Before the season gets going in earnest – just about every school that has yet to play a game will play one Friday or Saturday – I have to get a couple of other sleepers on the record. Earlier in the week I mentioned Creighton and Xavier. Earlier in the off-season I gushed about Utah […]

Today’s post is dedicated to the Mountain West Conference. The conference whose beat writers and coaches think so little of that each group voted San Diego State – a team that was somewhere around 130th to 150th best in the nation last season – the pick to win the league. One of the many MWC […]

Last night, Missouri kicked off its season with a 80-77 home loss to Sam Houston State in the first round of the Preseason NIT. You may be familiar with game theory, which has little application to college basketball. If not, don’t worry about it, because what matters to this contest is “one game theory”. That’s […]

This weekend’s lines are chosen to give the youngsters out there some inspiration. You don’t have to be big to play big. Friday FG 3pt FT Reb Min M-A M-A M-A O-T A F S TO BLK Pts Aaron Fitzgerald 25 3-6 1-2 1-1 0-1 14 1 3 1 0 8 Result: Win. UC Irvine […]

It’s going to happen. Last season, it was Villanova. In 2004 it was Georgia Tech. Those are extreme examples from the March Madness era, but every season a few teams overcome bland pre-preseason predictions and make the post-season party, occasionally making serious noise there. This is my attempt to discover those teams before their seasons […]

From Andy Katz via Yoni: The NCAA will begin revealing RPI data this season, beginning in January no less. This should have been done 24 years ago when the RPI was invented, but better late than never. I can’t understand why it took until now for the NCAA to do this. As long as at-large […]

In an effort to give myself some regular material to post in this space, I’m introducing a new feature. Every day for the remainder of the season, my team of advanced scouts will be scouring the nation for notable performances. The most notable (not necessarily the best) will be mentioned here. That player’s line may […]

Conference USA has always been a little quirky. First there was the name – how could this be America’s conference when Houston was the westernmost team? Then there was the original three-division setup allowing no member of the 12-team league to have to admit they were worse than fourth. CUSA is no less quirky under […]

Apparently I missed the memo that there was to be some sort of blogger’s midnight madness on November 1st. Between this week’s return of Big Ten Wonk and Mid-Majority, I feel content to continue my pre-season sabbatical for a few more days. If you can’t waste eight hours a day at those two places for […]

As some of you have discovered, a first attempt at schedules has been posted. As always, corrections are encouraged. I am going to be on vacation for the next couple of weeks, so if you don’t get a prompt response to your e-mails, that’s why.