sorts of back cuts, the kind of thing that wears opponents down. Wisconsin was No. 334 in adjusted tempo last season; if the Big Ten ever wants to blame someone for its entire league being slow, they should blame Wisconsin. 

Anyway, if you're really interested in the swing, have a go. In fact, take it to your buddies and tell them to study up, because you're putting it in your rec league's repertoire. You will have very little fun, but you will win. A lot. 

Mateen Cleaves still wants to fight everyone in red.

In 1998, Michigan State guard Mateen Cleaves was busted for underage drinking. Oh well. It happens. But if you're a college basketball player, and you have to play at Wisconsin the next day, you can expect a bit of student section ribbing. Mateen apparently did not. From Sports Illustrated:

Before playing at Wisconsin in February 1998, Michigan State guard Mateen Cleaves was arrested for underage possession of alcohol (a misdemeanor for which he completed a first-offenders program). After the Grateful Red student section serenaded Cleaves with 99 Bottles of Beer, Spartans coach Tom Izzo had to restrain Cleaves. "I had to drag him off the floor because he wanted to fight the whole place," Izzo says. "Then again, maybe he had some of it coming."

Two things: Mateen Cleaves is too sensitive. And Tom Izzo is too awesome.

Yes, Thomas's FIU squad dropped its first exhibition last night in an upset almost as bad as Syracuse's the day before. The Panthers lost 71-61 to an NAIA team from West Pal Beach, Fla., called Northwood; NAIA, if you're not aware, is all the way down there in the college sports hierarchy below Division III. Which is not to say there aren't good NAIA teams. There are. It's just that, you know, NAIA schools are never supposed to beat NCAA schools, and they're especially not supposed to beat Division I schools with famous head coaches whose last job was general manager and coach for the New York Freaking Knicks.

But that's exactly what happened to Zeke's Panthers last night, and sure, it's not the end of the world. It's just an exhibition game, for one. And in the big scheme, it could be worse. Thomas's team is not supposed to be good this year; that's more than we can say for Syracuse, which dropped its exhibition game to a Division II school from the same town. The main problem for Thomas is not the exhibition loss. It's in figuring out how a team that lost an exhibition game to an NAIA school can four days later compete with the likes of No. 6 North Carolina ... which is exactly what Thomas has to do.In this case, a horrid exhibition loss is nothing compared to that which follows it.

Tom Crean seems most upset by something else, though. Specifically: Coach K.

About two weeks ago, Mike Krzyzewski talked to ESPN's Andy Katz about Knight, with whom Coach K is famously close. Krzyzewski's comments were a little weird, to say the least. A representative sampling:

"I do think before coach Knight ever goes there, people at Indiana should think about what happened since he left [in 2000] and celebrate him instead of taking down the things he did," Krzyzewski said. "Over three decades he represented that school, won championships and produced great young men. That record is not talked about. You can't just say you're in the Hall of Fame. That's not enough. In order to have a great future, you need to celebrate the greatness of the past. I think Indiana basketball needs to celebrate coach Knight's time."

The whole point of the Hall of Fame seems lost on Coach K. The Hall of Fame induction is specifically designed to celebrate Knight's successes as a basketball coach. No one at IU is sending out press releases about Knight's failures, or his temper, or making jokes about Knight's speech being "zero tolerance." There are obvious black marks on Knight's record at IU, but Indiana brass was completely willing to gloss them over in the interest of getting Knight back in Bloomington for a weekend. What more does Knight want?

Anyway, Crean brought up Coach K on the radio without provocation, saying he was "bewildered" by Krzyzewski's comments and, egged on a bit by the radio hosts asking him successive questions on the matter, got a little bit aggressive in the meantime. The audio of the interview is here; the good stuff starts a little over halfway through. When asked if he ever thought about calling Coach K, Crean said:

"Um, not really. I didn't take it personal in that sense, because obviously he didn't know what we're trying to do here. Maybe it'd be different if he did. But no. We're going to be recruiting against them, we're going to hopefully be playing against them, and we're going to hopefully be competing for championships against them in the near future like they do.

"So I don't feel any need to have to explain myself or what we're trying to do here. I think it's up to people to pay attention to it if they're going to comment on it. [...] Obviously, he has a great affection for Bob Knight. But he's not alone."

Oh SNAP, son. Coach fight! This is totally like the time in high school when this one girl Brenda was all like "that's my boyfriend" and Sheila was all like "nuh-uh, obviously you don't know what you're talking about, SKANK," except when college coaches want to insult someone, they use the word "people" instead of "skank." They're much more subtle, and much more devastating for it. And I love every minute of it.

Is this a big deal? Maybe, but probably not. Yet. Which is why it's up to Coach K to come back with something equally withering. Your move, Krzyzewski. Don't act like you don't love a good blood feud, K. We're on to you.

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 25-10 (10-6 ACC)

2009-2010's toughest games: at Florida, at Ohio State

Primary attraction: In 2009, the Seminoles danced for the first time in 11 years. Will they make it back to the NCAAs without star Toney Douglas?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Length --Jay Bilas is going to love Florida State's length. Solomon Alabi is 7-foot-1, Chris Singleton (right) is 6-foot-9 and Xavier Gibson is 6-foot-11. Along with Wake Forest, Leonard Hamilton's team should have the biggest, most athletic frontcourt in the ACC.

2. Thank you, ACC expansion -- Somehow, FSU only has to play Duke and North Carolina once each this year. I'm a staunch ACC traditionalist, so I'm already inclined to loathe how adding Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech ruined the best basketball conference in the land. However, most of my reasons are the bizarre rantings of a solitary man with a messy apartment which may or may not contain a chicken. The unbalanced basketball schedule is a legitimate gripe though. The teams FSU could be battling it out with for third, fourth or fifth place in the ACC will each have to play Duke/Carolina three times (Georgia Tech has home-and-homes with both teams). This is obviously a huge advantage for the 'Noles.

3. Leonard Hamilton -- The FSU coach (who was once Michael Jordan's hand-picked choice to coach the Washington Wizards) always looks like he just got off work and is unwinding with three fingers of Glenlivet at a place where the bartender knows everyone's drink. He's always enjoyable to watch. His teams are never great, but they're almost never bad either. 

Solomon Alabi is really tall:

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 28-6 (14-0, WCC)

2009-2010's toughest games: at Michigan State, vs. Wake Forest, at Duke, vs. Oklahoma, Maui Invitational (possibly Arizona, Wisconsin, Maryland or Vanderbilt)

Primary attraction: With a killer schedule and the departure of four starters, could Gonzaga miss out on the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1998?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Is the cupboard empty or merely restocked? -- Gonzaga always reloads. Every two or three years seniors matriculate or a star heads to the NBA early and people wonder whether this is finally the year Mark Few's squad relinquishes its grip on the West Coast Conference. Expect that question to get louder this December when a young Zags team with an inexperienced frontcourt is sure to drop a number of games thanks to the Bulldogs' usual, burtal non-conference sked. The most familiar names (Austin Daye, Micah Downs, Josh Heytvelt and Jeremy Pargo) are gone, replaced with guys you've never heard of. But, then again, you had never heard of any of those four guys when they were the no-names replacing Adam Morrison and Derek Raivio.

2. Matt Bouldin -- You have heard of Bouldin, though. The latest in a long line of white, shaggy-haired guards, Bouldin will provide senior leadership to a team that will feature a frontcourt decimated by the loss of Downs and Daye. Robert Sacre is a seven-footer coming off a medical redshirt and Few insists he's ready to go. But seven-footers and foot injuries tend to be as bad a combination as Josh Heytvelt and plantlife.

3. A decade of dominance? -- Gonzaga is looking to become just the fourth team in NCAA basketball history to ever win 10 straight regular season conference titles. One more would tie the Zags for the second-longest streak of all-time, trying them with Kentucky (1944-52), Connecticut (1951-1960) and UNLV (1983-1992). The longest streak belongs to UCLA, which won 13 straight Pac-10 titles from 1967 to 1979. 

Gratuitous Dan Dickau picture: Did I used to have a man-crush on Dan Dickau? No. I still have a man-crush on Dan Dickau:

"Shut It Down" by Syracuse basketball's Rob Murphy

Shut it down! Pick and roll! Shoot the lights out! Mismatch! You see, these are basketball terms, but they could also double as imperative slang, or what original rap artists called "boasts" or "toasts." I learned that from a hip-hop class I took in college. (Yes, I took a hip-hop class in college. It was awesome.)

Anyway, Syracuse basketball has already adopted this as its theme song, and plenty of students in attendance at Tuesday night's game were sporting the signature "Shut It Down" t-shirt you see in the video above. LeMoyne, apparently, did not get the memo.

(HT: Troy Nunes)

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 21-15, 8-10 Big East

2009-10's toughest games: at UConn, at Villanova, at Louisville, at Georgetown

Primary attraction: Luke Harangody's last hurrah.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Thanks, NBA. This offseason, Luke Harangody decided to give the NBA a shot. He didn't officially declare, and he didn't hire an agent; he merely showed up to a few camps, tested his mettle against the NBA's scouting darlings, and went on with his life. When it was clear Harangody wouldn't be drafted before the second round, if at all, he decided to come back to Notre Dame. So it is to those scouts, the ones who made it clear that Harangody wasn't an NBA player, that I'd like to briefly say: Thank you.

See, Harangody probably isn't a pro player. But he is a very good college one. He is a force on the offensive end (and has been for his entire career) and his per-possession rebounding statistics, especially on the defensive end, put him among the top rebounders in college hoops over the last decade. Harangody is very, very productive. Even if he weren't, though, Harangody viewers would still get to watch one of the strangest all-around styles any of us have seen for a long, long time. Harangody doesn't jump very high, and he isn't very fast. His scores come on jump shots and awkward fadeaways and, most often, on a kind of twisting reverse layup thing that looks like no shot you've ever seen before. If Luke Harangody stepped onto a pickup gym floor, people would laugh at him. And he would win almost every single time.

That we college hoops fans have the opportunity to revel in Harangody's awkward productivity for another year is almost entirely thanks to a few honest NBA scouts and draftniks. Thanks, guys.

2. Meet the new Big East, where things will be slightly less hectic. Last year's Big East was good. It probably wasn't quite worthy of the "best conference EVER!!11!1" accolades it received for much of the year, but there's no arguing that its top five or six teams were truly elite, and that no other conference in the country could match it for sheer depth of talent. Notre Dame got the sharp end of that conference slate in the middle of the season, when they played -- get this -- at Louisville, at Syracuse, Connecticut, Marquette, and at Pitt, all the matter of a couple weeks. After that, the Irish were pretty much spent.

Fortunately, this year's schedule is far easier, because this year's Big East is far less talented. There isn't a single stretch of games -- or, frankly, a game -- that really screams trouble. Unfortunately for Notre Dame, after losing Kyle McAlarney to graduation and Purdue transfer forward Scott Martin to a season-ending knee injury, Notre Dame isn't nearly as talented as they were last year. So perhaps the schedule doesn't matter after all.

3. Like the tielighter, Digger Phelps will never let this one go. When I was a freshman in college, I went to visit some friends at Notre Dame. We acquired basketball tickets. I was too busy turning my nose up the Joyce Center (it is really bad, so my elitism was at least founded in reality) to immediately notice that it was halftime and the lights had dimmed and a video was playing on the jumbo scoreboard at the end of the arena. Sure enough, it was a video of the final 3:22 of Notre Dame's 1974 win over UCLA, in which the Irish -- coached by Digger Phelps -- came back from 11 down in the last three minutes to hand John Wooden's No. 1 Bruins their first loss in 88 games. That was Notre Dame's best basketball moment ever, and it happened at the helm of someone who matches his tie to his highlighter when he goes on national television to talk about basketball. Sometimes, these things don'tneed to make sense.

But there is good news this week. At least, according to Jackson, there's good news, as Sidney seems nearer to crossing the clearance threshold:

"We expect it could happen as soon as tomorrow or in the next week," Alabama-based attorney Don Jackson told FOXSports.com. "We've given the NCAA everything they've asked for.

"We didn't turn over bank statements," Jackson told FOXSports.com. "But they reviewed bank deposit information. They have all the information they need. In fact, I think they had enough before last Friday."

I'm not sure what the difference between turning over bank statements and bank deposit information is, unless you just want to hide what you had in your bank account initially, which, again, why? But Sidney's situation, and Jackson's handling of it, are long past the point of reason. Here's hoping what Jackson is saying is actually true. After all, this is a man insane enough to try to get a congressional hearing on his college basketball recruit's eligibility situation. I'm not sure he's proven his handle on reality quite yet.

Instead, the LeMoyne Dolphins -- the product of a tiny Jesuit college in DeWitt, New York, a suburb of Syracuse -- hit a three-pointer with eight seconds left to take an 82-79 win exhibition with over Jim Boeheim and the 'Cuse. If there is such a thing as college hoops-related madness on Nov. 3, this, folks, is madness.

LeMoyne isn't a Division I school; it plays in the Division II Northeast-10 conference against the likes of Bentley, Adelphi, St. Anselm, and Southern Connecticut State. Upsets like this don't happen in the NCAA tournament, because schools as small and -- forgive me -- feeble as LeMoyne don't get to play in the NCAA tournament. Their only consolation is yearly exhibitions against teams like Syracuse, which usually don't end with awesome buzzer-beaters.

So, OK, it was just an exhibition. To be clear, this doesn't really say anything about Syracuse's team, and I'm sure the 'Cuse will be fine in 2009-10. But if you think that distinction matters to the Dolphins, well, you didn't visit the LeMoyne men's hoops site Tuesday night. If you had, you'd have been greeted with this:

Yeah: I think you could say they're excited.

Last year's record: 23-11 (14-4 Missouri Valley)

2009-2010's toughest games: vs. Iowa, vs. Siena

Primary attraction: Can Northern Iowa make it back-to-back MVC titles and make consecutive trips to the NCAA tournament for just the third time in school history?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Can the Panthers avoid a slow start? -- Last year UNI started the year 6-6, with predictable losses to big-time schools like Marquette and Iowa. But there were also some unexpected slip-ups to the Illinois-Chicagos and Wyomings of the NCAA too. Ben Jacobson's squad will hope to avoid a similar start this year, but the schedule does no favors. UNI could see either Tennessee or Purdue in the Thanksgiving Paradise Jam, before playing in-state rivals Iowa and Iowa State ahead of an exciting interconference game with a much-hyped Siena team.

2. Fundamentals -- Is it cliche to say that MVC teams thrive on good fundamentals? Too bad, because Northern Iowa does the little things right. They shoot well from the field and the line, defend well, are formidable on the boards, force turnovers and are able to keep their own handle. In short, Northern Iowa isn't going to beat itself. OK, that did sound pretty cliche, but it's true. (Sorry, I've been watching too much Tim McCarver.)

3. The two Ben Jacobsons -- Ben Jacobson, the player, led UNI to three straight NCAA tournaments from 2004 to 2006. He was named twice to the first-team All-MVC team and is the third leading scorer in team history. Ben Jacobson, the coach, took over the Panthers the year after Ben Jacobson, the player, matriculated. Much to my disappointment, they are not the same person.  

"He hasn't played in 10 minutes!":

For your enjoyment, the biggest shot in Northern Iowa history. Tied with No. 3 seed Missouri in the first round of the NCAA tournament, Maurice Newby drained a three with one second left for the upset of the 1990 tourney. Norm Stewart, the legendary Missouri coach, made his name at Northern Iowa in the 1960s.

Look at Coach Floyd! He just slowly wades into the morass, oblivious, unflinching, scared of nothing -- not even a leopard-print-wearing female's attempts to bash him in the back of the head with a plastic chair. And before you know it, the chairs are set down, the scratches are unscratched, and the cheap hair extensions are released. Is Tim Floyd a hero? He'd never say so. But by golly, if that's not a hero, I don't know what a hero is anymore.

(HT: Herm's Perm)

You would think, given these two relatively attractive purposes, that college hoops exhibitions would be around forever. Not so. As the Washington Times reports today, many schools are deciding to forgo the exhibition scene altogether, instead opting for closed, controlled scrimmages. But why?

"It doesn't have the same limitations as an exhibition game," Hokies coach Seth Greenberg said. "You play an exhibition game, and you never really know who you're playing. You can play three guys who have Seth Greenberg's hairline and two guys that played 20 years ago in America and are just hanging on to a paycheck. If you're scrimmaging Georgetown, you know what you're getting."

Seth Greenberg is hilarious.

Of course, these scrimmages are closed, meaning no fans, no media, no pictures, and no athletics department press releases on the proceedings. They're just like practice, and coaches can structure an agenda for the scrimmage, too -- Dino Gaudio does segments of man-to-man defense, and then zone, and then, I don't know, probably that weird squishy man-zone thing that Wake Forest used against good guards last year.

The point is: more control, less unexpected weirdness. It's not exactly surprising that college coaches want more control; the profession is rife with control freaks. But the notion college programs would be willing to give up an extra game or two of home ticket sales revenue for sake of more structure. That's a surprise.

Last year's record: 19-12, 8-8 SEC

2009-10's toughest games: at Kentucky, at Tennessee, at Illinois, Mississippi State

Primary attraction: Kevin Stallings: College basketball coaching we can believe in.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. In which I admit my man crush on Kevin Stallings. Kevin Stallings had a pretty good offseason, and I'm not talking about the recruits he hauled in or the facilities he was able to revamp. No, I'm talking about public relations. Kevin Stallings killed this offseason's PR game, and I'll admit: It totally worked on me.

First there was the story of how Stallings walked out of an AAU tournament after being told he had to spend $295 on a player information packet. Stallings then took his story to the New York Times, providing Pete Thamel a very intriguing anecdotal lead. Stallings suddenly seemed like the principled man awash in a sea of scumbags, which may or may not be true, but sure gets the old man crush meter running.

Then there was this: Stallings gave up a $100,000 raise in order to send his team on a pre-planned trip to Australia after Vanderbilt, citing budget cuts, had decided to kibosh the trip altogether. Even if you are on a D-1 coach's salary, $100k is serious cheese, and Stallings' willingness to part with it is the equivalent of a friend willing to donate his money to insure everyone has a fun time. Those are the kinds of dudes you want to be around. So what I'm trying to say is: Kevin Stallings seems like a man you could grab a beer with. Stallings '12!

2. Oh, right: basketball. Fortunately for him, Stallings isn't just a nice guy; he's actually a pretty solid basketball coach, too. Stallings has taken the Commodores to two Sweet Sixteen appearances in his eight years at Vandy, and he could be looking at another tournament team in 2009-10. Vanderbilt returns its entire roster from a team that won 19 games, including center A.J. Ogilvy, who averaged 15 points and 7.1 rebounds a game before falling prey to injury in the latter half of the season. And pricey packets or no pricey packets, Stallings managed to land the No. 15 recruit in the country in the class of 2009, John Jenkins, whose outside shooting could make him a star early in his college career.

3. Memorial Gym is weird. What follows are a few interesting facts about Memorial Gym that I did not know until literally five minutes ago (all gleaned from Wikipedia, of course):

At the time of its construction, there was a serious discussion within the Vanderbilt community about whether the school should de-emphasize intercollegiate athletics. As a compromise, the gymnasium was built to hold only about 8,000 seats, and it would be readily adaptable to other uses. [...] The areas out of bounds along the sidelines were very wide, in contrast with the small facility which it replaced, where the walls were right along the sidelines and players could scrape their shoulders bringing the ball up the court. This necessitated the placement of the benches at the end of the court, which was not highly unusual at the time. [...] In addition, each goal is anchored by two far-reaching beams attached to support columns, with extra support coming from cables stretching all the way to the gym's ceiling. In the case of a backboard shatter or beam fracture, replacing these goals would be highly difficult, compared to the usual goal setup at most venues.

When you throw in the elevated court style -- so rare in modern gyms; Purdue is the only other court that uses the elevated court that immediately comes to mind -- I think it's fair to say that Memorial Gym (or the Memorial, as it's colloquially known) is among the weirdest gyms in all of the United States. I mean, who hangs their basketball hoops from the ceiling?

The big, overarching conclusion is this: a player shows the most improvement between his freshman and sophomore seasons than he does any other offseason. In fact, the freshman offseason improvement is, on average, greater than the improvement between a player's sophomore season and his senior season. That's not to say every player follows this pattern. There are lots and lots of exceptions, and this is no hard-and-fast rule. It's just a remark about the averages.

This isn't all that helpful when trying to predict a specific player's development, because each player is a unique snowflake, and the results aren't some PECOTA-like projection system whittled down to account for the smallest player attributes. But as a general rule, this works well, and it means you can take a look at teams that relied heavily on freshmen for success in a prior year and posit that at least a few of those teams can expect a jump in wins in the new season. Those teams include obvious powers Kansas, Michigan State, but also sneakily interesting squads like West Virginia, Louisville, Minnesota and Washington.

Again, not a hard and fast rule, but certainly something to watch in 2009-10. Don't let us down, sophs.

Same as your 2008-09 preseason All-Americans.

OK, not quite. There's no Ty Lawson or Tyler Hansbrough anywhere to be found. But there is a batch of players we are all by now quite familiar with, several of whom seem like they've been around forever. Those players are not exactly a surprise: Leading the vote is returning All-American Luke Harangody, who will be the primary interest in Notre Dame this season (but if you want to see insane rebounding and possession numbers in action, he'll be worth watching all the same). Next up is Kansas center Cole Aldrich, who had a breakout season in 2008-09, followed by Sherron Collins, Patrick Patterson, and Kyle Singler. Like I said: Players that seem like they've been around forever. Sherron Collins seems especially old, which I guess is what happens when an elite point guard stays for all four years.

The preseason All-American teams are more about past accomplishment than prospective ability anyway, and it's not hard to imagine other players creeping ahead of these five by the time the year is up. Still, though, this is a very good sample of the best college basketball has to offer in 2009-10. Even if people cared enough to complain about preseason All-American teams, and they don't, there's not much to complain about here.

Last year's record: 23-9 (9-7 ACC)

2009-2010's toughest games: vs. Illinois, vs. South Carolina

Primary attraction: Oliver Purnell has gotten Clemson to the tournament for the past two seasons. Will this be the year he finally wins a game?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Trevor Booker -- Kyle Singler and Greivis Vasquez were the top two selections for ACC Preseason Player of the Year, but don't be surprised if Booker earns the honor at the end of the season.The 6-foot-7 forward led the ACC in field goal percentage and rebounding last season, the first time that's been accomplished since a Wake Forest forward named Tim Duncan did the same in 1997. If he were to spring the upset, Booker would be just the second player in Clemson history to win the award. (The other player is revealed after the jump.)

2.  -- In the past three seasons, North Carolina has the most victories of any team in the ACC. But do you know who's second? Yeah, you're right, it's Duke. But Clemson's third, which is pretty impressive and guaranteed to be an Aflac Trivia Question at some point during the upcoming season. Many of those wins are attributable to the Tigers' notoriously cupcake non-conference schedules (Clemson has starts of 16-0 and 17-0 in two of the past three years), but Purnell's team does boast a 26-22 ACC record since 2007. The schedule is once again easy (only the 76 Classic, ACC-Big 10 challenge game and a standing date with South Carolina provide the Tigers any sort of test), so expect a lot more Ws for the purple and orange.

3. Meet Milton Jennings -- Though his name screams "anti-Keynesian economist", his game is all Murray Rothbard. Clemson's five-star, McDonald's All-American recruit gives the team immediate frontcourt help. Trevor Booker's brother, Devin, won't hurt either.

Trivia Answer ... And with the 10th selection in the 1987 NBA draft:

Except, to listen to Burnt Orange Nation on the subject, there aren't too many people who consider themselves Texas hoops fans in the first place.

For the diehards, we'll be there regardless, but I've been polling students about their knowledge of basketball right now.  As of now, the average UT student has absolutely no idea about two key items:

1) The season starts in two weeks

2) This will be THE storybook season for UT Basketball

That's not good.  And even though Texas is a "football school," this doesnt mean that all efforts to drum up support for basketball during the Fall Semester should be abandoned..  Especially not this season.  Just like the new $100 million dollar movie, "This Is It" for UT Basketball.  And, if you were going to market this team, there is no shortage of possibilities.

Perhaps that's just the student body; perhaps the rest of the fan base is just as excited for basketball season as they are for Colt McCoy and co.'s current bid for a national title in football. But Texas fans, seriously, don't take this for granted. Your team is awesome. Yes, Rick Barnes tends to put together awesome teams with alarming frequency, but very rarely are the teams this awesome, and within the larger context of college basketball in general, it's even rarer. Don't wait until February to experience it. Get out there and enjoy it while you can. It's either that, or enjoy your fate as one of those students who never saw Kevin Durant play live because you were too busy "studying" and "laying around eating chips in your dorm room." You will regret this. Trust me.

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here. Today, No. 43, Davidson.

Last year's record: 27-8 overall, 18-2 SoCon

2009-10's toughest games: at Butler, at Citadel, at Gonzaga, at UMass

Primary attraction: No longer Stephen Curry's show, Davidson is set for a serious fall from grace. But just how far?

1. Miss you, Stephen. For the past two years, you have known who Davidson's best player was, because this player's name was Stephen Curry, and his performance in the 2007-08 NCAA tournament made him an immediate college basketball legend. In 2009-10, Davidson's best player is (likely) named William Archambault, who you have not heard of, and who is (in case you'd like to know) who averaged 8.3 points last year. William happens to be Davidson's leading returning scorer. This is how bad things are going to get for Davidson this this winter. We'll all miss Stephen Curry as a collegiate basketball player, but Davidson fans, likely to watch their program recede into serious short-term irrelevance, will miss him much more than most.

2. Miss you, everyone else. The interesting thing about Davidson last year is that while Curry was clearly the team's best player, and one of the best at any school in the country, Davidson had its fair share of top-line talent to match him. That talent is now completely gone. Andrew Lovedale was the team's second-leading scorer behind Curry; he's peaced. Max Paulhaus was the SoCon defensive player of the year in 2008-09; he's done. The cupboard is almost entirely bare at Davidson, which is where three-star freshman recruit J.P. Kuhlman comes in. Kuhlman sounds like quite the long-range threat, which Davidson fans, having just lost the greatest long-range threat their school has even seen, will likely appreciate.

3. This one's for the gray hairs in the audience. Surprisingly enough, Davidson's history doesn't begin and end with Curry's rise to prominence in 2008. (I know, right? I totally thought it did!) In 1964-65, a Lefty Driesell-coached (before Driesell left to make his mark at Maryland, he coached Davidson for nine years, winning three SoCon titles in the process) Davidson team was ranked No. 1 overall by Sports Illustrated to begin the season. It featured forward Fred Hetzel, who averaged 25.7 points and 13.8 rebounds per game over his three-year career. Hetzel was picked No. 1 overall in the 1965 NBA draft. And somehow, despite losing only one game all year, Davidson didn't even make the NCAA tourney that season, thanks to an overtime loss to West Virginia in the SoCon tournament. Hey, at least we have at-large bids now.

Later in life, Driesell would tear up after watching Stephen Curry and the Davidson Bulldogs topple Georgetown in the NCAA tournament. See? It all comes back around.

Bonus: Stephen Curry highlight reel you had to know was coming. 

Pretty self-explanatory, I'd imagine:

Discussing Purdue's 2009 Big Ten tourney win as a reminder of how good Purdue basketball is, or something -- the explanation for this quote beyond "tweak Indiana" is still a little fuzzy to me -- Burke dropped this little bit of not-exactly-friendly trash talk:

“It should not come as a surprise, because Purdue leads the conference with 21 Big Ten championships,” he told the Star. “Nobody else has 21, not even the people down south of Indianapolis.”

"The people down South of Indianapolis" is an obvious reference to Indiana University, which, as I said up there in the first sentence, has a mere 20 conference titles in its history, one shy of Purdue's conference-leading 21. Purdue has a chance to widen that margin this year; Robbie Hummel and E-Twaun Moore and the gang will make Purdue a legitimate national contender, while Indiana, though improved, will be fighting a huge uphill battle to finish .500 in the Big Ten.

I'm afraid to say it, but in the short term, IU fans have to take this one on the chin. Should they need any retaliatory ammo, they can merely point to the five banners hanging on the wall in Assembly Hall. Purdue, with just two Final Four appearances (and no national titles) in its illustrious history, might have a tough time countering that one.

• John Wall's eligibility issues are resolved. Wall is forced to pay back around $800 in expenses from former AAU coach and then-registered agent Brian Clifton, and the freshman Kentucky point guard will also miss two games as punishment. Wall will be able to play in Kentucky's exhibition with Clarion on Friday, and his first regular season game will be Nov. 16 at Miami (OH). In other words: meh. No big deal.

• In another marginal bit of Kentucky-related basketball news, Billy Gillispie plead guilty to a suspicion of DUI charge he incurred on a Kentucky back road on Aug. 27 (my birthday, so, um, yay?). Gillispie apologized through a statement at the hearing, where he was, according to the Associated Press, wearing a "a dark suit and yellow tie." I know it was probably just a gray suit with a yellow and blue tie, or something, but my mind immediately pictured Gillispie in a giant zoot suit with yellow pin stripes and a top hat. If you're going to go to court, you might as well dress like a comic book supervillian, right? That's my motto. (Note: That's not actually my motto.)

• The Dagger's Rivals brethren is right on schedule with its preview series (whereas we are woefully behind), which means they just posted their No. 4 preview, Villanova, by the estimable Jason King. Check out the entire series of 347 previews here. Comprehensive doesn't begin to describe it.

• In the meantime around the ever-expanding college hoops blogosphere, Rush the Court is insanely and awesome previewing every team in one line on Twitter; Storming The Floor is readying for the college hoops explosion; and the dean of mid-major hoops blogging, Mid-Majority's Kyle Whelliston, has returned from his offseason hiatus with a sprawling essay about life, love, sports journalism, mid-major hoops, and the life of his site in the post-big-corporate-columnist era. It's well worth a read, as you can imagine.

The NCAA received a lesson, too, and yesterday, after months (even years) of stories about a variety of teet-suckling player representatives, the Board of Governors put that lesson into action.

Yesterday, the NCAA provided support for measures that would prevent coaches from hiring a player's representatives for a temporary gig at a summer camp. The meaures would also prevent coaches from hiring a player's high school or summer league coach to a full-time staff position in order to lock down a player's commitment. Lastly, it would prevent coaches from donating money to AAU programs weakly disguised as "nonprofits."

These proposals (they're not rules yetl; they still require approval from the Legislative Council in January, but that's likely a procedural formality) are awesome. They strike at the heart of three of the most unethical and widespread recruiting practices, and even more than that, they provide hope for the future. Today it's the nonprofits restriction. Tomorrow, the NCAA could regulate against any subscription recruiting service that also manages players' access. And so on. The ground is paved for future work, and the road already looks pretty nice.

The problem, of course, is that college coaches and AAU sleazers are really good at finding new loopholes and exploiting them. (I guess these would be potholes in the road, but let's just drop the stupid road metaphor, huh?) As Seth Davis points out today, the whole reason college coaches even started hiring AAU guys as camp counselors is because the NCAA made a rule against playing (rather profitable, in their day) exhibitions against AAU teams. It's impossible to keep these folks totally at bay; the NCAA just isn't big enough or judicious enough to anticipate future problems in time to prevent them. And it likely never will be.

For now, though, the NCAA deserves credit for its attempts at reform. These proposals won't change everything, and they won't stop the flow of money from college coaches to AAU leechers anytime soon. But they do send a message that the NCAA isn't allergic to change. In the post-Myles Brand era, that's a welcome transmission.

Glass said Knight said he was concerned the media interest in his attendance would take away from others being inducted. Along with Knight, Steve Downing, Katrin Koch, Joe Norman, Mike Rabold, Alan Somers and Jerry Yeagley are also entering the Hall of Fame.

"I absolutely respect his feelings on that and very much appreciate his response, which in no way suggested he opposed being inducted," Glass said.

In a statement released by the university, Glass also added, "Coach Knight expressed his tremendous appreciation for the support his teams were given by the IU student body and fans all over the state of Indiana and the contribution that support made to the success of his teams. Coach Knight also noted that there is no one he appreciates more than his players, who he said were the most responsible for the success the program had during his tenure."

That's a very nice, political response from Knight, but come on now. Really? That's the reason? If there's anything we know about Bob Knight, it's that he doesn't mind the occasional camera in his face. Were media attention something he were trying to defray, he wouldn't carry these things out to their furthest possible endpoint. He wouldn't keep people on their edge of their seats for months after the initial invitation. And he certainly wouldn't have taken a gig with ESPN, which as a member of the media, tends to involve a fair amount of media face-time.

No, of course not. The reason is obvious: Knight still doesn't want all that much to do with Indiana. Or, if he does, he wants his return to the school to be on his terms. This is how Knight operates. Which is fine for him, I suppose; it's not his fault so many IU fans still want some sort of symbolic return to happen now that the ebullient Tom Crean is the program's figurehead. It's those fans' faults for keeping this thing up for so long when it should have been let go years ago. But more than anything, the way this has been handled is on Knight. IU couldn't have been more conciliatory to the man. If he doesn't appreciate that, he's never going back.

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 13-20 (7-11 Sun Belt)

2009-10's toughest games: at North Carolina, at Florida State, at Western Kentucky

Primary attraction: Having failed at both the semi-pro and professional level, Isiah Thomas brings his special brand of ignominy and mismanagement to a middling college basketball program. This ought to be good.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Isiah, Isiah, Isiah. I don't really have to explain this, so let's keep it brief. Isiah Thomas's stint as general manager and then coach of the New York Knicks can reasonably be called one of the worst in the history of the NBA. Thomas didn't just fail on the court, or with the clipboard. He managed to balloon the Knicks' salary to league-leading levels (for much of his tenure, it wasn't even close) on players that didn't resemble anything remotely close to a team. He took on the contracts of Stephon Marbury and Steve Francis at the same time. He put Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry in the same frontcourt. His best skill, scouting and drafting, was usually wasted on second-round role players like Renaldo Balkman, because the Knicks had trade all their picks away to the Bulls. (For example.) He was legendarily awful. (He also got himself into a sexual harassment mess, which is a whole 'nother ballgame altogether.)

How does that awfulness translate to the college game? Does Zeke's eye for talent win out? Does college basketball's inherent restrictions against giving a surly, overweight player a contract extension keep Zeke safe? Or does the whole "finding talent and coaching it" thing -- universal to both enterprises -- doom Zeke to another failure?

None of these questions will get answers in year one, but at least we'll be able to mark Isiah's progress. At this point, merely making it through a season without some sort of calamitous disaster would seem an improvement.

2. Welcome to the big show, Zeke. Thomas won't get much time to prepare before his new team is thrown to the Lions of the college hoops world. On Nov. 9, FIU plays at North Carolina. Oof. This was a minor point of contention in the offseason, when Thomas and AD Pete Garcia threatened to back out of their contractual agreement with the tournament organizers because they said they were promised a game against Ohio State. Really, they were promised a game against either OSU or UNC, and FIU brass soon fell in line. As bad as it seems, really, this is a no-lose situation for Thomas. No one expects FIU to win, and he gets some national attention for his program to boot. And if they do make it tough for UNC at home, all the better.

3. Isiah Thomas can afford to give up his salary. When he took his job at FIU, Thomas volunteered to give up his first year's salary thanks to the slumping economy and the fact that he is already a pretty wealthy guy. Nice gesture, but he won't exactly be starving; between Thomas's pro days, his GM stints and his coaching gigs, Zeke's got some money saved away. But more than anything, Zeke owes his fortune to a very Magic Johnson-esque business endeavor: Dale and Thomas popcorn! I won't even make a joke about the popcorn being overpaid and lazy; that soil has been scorched by now. Anyway, the point was ... eh, I didn't really have a point. I'm just really hungry and wanted to talk about popcorn for a second. Mmm. Popcorn.

Bonus: From the "Ahhh, simpler days" file:

Thomas' post-playing days have been of fail. You get it. So let's for a moment remember when Isiah Thomas was one of the best players on the planet:

Just as we had our first Coaches' Poll today, we also have the first Preseason All-Name team. Prepare to feel the wrath of Tiny Gallon!

Bak Bak - 6'9" Forward - Cal Golden Bears

Tiny Gallon - 6'9" Forward - Oklahoma Sooners

Orion Outerbridge - 6'9" Forward - Rhode Island Rams

Alibaba Odd - 6'2" Guard - Delaware State Hornets

Just-in'love Smith - 5'11" Guard - Siena Saints

Just-in'love is easily my favorite. Very few first names comprise a multi-word adjectival phrase. Even fewer manage to do so with such brilliant punctuation. I love everything about it.

Oh, and in case you're wondering where Dagger favorite Nimrod Tishman comes in on the list, the answer is on the bench. Which is an outrage. The guy can't get any playing time in his first year for the Gators, either, and he's relegated to the bench in the one area where he really exceeds? Just another chapter in the sad saga of Nimrod. For shame.

Anyway, there are some interesting results here. (Kansas at No. 1 overall is not one of them.) Michigan State at No. 2 is maybe a little high, at least at the beginning of the season; Tom Izzo's Spartans tend to stumble out of the gate and improve by leaps and bounds as the season goes on. No. 5 for Kentucky is maybe a bit low, especially considering North Carolina at No. 4. Both teams are almost equally youthful, and you could argue Kentucky has the better talent.

The conference with the most teams in the preseason top 25? That'd be the Big Ten, who in addition to Sparty gets No. 7 Purdue, No. 15 Michigan, No. 17 Ohio State, and No. 18 Minnesota on the list. This makes sense, in a weird circuitous way: The Big Ten is likely the deepest conference in the country this year, but it lacks the sort of elite nationally recognized talent that puts teams in the top 10. Ohio State's Evan Turner is probably the best pro prospect in the whole of the conference, and casual hoops fans could be forgiven for not knowing who, exactly, Evan Turner is. You get my point.

Anyway, there are always complaints to be made, so let's hear 'em. Who's got beef with the Board of Coaches?

John Wall took off on two feet, pulled his left arm behind his head and threw down a tomahawk dunk. Moments later, the Kentucky freshman point guard took an inbounds pass and beat everybody down the court for a layup.

Yes, Wall scored 25 points in the team's annual intrasquad scrimmage. He's good. Immediately afterward, Kentucky coach John Calipari was forced to answer John Wall-related questions that had to do with topics less fun to discuss than just how good Wall is looking in these exhibitions. He had to deal with the fact that merely two weeks before Kentucky's home opener, Wall is still not cleared to play. The issue arises from Wall's relationship with former AAU coach Brian Clifton, who was registered as an agent while he coached Wall. This isn't a major deal; if guilty, Wall would miss three or four games at the most. But it does clearly annoy John Calipari all the same:

“There’s probably 10-15 kids going through the same thing that John’s going through, but he’s been cleared in every way,” Calipari said. “The other stuff they’re looking at, they’re looking at with a lot of kids. Asked to clarify his answer, Calipari bristled for a moment. “There’s all kinds of different levels of clearance and like I said, there’s 10-15 kids going through the same thing,” he said. “Let’s talk about the scrimmage.”

But the scrimmage is boring. Let's talk about eligibility issues. There's literally nothing remotely banal about the NCAA's approach to student eligibility. It's so very exciting ... *yawns*. Woo. What time is it? Did someone turn the heat on in here? I suddenly feel so very ... sleepy.

The only problem with that is that Florida coach Billy Donovan doesn't seem all that intent on using Tishman frequently in his first year. Donovan said he plans to play Tishman 5-10 minutes a game, and that he doesn't have expectations for Tishman's contribution and that Tishman will play behind Erving Walker, Ray Shipman, and top recruit Kenny Boynton. Which, frankly, is a shame. We want Nimrod! The kid has a great chance to do things with a word that hasn't been cool since Green Day wrote that acoustic song played in every single high school graduation since. (And maybe "nimrod" wasn't even cool then. I don't know. I was like 12.)

Naturally, Irving chose Duke, and his refutation of Zagoria's story ended up being for no other reason than to push people to watch the ESPNU announcement. Clever marketing. Also kind of mean. So fellow reporters Seth Davis and Gary Parrish have come to an agreement: Irving needs to apologize.

From Davis:

Make no mistake: Kyrie Irving is worth the hype. He is the best guard Duke has recruited since Jay Williams, and he is a terrific student to boot. But since he has been playing the media game so deftly, he should do what a real media organization is supposed to do when it publishes something that's wrong: He should issue a correction. At the very least, he should apologize to Adam Zagoria. Unlike Kyrie, he got the story right.

From Parrish:

(Note: Credit SNY's Adam Zagoria with the scoop. He had this nailed two days ago, wrote it and had to deal with Irving refuting his story publicly . As a journalist, I can tell you there's nothing more frustrating than having an accurate story refuted. So it was nice to see Zagoria vindicated, and Irving probably owes him an apology via Twitter, at least.)

Rush the Court has an interview with Zagoria, and it's clear Adam isn't looking for any pity, so all's probably forgiven. And come on: Irving's not going to apologize. Still, it is a bit of a jerk move. Zagoria found information (that wasn't exactly a well-kept secret anymore anyway), confirmed it, and published it. In other words, he did his job. Irving has plenty of time in his career to host press conferences; getting mad at Zagoria for "ruining" this one seems incredibly short-sighted. But 18-year-olds can be shortsighted sometimes, I guess.

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 25-9 (Sun Belt: 15-3)

2009-2010's toughest games: at South Carolina, at Vanderbilt, at Louisville

Primary attraction: Can the Hilltoppers make a deep NCAA tournament run for the third consecutive year?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Sweet 16 or bust? -- Expectations should be high in Bowling Green. The Hilltoppers have won games in each of last two NCAA tournaments. After pulling the non-upset upset over No. 5 seed Illinois in the first round of last year's tournament, A.J. Slaughter and Orlando Mendez-Valdez led Western Kentucky to within one shot of besting No. 4. This year, Mendez-Valdez is gone, but Slaughter, the preseason Sun Belt Player of the Year is expected to shoulder the load.

2. Can McDonald avoid sophomore slump? -- When Darrin Horn left Western Kentucky after leading his team to the 2008 Sweet 16, there was expected to be a first-year drop-off when new coach Ken McDonald came in with a new system after coaching under Rick Barnes at Texas. Obviously, that didn't happen. Now that McDonald is in his second year, will the Hilltoppers show improvement as McDonald becomes more familiar or will the team regress and fall back to the pack in the Sun Belt? 

3. What's a hilltopper? -- Surely there's a better reason that Western Kentucky is called the Hilltoppersthan the fact that the school sits atop a hill, right? Wrong. That's exactly why they're named the Hilltoppers. (Interesting then that Duke isn't named the Cesspools -- I kid, I kid.) Western Kentucky sits atop one of the highest points in southern Kentucky, hence the name. The women's basketball team is nicknamed the Lady Toppers, a fact which I'm reluctantly going to leave alone.

The Drake!: First round, 2008 NCAA tournament. This is why college basketball is the greatest game there is:

So, you know that whole "trying to lure Bob Knight back by settling his $75,000 outstanding legal claim against Indiana University" thing? Bigtime no-go:

"The Indiana University administration recently made a public announcement on a very private issue that I was being sent a check for $75,000 from alumni donations to cover expenses I incurred as an employee at Indiana University," Knight said in a statement. "Indiana University has refused for nine years to take care of their obligation in this matter. I did not know until [Monday] that this check was sent to my attorney. Upon finding out about it, I immediately gave him instructions to send the check back.

"In all the years I coached at Indiana and elsewhere, I never accepted a thing from alumni and I don't intend to start now," Knight said in the statement. "This issue is with the university, not with the alumni."

The whole reason Mr. Anonymous Indiana Alumni even sent the check was to pave the way for Knight's return to the school in time for Knight's Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Nov.. No legal claim, no reason to stay away, right?

Only one little problem: Bob Knight is still Bob Knight. And if there is a way to screw over Indiana while taking the moral high ground, by God, Bob Knight will find it.

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 33-4 (16-0 Conference USA)

2009-2010's toughest games: at Kansas (neutral site: Scottrade Center in St. Louis), vs Tennessee, vs Gonzaga

Primary attraction: Memphis, like new coach Josh Pastner, is talented but unproven. How far can talent take a Calipari-less Tigers squad in 2009-10?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Forget everything you knew about the Memphis Tigers. Rough going for Memphis this offseason, huh? First, 30-win-season machine John Calipari is lured away by the high-profile of Kentucky. Then Calipari snatches up all his recruits and takes them with him. Then it's revealed that former Tiger Derrick Rose quite possibly committed SAT-related fraud, and because Rose never responded to the NCAA's ongoing investigation, Memphis bore the brunt of the punishment: The school was forced to vacate its 38 wins and NCAA tourney runner-up finish from 2007-08 and is now under a three-year probationary period. To recap: Calipari? Gone. Best recruiting class ever? Gone. Best season in school history? Gone. The Tigers as we've known them? Gone.

What's left behind is what could make this Tigers team so interesting. Calipari was so good at getting players to Memphis that even after his 2009 class exodus, the Tigers still have more than enough talent to win their conference handily. Duke transfer Elliot Williams is eligible to play immediately; that gives the Tigers a backcourt player with big-time hoops experience. Robert Sallie, who struggled for most of 2008-09, had his 35-point coming-out party in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Doneal Mack was a highly touted recruit, but has never lived up to his potential. Can he turn it on in his senior season?

Meanwhile, the Tigers are talented but unproven in their frontcourt, which is a pretty perfect microcosm of the team in general. There is talent here. Can it coalesce?

2. Boy genius, or just a boy? The man responsible for doing something with that considerable talent is Josh Pastner. It is not an exaggeration to say that Pastner is, bless his heart, sort of insane. Just 31, he takes over an elite college hoops program, but his youth belies his experience: Pastner has been doing this pretty much since he could breathe. To wit:

After traveling 90 minutes to watch Stephen Jackson play in a ninth-grade game, Pastner approached the future NBA star’s mother in an attempt to convince her to let her son join his AAU squad, Houston Hoops. “Well, ummm …,” a confused Judy Jackson said, “are there any adults involved? Where are your parents?” Reasonable questions, to be sure. Pastner was only 14.

Yes, Pastner had his own AAU squad at the age of 14 which, by the age of 16, his father had ceded entirely into Josh's control. Josh assumed the role of player-coach and was put in charge of team trips, fundraising, uniforms, recruiting -- the whole thing. At the age of 16. At 16, I was washing dishes and thinking I was really responsible for my age. Pastner had done this before.

The question is not whether Pastner can recruit; he was instrumental in Calipari's success at luring players to Memphis. The question is whether Pastner can coach. And how? Does he stick with Calipari's dribble-drive motion? Does he do something entirely different? Is he just young and crazy enough to find his own blend of new-age offensive basketball styles? Or is he just young?

3. Pierre Henderson-Niles, inspiration to us all. Anyone interested in dropping a few pounds will also be interested in the story of Pierre Henderson-Niles, who was one of the top 30 players in his recruiting class before he arrived at Memphis and ballooned to 347 pounds. This offseason, Henderson dropped the equivalent of a 12-year-old in poundage; he now weighs 278, and is reportedly in the best shape of his life. If there's any time for Henderson-Niles to regain the talent that made him so special in high school, it's now. Pastner's wide-open frontcourt will be counting on it.

Bonus: Derrick Rose is really good, vol. 4,359:

No basketball fan, college or otherwise, needs to be told how good Derrick Rose is. But sometimes it's nice to watch what happens when a really good pro player is forced to play college basketball for one year. Things like this happen:

Rose is difficult to handle in the NBA; his speed and athleticism made him a star in his rookie season, and he couldn't even shoot. That's the natural adjustment one faces in the NBA ranks, though. "Difficult to handle" in the NBA corresponds to college roughly as "frighteningly good." Derrick Rose was that.

You probably know Buzz Bissinger as the author of the seminal "Friday Night Lights," one of the greatest sports books ever written.* You might also know Bissinger as a man willing to spit himself silly on premium cable television at the notion of sports blogs. (Not a sports blog. All of them. In general.) You may also know Bissinger as the man that has since refused to back down from his underlying message but who has decided to take some of the ribbing in good stride, and who has even revisited the very sports blog(ger) he attacked on "Costas Now."

(*Or so I hear: I have yet to read it. It is one of the greatest blind spots in my entire literary arsenal. I'm embarrassed. Just admitting this has been cathartic, though; I'm going to buy it from Amazon right now.)

Today, Buzz Bissinger is in something of a new role: New York Times guest columnist. The Times published a lengthy Bissinger missive about the college hoops age limit, and perhaps unexpectedly, Bissinger comes out on the side of abolishing the whole thing and starting over anew. I admit: I did not see this coming. Apparently, neither did Buzz:

Beyond simply advancing their skills, I thought, it might turn them on to the value of an education, maybe enough to stay in school longer. Now, with another N.B.A. regular season beginning today, the issue still rages, with ramifications that go directly to the heart of whether any professional sports league has actual concern for its athletes beyond a smokescreen of clever spin. And in looking back at Stern’s decision, I am now convinced that we got punked.

Bissinger's stance as a converted member of the anti-age limit crowd lends him extra credibility; he's clearly not an ideologue. Then he gets down to business, running through the various reasons why the age limit exists (having more to do with NBA owners wanting a free development system than anything about social justice) and why comparisons to the NFL's system are disingenuous (young football players' bodies need their late teens and early 20's to develop enough to play in such a brutal league). Then, the study you've all been waiting for: Michael McCann's 2004 survey of high school NBA draft entrants' successes and failures in the pros. A summary:

A study by Michael McCann, a professor at Vermont Law School who is an expert on sports and legal issues, pointed out that of the 21 high school players who declared for the draft from 1975 to 2001, four became superstars — Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal and Tracy McGrady — and only four never made it to the N.B.A. This trend held with the high school draft classes of 2002 through 2005, the year the ban was put in place: of the 26 players drafted, 20 were still playing through last season and three have become superstars: Amar’e Stoudemire, Dwight Howard and James.

McCann did another study in 2005, which similarly quashed the notion that high school draftees tend to get in trouble more frequently than do college-educated NBA pros. And Bissinger also points to Basketball-Reference's work in destroying the myth that those players were any less productive on the floor. In both cases, anecdotal evidence has dominated the NBA fan debate on the issue. Players will fail! They'll get in trouble! They can't handle their money! They won't be any good! The truth of the matter is far different, and if anyone thinks David Stern and NBA owners don't know that, they're kidding themselves.

In the end, Bissinger proposes a system in which the NBA "foot the college’s bill for training pro athletes by paying a given amount each year for each player successfully drafted from college." Not a bad idea. Even if the money just sat in a scholarship fund, and the player himself never saw a dime of it, it wouldn't change much of what happens currently, wherein college players generate millions and millions for the NCAA and are merely rewarded with a scholarship and room and board. Which, don't get me wrong, is great. I'd take it. But it's not commensurate with most big-time college basketball players' value, and both the NCAA and the NBA know it.

Even if Bissinger's solution wouldn't work, the fact of the matter is that he has done, in the pages of the most respected newspaper in the country, what very few critics of the age limit have done before him. He has manged to destroy the NBA's underlying reasons, and he has done so not with anecdotal fuzziness but with cold, hard data. And when he was finished, he went ahead and threw some flack the NCAA's way, too. This is no small feat. The man may be a legendary spit-shouter, but when he's not busy trolling for Tony La Russa, he's an even better sportswriter.

But even if Hofstra fails, Jenkins will lead the country in the all-important category of "quotes that sound like they're coming from a middle-aged assistant coach." From Defiantly Dutch (via CAA Hoops, who noticed the cadence):

“He’s a great point guard,” Charles Jenkins said. “He’s got great vision for the game. His court vision is amazing. He makes the right plays. He’s still learning how to get shots because of his size…[and] he’s going to have to learn what passes not to make, but once he polishes those things off, he’s going to be a great addition to this program.”

[...] Like the practices that preceded it, the Blue/Gold Scrimmage was predictably unpredictable. “We still made a couple mistakes up there that are going to get brushed up,” Jenkins said. “We’ve got two or three more weeks to polish those up."

“It’s like a new environment,” Jenkins said. “Last year we had a lot of veterans on the team that were already adjusted to the program. This year, you’ve got a lot of freshmen that are going to take a little bit more time than it took the veterans to mold, just as far as the offense and the defense and how physical the nature of college basketball is. But I think as time progresses, we’re going to be a very good team.”

There are other quotes in Defiantly Dutch's story, including one from head coach Tom Pecora. But if you didn't know the difference, and had no way of looking up on the Googles which person was a junior in college and which person was the full-grown adult male head coach, you could be easily convinced that Jenkins is running the show. His coach-speak is pitch perfect. It takes coaches decades to develop that; Jenkins is a prodigy in the form.

Whether that's good for Hofstra or bad (though convincing leadership from your junior captain is never a bad thing) is beside the point. Right now, it's just sort of awesome.

Last year's record: 31-7, 12-4 Big 12

2009-10's toughest games: at Vanderbilt, Illinois, at Kansas, Texas

Primary attraction: 40 Minutes of Hell gets its ultimate, talentless test. Watching the 2009-10 Missouri Wildcats is going to be fun.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Who wants to watch theory in motion? Earlier this year, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an interesting but ultimately flawed piece about the efficacy of the full-court press in college hoops. Gladwell's piece was really about how it benefits underdogs -- both in hoops and in war -- to flout convention and surprise opponents with frantic attacks. Gladwell's piece failed because he prescribed the press as a cure-all, ignoring what might happen to an underdog facing an athletic team that loves to run. But the theory is attractive, and perhaps its greatest modern-day advocate coaches the Missouri Tigers. His name is Mike Anderson, and he is fun to watch.

Anderson's style -- termed "40 Minutes of Hell" -- is derived from Nolan Richardson's successful Arkansas teams. It requires that Anderson's players press for, you guessed it, 40 minutes. They never let up; at least one player guards the inbounds pass after every made basket, no matter what. On the offensive end, Anderson's players aren't required to work the shot clock down to a nub. They're encouraged to fire away, and so they do.

Last year, this strategy worked wonders: Anderson's Tigers won 31 games, including the Big 12 conference tournament and a Sweet 16 upset over Memphis, putting Anderson in the Elite Eight in just his fourth year. But in 2008-09, Anderson won with talent. Can he do it this year with something less? Can he -- gasp -- prove Malcolm Gladwell right?

2. Talent. Pshh. Who needs it? After their deep tournament run, the Tigers lost three key senior starters: star forward DeMarre Carroll, guard Matt Lawrence, and forward Leo Lyons. That wipes out Anderson's entire starting frontcourt, and losing Carroll -- whose constant defensive pressure and versatility from the high post on offense made the Tigers go -- will be especially difficult. J.T. Tiller is likely Missouri's closest thing to a star player, but after that Missouri will be relying on newcomers in the froncourt. Can they make it work? More interesting, does it matter? Or does "40 Minutes of Hell" work no matter who suits up?

3. And finally, be glad you do not play for Mike Anderson. Even watching the Tigers play can be exhausting. They stop for nothing. And the only way a team can play this style for 35 games a season without losing life and limb halfway through the Big 12 slate is, of course, conditioning. So the Tigers do lots and lots of sprints. I can't imagine Missouri's practices, nor do I want to, but I do know that Missouri didn't have a Midnight Madness this year. They just had "practice." And pretty much all of the photos of that practice look like this one. Like I said, fun to watch, but watching's as close as I'd like to get to whatever makes Division 1 athletes hunch over like that.

Quin Snyder has different motivational methods:

Obviously, you're aware I'm quite interested in Mike Anderson. But before Anderson came the disastrous era of Quin Snyder, perfectly punctuated by the single worst pregame speech of all-time:

Quin Snyder just sang Eye Of The Tiger! In a locker room full of 20-year-old males! And now it's on the Internet! Awesome, right?

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 24-8 (13-5 Big South)

2009-2010's toughest games: at Virginia Tech, at Seton Hall, at George Mason

Primary attraction: Can the highest scoring team in the country play enough defense to get back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1977?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Offense, offense, offense -- The Keydets were the highest scoring team in the country last season (93.8 ppg) for the third straight year, thanks to a run-and-gun style that's based on quick perimeter shooting. (44 percent of VMI's points came from three-pointers last year, most in the nation.) 

2. Defense, defense, defense -- Unfortunately for them, VMI's frenetic offensive style leads to just as many points on the other end of the floor. Coupled with the fact that the regular rotation won't feature anyone taller than six-foot-seven and it's no surprise that the Keydets gave up more two-point baskets than any team in the NCAA in 2008-2009. (They're a team of extremes, that's for sure.)

3. No more twins -- VMI fell short of the NCAA tournament in the Big South final last year (for the second time in three seasons). Getting back there will prove to be tough without the team's top two players, twins (and truth-stretchers) Chavis and Travis Holmes.

Here is America we don't tolerate that kind of crap, sir:

An AP picture from last year's Big South championship:

The caption reads:

Radford senior Brayden Deluns, left, yells at a VMI cadet during an NCAA college basketball game at the Big South Conference championship at the Dedmon Center, in Radford, Va., Saturday, March 7 2009. Radford beat VMI 108-94.

I don't know what makes the guy on the left more of a loser: That he's yelling at a guy in uniform or that he celebrated said fact by willingly giving his name to the photographer.

"It's interesting because we can already see it and we haven't played a game yet," Lowe said. "We are there every day and we can see it ... but to watch Tracy Smith take a young player under his wing and to watch Dennis [Horner] to watch Tracy to watch C.J. [Williams] take these young guys and then after practice take them and go somewhere and do things together, we haven't had that.  It tells me we are going in the right direction, now we have to continue to bring in the talent level in order to get back to where we should be. "

"These young guys" refers to Lowe's recruiting class, which he will need to rely on heavily in 2009-10 if he wants to avoid a disastrous last-place ACC finish. Why is that a disaster? Because Lowe is already on very thin ice with the N.C. State faithful, who, if you'll remember, ran Herb Sendek out of town in 2006, after five consecutive NCAA tournament berths. 2006 also happened to be the Wolfpack's last tourney nod; Lowe hasn't been to the tourney since he took over in 2006-07, and hasn't even made the NIT the last two years.

This is Lowe's third year, and he better hope his none-too-heralded recruiting class is better than advertised, or it won't matter who takes whom under whoever's wing. The Wolfpack will be bad, and Lowe will be gone. Like Sidney said: gulp.

No, seriously. Baby-stretching.

A minister as well as a medical doctor, he quickly realized that taller players had an advantage in basketball and wondered if there was a way to stretch babies to make them grow taller. Naismith actually conducted experiments on a machine he invented.

In 1907, he said his theory was that “the body is more or less elastic” and that “by stretching the body 30 minutes a day for six months, it will lengthen two inches.” He thought the best time to stretch individuals was from 5 months to a year old. He was worried that an individual might grow too quickly, and there would be no way to stop it from happening.

It sounds pretty ridiculous until you remember that 1907 was still before we had any sort of useful medical science to speak of. Hospitals barely existed. Doctors attempted to relieve symptoms rather than cure diseases. If you got sick, you would probably die. Modern advances in medical science were basically unheard of; you could still get away with selling tonic water and calling it medicine. So "baby-stretching," which makes Naismith sound like a crazy person to me, probably wasn't all that awful, given the surrounding medical environment. Hey, let's stretch some babies! What's the worst that could happen? OK, so it sounds crazy no matter what the era. I concede the point.

But when anyone gave Naismith a hard time, all he had to do was remind them that he had an awesome mustache and also CREATED BASKETBALL, and they'd have to immediately shut up. Because duh: basketball is awesome. So yay for James Naismith. Even if he was a crazy baby-stretcher.

First, the rule, which college football fans will know all too well. Since we last played college hoops, the NCAA has outlawed excessive celebrations or anything else that might be considered "unsporting behavior," which sounds like a rule you have to observe when your friend takes you to a really nice golf club. It's pretty vague phrasing for a sport that relies so heavily on intensity and emotion as its main draws. And so the ACC's players are worried. What if I dunk on a dude and dare to act happy about it? Will that hurt my team?

"What if you dunk on someone, and it's a crazy dunk, and you can't keep the emotions inside of you," [Greivis Vasquez asked.] "I guess that's what they want us to do. But, that's why they have rules.''

"If you dunk on someone or whatever -- that's just someone's game. They take pride in it," insisted Virginia Tech guard Malcolm Delaney. "They don't mean to disrespect people, but that's sometimes how it comes out."

Surprisingly enough, Maryland coach Gary Williams agrees (though I suppose we should never count out Gary Williams in a discussion about emotional body language; the man can empathize with enthusiasm):

"That's why college basketball is a great game, because of that exuberance,'' Maryland coach Gary Williams said, adding that there is a distinct difference between celebration and taunting. "These are 18-and-22-year-old kids who have grown up playing a certain way. It may not be the way I grew up playing it, but it's a great way to play. And I hope nobody gets penalized for making a great play and being penalized for it. You've seen it in football already,'' he added. "Hopefully, nobody loses a game over something like that.''

The problem is not that the NCAA wants to crack down on unsportsmanlike behavior; as much old-school sports types tend to be stuffy about personal style -- you can still find plenty of people who decry the NBA over something as silly as tattoos -- preventing silliness is a noble goal. The problem is that, like the new block-charge rule, the terms of the new rule are extremely vague. What qualifies as excessive? What's the line? And if the refs don't know, how can the players and coaches?

Paul Hewitt and Virginia Tech guard Malcolm Delaney wondered why the NCAA didn't survey players and coaches to get their input on the rule. Clearly, Hewitt and Delaney are not studied in the means of the NCAA. But there ought to be some sort of clarification here. Williams is right: If this rule plays a role in a team winning or losing a game this season, it will have gone too far. Deciding between affecting games and allowing players to pound their chest isn't really a decision at all.

Last year's record: 24-10, 14-4 CAA

2009-10's toughest games: at Oklahoma, Nevada, at George Mason

Primary attraction: Eric Maynor is in the NBA. Anthony Grant is at Alabama. Can the Rams still "wreak havoc"? New head coach Shaka Smart seems to think so.

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. Oh, havoc will be wrought. (Wreaked?) On April 2, new VCU Rams head coach Shaka Smart held his introductory press conference. This was -- duh -- a big moment for Smart. After a stint as an assistant coach under Billy Donovan, Smart was getting his shot at his first head coaching gig. And he had some big, similarly-soled shoes to fill: Smart's predecessor was fellow coaching wunderkind Anthony Grant, who at 42, coached VCU to a 76-25 record in his three years at the helm, including two NCAAA tournament berths (and one very memorable upset over Duke, but let's get to that in a second). Grant bolted VCU for a chance to rebuild Alabama's program; no doubt following in Donovan's career path, he got his own SEC-flavored basketball school to loom over.

So it was left to Smart, just 32 himself, to ensure VCU fans that the program was in good hands. Not just good hands: aggressive ones. This is what he had to say:

Shaka Smart says he will build on the success already in place at Virginia Commonwealth and plans to "take this program to even greater heights." [...] Smart said his Rams will play "the most exciting style of basketball in the CAA. We are going to wreak havoc on our opponents' psyche and their plan of attack."

Yes! That is aggressive, and VCU fans -- and anyone with an interest in uptempo basketball period -- should love it. (And if you're one of Smart's players, doesn't that make you want to hit the practice court immediately? I'm pumped, and the only time I've left the couch in the last four days is to take my dog outside and smoke a cigarette. Let's do this!)

2. He's not just saying that, either. Speaking of those players, the Rams should have the horses (confusing animal metaphor!) to wreak that promised havoc. Though they lost a bonafide star in Eric Maynor, they return almost everyone else, including 6-foot-11 forward Larry Sanders, whose 18 points and 20 rebounds in last year's CAA conference tournament final marked his official breakout. Forward Jamie Skeen transferred from Wake Forest at the end of 2006-07, where he started 24 games. Point guard Darius Theus is earning early raves, and Joey Rodriguez, Maynor's right-hand man in 2008-09, returns as well. This is a team with serious talent, even after losing an NBA draft pick. Not too shabby.

3. Fitter. Happier. More efficient. There's an argument to be made that while Eric Maynor was a star, he wasn't the most efficient of players; his effective field goal percentage ranked him a mere No. 430 in the country, much lower than his go-to status would infer. And Maynor was a go-to player: He was No. 13 in the nation in percentage of possessions used, and No. 40 in percentage of shots taken. Maynor's loss will hurt, but perhaps a more balanced Rams attack means a slightly more efficient one. Or maybe not. Either way, worth watching.

Obligatory Eric Maynor heroics clip:

I've posted this bad boy before, but here it is again. Revel in it. Efficient or not, Maynor was absolutely amazing to watch. Oh, and sorry, Duke fans. (FYI, the first part of this video is cool, but the last minute or so is where the real action is.)

There are plenty of deep-pocketed boosters at every major athletics college. My personal favorite is T. Boone Pickens, who cares about two things: energy independence and the Oklahoma State Cowboys. These very limited interests mean Boone spends his money evenly on the two. (Not quite, but almost.)

Indiana is among these schools, and the latest evidence of that fact -- and of the semi-related fact that Indiana fans really can not get over their Bob Knight obsession, even now -- comes news from the Bloomington Herald-Times that an anonymous IU booster donated $75,000 to Indiana. But it's not just any donation. The money is planned to go toward a legal settlement between Indiana and Knight related to Knight's still-outstanding legal claim that the university failed to represent Knight in a legal claim against him. According to the story, an Indianapolis law firm drew up papers and got representatives from both IU and Knight's camp to sign it. And just like that: poof. Legal problem resolved.

It's not too hard to infer, as Indiana fans already have, that the donation is intended to help Knight settle his scores with Indiana in advance of his big Hall of Fame induction ceremony in November. IU invited Knight to the induction; Knight has yet to respond to indicate whether he's planning on attending or not. This was one of the final legal hurdles preventing Knight's return.

Here's my question: At what point does the pining over Knight's symbolic return stop being conciliatory and start being pathetic? Sure, Knight was a legendary coach, but his martyr complex after his firing -- during which he was held to the same standards as any other university employee for once in his long career -- is almost as sad as IU's constant attempts to woo him back. IU fans want Knight to show up in November. They want to see him crimson again. This is a totally natural impulse, and IU should be commended for entertaining it. But if Knight doesn't want to come, if he wants to keep pretending he was a victim for the rest of his life, and if he wants to keep acting like he had no part in his demise whatsoever, then IU should let him.

It's not exactly "He's Just Not That Into You." It's more like "He's An Angry Old Man Who Likes To Feel Sorry For Himself And Is Incapable Of Forgiveness."But the underlying premise is the same.

Basketball Prospectus' John Gasaway couldn't have described the reaction to the Wall story any better yesterday:

Assuming no new facts come to light, the story was an excellent example of the “WHAT?!…Oh, is that all?” reaction that news professionals now refer to as the balloon boy sequence: shock and fright followed by a shrug.

Most of us were shrugging within fifteen minutes of reading the whole story yesterday, but there are probably some -- I'm betting they're Indiana and Louisville and Memphis fans, most of them -- who are hoping the John Wall thing turns into a crippling mess for Kentucky basketball. A day later, that seems less and less likely. From Jeff Goodman:

Sources close to the situation have told FOXSports.com that Wall will likely be cleared prior to Kentucky’s season-opener – which is on Nov. 13 against Morehead State at Rupp Arena.

Ahh. You feel that? It's shoulder-shrugging time. Work the kinks out. Really get in there. Make this the best part of your day. Because here's the thing: Even if Wall isn't cleared, the three or four games he'd likely miss as punishment would be all of Kentucky's early-season cupcakes. Every team has them. And when you're as talented as UK, you can lose your best player for four games early in the year and still not even break a sweat. This little AAU oversight, whether sinister or not, isn't going to matter much in the 2009-10 college basketball season. Kentucky fans can take deep breaths; those eager for Calipari to fall from his occasionally skeevy pedestal will have to practice a little more patience.

And that's the consensus among the pundits (I love using the word "pundits" for "writers and bloggers"; it adds a bit of Anglo flair to the proceedings, doesn't it?) today as well. Had Calipari stayed at Memphis, Wall might never have seen the floor. But since Wall is at Kentucky and Calipari is scot-free, the punishment won't be all that strict, nor will Calipari's name get dragged through the mud. Or, if it does, it shouldn't. At least not this time.

The issue is John Wall's AAU coach, Brian Clifton, who was registered as an agent with FIBA for about a year. If Wall received benefits from Clifton, such as plane rides to tournaments, uniforms, sneakers -- anything, really -- Wall would have to repay whatever he received before he could be eligible to play for Kentucky. According to ESPN's report, Kentucky compliance officials have been working "feverishly" to figure out if Wall owes money and if so, how much.

Maybe this isn't any more unlikely than Sidney's long-running eligibility issues, and maybe this will all be resolved by the time Kentucky plays its first exhibition game on Nov. 7. But there are a few reasons why this is different from Sidney, namely because it's so surprising -- how was Kentucky able to keep this under wraps for so long -- and because Wall is the premier player in the country leading a rejuvenated UK fan base fresh off its most orgasmic offseason on record. If Wall's ineligibility doesn't get sorted out in the next few weeks, make no mistake: it's a major blow.

But it's also not one that will cost Kentucky much on the court. The punishment for Wall's offense, assuming there is one, is that "an athlete can be withheld from at least 10 percent of a team's games." My math's not great, but that means Wall would likely miss three or four games. Not exactly the most exciting news Kentucky fans have ever heard, but certainly not the most devastating, either.

But IU's Bobby Capobianco -- a 6-foot-8 freshman bruiser from Loveland, Ohio -- went above and beyond. Take it away, Robert:

"I know this: We won't be scared or intimidated by anyone," Capobianco said. "We won't be out there with pee running down our legs. We want to be the team where people are sitting in the stands thinking, 'How in the world are they winning this game?' We want that stunned silence, like people can't believe what they're seeing."

Yes, you read that right: Bobby Capobianco knows where the bathroom is. And he's not afraid to use it before and after games. So there.

Anyway, Indiana fans will love the confidence, especially coming from a 6'8, 220-pound guy rocking the Scott Pollard mutton-beard look. Get Capobianco a big pickup truck, a can of Cophenhagen, and a Peyton Manning jersey: He's a Hoosier now.

No, dude. No. If this was a coach from the Big Ten, sure. The ACC, maybe. The Big East? I'd listen. But not the SEC. Come on now.

Without spending too much time on this -- because everyone knows this is silly, right? I don't have to explain why this is silly? -- let's take a preseason look at the SEC. Barring catastrophe, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi State are all tournament shoe-ins. But then things really drop off, and you get a bunch of maybe teams in the mix. Vanderbilt is the best of these teams; they have a chance to be much better than the preseason consensus would allow. But then, who? LSU? Not a sure thing, not with all that lost talent. Florida? Maybe, if Kenny Boynton is a star, but this is a pretty big maybe (and even if he is, is that enough to carry the Gators)? South Carolina? Eh. Arkansas? Eh. Alabama? No. Auburn, Ole Miss, and Georgia: no.

The usual disclaimer here is that it's not to say this couldn't happen, or that it won't. Anything can happen. But as it stands today, the SEC is not a deep conference, and any politicking to the opposite should be promptly called out for what it is. Sorry, Coach Cal, but you don't have the votes.

Jai Lucas, the Longhorn guard who transferred from Florida in January, will be eligible to compete for Texas for the first time against Texas Pan-American on Dec. 15 in the Erwin Center, team spokesman Scott McConnell said Tuesday. That’s crucial news for Lucas and the Longhorns, who were hoping he could get one game with the team before facing North Carolina on Dec. 19 in Arlington. Lucas is eligible on Dec. 15 because that’s the last day of final exams at UT.

Lucas doesn't have to sit out a calendar year; he just has to wait until the academic year is completely over. Simple enough, but that gets Lucas back sooner than expected, so it's a big deal all the same.

With Lucas back in the fold, Texas might just be a favorite against a talented but young UNC squad on Dec. 19. This is arguably Rick Barnes's best team ever; it's certainly the deepest he's ever had. Barnes adds Lucas to his No. 2-ranked 2009 recruiting class (only John Calipari's insane haul at Kentucky could top it), a class that includes the No. 4- (Avery Bradley) and No. 6- (Jordan Hamilton) ranked players. Last year the Longhorns had to work primarily through A.J. Abrams' skittery outside shooting game. This year, they're embarrassed with riches. And every one of those riches will be available to them before their first big non-conference game of the season.

By which I mean to say, um, sorry, UNC. That's a bummer.

Man, that Luke Harangody sure is tough. These guys know what I'm talking about.

Yes, Jay Wright sat down with The Sporting News' Matt Crossman yesterday (sheesh, is it already Thursday?) to discuss his team, the Big East, and the losses of DaJuan Blair, Levance Fields, and Sam Young. Standard stuff. Jay Wright's a savvy guy. Jay Wright eats interviews like these for breakfast. Sort of like Hitler ate milk and dry bread, right? HA! World War II reference! No?

Q: How brutal was it playing in the Big East last year?

A: It really was. All of us knew last year, playing everybody, as good as everybody was, it was just going to be a brutal year. You knew it was going to be brutal, but you didn't know until you went through it. By the time you came out the end of it, you looked back and said, "Wow. That was like a Bataan death march." Never a night off.

Oh boy. If I could somehow recreate that record screech that happens in movies on a blog, I would do it right now. That is record-screech-worthy. Failing that, this will work.

You know, I didn't have to play in the Big East last year. I had the luxury of watching, and man, was there some good college basketball to be had. Really great stuff. Like, remember when Sam Young dunked on the break against UConn and sent Pitt fans into a frenzy? That was awesome. And let's be real: That schedule was pretty brutal. A supposedly good team like Notre Dame got eaten alive before it had much of a chance to salvage its season. It was rough out there.

But I have to say, never during the course of last year's Big East slate did I observe anything that appeared as bad as this:

The march, involving the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week in tropical heat. Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.

That sounds just like having to play Louisville and UConn in back to back road games. Brutal!

I know it's just an expression, and Jay Wright didn't mean anything by it, so I'm not going to get all huffy. It's just that, you know, let's choose our words a little more carefully. The Bataan Death March was a uniquely horrible atrocity in the history of the world. It is to college basketball scheduling roughly as waging war is to fighting for a rebound under the hoop. Just sayin'.

But maybe Jordan is already regretting his decision. As Darren Rovell reported last night, Jordan is in the midst of a shoe company war at UCF, where he was promised during his recruitment he'd be allowed to wear his father's Air Jordan brand even though UCF is an Adidas school. Now, Adidas -- which sponsors UCF to the tune of $1.9 million a year -- is dope-slapping that idea with the quickness:

Soon after the comments were made, UCF athletic director Keith Tribble told AOL’s Fanhouse that the freshman could make the decision for himself since there had been a previous precedent set with a UCF football player who wore a different brand of shoe due to the fit.

But adidas spokesperson Andrea Corso told CNBC that no compromise had been reached with the school. “We are in negotiations for a future relationship regarding the broader UCF athletic program,” Corso said. “What I can say is that these relationships are based upon agreed deliverables for both parties.”

In other words, UCF didn't negotiate the terms of Jordan's shoe agreement, and Adidas might want some of that money back. The interesting question is how far UCF will be willing to go to preserve Jordan's right to wear his dad's shoes. Do they accept less money from Adidas? How much less? Or do they go to Nike and sign a new contract before things get silly?

Excuse me ... what's that? I'm getting a message in my ear here. What? This whole thing is already silly? Oh, right. Yeah.

So, with that sunny caveat out of the way, I give you ... the Big East preseason coaches' poll. Loud noises!

That looks about right. You could maybe argue that Georgetown deserves slightly more respect, and I'd also be comfortable with West Virginia moving slightly lower on the board (much of their success this year will require a breakout from Devin Ebanks, and breakouts are a fickle thing), but yeah, this looks OK? But if there are gripes, I'm sure you'll levy them in the comments. Anyone feeling disrespected?

"Guys, don't even think about it. That is MINE." This is how Dick Vitale lives his life. And in regards to finding your wife, this is the sort of thing that always sounds much, much better after a 30-year marriage. Guys who bet their friends over women and bother them three or four times never seem cool or romantic at first encounter. They just seem creepy.

The Hunt for the Most Interesting Team in the World is the Dagger's 2009-10 countdown preview series. Check out the overriding principles here.

Last year's record: 18-18, 7-11 Pac-10

2009-2010's toughest games: At Washington, at Cal, at UCLA

Primary attraction: Barack Obama's brother-in-law! Relax: just kidding. While fever over Craig Robinson's relation to the White House reached its high point in late 2008, Robinson was busy coaching his team to yet another very impressive campaign. Can Robinson's team take yet another step in 2009-10?

Three items of undeniable interest:

1. OK, fine: Barack Obama's brother-in-law. To the casual fan, or the co-political-sports junkie (I'm looking right at myself here) it might be moderately interesting that yes, Michelle Obama's brother is Craig Robinson, head coach of Oregon State University Beavers basketball. Most casual fans would be aware of this because the family hasn't exactly tried to hide the relation; Robinson introduced his sister in her 2008 Democratic Convention speech. But what's most interesting about Robinson since 2008 is his basketball acumen: In just two years, Robinson has taken a team that went 0-18 in the Pac-10 in 2005-06 to a combined 13 Pac-10 wins spread over two seasons. After last year's .500 year, the Beavers have a genuine chance to compete in the Pac-10. They're a long way from 0-18, and Robinson deserves much of the credit.

2. Hoe gaat het, Roeland? That's a hearty "how's it going" to 6-foot-11-inch OSU senior Roeland Schaftenaar, who you sort of have to watch to believe. It's not that the Dutch-born Schaftenaar is that unconventional; he looks and plays like plenty of European forwards you've seen before. But Schaftenaar has a unique skill: He's a passer. He led the Beavers in assists last season -- yes, a 6'11 center led OSU in assists -- with 120, and he averaged around 10 points per game to go along with it. Anyone with a thing for passing big men has to catch Schaftenaar. He's a good time. Or, as he might say, "een goede tijd."

3. The other Craig Robinson. Currently one of the more underrated comedic actors in showbusiness is also named Craig Robinson. It's a testament to how deep the cast of "The Office" is that Robinson only plays a bit part. This might not be all that interesting at first glance, but try watching an Oregon State game now without thinking (language alert at the following link) "Ooh, this is so exciting!"

But some schools don't. That is, they don't make as much money as big-time college football programs. A basketball program like Indiana might make $4 million in a season; Michigan football likely makes that every home game. These disparities tend to grow the higher you go up the list of big-money programs. Which is why it's not exactly surprising to hear that, yet again, most NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision schools didn't even make any money last year:

The NCAA's latest report on revenues and expenses, released Tuesday, showed fewer than 25 percent of all Football Bowl Subdivision schools made money in 2007-08, while the remaining 302 schools competing in Division I struggled to break even. Twenty-five of 119 FBS schools reported overall profits, an increase from 19 in 2006.

Why the disparities? It's easy: Big schools have boosters and sold-out games and tailgating and the rest of it. Small schools don't have that stuff. And schools that just compete in basketball, or don't have strong football programs, lose the cash cow that separates that profitable minority from the just-barely-breaking-even majority. (The recession also affected college budgets, too; donations and contributions were down, and schools had to fund more of their own athletics budget than in 2006.)

That said, within their respective sports, college hoops can be profitable. Another stat from the AP:

Of the 119 FBS football teams, 68 (57.1 percent) finished the year in the black. [...] Of the 119 FBS schools playing men's basketball, 67 teams made a profit.

Of course those football teams are making way, way, way more money than college hoops teams. It's like saying the corner coffee store is profitable, and so is Starbucks. But still: The corner store can make a profit! For those of us who care far less about football than hoops, it's good to know the latter can exist independent of the former.

Anyway, the point of the Borat reference? It appears Kyrie Irving, Rivals' No. 9-ranked player in the class of 2010, is a fan. What else could explain lrving's apparent commitment to Duke -- as reported by Adam Zagoria yesterday -- and his subsequent denial of that commitment? It has to be "Borat." Kyrie Irving is your movie-quoting friend!

I don't know what's going on with all these supposed sources but I have not commited to duke [...]I will be deciding between Texas a and m duke and Kentucky.. I have not commited to duke..I will be announcing on espn u

You heard the man: Irving is planning on announcing his college choice tomorrow, and it may or may not be Duke. Where it won't be is Georgia Tech or Seton Hall, both places Irving just eliminated via Twitter. And within recruiting circles, Duke has been Irving's top choice since he eliminated Indiana a month ago. So maybe Irving will surprise everyone and pick Kentucky at the last second -- he wouldn't be the first, and you can never count out John Calipari in a recruiting battle -- but Irving's denial seems more to do with his ESPNU appearance than with any remaining decision-making. Duke fans will hope so, anyway.

In the meantime, I long for the day when, like, investment bankers are recruited to their first jobs this publicly. I'd watch that show.

What am I talking about? Most recently, I'm referring to Louisville starters Terrence Jennings and Jerry Smith, and their collective decision to get in a fight (or scuffle, or security disagreement, or whatever you want to call it) with police officers at a bar in Jeffersonville, Ind. The two plead guilty yesterday to resisting law enforcement and were given one-year suspended prison sentences, probation, and ordered to do 40 hours of community service each.

Neither player will be forced by the law to miss any basketball in the coming season. Meanwhile, Louisville coach Rick Pitino has already made it clear the duo will not miss any game time. So, if Pitino isn't forcing them to sit, and the Jeffersonville city judge isn't forcing them to sit, Jennings and Smith will go on with their 2009-10 season as if nothing ever happened. As if that whole "fighting cops" thing was just a fever dream.

Again, I'm not saying I have a problem with this. I'm basically cool with it. People fight cops all the time; people get drunk and do stupid things even more than that. I've been there. It happens. I don't judge. If Pitino thinks (though Pitino's opinion on punishment for wrongdoing is not exactly our most trustworthy, is it?) the two deserve to play, fine. I'm not going to complain one bit. I have nothing invested in this.

But when two starters at an elite college basketball program get arrested for resisting arrest, it seems like a big deal. We all cover it and discuss it accordingly. And yet in terms of basketball -- which is why we make it a big deal in the first place, right? -- it's not a big deal at all. Literally nothing has changed here. That's a good thing for Louisville fans. It's maybe a bit disorienting for the rest of us.

It would be possible to keep posting Midnight Madness videos for the rest of the week. There are enough dunk contests around the country, enough goofy player introduction videos, to last until the season starts. But since I'm not sure we're going to see a better dunk than Mr. Bell's -- in which he flew over five of his teammates before the slam -- I think we can rest. We've peaked.

For what it's worth, reader Jeff makes it seem as though Mr. Bell had himself quite a dunk contest: "This is where he dunks over 5 teammates. His first dunk was an off-the-shot-clock windmill dunk. His second dunk went between the legs. This was his winning dunk." Nor is this the first time Keion has done something semi-awesome. Observe his "Batman" dunk at Kobe Bryant Camp:

Well played, Keion. I always liked Batman better than Superman, anyway.

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Except Kansas point guard Sherron Collins -- probably the title-holder for best point guard in the country, at least until Wall makes a run at the title -- isn't a fan of all the hype. He thinks Wall needs to pay some dues first.

“It bothers me a little bit,” Collins said when I asked about all the attention Wall is getting. “I think I’ve established myself, and he’s coming out of high school with a lot of hype. But I’m the old guy, and I ain’t gonna let no young boy get the best of me.”

I love the inflection here, as if Collins is some 35-year-old NBA veteran with an ABA game who plans on out-crafting his younger, more athletic opponents. Sherron Collins is 22 years old. He's barely old enough to drink legally. Maybe within the confines of college basketball he's a wily old vet, but in the big picture he's only slightly less young than is John Wall.

Anyway, that quote comes from Gary Parrish, who ranked Wall ahead of Collins on his point guards list and then had the onions to go ask Collins about it. Kudos, Gary. It's probably a good thing Brady Morningstar wasn't around, though. Fights in Lawrence have broken out over far less.