Mack, Mooney making waves by staying put

It hasn’t just been on the floor where college basketball’s little guys have been chalking up some victories this March.

Butler and VCU will carry the banner for programs outside of the traditional BCS alignment at the Final Four in Houston, and at least two coaches from a non-power league have made statements of their own with decisions that they reached over the weekend. Chris Mack’s stunning rejection of Tennessee and Chris Mooney’s mammoth contract extension to prevent a move to Georgia Tech left at least two major programs with coaching searches to finish and kept Xavier and Richmond firmly in their current places as regular contenders for Atlantic 10 titles and NCAA bids.

A reported eight-year deal worth $16 million was undoubtedly a difficult offer for Mack to turn down on its face, but look a little deeper. He has no prior connection to Tennessee and the Vols are staring down the barrel of potential NCAA sanctions that could cripple their program. Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton also seems to be running a house divided – how else would something like this leak out? Being turned down by Xavier? That’s not supposed to happen at an SEC school with virtually unlimited resources at its fingertips, and it’s certainly not supposed to go public.

As it stands now, the Vols’ turmoil isn’t ending soon. They were forced to fire Bruce Pearl just one year after their first Elite Eight run in program history and face the real possibility of their two best players, Scotty Hopson and Tobias Harris, jumping to the NBA. Also working against the next Tennessee coach is that men’s basketball, at best, is the school’s No. 3 sport. Football will always be king on Rocky Top (along with everywhere else in the SEC except Kentucky), and Pat Summitt’s women’s program has been drawing bigger crowds than the men for most of the past 25 years. Scooping Cuonzo Martin from Missouri State late Sunday night might be just what Tennessee needs to save itself from this sudden tailspin, but the former Purdue star isn’t walking into comfortable circumstances.

Ohio is home for Mack, and it’s looking like he has no intention of leaving. He’s a Cleveland native and a Xavier graduate, Class of 1992. He has a gleaming on-campus facility, the Cintas Center, which the Musketeers regularly pack. As recently as last year, Mack’s program was one of the top-20 most valuable in the country and one of only two non-BCS schools to make the cut (UNLV was the other). He can schedule just about any team in the country and arrive at any location via private charter. He has an excellent area to recruit – five players on the Xavier roster this year were from Ohio, including starting center Kenny Frease, and three were from nearby Indiana. He’s got a Naismith candidate in Tu Holloway. There’s no guarantee that he would find life any better at Tennessee, and Mack decided to go with what he knew.

Mooney faced the same circumstances when Georgia Tech reportedly came calling to lure the 38-year-old to the ACC. It’s a chance that he’s turned down before as recently as last season, when he said no to Boston College and left the job open for the Eagles to hire Cornell’s Steve Donahue. Mooney’s extension, his third in as many years, will carry him through the 2020-21 campaign and give him the sort of security that will make him the envy of his profession. He’s been given the necessary time to turn Richmond into a consistent winner and has delivered three straight seasons of 20 victories or more, back-to-back trips to the NCAA Tournament and a Sweet 16 run this year.

Much like Mack, Mooney doesn’t need to go far from home to recruit star players. Justin Harper, a Richmond native, is a virtual lock to be selected in the upcoming NBA Draft. Darien Brothers, another Richmond native, started all but one game for the Spiders in 2010-11. Six of Richmond’s players hail from Virginia (Harper, Brothers), Washington, D.C. (Cedrick Lindsay), or Pennsylvania (Kevin Hovde, Greg Robbins, Dan Geriot), which also happens to be Mooney’s home state. A Philadelphia native and Princeton graduate, Mooney has spent most of his life in the Mid-Atlantic region. He came back to the East Coast after one season as the head coach at Air Force and has flourished thanks to many of the the same advantages that Mack enjoys with Xavier – institutional commitment, fertile recruiting base, strong non-conference schedule and a rising national profile.

Mooney could have asked for something similar to the cushy contract that Paul Hewitt enjoyed since his run to the national championship game in 2004, but it’s hard to believe that the Yellow Jackets would have had the stomach to sink much more dead cash into a basketball program that has enjoyed just one winning season in ACC play since 2000. Five first-round picks in the NBA Draft (Chris Bosh, Jarrett Jack, Thaddeus Young, Javaris Crittenton and Derrick Favors) weren’t enough to help Hewitt get things right against the likes of Duke and North Carolina. Mooney certainly didn’t need to stomach the aggravation of rebuilding from scratch in Atlanta.

Will coaches like Brad Stevens, Shaka Smart, Josh Pastner and Sydney Johnson follow Mack’s lead? Three of the last eight Final Four berths have been earned by teams from outside of the BCS leagues. Kansas, a No. 1 seed in each of the past two tournaments and a team loaded with McDonald’s All-Americans and future NBA players, has now lost to Northern Iowa and VCU in consecutive years. The difference between the traditional powers and the former stepping stones in a given year has never been smaller. Mack clearly recognized this when he gave Tennessee his answer. It remains to be seen whether he’s started a trend that his peers outside the BCS will follow.

– Bill Koch

 

A Sweet 16 batch of winners and losers

For my money, the four best days of the college basketball season have just wrapped up. Coast-to-coast action, buzzer beaters and emerging stars always highlight the opening rounds of the NCAA Tournament, and the three-day aftermath leading into Thursday night and the Sweet 16 makes for buzz around the office water cooler that’s hard to control. The 2011 version of The Big Dance has delivered as usual, and we offer a brief recap here of the winners and the losers who have separated themselves from the pack since Thursday’s opening tip.

WINNERS

Mike Krzyzewski – We have to take a minute to recognize Coach K’s 900th win of his sublime career on the sidelines. He joined his mentor and former coach at Army, Bob Knight, in the exclusive club thanks to a 73-71 victory over Michigan on Sunday, a win that booked the Blue Devils a place in the Sweet 16 for the 20th time under Krzyzewski. His consistent excellence and class in both victory and defeat should be enough to remind us that the college basketball world isn’t solely populated by shady AAU connections, corrupt shoe company executives and too many coaches who play fast and loose with the NCAA rulebook.

Butler – Forget about the two bizarre fouls in the closing seconds of the Bulldogs’ 71-70 squeaker against Pittsburgh. Focus instead on the fact that Butler is 7-1 in its last eight NCAA Tournament games, won its opening two games this year by a combined three points and condemned the Panthers, the Big East regular season champions, to another early exit. With all due respect to Norman Dale and Jimmy Chitwood, the Bulldogs are the real life Hoosiers. If I was an athletic director, I would hijack a Brinks truck and turn all of its contents over to Brad Stevens if he would coach my team.

Kansas – Not only were the Jayhawks impressive in winning each of their first two games, but their path to Houston just got a whole lot easier thanks to the carnage that took place in the Southwest Regional. Three double-digit seeds (No. 10 Florida State, No. 11 VCU and No. 12 Richmond) are all that stand in the way of Kansas and a trip to Reliant Stadium, and Ali Farokhmanhesh isn’t walking through that door. Book the Jayhawks a place in the Final Four if the Morris twins continue the beastly sort of performances that they threw at Illinois in the second half on Sunday.

VCU – These guys are looking like the East Coast version of Gonzaga circa 1999. Didn’t think the Rams belonged in the tournament field? All Shaka Smart’s crew has done is absolutely hammer three teams from the Big Six conferences by an average of 16.3 points per game, including Sunday’s 94-76 thumping of Purdue. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a basketball man crush on Joey Rodriguez. The little guy is tough as nails and quick as a cat, and I’m thinking that the Merritt Island, Fla., native is going to give the Seminoles all they can handle in the next round.

Jimmer Fredette – In a word, wow. The shooting display that my choice for the National Player of the Year put on in the second half against Gonzaga was one of the better performances that you’ll ever see in a tournament game. Fredette finished with 34 points and was 7-for-12 from three-point range as the Cougars cruised past the Bulldogs, 89-67. To think that this game was an even-money pick with the guys in Las Vegas at tipoff is pretty laughable now.

LOSERS

The Big East – This is not a recording. It’s looking like the alleged Best Conference in the Nation will be without a championship game participant yet again after only Connecticut and Marquette survived to reach the Sweet 16. The Big East’s 11 representatives have combined to go 7-7 against other leagues, including a disappointing 5-5 mark against schools that carry the Mid-Major label. Pittsburgh (against Butler), Louisville (Morehead State), St. John’s (Gonzaga), Villanova (George Mason) and Georgetown (VCU) did very little to quiet the howls that came from the little guys when the league received its ridiculous number of bids. The Huskies’ 2004 run to the title, the last time the conference had a school playing on Monday night in April, seems even longer ago right now.

Notre Dame – The Irish deserve special recognition for the stinker they threw out in what was a virtual home game in Chicago, suffocated by Florida State’s defense in a 71-57 defeat. Notre Dame went 7-for-30 from three-point range and was all but done when the Seminoles extended their lead to 23 points midway through the second half. The Irish finished at just 30.6 percent from the field overall and Mike Brey has another offseason to find an inside game for his team to turn to when its shots from the perimeter aren’t falling.

Texas – Was that five-second call on Cory Joseph a little quick? Perhaps, but the Longhorns’ freshman showed his inexperience by failing to call timeout a little sooner in the count. Texas followed that up by allowing Derrick Williams, Arizona’s best player, to shake free on the baseline and failed to either hang in and take a proper charge or deliver a hard foul that would have forced Williams, a 74.4 percent free throw shooter, to earn it from the foul line. The Longhorns’ hat trick of mistakes was completed by J’Covan Brown, who was content to walk the ball up the floor and waste most of the final 10 seconds before squeezing off a wild shot in traffic that never had a chance of going in. It was poor execution at both ends of the floor in the final 15 seconds that doomed Texas, not a referee’s whistle.

– Bill Koch

 

Winners, losers emerge from NCAA Tournament

If I ever run for president, one of my first campaign promises will be to reclassify the first two days of the NCAA Tournament as national holidays. At the very least, it’ll earn me some cheap votes. At best, it’ll land me in a bar somewhere on Embassy Row with my bracket sheet in front of me instead of some budget analysis that would put me to sleep.

I watched as much basketball as I could for each of the past two days, and I came away with a few snap judgments about the 32 remaining teams. For lack of better categories, we’ll highlight a few of the winners and losers here for your consideration.

WINNERS
Duke – This is how a No. 1 seed is supposed to look. The Blue Devils were the perfect schoolyard bullies while hammering Hampton, 87-45, and welcomed Kyrie Irving to a backcourt that is now one of the tournament’s best. Irving didn’t skip a beat while pouring in 14 points and his return to health makes Duke a very tough out going forward.

The CAA – Pretty nice showing from one of the best Mid-Major leagues in the country right now. VCU was impressive at both ends of the floor while drilling Georgetown and George Mason used its grit down the stretch to overcome Villanova. Only Old Dominion’s two-point loss to Butler, a 60-58 slugfest that was decided by Matt Howard’s buzzer-beater, prevented the league from enjoying a 3-0 start.

Richmond – The Spiders came from behind to edge Vanderbilt and, coupled with Morehead State’s upset of Louisville, stand an excellent chance of making a run to the Sweet 16. Chris Mooney’s star continues to rise, with Georgia Tech and North Carolina State certain to come calling for Richmond’s excellent young coach to fill their respective vacancies. Add some NBA scouts to that list as well, because Justin Harper will certainly be playing for money next year and Kevin Anderson wouldn’t be the worst backup point guard in the league if he made the jump right now.

Young coaches – Mooney, 38, is considered an up-and-comer in his sixth season with the Spiders, but he’s a grizzled veteran compared to some of his peers who made noise over the opening two days of the tournament. The baby faces include Princeton’s Sydney Johnson (36), Butler’s Brad Stevens (34), VCU’s Shaka Smart (33) and Memphis’s Josh Pastner (33), and the sub-40 quintet went 3-2 in the first round. Johnson and Pastner lost their games by a combined 4 points.

LOSERS
Tennessee – Bruce Pearl’s reign on Rocky Top looks to be in shambles after a 75-45 drubbing against Michigan. It was the most lopsided loss in tournament history in an 8/9 game and one more strike against Pearl, who led the Volunteers to their first Elite Eight appearance in program history in 2010. That seems like light years ago with NCAA investigators closing in and Tennessee athletic director Mike Hamilton refusing to commit to Pearl for the long term.

Georgetown – Another year, another early exit against a lower-seeded Mid-Major for the Hoyas. VCU did the honors this time with a 74-56 whipping in Chicago, a game in which Georgetown looked thoroughly outclassed from the opening tip. The Hoyas’ last three trips to the NCAAs have resulted in just one victory and losses to Davidson (2008), Ohio (2010) and now the Rams. Poor perimeter defense has dogged Georgetown in each of its last two NCAA defeats – the Bobcats and VCU went a combined 25-48 from 3-point range.

Villanova – The Wildcats ended a second straight season with a whimper, falling 61-57 to George Mason to finish 2010-11 with six straight defeats. Villanova was just 2-8 in its last 10 and did very little over the season’s final two months to warrant its at-large berth into the field, similar to its 3-6 collapse last season after getting off to a 22-2 start. That berth in the 2009 Final Four appears to have left the Wildcats with a two-year hangover and Jay Wright hasn’t found the cure just yet. He’s got a longer than expected offseason now to search for it.

Michigan State – What happened to Tom Izzo’s team this season? The Spartans opened the year as the No. 2 team in the nation and closed by barely scraping into the tournament and suffering a 78-76 loss to UCLA in the opening round. Michigan State trailed by 23 at one point in the second half and needed some Bruins’ misses at the foul line down the stretch to even make it a game. This isn’t the usual grit that we’ve grown used to seeing out of the Spartans, who advanced to each of the last two Final Fours.

– Bill Koch

 

Gator Nation lacking some bite

Caught a few minutes of the Florida-Vanderbilt game on Tuesday night and was a little bit surprised by what I saw.

It had nothing to do with what happened on the court. I figured the Gators and the Commodores would battle to the final buzzer, and they didn’t disappoint. Florida eked out a 65-61 win that will pay long-term dividends in the hotly-contested SEC East.

No, my shock came with Vernon Macklin went to the foul line midway through the second half. The ESPN cameras panned to a wide shot, and I caught a glimpse of the nearly 2,000 people who came to the O’Connell Center dressed as empty seats.

Seriously, Florida fans? You’re not even five years removed from back-to-back national championships. Your undergraduate enrollment for the Fall 2009 semester was almost 50,000, enough students alone to fill the O Dome four times over. You didn’t turn out for a pair of top-25 teams in a town where there are no professional sports and where the football team drew 51,500 to The Swamp for its 2010 Orange and Blue Game, a glorified spring scrimmage where the most important item on hand in the bleachers is the sunscreen.

Florida has sold out two home games this season (Nov. 16 against Ohio State, Jan. 15 against South Carolina) and lost them both. The Gators will make it three full houses tonight when they host Kentucky, a program that has drawn over 20,000 fans to all of its home games this season. Duke and Kansas have combined for 24 sellouts between them this season – in 24 home dates. The Blue Devils’ fans will camp for a week for their tickets. Florida’s fans won’t even walk up five minutes before the game and claim theirs. How does that play on the recruiting trail?

And don’t try to blame the opponents. This is always what we hear in Rhode Island, that Providence and URI don’t schedule anybody sexy and can’t draw fans because of that. Duke (Colgate, Bradley, St. Louis, Elon) and Kansas (Longwood, Texas Arlington, TAMU-CC, UMKC) have played their fair share of dogs this season and packed their respective houses regardless.

This is why Billy Donovan’s name comes up every time a top-tier college basketball or NBA job comes open. This is why he had one foot out the door in 2007, ticketed for the Orlando Magic and a payday worth almost $30 million. He knows that Gators basketball, no matter how much his team wins or how entertaining his players are, will always be an afterthought.

I started thinking about all of this when I tuned into College Gameday this morning. All of the usual pomp and circumstance that follows Rece Davis, Jay Bilas, Hubert Davis and Digger Phelps was present. The O Dome was rocking, as I’m sure it will be tonight. Don’t get used to it.

 

Calipari’s apology to Jones speaks volumes

Why did John Calipari have to apologize to Terrence Jones?

The Kentucky coach tore into his freshman star during Tuesday’s 68-66 loss at Alabama, launching a profanity-laced tirade late in the second half that was broadcast on ESPN for all to see. You didn’t need to be the best lip reader in the world to see that Calipari was cussing Jones out for some sort of transgression, later revealed to be Jones’ allegedly selfish play down the stretch. Calipari certainly made his point in his own way, and Jones insisted both in his postgame comments and on his Twitter page that no harm was done.

Calipari certainly isn’t the first coach to use objectionable language while addressing a player. Bob Knight made a career of it during his stops at Indiana and Texas Tech (thrown folding chairs, anyone?). Mike Krzyzewski would occasionally be right at home with the cast of Goodfellas when the going gets tough on the Duke sidelines. Frank Martin rivals John McEnroe in his prime with the intensity of his tantrums while coaching his Kansas State players. All three of those men have won a lot of basketball games, and they’ve done it their own way.

Calipari is cut from the same cloth – win at all costs, whether it means guiding a program that plays fast and loose with the rules (as Marcus Camby did while Calipari coached him at Massachusetts) or embracing a revolving door of one-and-done standouts (Dajuan Wagner, Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans at Memphis; John Wall, Eric Bledsoe, DeMarcus Cousins and Daniel Orton at Kentucky) who use college basketball as a mandatory year in purgatory before reaching the paid Heaven that is the NBA. The end result is the same – NCAA Tournament bids, high-profile recruits and an opportunity to compete for the national championship on an annual basis. Calipari’s in no danger of losing his job or even being publicly reprimanded by his bosses in Lexington for his conduct on Tuesday.

So where’s the harm in all of this? It might be a quaint notion in the current world of big-time athletics, but coaches are still obliged to serve as role models for their players. They’re the caretakers for their athletes while they’re away from home, a promise that they make when they extend a scholarship offer long before potential players have set foot on campus. Calipari is in charge of Jones’ development as both a player and a person for as long as the 6-foot-8, 244-point forward remains in a Wildcats’ uniform. That’s the reason why what happened on Tuesday night was wrong, and it’s certainly the reason why Calipari owed Jones a public apology.

That’s not to say that it might not happen again. Calipari could get after Jones in practice tomorrow with something a little stronger than, ‘Terrence, could you please hedge out a little harder on that high screen?’ The important lesson that both men will hopefully take from this is that they’ll think about what they say the next time they’re in a heated situation. It’s one that Calipari already should have learned thanks to his wealth of experience in the game and one that Jones should be able to grasp after everything that’s happened to him in the last 24 hours.

– Bill Koch

 

SEC’s tournament hopes take another hit

Mid-majors across the nation received yet another gift from the SEC on Friday.

The College of Charleston’s 91-78 thumping of Tennessee in Knoxville was an additional black eye for a basketball conference that has been battered and bruised throughout two months of nonconference play. Let the SoCon, the Atlantic 10, the West Coast Conference, the Mountain West and all the rest of the mid-majors pop champagne at midnight tonight. They’re all in better position to send multiple teams to The Big Dance thanks to efforts like the ones the Cougars made on Friday, and they’ll do so at the expense of one of the Big Six.

As 2010 turns to 2011, it’s not too early to sneak a peek at the RPI rankings. March is just two short months away. That is, sneak a peek unless you call the SEC – particularly the SEC West – home. Covering your eyes might be the better course of action.

The SEC is currently No. 7 in the RPI and falling fast. The league’s teams won’t be able to receive much of a boost by beating one another, making it likely that its ranking will continue to fade as the season wears on. Kentucky, Vanderbilt and Florida might end up being the only three schools that will be able to make a serious case for at-large berths to the NCAA Tournament, repeating their selections of a year ago.

How did this happen? How has the SEC’s chance to make a run to Houston’s Reliant Stadium this spring already taken a hit? Let’s review this scenario on a case-by-case basis, with each school’s respective RPI ranking appearing in parenthesis.

– Kentucky (No. 5)
John Calipari has the young Wildcats purring on all cylinders, as evidenced by the 78-63 road blowout of Louisville on Friday. Kentucky under Calipari is basically an NBA prep school, a talent-rich environment filled with future lottery picks who will put in their mandatory one year of service before heading off to greener (and cash-filled) pastures. Not that anyone in Lexington will complain – wins against Notre Dame and Washington and a difficult schedule to date also help to bolster the Wildcats’ résumé.

– Vanderbilt (No. 13)
The Commodores’ one-point win over Marquette on Wednesday night, added to a victory against a young North Carolina team that figures to improve as the season progresses, was a nice way to end 2010 for Kevin Stallings’ crew. A pair of three-point losses to West Virginia and Missouri (in overtime) are hardly a reason to be ashamed.

– Tennessee (No. 25)
Don’t expect the Volunteers to stay here for very long. Those victories over Villanova and Pittsburgh must seem like they happened eons ago after losses to Oakland, UNC-Charlotte, USC and Charleston. Beating Belmont by one and needing to come from behind to beat Tennessee-Martin by six isn’t exactly the best way to follow up last season’s run to the Elite Eight. Speaking of eight – Bruce Pearl’s pending suspension at the start of conference play won’t do much to right the ship.

– Florida (No. 28)
The Gators are an interesting case in that they just might end up being the best of the rest. Florida is an extremely talented team stocked with blue-chip recruits, which makes losses to Jacksonville and UCF pretty difficult to explain. Throw in a home blowout against Ohio State and the Gators will need a consistent effort the rest of the way to secure the 11th NCAA bid of Billy Donovan’s tenure in Gainesville. Snapping’s Xavier’s lengthy home winning streak on Friday at the Cintas Center was an excellent start.

– Georgia (No. 55)
The Bulldogs’ 11-2 record is impressive until you consider that their three true road wins against Saint Louis, Georgia Tech and Mercer came by a combined six points. Still, Georgia will be in the hunt if it can avoid any bad conference losses. Its only defeats are to Notre Dame (by six) and Temple (by seven), two teams who certainly figure to be included in the NCAA Tournament field.

– Mississippi (No. 59)
Which team has the top current RPI ranking in the SEC West? It’s Ole Miss, which is seeking to end the conference’s longest tournament drought. The Rebels haven’t played in the NCAAs since 2002 and seem to have an opening if they can string together an impressive league run. And they’ll need it – losses to Dayton, Miami and Colorado State aren’t going to do much to help Mississippi’s cause.

– South Carolina (No. 113)
Losing by 22 at Ohio State can almost be deemed acceptable – the Buckeyes have been a wrecking machine thus far, crushing just about everyone put in front of them to date. Losing by 16 at home against Furman? Not so much. The Gamecocks will pretty much have to run the table and go deep into the SEC Tournament to make their first NCAA appearance since 2004.

– Arkansas (No. 140)
The only glaring loss on the Razorbacks’ nonconference résumé is a defeat against UAB, an NCAA regular from Conference USA. How is Arkansas this low in the rankings? There can only be one answer – the Razorbacks’ strength of schedule is currently No. 307 in the nation. There are only 345 teams in Division I.

– Alabama (No. 211)
The Crimson Tide can attribute their position to a lost weekend in the Virgin Islands. Alabama suffered three straight defeats to Seton Hall, Iowa and St. Peter’s at the Paradise Jam, a miserable stretch that continued when the Crimson Tide lost to a Providence team that was picked to finish near the bottom of the Big East standings.

– LSU (No. 228)
Where have you gone, Big Baby Davis? Tyrus Thomas? Home losses to Nicholls, Coastal Carolina and a 20-point thrashing by North Texas never would have happened on their watch. Another defeat at Rice undoubtedly has Tigers’ fans counting the days until spring football.

– Mississippi State (No. 231)
The Bulldogs have lost to Virginia Tech by 31, Washington State by 26 and Saint Mary’s by 22. They’ve also led SportsCenter thanks to the Renardo Sidney-Elgin Bailey MMA matchup in the stands in Hawaii. These aren’t happy times in Starkville.

– Auburn (No. 333)
Tony Barbee has a serious rebuilding job to do with the Tigers after four solid years at UTEP. Auburn’s spanking-new, $92-million arena is going to be full of empty seats if the Tigers continue to struggle like they have this season. Losses to Division II Columbus State, UNC-Asheville, Samford, Campbell, Jacksonville and Presbyterian are a pretty clear illustration of how far Auburn has fallen, and its young roster (four freshmen, five sophomores and just one senior) is going to have to take its lumps.

– Bill Koch

 

Bulldogs still packing major bite

I was reminded Saturday night why I wish every college basketball program in the country had Gonzaga’s mentality.

Want to play next season? Sure.

Care where the game is? Nope.

Mind if we never, ever have any intention of coming to the Pacific Northwest in the foreseeable future? Doesn’t matter.

The Bulldogs edged past No. 9 Baylor, 68-64, at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, the latest game in an early season gauntlet that would leave most programs in the nation’s power conferences dropping to their knees and begging for mercy. Mark Few’s crew seems to have no limit to its ambition despite having established itself over the past decade as a national standout, and Saturday was just the latest example of Gonzaga’s willingness to go on the road and take on all comers.

Consider that Baylor had played its first seven games at home this season against Grambling State, La Salle, Jackson State, Lipscomb, Prairie View A&M, Arizona State and Bethune Cookman, all double-digit wins by the Bears against teams with a current combined record of 30-42. Baylor’s next three games before its Big 12 opener at Texas Tech on Jan. 8 include more home dates with San Diego, Texas Southern and Morgan State, who have started 7-19. If I live in Waco and support Baylor athletics, is it even possible for me to get excited about watching LaceDarius Dunn and Co. blast a bunch of teams that will be dead and buried way before March Madness? Am I currently questioning just how good these Bears will be just one season removed from their first Elite Eight trip in 60 years? Am I going to receive any answers before conference play starts in just three short weeks?

Put me in Spokane and I’ll be happy, even if the Bulldogs are just 6-5 after 11 games. Take out the absolute waxing that Gonzaga endured at Washington State and the Bulldogs’ defeats against San Diego State, Kansas State, Illinois and Notre Dame, all Top 25 teams, shouldn’t cause the NCAA Tournament selection committee to frown on Gonzaga’s current résumé all that much. The Bulldogs will be ready to march into conference play with most of their toughest tests already in their collective rearview mirror, and they’ll be better off for it the rest of this season and beyond.

– Bill Koch

 

Hewitt on thin ice with Yellow Jackets?

If Paul Hewitt was a high school football coach in Texas, he would have found at least a handful of ‘For Sale’ signs on his front lawn this morning.

Georgia Tech’s embarrassing 91-71 thumping at Northwestern on Tuesday night as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge is the second major hiccup for the Yellow Jackets this season, and it could easily be a hat trick if they hadn’t escaped with a 71-68 overtime win over Division II Clark Atlanta University in an exhibition game. We’re barely into December and Georgia Tech has already absorbed a whipping from the Wildcats, a close shave against the Panthers and an 80-63 defeat to Kennesaw State.

Since he took over in 2000, Hewitt has gone 67-93 in ACC play and finished over .500 in the conference only once. He’s guided the Yellow Jackets to the Sweet 16 exactly one time, that coming in 2004 when Georgia Tech lost the NCAA championship game to Connecticut. That’s the only season during Hewitt’s tenure where the Yellow Jackets cracked the .500 mark in conference play, and their record was still a modest 9-7.

Even more damning for Hewitt is the fact that his cupboard at Georgia Tech has never been all that bare. Chris Bosh (fourth in 2003), Jarrett Jack (22nd in 2005), Thaddeus Young (12th in 2007), Javaris Crittenton (19th in 2007) and Derrick Favors (third in 2010) were all first-round picks in the NBA Draft during Hewitt’s tenure. Toss in current pros Will Bynum and Anthony Morrow and that’s an enviable roster for an alumni game against most other schools. The Yellow Jackets’ current roster includes junior guard Iman Shumpert, a former McDonald’s All-American, and Glen Rice Jr., the son of You Know Who. Julian Royal, a 6-foot-8 forward from Milton, Ga., and the No. 66 recruit in the 2011 class according to ESPN.com, has signed a Letter of Intent to join Georgia Tech next fall.

Does this sort of performance justify the cushy, rolling six-year deal that Hewitt currently enjoys? He signed a deal worth a reported annual $1.35 million salary and an extra year tacked onto the end of the contract every April 15 after the loss to the Huskies in 2004. Georgia Tech would be on the hook for close to $7 million if the school decides to cut ties with Hewitt at any point. He’s certainly produced a steady stream of professional talent from his program, but the results on the floor hardly suggest that Hewitt is giving the Yellow Jackets a fair return on their investment. Northwestern shot 76 percent from the floor in the first half on Tuesday, a dreadful defensive effort that is either evidence of a systemic flaw or players who just aren’t getting the message.

In either case, the search for answers leads back to the coaching staff and to Hewitt. A soft ACC schedule that features just one game apiece against Duke, North Carolina and Maryland might give Georgia Tech the necessary time to improve before postseason play rolls around in March, but by then it might be too late to save Hewitt’s future with the program he’s guided to relative mediocrity for over a decade.

– Bill Koch

 

TCU set to shake up Big East

TCU’s announced move to the Big East starting in the 2012-13 academic year should have some knees knocking here in the Northeast.

This is all about football – more specifically, cash generated by television rights and the BCS – and the traditional basketball power conference might be in for its biggest facelift since Boston College, Virginia Tech and Miami jumped ship for the ACC and Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, Marquette and DePaul came in from Conference USA to create the current 16-team monster.

Memo to the traditionalists out there: Dave Gavitt and Mike Tranghese aren’t walking through that door. If they did, they’d find a landscape unlike the one they helped shape when they formed the regional, seven-team league in 1979 that they eventually shepherded to national prominence. Television also helped shape that rise – a fledgling cable network called ESPN gave the Big East a national stage on which to play its games – but the similarities end there.

The Horned Frogs saw their opportunity and they took it. They won’t be on the outside looking in anymore, begging pollsters to give them a chance and put them high enough in the rankings to play in the postseason with college football’s bluebloods. The automatic BCS berth that comes with winning the Big East and the obvious advantages that TCU will bring with it – fertile recruiting base, no local competition for players from teams within its conference, weak existing opponents in its new league – made the move a no-brainer for the Horned Frogs. For TCU, it’s basketball be damned.

But what about Providence? Seton Hall? Marquette? Villanova? What do they bring to the table in this new alignment? How long will the football schools tolerate sharing their revenue with the basketball schools that are along for the ride?

The Friars offer nothing but a historical link to the Big East’s beginning, and that seems to matter little in the current NCAA climate. They don’t play in a large television market that brings the appeal of the other non-football members. Providence could be on the outside looking in and go the way of Holy Cross and some of the other small Catholic schools in New England.

The Pirates are left to cast longing glances at the Scarlet Knights and wonder what might have been. Rutgers can command New Jersey for the league with very little help from Seton Hall. Not even the sparkling new Prudential Center, an off-campus facility used by the New Jersey Devils and (for now) New Jersey Nets, is enough of a draw for the Pirates to keep pace with the surrounding New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas.

The Golden Eagles could make a good case for themselves thanks to their recent success and strong fan base in the Midwest. Marquette routinely is in the NCAA Tournament discussion, draws huge crowds to the Bradley Center and plays a tough non-conference schedule (Duke, Gonzaga, Wisconsin and Vanderbilt this season) that increases the Big East’s overall RPI. The Golden Eagles have a strong chance to survive the cut.

The Wildcats are faced with an interesting football dilemma. Villanova won the FCS national championship in 2009 and qualified for the postseason again this year. The foundation on the field is in place to try to make the leap to the FBS. Finances, the admissions standards that come with being a private school and significant, costly upgrades in facilities are the big obstacles standing between the Wildcats accepting an offer to become the conference’s 10th football member. Villanova’s place in the Philadelphia market likely keeps the school safe regardless of how that situation pans out.

Take DePaul (Chicago), Georgetown (Washington, D.C.) and St. John’s (New York) out of the equation due to their large television audiences. They’re not going anywhere. They’re negotiating leverage if the Big East ever wants to launch its own network or jab ESPN and ABC for more money.

Notre Dame also has to be excluded from the discussion due to its national brand and coast-to-coast alumni base. The Fighting Irish and the league have always been an arranged marriage of sorts due to Notre Dame’s insistence on remaining a football independent and negotiating its own television package with NBC and the BCS, but it would be foolish to allow a cash cow like that to walk away.

Some others might not be so lucky. That sound you hear is the college sports landscape about to change again – and the gnashing of nervous teeth in some of the Big East’s athletic departments.

-Bill Koch