ESPN Men's Basketball

Andy Katz discusses Miami's Angel Rodriguez, New Mexico State's Cullen Neal and the beginning of a potentially historic season for Kentucky.

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It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: the noble speed freaks of Virginia Military Institute.

Let's be clear from the start: Stylistically speaking, there is no right or wrong way to play the game of basketball. There are only wins and losses. Everything else -- from a coach's philosophy to aesthetic preference to good old-fashioned matchup strategy -- is only so much interior detail.

In other words, up-tempo basketball does not equal winning basketball. Or vice versa. There are strategic advantages and disadvantages, and personnel is the key, but no system is so good it can succeed of its own merits alone. For fans, everything is subjective. Some people really love slow, deliberate, physical basketball. Others saw their hoops holy grail in Phoenix in 2005 and walk the Earth like Jules from "Pulp Fiction," casting about desperately for anything that might vaguely approximate it.

I'll admit it: I am in the latter camp. For every magnificent fiber of this sport, college basketball in 2013 can be too slow, too plodding, too careful -- smothered by helicopter coaches deathly afraid of leaving their livelihoods to chance. When a coach openly defies this trend, it's worth taking notice. When a coach does so, and then doesn't win all that much, and then keeps on doing it anyway -- well, that's when you've really got my attention.

That coach exists. His name is Duggar Baucom. He coaches the Virginia Military Institute Keydets. And his teams play fast. Always. Win or lose. That's all you really need to know.

Just in case, let's demonstrate: Since 2005-06, when Baucom came from Division II Tusculum College, VMI has finished outside the top 10 nationally in adjusted tempo only once, in his first season. To the right is a list of VMI's adjusted tempo figures -- and their won-lost records -- since.

In the past seven seasons, as part of Baucom's strategy, VMI has focused its efforts on turning opponents over and attempting to win the game on offense. This always leads to two things. The first is awful defense; the Keydets have finished a season ranked higher than 300th defensively only twice in the past eight years. The second? Thoroughly entertaining basketball!

In fact, that's the real marvel here. VMI has a system. That system is a joy to watch, but it does not yield consistent victories. VMI's coach has stuck with that immensely enjoyable system even as it has failed to bear consistent fruit -- and risked becoming a sideshow -- because he thinks it’s the best way his team can play basketball.

Which is exactly why you've got to, got to, got to see VMI. The Keydets may not always be successful, even in the forgiving context of the Big South. But they are guaranteed to thrill -- for better and for worse.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season — from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Today: Weber State, and Damian who?

The 2012-13 NBA Rookie of the Year went from Weber State to the National Basketball Association for very good reasons. In 2011-12, Damian Lillard, to that point a relatively unheralded senior redshirt junior playing for a small mid-major program in Ogden, Utah, touched the ball on nearly a third of his team's possessions. Despite that burden, he posted a 124.4 offensive rating, the highest of any player with a usage rate above 28 percent, per Ken Pomeroy -- higher even than All-American Doug McDermott, who consumed fewer of his team's trips. Lillard's late-blooming offensive brilliance canceled out every concern NBA scouts had about Big Sky competition. That summer, the Portland Trail Blazers made him the sixth overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft.

Back in Ogden, it was fair to expect Weber State to fade away. Frankly, the Wildcats were never in collective focus anyway -- they lost to all three (at Saint Mary's, at BYU, at Cal) of their significant nonconference opponents, fell short in OT in the Big Sky title game, and finished ranked No. 148 in the country in Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency. For a team with a future NBA Rookie of the Year running the show, Weber State flew way under the radar. And with Lillard gone, surely the opportunity was lost.

Which brings us to the big, predictably introduced reveal: Weber State didn't get worse. It got better. Randy Rahe's team won four more games (30-7) than in 2011-12. Its defense got drastically better, zooming from 258th in the country to 99th. That would have been the biggest surprise, but for this: The Wildcats' offense didn't regress a bit. Weber State posted the fourth-highest effective field goal percentage in the country (56.0), thanks in large part to lights-out, 45.6 percent-from-3 shooting from senior guard Scott Bamforth. The Wildcats finished No. 76 in Pomeroy's efficiency rankings. They weren't just better. They were much better.

They also missed the tournament. Again. Thanks to another close Big Sky loss, and no nonconference results, again.

Which is precisely why Weber State offers such an interesting watch for the season to come. Just as the Wildcats had to overcome the loss of their ball-dominating, NBA-ready point guard a year prior, this summer they're reconfiguring without Bamforth, one of the best pure shooters in the college game, and reliable senior forward Frank Otis, arguably the team's best rebounder. But Davion Berry, who shot 41.4 percent from 3 last season in his own right, and center Kyle Tresnak, a shot-blocker and rebounder who by now has a well-rounded interior game, are both back. So is freshman Joel Bolomboy, the 2012-13 Big Sky Newcomer of the Year.

In other words, this is the season Weber State might finally break through -- just 17 months after waving farewell to one of the best young players in the NBA. I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to work. But Weber State just keeps getting better.

Is it the college basketball preseason yet?

Why I am even asking this question? Because in 2013, for the first time ever, the NCAA's date before which teams cannot participate in full practice was moved two weeks up the calendar -- technically, it began Friday. Some teams celebrated their Midnight Madness events this weekend, but many more have chosen to wait. And so the big, all-encompassing Midnight Madness explosion we grew so fond of in the past has been replaced by a slow, excruciating trickle. If the rule change didn't make so much obvious sense, I would probably be a little sad.

The upside, of course, is that the new Midnight Madness landscape doesn't preclude America's college basketball coaches from participating in a tradition unlike any other: dressing up as a ridiculous cultural reference in the hopes of making college kids laugh.

On Saturday morning, at Pittsburgh's "Morning Madness" -- scheduled to precede the Pitt football tailgate -- coach Jamie Dixon kicked off the fun. And by "kicked off the fun," I mean he donned the garb of a person named "Uncle Si," from a reality television show about a colorful group of people who made tons of money selling duck calls. Yes, Dixon a character from "Duck Dynasty." He even did the accent and everything.

All told, according to Pittsburgh, more than 4,000 people showed up for the event, which, as you can see above, also included quirky introductions, slam dunks, trivia, and more slam dunks. All in all, it appears to have been a massive success. And Pitt has an ace up its sleeve when it comes to costumed coaches: Dixon "appeared and performed in a variety of commercials" as a kid in Southern California, and "is a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild," according to a school release. "Uncle Si" appears to have been a method performance. Impressive stuff.

All of which is to say: Your move, Izzo.

WASHINGTON D.C. -- It’s just one hour into the official start of the season and already John Thompson III wishes he could talk about someone other than Joshua Smith.

That doesn’t make him unusual. Coaches like nothing less than talking about guys who are hurt, suspended or ineligible. They aren’t ready to play, so why bother?

Fair logic in an illogical, information-hungry world.

The fact of the matter is the UCLA transfer is more than just a curiosity for Georgetown; he could be a critical piece to the Hoyas’ puzzle. With Greg Whittington sidelined indefinitely with a torn ACL, Georgetown will push junior Mikael Hopkins into the middle and count on senior Nate Lubick to help him out. Both are decent candidates; none has the potential of Smith.

Of course that’s always been the catch with Smith -- he has all this potential, most of it unrealized -- and that’s why the big man lumbering up and down the McDonough Hall court on Saturday morning is the big question mark for Georgetown.

As of right now, Smith won’t be available until the second semester, but Thompson said he’s awaiting a decision from the NCAA, intimating there’s a chance Smith could play immediately.

Thompson declined to get into specifics to the nature of the request.

“We don’t know when or how long we’ll have him,’’ Thompson said. “But we think we should know pretty soon.’’

Having Smith available is one thing; if Smith is ready another. The one-time top recruit followed up a conference all-freshman season with an average sophomore season, his playing time diminishing as the season progressed.

His lack of dedication exasperated Ben Howland, who privately and publicly fumed at his big man’s lack of progress.

Six games into his junior year and Howland’s final turbulent year, Smith elected to transfer.

Georgetown, which opens the season on Nov. 8 against Oregon in South Korea, offers not only a fresh start but also a coach who suffers no fools. Certainly Smith is to blame for his own failures, but he was also caught in a Westwood soap opera that wasn’t good for anyone.

“He has to make a decision if he wants to be good or not,’’ Thompson said. “He has all the tools. He always has. When and if he commits, he’ll see the positive results. It’s a process.’’

What will be especially interesting to watch is how Smith blends in to a team that cares about its defense above its offense. That wasn’t exactly UCLA’s MO last season, unless matador defense is a new trend.

Thompson peppered his first practice with challenges to his team about its defense, promising later that “we will guard.’’

Plenty was made about the Hoyas’ lack of offensive fireworks last season, a display that might fizzle even more sans Otto Porter, but Thompson argues that not enough was said about the other side of the ball. While it mmight have lacked in aesthetics, Georgetown did hold teams to just 56.4 points per game, practically suffocating foes into defeat.

The long and lanky Hopkins and the worker bee Lubick understand what’s expected on that end.

Smith, who didn’t exactly dash back on transition for UCLA, will have to learn.

“We’ll see how it all plays out,’’ Thompson said. “But regardless, I think this team has a chance to be very, very good.’’

Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak was an NBA journeyman for more than a decade before he entered the coaching ranks.

He played for six NBA squads, a tenure that included a lengthy stretch with the Milwaukee Bucks.

The bicycle thief he captured on Saturday might not have known that. But he clearly recognized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to run from the 6-foot-9, 220-pound man.

Krystkowiak saw the man riding a bike while towing another. Seemed odd to the Utes head coach.

So, he …

Well, let the Salt Lake Tribune’s Tony Jones explain …

Upon approaching the man, he forced him to sit on the sidewalk and called campus police, who discovered five stolen phones in his bag upon arrival.

"The guy asked me if I was going to chase him if he attempted to run," Krystkowiak said Saturday night. "I told him that if he tried to run, I was going to chase him and tackle him. Honestly, I was hoping that he’d run. I guess a good thief would’ve run before I caught up to him."

The incident began at 7:30 a.m. when Krystkowiak was walking to the basketball offices to prepare for basketball practice — the Utes officially started on Friday afternoon in preparation of the new season, now five weeks away.

According to Krystkowiak, the man was riding a bike while holding another bike, which seemed odd. That’s when he decided to approach the man.

"He started telling me all kinds of stories," Krystkowiak said. "I guess it was a good way to start the day."

The moral of the story? Don’t mess with a guy who played in the NBA during the ’80s and early ’90s. The rules were different then.

The Detroit Pistons tried to harm Michael Jordan whenever they played the Chicago Bulls. The New York Knicks had guys like Anthony Mason and Charles Oakley, who would have fought in the UFC if it had been prominent then.

Krystkowiak battled these men every night in the league. You had to be tough to survive.

That bicycle thief is lucky Krystkowiak didn’t have a flashback. Yes, he would’ve tackled him. Or worse.

There weren’t any refs around to stop him.

On Twitter, the coach called himself “Barney Fife.” Nah.

More like “Blade.”

Andy Katz discusses the growing popularity of Georgia coach Mark Fox, the disturbing trend of tampering complaints and the diagnosis for San Diego State assistant coach Mark Fisher.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Next up: trickle-down realignment in the Western Athletic Conference.

Inequality is a defining characteristic of college basketball. Heck, it might be the defining quality. Without the massive gulf between college basketball's haves and have-nots, the NCAA tournament wouldn't be so captivating. Inequality gave us Cinderella. It has its pluses.

It also skews every discussion about the sport. We forget just how many of Division I's basketball schools have less in common with Kentucky than Division II. We forget how diverse the landscape really is. We forget about the little guys -- at least until 160 of them defeat a landmark stipend proposal, to name just one example.

It should be no surprise, then, that the conference-realignment headlines had the same selective focus. For the past two years, the Division I elite have jockeyed and clamored for spots in bigger, better leagues, each new development breathlessly covered on a hourly basis. Less well-known is the way realignment has trickled down to even the smallest, least monied leagues. No mid-major league offers a more instructive example than the Western Athletic Conference.

The WAC you'll see in 2013-14 looks almost nothing like the WAC of last season or years prior. The Mountain West vacuumed up Utah State (the WAC hoops standard-bearer for much of the past decade, featuring one of the best home crowds in the country) and San Jose State. Denver took off for the Summit League. Louisiana Tech and UTSA joined a hollowed-out Conference USA. Texas State and UT Arlington found a home in the Sun Belt. That's -- count 'em -- seven teams from a previously 10-team league that will no longer be in the conference in 2013-14. And next summer, when Idaho makes its official move to the Big Sky, that'll be eight. "Decimation" is the word that comes to mind. Nothing but the bones of the carcass remain.

But there is some good news. Marvin Menzies' New Mexico State program -- the WAC's NCAA tournament representative for three of the past four seasons -- stayed put. And while there's no question the WAC's quality has taken a significant hit, it has re-established itself as a home for programs that desperately needed a conference. Chicago State is a perfect example: After years spent as a guarantee-game punching bag in the loosely affiliated Great West, Chicago State finally has a league it can sell to lower-tier local prospects. Cal State Bakersfield was an independent; Grand Canyon is graduating from Division II.

There are dozens of stories here, stories of players and programs previously relegated to the sport's lowest caste finding their footing in a league that needs them every bit as much as the reverse. It might not make a whole lot of geographical sense, and it might not always offer the best basketball. But it is a fascinating realignment case study worth checking in on throughout the season.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Today: Havoc in the Atlantic 10.

The backlash is bound to happen soon.

You know how this works: As soon as any style or system or musical genre or meme or anything else reaches cultural critical mass, people get sick of hearing about it. They get grumpy. They start finding flaws, start calling names, start parsing the image from the substance. The Internet allows us to wage these backlashes publicly and at lightning speed, but it's not a new phenomenon. We're Americans. We build you up, and we tear you down. It's always been this way.

Since 2011, when Shaka Smart led his suddenly scorching Rams from the First Four in Dayton to the Final Four in Houston, VCU men's basketball has been on the steady, comfortable ascension portion of the backlash curve. More specifically, the defensive style pioneered by Smart -- HAVOC, he calls it, in all capitals -- has become the hottest, and best-branded, system in all of college hoops. The best part? It works.

Well, sort of. This is why I fear the backlash: Because HAVOC, in which Smart's players aggressively smother opposing ball handlers over the entire floor, for the entire game, got exposed.

Just a few months after the Rams dominated point guard-less Butler, and had the whole world singing HAVOC's praises, a team with a very good point guard proved that if VCU couldn't force turnovers, it couldn't get stops. The numbers bore that out: In 2012-13, VCU forced opponents to turn the ball over on 28.5 percent of its possessions, the highest mark in the country. But if teams didn't turn the ball over, they shot well, grabbed a ton of offensive rebounds, and went to the free throw line all the time. In March, when Naismith player of the year Trey Burke shrugged off the HAVOC, VCU's high-octane system shut down.

That's why this is a pivotal season for the Rams, and for Smart. This may be his most talented team, with few obvious challengers in the realignment-thinned Atlantic 10. But can VCU adjust? Can it force gobs of turnovers without surrendering the other defensive factors? This is the defining question of VCU's 2013-14 season.

But for now, forget all that. Because from an entertainment perspective, there are few teams in the country that offer more fun for your buck than VCU -- gritty, speedy guards flying up and down the floor, harassing opposing ball handlers into submission, the Siegel Center crowd roaring its approval. Flaws or not, VCU's HAVOC is not to be missed.

While the rest of the basketball world debates whether Andrew Wiggins will be the top pick in the 2014 NBA draft, his college coach is waiting for him to become the best player on his team.

"He’s been marginal," Kansas coach Bill Self said last week. "Compared to what people are saying, I think he’ll have some ups and downs."

That’s not meant to be a jab at Wiggins. Self is quick to add that he has never seen anyone with as much promise and explosiveness as Wiggins. "We’ve never had anybody who can do what he can do," he said.

But Self is also about reality, not hyperbole, and reality is on the court at Allen Fieldhouse, not on Twitter.

And the reality is Wiggins might be a basketball prodigy whose legend already has grown to almost urban myth, and whose most recent game was against high school kids.

Wiggins’ jump-out-of-the-gym talent is eye-popping, but to succeed as a collegiate player he has to learn to be more than just the occasional exclamation point.

That’s what Self is waiting on.

"You’d watch him play 10 minutes in a game and leave out of there going, 'Wow,' " Self said. "He makes plays that truly leave you in awe. But he doesn’t know yet how to play hard consistently. He can definitely do that. He just has to learn how."

Wiggins isn’t unusual. In fact, in these fast-twitch times, he’s the norm, merely the latest in a succession of guys tagged "It" for the season -- following in the oversized footsteps of Nerlens Noel, Anthony Davis, John Wall, Harrison Barnes, Derrick Rose, Greg Oden, Michael Beasley, Kevin Durant, all the way back to a guy named Manning at Kansas.

They are the next LeBron, the next sure thing, their team’s savior and the game’s future. Most -- though not all -- have handled the burden extraordinarily well and even more surprisingly, most -- though not all -- have lived up to the hype, but it’s a head-swimming ascension for even the coolest customer.

By all accounts, Wiggins is humble, despite all of the attention, a "sweet kid," according to Self.

Just a few months ago, Wiggins was trying to find the right cummerbund for the prom.

Now he’s posing for GQ.

It puts college coaches in a quandary. In these hyperattentive times, they have to find the proper balance, to protect their players from the insanity without coddling them on the court.

"It’s just been harder, faster, tougher so far, but at some point I have get inside his noggin," Self said. "He’s been humbled already and that’s a good thing. I just hope the expectations don’t weigh him down too much."

It’s up to Self to make sure they don’t, and it's up to the coach to tell it like it is. The rest of the world can debate whether Andrew Wiggins is the future top pick; it’s up to Self to be a realist.

1. UCLA made it official with a press release on Thursday that former UTEP signee Isaac Hamilton is on scholarship and enrolled for fall classes. But the release wasn't clear about if he was going to play this season. There was a reason for that omission. According to multiple sources, UCLA has moved on a waiver for Hamilton to play this season. The Miners didn't release Hamilton from his National Letter of Intent and his appeal to the NLI was denied. UCLA is still holding out hope Hamilton could be cleared. The 6-foot-5 Hamilton is prepared to sit and the stated purpose of leaving UTEP for UCLA was to be close to his ailing grandmother. UCLA coach Steve Alford said the versatile guard would fit in well with the Bruins. He would. UCLA needs another potential scorer and someone with length on the perimeter. Hamilton averaged 23.5 points last season for St. John Bosco High in Bellflower, Calif. If Hamilton were to get eligible, then the Bruins would add depth in October to a position that desperately needs it.

2. Memphis doesn't open the season until Nov. 14, which means the Tigers can't start practicing Friday like many of the schools that open the season Nov. 8. That's fine with coach Josh Pastner. He wants to manage the preseason grind while pushing his guys, but knows he needs to preserve them some for later in the year. He said the Tigers will start practicing Oct. 3 and within the first week he will give the Tigers a three-day weekend off. He said he remembered his former coach, Arizona's Lute Olson, building in a three-day break for the Wildcats to avoid preseason burnout. The Tigers will have a veteran team entering the American Conference, especially on the perimeter, and the maturity with the team should lend itself well to handling a spread out practice schedule early in the preseason.

3. Credit new Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan for his patience. He didn't overreact to the potential thin roster when he took over. He collected some transfers, but all with a story to tell, and waited out the waiver process. And it worked. Rutgers found out Thursday Pitt transfer J.J. Moore was eligible immediately. That came on the heels of Iowa State transfer Kerwin Okoro getting his waiver. Jerome Seagears was allowed to come back to Rutgers after a brief spring stint at Auburn without any penalty. The Scarlet Knights now have the depth to be competitive and an intriguing team in the American Conference before moving to the Big Ten.

ESPN college basketball insider Jeff Goodman breaks down when he expects North Carolina guard P.J. Hairston to play this season.

Paul Biancardi breaks down Jahlil Okafor, the No. 1 prospect in the ESPN 100, and the fact that Okafor and Tyus Jones, who is No. 4 overall, want to be a package deal. So the question becomes how likely is that to happen?

If you have to have a sudden flurry of injuries, it's better to have them now than in January.

That's the best possible outlook for Indiana coach Tom Crean right about now. Just a few days after it announced freshman guard Troy Williams would miss "the next few weeks" with a hand injury, on Thursday Indiana revealed that fellow freshman Luke Fischer sprained his shoulder in a scrimmage this week. The good news, beyond the fact that both injuries came in September, is that Fischer's injury is also of the "few weeks" variety according to the school; he isn't likely to miss a large swath of time. The bad news? The next few weeks are pretty important, too.

That is especially the case for Indiana. No team, save Kentucky and Kansas, needs its freshmen to take immediate steps like IU. The Hoosiers return just one starter, sophomore Yogi Ferrell, and waved farewell to four 1,000-point career scorers, two of which were reliable seniors (Christian Watford and Jordan Hulls), two of which were top-five NBA picks (Victor Oladipo and Cody Zeller). Crean has established an unmistakable program momentum, one he has planned to sustain through solid recruiting, and he has done exactly that -- ESPN's recruiting experts rank IU's 2013 class No. 4 in the country, behind only Kentucky, Kansas and Memphis.

Fischer might be the most important player to that effort. Much of the summer's attention in Bloomington has focused on Noah Vonleh, and rightfully so -- Vonleh is a top-15 player in a loaded class, a likely lottery pick, and an athletic freak of nature who by all accounts has treated his first summer on a college campus like an 1980s action movie star in a training montage. Fischer's presence, on the other hand, has largely gone unnoticed. This despite the fact that a) Fischer is the No. 4 center in his class and the No. 34 player overall and b) the best shot Indiana has of replacing Zeller's interior dominance -- namely his ability to earn trips to the free throw line.

The Williams injury is probably less impactful, despite his status as a four-star player. Crean has plenty of guards and wings to throw at the problem. Jeremy Hollowell is a very promising sophomore, Will Sheehey is still in the building, freshman Stanley Robinson is comparable, Vonleh is versatile facing up, and so on. An anchor on the low block is the truly pressing need.

It's hardly a dire situation. A few weeks and zero games missed, as Crean said about Williams, is "minor in the scheme of things." But if IU wants to make the transition into its post-Zeller (or maybe post-Hulls?) era seamless, its prospects have to make good on their potential right away. That process has already begun, and it will continue long after Fischer and Williams have healed. But the first official practice of the season less than 30 hours away, a promising but unusually young Indiana finds itself at an unfortunate cohesion disadvantage. The clock is already ticking.

When a coach loses his job the way Mike Rice lost his job at Rutgers last spring — when video of insane practice abuses becomes a mainstream living-room talking point that furrows brows on the "Today Show" and raises cackles on "Saturday Night Live" — you do not expect the recovery to be quick.

Usually, Rice-level disasters are attended by nuclear fallout. Players flee the scene. Recruiting connections dry up. It takes years to restore a program's good name, to prove to parents that their kids are in good hands.

Considering Rutgers is not exactly a paragon of historical basketball success — and considering the fact that Rice's motivational tactics had yet to yield their first .500 season at the school — well, the calculus should be simple. Rutgers should be awful in 2013-14, and not much better beyond it.

Not so much, actually. The Scarlet Knights might not contend for a national title in 2013-14, but they are looking shockingly competitive. And it's all thanks to transfers.

Yes, transfers, specifically the legislative relief waiver some transfers can receive after appealing the NCAA and proving their move was due to financial hardship or family illness. That's how J.J. Moore, a junior Pittsburgh wing who played good, efficient basketball in just under 20 minutes per game for Jamie Dixon last season, became eligible for the 2013-14 season, as Rutgers announced Monday. The Long Island native transferred to Rutgers to be closer to his family, specifically his daughter and his ailing grandfather, and will be allowed to play right away this season.

Just a few weeks ago, that same mechanism — the legislative relief waiver — appeared to be working against the Scarlet Knights in arguably unfair ways. Rutgers fans, and frankly the entire college hoops world, were puzzled (which is putting it politely): Just months after Rutgers' players began to stream out of the post-Rice morass, receiving waivers along the way, Iowa State transfer Kerwin Okoro, whose father and brother passed away in New York last winter, was denied his claim. The NCAA's famed inconsistency seemed to be at work. The system appeared to be broken. That's what I was writing about, anyway, but Rutgers had more immediate concerns.

And then, just like that, the Okoro insanity quietly lifted. Moore followed. Now Rutgers' lineup will feature Myles Mack and Jerome Seagears, products of Rice's touted 2011 recruiting class, in the backcourt, with Moore on the wing and senior Wally Judge and sophomore Kadeem Jack in the frontcourt.

That is not a bad lineup. Is it good enough to compete with Louisville for the inaugural American Conference crown? No. Is it good enough to make the NCAA tournament? Possibly, though I tend to doubt it. But it is good enough to avoid the archetypal post-scandal season — single-digit wins, depressed fans who resign themselves to cheering for floor burns, court-storms after otherwise mediocre conference wins. Nobody wants that, and Rutgers is likely to avoid it. Meanwhile, Jordan's hands aren't tied by sanctions or lost scholarships. The uniqueness of Rice's firing, as crazy as it was, doesn't come with the usual tangible downsides.

The lesson, as always: The legislative relief waiver giveth and the legislative relief waiver taketh away. Rutgers finally got on the right side of that equation this week.