ESPN Men's Basketball

1. The new Big East pulled off an officiating coup from its competitor the American Athletic Conference when it landed veteran official John Cahill as its coordinator. Art Hyland, who is retiring as the old Big East's coordinator, will stay on as a consultant. The news of these moves was conveyed to coaches during meetings in Florida on Monday and Tuesday. The American conference was also interested in Cahill and will search for a coordinator. The two conferences will likely compete for the same pool of officials when they play on the same date, mostly Saturdays. The buzz on the meetings was positive as the 10 schools, with their coaches and athletic directors, discussed the future with their television partner, Fox sports. The coaches weren't tipped on the next commissioner, but were told a name would be revealed soon. The schools still don't know which days they will be playing on during the conference season as Fox plans the winter schedule.

2. Tuesday's NBA draft lottery worked out perfectly for Nerlens Noel. If Cleveland takes him No. 1, he won't have all the pressure on him to produce immediately as he returns from surgery on his anterior cruciate ligament. The Cavaliers have a star in Kyrie Irving, a first-team all-rookie player in Dion Waiters and can afford to wait on Noel if need be next season. Noel would probably not be best served in Orlando (the Magic got the No. 2 pick), where the expectation would be for him to contribute sooner. The past two centers Orlando has picked at the top of the first round -- Dwight Howard and Shaquille O'Neal -- are unfair comparison. The Cavs have flourished in finding the right young talent through the draft in the post-LeBron era. Noel would fit in well with this organization.

3. Mike Rice might never get another head or assistant coaching job in the sport. But he must not have been looking to be coddled or seeking sympathy in entering John Lucas' program in Houston -- Lucas doesn't do either. He plays it straight and will work with Rice on anger management. Rice has to be a productive member of society for his family, and one would assume he needs to work. If there was anyone in basketball who can help Rice in his recovery, it's Lucas.

Sheldon Jeter was promising last season. The Vanderbilt freshman averaged 17.5 minutes and 5.5 points per game for the Commodores in 2012-13, the kind of performance that positioned him as a fulcrum of Vanderbilt's arduous post-John Jenkins/Jeffrey Taylor/Festus Ezeli rebuilding effort. The future was bright.

The only problem? Jeter doesn't want to play at Vanderbilt anymore. On Friday, the Beaver Falls, Pa., native announced his intentions to transfer closer to home "due to personal issues." Bummer, but hey, it happens, right? Transfers are a part of the modern college game, unfortunately. Vanderbilt would have to wave farewell and hope other newcomers could take over Jeter's prospective role.

If only things were so simple. On Tuesday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Ray Fittipaldo reported, according to multiple sources, that coach Kevin Stallings was blocking Jeter's transfer to Pittsburgh, which is a 20-minute drive from Beaver Falls, Jeter's hometown. That leaves Jeter and his family to appeal Stallings' decision to Vanderbilt's athletics department brass. If that appeal fails, Jeter will be forced to either find another school or pay Pittsburgh tuition for a season before he can become eligible for a scholarship.

There are a few unknowns here. The first is whether Stallings prevented Jeter from transferring to schools other than Pittsburgh. Another is why Stallings would bother blocking Jeter's transfer to Pittsburgh in the first place. It is not unusual for coaches to stipulate that transfers not be allowed to play for conference opponents or local rivals, but Pitt and Vanderbilt share neither of those connections.

The most frequent off-the-record reason given for this sort of blockage is tampering by the destination program, but there is no evidence of that here. It may well be that Stallings is displeased that his star freshman wants to attend a school that showed interest in him but didn't have a scholarship to offer in 2012-13, especially after Jeter proved himself on Stallings' watch. For their part, the Commodores aren't offering any clarification. When reached by ESPN.com Tuesday afternoon, a Vanderbilt spokesman said only that Stallings "doesn't have any comment."

Whatever the reasons and scope of Stallings' decision, it should not be received well. St. Joe's coach Phil Martelli has never quite recovered from the hit his reputation rightfully took after he stuck little-used transfer Todd O'Brien in NCAA purgatory because, as O'Brien told Sports Illustrated in 2011, Martelli said O'Brien had "wronged him." Bo Ryan came under fire in 2012 for the Jarrod Uthoff transfer saga, in which Wisconsin's hugely restrictive "blocked" list was eventually whittled down thanks in no small part to widespread public outcry.

People get mad when they hear these stories, and for good reason. College basketball coaches are not only wildly compensated, but able to jump from job to job essentially at will, each new buyout clause superseded by the last. College players, meanwhile, must wait a year to play for a new school as a baseline, even if -- as is usually the case -- their request to transfer is granted and their desired school is approved. The fact that coaches have such tight control over the release and eventual destination of a player on a renewable but non-guaranteed one-year scholarship -- a player who can be run off at a moment's notice and still have to sit out a year -- reeks of the NCAA's antiquated patriarchy in its most odious form.

There may be a valid reason for Stallings' decision, at least by his own reckoning. Or maybe the coach just doesn't want to lose a key piece of his rebuilding effort. Maybe he feels betrayed -- "wronged," as Martelli famously put it.

Unfortunately, none of it matters. All we see from the outside is a college coach telling a player he can't go somewhere based on what amounts to a whim. It is the worst possible look.

New York Knicks forward and perennial NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony is one of Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim's former players, and like most good coaches, Boeheim is loyal to his guys. But Anthony is obviously much more than that. He's the player chiefly responsible for Boeheim's lone national title in the legend's 37-year head-coaching career. His number hangs in the Carrier Dome rafters. He's also a significant donor to the men's and women's programs; his $3 million donation helped Syracuse build a 54,000-square foot, $19 million practice facility that opened in 2009. Its name: the Carmelo K. Anthony Center.

In other words, Boeheim having Melo's back sort of goes without saying. Of course he does, right? Even acknowledging as much, though, the coach's comments to the Syracuse Post-Standard following the Knicks' Eastern Conference semifinals loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday night went above and beyond the call of duty. They're also pretty hilarious. To wit:

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim maintains little hope that former Syracuse star Carmelo Anthony can win an NBA title with the New York Knicks.

"Not on that team," Boeheim said. "He did what he can do. He played very well the final game. Everybody's killing him but Tyson Chandler just didn't try to catch the ball. He threw him the ball and Tyson Chandler went like this (Boeheim dodged in a chair in his office in the Carmelo K. Anthony Center). He was wide open. He should have been looking for the ball right here. Kenyon Martin should have been looking for the ball. They both went like this (Boeheim dodged again). Carmelo gets turnovers and the announcers aren't smart enough to even think, 'Well, the guy should try to catch the ball.'"

The mental image I have of Jim Boeheim impersonating Tyson Chandler dodging a pass is ... well, it's spectacular, frankly. It's also kind of endearing! Boeheim may be a Melo fan first and foremost, but he sounds like your average Knicks supporter, crankily tossing recriminations in the wake of another disappointing playoffs performance in an otherwise promising season.

For whatever it's worth, Boeheim also has it right, at least in the macro. He talked about the difference in talent level between the Knicks and the Heat, where LeBron James' next-best options are Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Ray Allen, all of whom are likely to be Hall of Famers. Anthony, on the other hand, dug into the playoff trenches with an ailing, aging Chandler, a Jason Kidd who suddenly lost all ability to put the ball in the basket, a reclamation-era Ray Felton, a basically useless Amar'e Stoudemire and a supposed go-to second scorer (J.R. Smith) who spent a decent portion of the playoffs either struggling or being publicly called out for "clubbing" by Rihanna.

Anthony, meanwhile, averaged 28.8 points per game in 12 playoff appearances. Because he plays in New York, the focus on some of his fourth-quarter struggles will be massively amplified, but I think we can all agree he wasn't the sole reason the Knicks lost to the Pacers. Far from it.

Of course, all of these arguments -- much like the mess surrounding Derrick Rose's return -- merely serve as pleasant distractions from the unpleasant fact that Anthony, while very good, isn't LeBron James, because no one is. Until James decides to stop making the Eastern Conference his personal plaything, everyone else is playing for a spot in the conference finals. This is the NBA's dreary reality. Everyone should be used to it by now.

Anyway, it's kind of fun to see Boeheim -- who coached Tyson Chandler in the 2010 FIBA Worlds, it should be noted -- put his frustrated fan cap on, if only for a moment. We've all been there.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Earlier this month, coaches and administrators gathered at a local hotel for the annual Villa 7, a program that was created to help assistants navigate the pipelines that often lead to head-coaching gigs.

Jim Delany, Big Ten commissioner, attended the event and took some time to speak with ESPN.com about the league’s basketball product.

How strong is Big Ten basketball right now following last season’s success?

Delany: We had a good year. We’ve got good coaches. We’ve got good players. We’ve developed some players. I don’t think anyone understood how good Trey Burke was going to be or [Victor Oladipo]. Both great athletes who really grew a lot as players. So we had a fun year. I mean, I know that everyone talks about the regular season, but our regular season was fun to watch, stadiums were full, ratings were good and teams were good teams. We’ll have our ups and we’ll have our downs. So it feels better to win than not. I feel good about our basketball.

Both Maryland and Rutgers will join the league soon. What’s the current appetite for additional expansion?

Delany: I think it slowed down a lot. It seems that maybe there’s an opportunity to integrate and to consolidate. I don’t know where anyone got the idea of 16 or 18. We had 11 and that was comfortable for us for 20 years. Then we decided to make a change. There were a lot of changes happening around us. We’re just glad that Maryland and Rutgers, two flagship universities, important markets, contiguous states, both members of the AAU [Association of American Universities], were interested in casting their lot with us. Our job, I think, is to build with them, help them transition and over the long term, make them happy they’re in the Big Ten.

Multiple rule changes were recently proposed for college basketball. Adjusting the shot clock, however, was not one of them. What do you think about the decision to leave it at 35 seconds?

Delany: I think we ought to work with what we have. I think I’m a huge believer in the law of unintended consequences. I also believe in experimentation. So I think it’s important to take one experiment at a time. It’s like any other experiment that you do. You want to control the variable so if something does change, you know what caused it.

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee recently recommended the expansion of instant replay. What’s your view on the current use of instant replay in college basketball?

Delany: I like those [recommendations]. I think you want to use technology without interfering with the game. [The Big Ten] experimented ourselves a little bit with holding replay on a 3-point shot until the next dead ball situation. I think that saved some time. I like the NBA procedure where they check who the ball might have gone off of in the last couple minutes. I think that’s good. Put it this way: You can recover from a bad call in the second minute of the game a lot better than you can in the last minute. It’s true, mistakes are made throughout. But if you can correct it with technology without affecting the rhythm of the game, I think that’s a good thing.

Once again, the Big Ten was the strongest basketball brand in the country during the regular season. But the league’s members failed to win a national title. The Big Ten has not earned a national title since Michigan State won the crown in 2000. How important is a national championship to the league’s overall reputation in college basketball?

Delany: I wish we had 11. But I love our programs. I love our coaches and players. We’ve had 10 or 11 teams in the Final Four. They’ve put themselves in a position to win it. I think Coach [Dean] Smith was in six before he won one. I think Coach K was in three or four before he won one. ... You tip your hat to the guys who do win it. You have tremendous respect for them. As long as we can continue to produce a lot of high-quality programs, ours will come over time.

As the league expands, how will additional travel to the East Coast affect athletes in the classroom?

Delany: Really, the additional travel time to the East Coast -- these guys are flying charters -- is probably 30 minutes. If you’re going from Minneapolis to Purdue, it’s probably 50 minutes. And so, I think there is pressure on the student-athlete. I think we ask a lot of them. I also think that they have a lot of support. There’s a lot of academic support. We try to provide a couple days of prep, we try to do the right sequencing. But there’s no doubt: To be a student-athlete in today’s environment, both academically and athletically, is taxing. That’s why they get the academic support. That’s why we try to increase the standard so kids come in ... so that they’re ready to play and go to school.

Editor’s Note: This month, ESPN Insider’s college basketball and recruiting experts are teaming up to examine how 15 of the nation’s best recruiting classes will fit in with their teams in the 2013-14 season. Today's featured program: Michigan . Check out the Nation blog each morning for a corresponding post on the key returnee for each of the 15 teams.

Glenn Robinson Jr. was a star for the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1990s. My hometown squad picked Robinson in the 1994 NBA draft with the No. 1 pick. He did not look like a stud. He didn’t have an imposing physique, he always seemed sleepy, and he wasn’t very explosive. But he’d torch you.

Robinson was an All-American at Purdue. His son, Glenn Robinson III, has the same potential. But he’s a different player.

He’s flashier. He doesn’t have his father’s jump shot (yet), but his father didn’t have his athleticism, either. Still, he did enough in his first season at Michigan to encourage lottery chatter with regard to his draft stock. But he came back.

Mitch McGary, another kid who passed on millions of dollars for another shot at the national title, will return, too. Incoming freshmen Zak Irvin, Mark Donnal and Derrick Walton are all top-100 prospects per RecruitingNation.

The Wolverines have the talent to win a Big Ten title and make a run in the NCAA tournament again. For that to materialize, however, Robinson -- the most important returning player on the roster -- must don a cape and play a starring role for the Wolverines.

Robinson’s captivating debut featured the following stat line: 11.0 PPG, 5.4 RPG, 1.0 SPG and 57 percent shooting from the field. His offensive rating of 128.4 was ranked 10^th nationally per KenPom.com (regardless of possessions used).

What more could John Beilein have wanted from a first-year player?

But Robinson will be asked to lead the program now. While he is an elite talent, he also benefited from a system that featured many weapons most teams could not defend.

Trey Burke, the reigning Wooden Award winner, was the best player in America. By the end of the season, McGary was one of the nation’s top bigs. Tim Hardaway Jr. was worth 14.5 PPG and a 38 percent clip from the 3-point line.

Meanwhile, Robinson blossomed as a run-the-floor-and-score forward. He had so many pockets to impact the game because Michigan was a matchup nightmare for most teams. Plus, the Wolverines made nearly 40 percent of their 3-point attempts. Pick your poison.

Only one squad found a way to silence Michigan in the NCAA tournament. Louisville. In the national championship game.

The particulars in Ann Arbor will change next season, though. With a move to his natural small forward position, Robinson could put up tantalizing numbers. He’ll have the ball more often, which will position the sophomore to control each offensive possession. He’ll be the center of Michigan’s offensive attack and he’ll put in a lot of work off ball screens, too. Overall, Robinson should be a more unpredictable threat next season.

But offense is just one aspect of his transition.

Although Beilein is recognized for his 1-3-1 zone, his team played the bulk of its possessions in man-to-man last season. As a power forward, Robinson was often forced to defend bigger, stronger players throughout the season. His length and athleticism will be helpful as he’s assigned to smaller, quicker athletes at his new position.

He says he is ready for the challenges. Robinson recently told mlive.com: “I feel like I really haven't showed everybody what I can really do on a basketball court. Hopefully I can come back and shock some people. And maybe make some people think about what I can do.”

You have to admire the confidence, but he’ll have to adapt next season. Burke won’t save the day anymore. That will be Robinson’s job and that’s not an easy adjustment for any player.

Sometimes, it’s an impossible transition for an underclassman, but it’s also intriguing. If Robinson averaged double figures despite playing an unnatural position, then what will he do when he’s more comfortable and frequently handling the ball?

The answer to that question could dictate the final destination of Michigan basketball in 2013-14.

Remember when the 2013-14 Kansas Jayhawks were going to be a shaky proposition? I do!

Just two weeks ago, Kansas was the team losing all five of last season's starters, among them four seniors and one freshman top-five draft pick. Left in their wake was an unusually young team. Sophomore Perry Ellis would have to be a star. Naadir Tharpe would have to develop into a less erratic distributor. A crop of promising freshmen would have to step up right away.

After nine straight titles, Kansas' stranglehold on the top of the Big 12 must be taken as an article of faith. But with Oklahoma State's Marcus Smart back, and Baylor looking plenty talented in its own right, said stranglehold appeared to be straining at the knuckles. Would this finally be the year?

Those were the days, weren't they? Of course, that was before Kansas landed arguably the best young prospect in the past decade in Andrew Wiggins, and also before Monday evening's news that Memphis senior Tarik Black had chosen to play his final year of collegiate eligibility -- available immediately via the graduate transfer exemption -- in Lawrence, Kan.

Black's decision is more icing than cake. Whereas Wiggins was a revolutionary addition, by all accounts the type of player who could have lifted an 18-16 Florida State team into ACC title contention, Black is merely a nice bonus. Which is not to say he isn't talented. He is, and always has been. But after arriving as a highly touted prospect, he was disappointing in three seasons at Memphis, primarily thanks to his inability to stay out of foul trouble. Over three seasons, Black averaged 5.7 fouls per 40 minutes. His lowest rate, 5.1 as a sophomore in 2011-12, also coincided with his most efficient performances. His 68.9 effective field goal percentage was the second-highest in the country that season.

Whether or not Black will be able to stay on the court long enough to put his combination of skills and size to work is an open question, but it's almost beside the point. Kansas needed another big body, not a star, and preferably a veteran. Black should be able to play 20-25 effective minutes, when he can take some pressure off the nation's top-ranked incoming center, Joel Embiid. That's a baseline expectation KU coach Bill Self would surely be happy with. Anything else is, again, a bonus.

In any case, any thoughts you might have had about the Jayhawks two weeks ago are essentially irrelevant. Kansas is still young, sure, but not as young as it was. It is more talented than ever now, with the exact thing it lacked -- a veteran in the frontcourt -- signed up for the ride. The end result is another KU team that will enter the season as the Big 12 favorite and a national title contenders. Same as it ever was.

1. The American Conference will have an 18-game true round-robin schedule with 10 league members, according to sources at the league meetings in Florida. The conference also discussed the site of the 2014 men's basketball tournament and Memphis is the early frontrunner. The hope is that the FedEx Forum can be a destination that supports all of the games, not just the Tigers. Hartford and Mohegan Sun Casino were also candidates and are still in pursuit among a few others. The American will play primarily conference games on Thursday or Wednesday-Saturday. The conference will be up to 11 teams in 2014-15 when Louisville and Rutgers leave for the ACC and Big Ten, respectively, and East Carolina, Tulane and Tulsa join the league. Louisville coach Rick Pitino and Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan weren't in attendance but Tulane's Ed Conroy, East Carolina's Jeff Lebo and Tulsa's Danny Manning were at the meeting. The American Conference has a year to discuss how the 11-team schedule will unfold but there are likely two choices. The league could play eight teams twice and two teams once (one home and one away) or go with 20 league games for a true round-robin. The league's coaches were shown the new logo for the league which will be unveiled soon. The league is also in competition with its former members, the new Big East, in trying to secure a new coordinator of officials. Both leagues will be attempting to lure the top officials as they play likely at the same time on Saturdays.

2. Memphis is putting together another stellar nonconference schedule with a home-and-home series with Oklahoma State, starting in Stillwater, a home-and-home series with Gonzaga, starting in Memphis, playing Florida in the Jimmy V Classic in New York City as well as being in the Old Spice Classic. Memphis is in the event with Oklahoma State, which means the Cowboys and Tigers will likely be on opposite brackets to avoid playing twice. If they do then it would likely not be until either the championship or in a loser's bracket.

3. Oklahoma State is also trying to put together a strong slate with a team that can contend for a conference title. The Cowboys will host Memphis and South Carolina, play at South Florida, are in the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, and play Colorado at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The game is a prep game for the Buffaloes in advance of the Pac-12 tournament at the same site, while the Cowboys get a quality NCAA-like game against a former Big 12 rival. The Cowboys host Robert Morris, the NEC champs and slayer of Kentucky, but are still looking for a quality opponent for the all-college classic in Oklahoma City.

The world of the NCAA is a strange place. In the NCAA's world, small, silly things can be much bigger and much more serious than in any other possible context. For example, a photo of a recruit at a coach's house can be seismic, the conspiratorial equivalent to the Nixon tapes. It can get a successful coach not only fired but show-caused. It can throw the program he built into a bit of a rebuilding phase. It can reorient his career path from basketball to marketing.

That's what happened to Bruce Pearl, whose crime was less about having then-prospect Aaron Craft at his house for a barbecue then lying about it to NCAA enforcement staff, which is the biggest single no-no in the NCAA's long and rich-mahogany-scented no-no tomes. It was serious stuff, not only earning Pearl what amounts to a three-year ban on his ability to coach college basketball, but uprooting him from a program he had built into a consistent winner while also squandering the long and arduous climb Pearl made after a decade spent in coaching purgatory. Honestly, it was kind of sad.

Outside of the context of the NCAA, though, all of this stuff can seem kind of funny? A barbecue? A sneaky photograph? What is this, "Columbo?" When someone who is primarily an NBA fan hears about all of this, they scoff incredulously. Serious though it may be in one context, to many the NCAA just seems funny.

Which is why I found Pearl's son, Steven Pearl's, radio ad below for a local Knoxville barbecue joint to be so utterly hilarious. It includes such excellence as "If there’s one thing we Pearls know, it’s how to throw a barbecue" and "Just remember, my two rules for legendary backyard barbecues … 1) Get your food from Calhoun’s and 2) Absolutely no photography" before closing with a gem of a legal disclaimer: "Offer not available to Aaron Craft." Amazing.



At this point, apparently the Pearl family can not only joke about the fateful barbecue, but can do so to their own financial gain. It's a sign of the mostly forgiving attitude most UT fans still have toward the Pearls that Steven Pearl could have a local radio show in the first place, let alone get paid to reference what was at the time a really baffling and traumatic series of events for Vols fans. And it totally works! Impressive, right?

Of course, the elder Pearl has never been shy about making jokes at his own expense. In 2011, as he waited for the NCAA hammer to fall, he participated in a United Way event that cast him in the role of celebrity gas-pumper. As he said at the time: "In coaching, you always need to have a profession you need to fall back on if you don't win enough games, so I'm just here practicing."

Fancy silhouetted court designs are all the rage these days and, as with most garish collegiate sports-related designs, we can safely blame Oregon. The Ducks' "Tall Firs" court at Matthew Knight Arena was groundbreaking when it was unveiled two years ago. It incorporated advanced design principles, local flavor and program history onto what has traditionally been a utilitarian surface.

Of course, the Ducks' design actually came at the expense of the court's utility; until a revision, it didn't even have a visible half-court line. It is also distracting at best (the lights of Matthew Knight combine with the floor to produce more lens flare than a J.J. Abrams film) and ugly at worst (your mileage may vary).

And, predictably enough, exactly none of the above has stopped other teams from trying to capture the branding benefits of loud court designs.

The latest to join the fray is George Washington, which on Monday unveiled a new design for its court at the Charles E. Smith Center. The design, which you can see a larger version of here, adds artistic silhouettes of the the Washington Monument, United States Capitol and White House to the floor, as well as a few pomp-y flags and stars. There is also a hashtag on the proposed design -- "#RaiseHigh" -- which, as the Washington Post's Sarah Kogod notes, could be especially interesting given the NCAA's recent ban of promotional hashtags on football fields. (This is one NCAA rule I think we can all fully support. The world has enough hashtags already.)

So, is George Washington's court awesome? Ugly? Art is a subjective and egalitarian thing, so I won't foist my judgement upon you. But at the very least, GW's design does communicate what it wants to communicate, which, apparently, is to remind people that George Washington is in fact located in Washington, D.C.:

"After our graduating students and student-athletes enjoyed their Commencement ceremony on the National Mall yesterday, unveiling this spectacular new floor design today further emphasizes our campus setting in the heart of D.C.," said Director of Athletics and Recreation Patrick Nero in a release Monday. "When people around the world are watching our games, we want them to immediately recognize and understand the university's unique setting in the middle of the action in this world-class city."

Mission accomplished, right?

Back in February, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski stepped down from Team USA. If you missed it, don't be too hard on yourself; there wasn't a celebration or retirement ceremony or any sort of ritual. Instead, Coach K appeared on "Mike & Mike in the Morning," said his time coaching Team USA -- which included two Olympic gold medals, a 2010 FIBA title with a thrilling team built on young stars, and zero losses since 2006 -- had been an honor. He said he expected USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo to name his successor this summer, and that was basically that. An excellent chapter in Coach K's illustrious coaching history had quietly closed. On to the next.

Turns out, Coach K just can't quit USA Basketball. This past weekend, Coach K told SI.com he is in discussions to return to the team through the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janiero, discussions which Colangelo appears all but set on at this point:

However, Krzyzewski told SI.com on Saturday that he and USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo have been talking about his return "quite a bit."

"I think it's very close to being resolved," Colangelo said in the SI.com report. "That's all I can say for sure. Give it another week and it should be resolved."

And why not? That's the immediate response to all this. If Coach K is still interested in the job, and Colangelo can convince the 66-year-old he has the time and energy to devote himself to it, why wouldn't you lock him up for as long as he wants to do it?

The national team job is not like most coaching jobs. X's and O's are the most visible, and thus the most routinely overrated, part of a coach's job, but never is that more true than with Team USA. Even as the world catches up to us, Team USA will always be the most talented group on the floor. It should beat nearly every opponent, save perhaps Spain, in convincing fashion. We have LeBron James. We're too good. Even so, this presents a different set of coaching challenges. It involves managing an entire team full of big egos. It requires a coach who can focus players on the task at hand without seeming draconian or detail-obsessed. It requires someone to constantly instill the importance of unpaid Olympic basketball to millionaires for whom it must sometimes seem like an unnecessary summertime hindrance.

Coach K has excelled at precisely those things, while also recognizing the difference between NBA and foreign rules and establishing an open, spread offensive style of play (with Carmelo Anthony as a devastating long-range four) that works in the foreign game. He has re-established Team USA as the hegemonic superpower domestic fans demand, and become something of a surrogate collegiate mentor to James and Kobe Bryant, among others. He has checked every possible box.

There are few coaches who could do the same. Phil Jackson, certainly. Greg Popovich, probably. George Karl and Jim Boeheim, maybe. After that, the list of coaches with enough gravitas to walk the tricky tightrope line required to coach a modern Dream Team verges on zero.

Editor's note: This month, ESPN Insider's college basketball and recruiting experts are teaming up to examine how 15 of the nation's best recruiting classes will fit in with their teams in the 2013-14 season. The day's featured program: Ohio State , which Andy Katz delves more into here. Check out the Nation blog each morning for a corresponding post on the key returnee for each of the 15 teams.

I let my enthusiasm for LaQuinton Ross' obvious natural gifts spill out onto Twitter on March 6, as Ohio State was thrillingly engaged in what would end up being its best win of the season:

I feel like LaQuinton Ross could be a top-five pick next summer.

— Eamonn Brennan (@eamonnbrennan) March 6, 2013

Revisiting that tweet reminded me just how silly it seemed at the time, including to many Ohio State fans. Ross? A top-five pick in a loaded draft? Come on, Brennan!

I'll admit it: At the time, it was a bit silly, and not just because Ross didn't even play well at Indiana that night. To that point, Ross, though blessed with a combination of lanky size and perimeter skills, had been a maddeningly inconsistent entity. If you review his overall sophomore season, there is some to like, but still plenty to be cautious about. The 99.6 offensive rating. The 22.7 percent turnover rate. The less-than-stellar work on the boards. The tendency to drift for long stretches.

Then March happened.

Even on a team with Aaron Craft and Deshaun Thomas, no player was as crucial to Ohio State's Elite Eight run as Ross, specifically in difficult wins over Iowa State and Arizona. Against Iowa State, Ross finished 6-of-10 from the field, and 3-of-5 from 3, with most of those shots coming in key moments down the stretch. The Arizona game in Los Angeles was no different, as Ross hit two massive 3s late in the game and finished with 17 points on eight field goals and an offensive rating of 161. Even in OSU's loss to the Shockers, Ross scored 19 points, including 9-of-10 from the free throw line.

There were a handful of moments in each of Ohio State's four tournament games in which Ross was clearly the best and most talented player on the floor. They didn't always last for 40 minutes, but they were there.

The question is whether Ross is ready to replicate that March performance for the length of a college basketball season. This is a massive challenge. Ross won't be asked to do more in the same context as last season. He'll be asked to be the featured scorer on an offense that will desperately need someone to approximate the reliable excellence of NBA-bound forward Deshaun Thomas. Thomas really was excellent: He finished the season with a 114.4 offensive rating while shooting 32.2 percent of Ohio State's available shots while on the floor. The Buckeyes were first and foremost a defensive team, at various times the best in the country (particularly from mid-February on), anchored by players who are not of the go-to offensive breed. But Thomas was not only good in his own right, he demanded so much attention from opposing defenses that he helped turn a team of average scorers into the 12th most efficient in the country, by KenPom.com's adjusted efficiency lights.

In OSU coach Thad Matta's ideal world, Ross would slot right into Thomas' role. The skill sets -- both are essentially face-up wing forwards who can shoot on the perimeter and finish around the rim -- are almost identical. Just make Ross the new Thomas. Easy, right?

In reality, it will be impossible to replace Thomas with just one player. Ross will have to contribute much on the offensive end, but 6-foot-7 junior Sam Thompson -- whose own 112.5 offensive rating is emblematic of Thompson's intelligent and efficient play, as well as his ability to streak toward the rim and finish while there -- will have a large role to play. Junior guard Shannon Scott will have to develop into more of a threat. He will have to be a more confident shooter (he shot just 33 3s, and made just 11, in 2012-13) to help keep defenses honest. And junior center Amir Williams, who also showed long-awaited signs of strength throughout the season, might still become a go-to threat on the low block.

That leaves Craft. There are many great things the Ohio State point guard has brought to the table in his three seasons. He might be the best perimeter defender in the country. His coaches and teammates trust him implicitly. But it seems likely Craft has topped out as an offensive player. He is solid, but he is not going to be the go-to scorer on a national title-type team.

But Craft will be guarding people, as will Thompson and Scott and Lenzelle Smith, which is why we can fairly expect Ohio State to be a defensive monster in the same vein as 2012-13.

Whether the Thomas-less Buckeyes will score at a sufficient rate is the key question of their season. No one looks as likely to answer it as Ross. He appears destined to become a pure scorer. He's too gifted, and playing at a program that has traditionally strip-mined every last bit of talent out of its players, to not get there.

Then again, that's what Ohio State fans have been saying since a raw Ross committed to the Buckeyes two years ago. We've seen glimpses. Are we to assume that Ross' assured March is the turning point, the early warning signs of a star putting it all together? Or was it just a tantalizing but ultimately outlying small sample size?

We'll find out in a few months. Ross might not be a lottery pick, or a top-five pick. Maybe the potential is so bright it is blinding me the point of confusion. But Ross could be all of those things. If he is, I bet we'll find out in 2013-14.

1. Arizona State's Jahii Carson would have been one of the top point guards at the NBA pre-draft combine in Chicago last week. Instead, Carson, who is a second-year freshman after being ineligible in his first season, is returning to school and will be one of a handful of preseason candidates for Pac-12 player of the year. The Sun Devils are already thinking of ways to push the tempo and prepare Carson for a jump to the league. Newly named associate head coach Eric Musselman said the Sun Devils have already been practicing with a 24-second shot clock and put only one 3-point line down on the court -- the NBA distance. "We're going to play faster next season,'' said Musselman. He added the NBA 3-point line is to get the players comfortable with the deep distance. The Sun Devils, though, have some holes with the abrupt departure of shooting guard Evan Gordon, who transferred to Indiana, and the known exit of senior forward Carrick Felix. The Sun Devils finished 9-9 in the Pac-12 but went to the NIT. ASU is trying to be innovative and certainly more interesting next season as a possible NCAA team that shoots with confidence from range and plays at a quick clip to get more possessions.

2. Murray State coach Steve Prohm was in Chicago at the pre-draft combine to watch Isaiah Canaan, his veteran point guard who is sure to be a first-round lock and has the potential to be the next Damian Lillard -- a lower-profile school gem who stars in the league. But Prohm said he has a replacement set -- Zay Jackson. The suspended guard is cleared to join the Racers and be the starting point guard next season. Jackson served 49 days in jail after hitting a man with his car in a Walmart parking lot on Sept. 10. Prohm said Jackson practiced with the team once he was released from jail. He said there wasn't a judicial review board and that the decision for Jackson to come back was made by the athletic department. Prohm said Jackson had a 2.75 grade-point average and has not been an issue since he returned. The Racers will have depth at the position with the eligibility in December of Clemson transfer T.J. Sapp. Prohm isn't pushing the schedule in this transition year and will simply play 29 games without a tournament.

3. Missouri has another solid schedule to sell with nonconference games against Illinois (St. Louis), UCLA, at NC State, West Virginia in the SEC-Big 12 Challenge and Long Beach State. They are also in a tournament in Las Vegas where Missouri has been promised, according to Haith, since it wouldn't face UCLA because the Bruins and Tigers are already scheduled. The other two teams are Nevada and Northwestern. If this were the case then the Las Vegas Invitational can easily manage this by having UCLA and Missouri play Northwestern and Nevada, just alternating.

Editor's Note: This month, ESPN Insider's college basketball and recruiting experts are teaming up to examine how 15 of the nation's best recruiting classes will fit in with their teams in the 2013-14 season. Today's featured program: Memphis , which Jason King delves more into here. Check out the Nation blog each morning for a corresponding post on the key returnee for each of the 15 teams.

It's official, if it wasn't already: NCAA tournament wins are the most valuable commodity in college basketball.

How do I know? Back in November, Memphis coach Josh Pastner was feeling some serious heat. After another disappointing early-season nonconference stretch, the Tigers' intense fan base grew restless. Respected local columnists were echoing laments screamed loudly at television sets throughout the Bluff City, openly wondering if Pastner could actually coach. Memphis seemed thankful for Pastner's prodigious recruiting ability and straight-laced work ethic, but also smarted from a series of first-round tournament exits.

A few months later, in late March, Memphis athletic director Tom Bowen signed Pastner to a contract extension, vowing Pastner would "remain our basketball coach for a long time."

What changed? Memphis beat Saint Mary's in the NCAA tournament, 54-52. Suddenly, thanks to one two-point victory in the Palace of Auburn Hills, it turns out Pastner could coach after all.

The immense silliness of this dynamic isn't limited to Pastner or Memphis, but as we've written before, his situation was a particularly poignant example. In 2011, the Tigers lost 77-75 to a Derrick Williams-led Arizona team (the same one that pummeled No. 1 Duke and Kyrie Irving en route to the Elite Eight). In 2012, they lost to Rick Majerus' diabolical Saint Louis defense. The 2013 Tigers (31-5) may be remembered as the team that got a sizable monkey off Pastner's back, but they finished No. 40 in KenPom.com's adjusted efficiency rankings. The 2012 team -- a drastically underseeded No. 8 that just so happened to play against a drastically underseeded No. 9 coached by one of the great tactical masters in college hoops history -- finished eighth in those same efficiency rankings.

That Pastner was under fire following the former and received a contract extension after the latter should tell you everything you need to know about the psychological stranglehold tourney wins maintain over our collective college hoops consciousness. It must be suffocating.

Perhaps, then, 2013-14 could be a breath of fresh air. Just as Pastner has been freed from the tyranny of small sample sizes, the program he leads is now free of Conference USA, a league it outgrew years before John Calipari jumped to Kentucky. (Speaking of small sample sizes, C-USA's mediocrity in recent years made every Memphis game in November and December utterly crucial and devoid of margin for error. Hence last winter's freakout.) The American Athletic Conference isn't the vintage Big East, but it is a much better league. It will offer more opportunities on a near-nightly basis than C-USA; it will allow Memphis fans to breathe much easier about their March tournament seed even if the Tigers sputter this fall.

Which brings us, finally, to the point of all this: For Memphis to shine in its first post-C-USA season, Joe Jackson has to have the best season of his career.

This may seem obvious. Of course the team's senior point guard and most-used player a year ago has to have a good season. And isn't that the expectation anyway? Shouldn't we pencil that in, and find a more pivotal, younger player?

It's not as obvious as you think. For one, Jackson, a proud hometown kid, has had a mercurial career. Jackson has veered from wildly promising to disappointing to the key cog in a backcourt that carried the Tigers through some truly disappointing frontcourt performances last season (most notably those of Tarik Black and Adonis Thomas, both of whom departed the program this season). The question is whether or not Jackson can take the progress of 2012-13 -- when he shot 44.7 percent from 3 and 54.4 percent from 2, and posted a 112.0 offensive rating -- and combine it with leadership, consistency and fewer turnovers.

That last bit might be the most important. Last season, Memphis' offense scored 1.06 points per trip. That's not bad, but it's not great, and it had a lot to do with the Tigers' 20.8 percent turnover rate. Jackson himself posted a typically high assist rate (27.8 percent), but also turned the ball over on 23.0 percent of his possessions. That was better than his freshman season (29.1 percent), but was a minor regression from 2011-12 (21.6), when his usage rate was three percentage points higher.

If the Tigers shoot the ball as well as they have in recent seasons, fewer turnovers will improve their efficiency almost overnight. Jackson has yet to prove he can reign in his cough-up tendencies and still be his slashing, daring self. He has to find a way to reconcile these competing impulses this season.

He also has to be a leader. Memphis has always felt young in Pastner's tenure. In 2011 and 2012, this was because most of his top contributors, recruited in Jackson's class, were freshmen and sophomores. In 2013-14, in Jackson and shooting guard Chris Crawford, Pastner will finally have genuine four-year starters with full careers full of experience, but his team will once more be very young. In addition to Thomas and Black, Memphis waved farewell to seniors Ferrakohn Hall, Stan Simpson, Charles Holt and D.J. Stephens, as well as junior transfer Antonio Barton. As is tradition, Pastner will bring in a talented class of freshmen, including four ESPN Top 100 prospects (power forward Austin Nichols, small forward Kuran Iverson, small forward Nick King, and point guard Rashawn Powell).

There are some returners to note: Geron Johnson is back, as is sophomore forward Shaq Goodwin, who is probably the most talented player on the roster. Even so, this is still a team that lost four guys to graduation, two to transfer and one to the NBA draft. It is also a team entering a new conference replete with new, more daunting opponents. There are few strings of words more synonymous with "leadership" than "four-year starting point guard." Jackson has to be that guy.

If Jackson were to merely repeat his solid 2012-13 -- if he really has capped out his potential, and really can't help the turnovers -- then Memphis can still be a good team. But if Jackson can put together a performance his hometown will remember him by, this young group might be capable of much more than one overanalyzed NCAA tournament win.

1. Kansas freshman Ben McLemore said Thursday he knew nothing about any payments that AAU coach Darius Cobb told USA Today he received from Rodney Blackstock, he founder and CEO of Hooplife Academy in Greensboro, N.C., to direct McLemore to an agent. Cobb said in the report that he took $10,000 in two separate payments. "I think this was just to attack Rodney Blackstock," McLemore said while he was watching the draft combine in Chicago. McLemore said he did not personally take any money and that he did not commit an NCAA violation. McLemore said he was one of Andrew Wiggins' hosts at Kansas and said Wiggins will fit in perfectly with coach Bill Self. "I know if I was there we would have had one of the best backcourts in the country with me, Wiggins and Naadir Tharpe," McLemore said, adding that he would have loved to have played with Wiggins, but he knows he'll see him in the NBA in a year.

2. Count Marquette coach Buzz Williams in the camp that is frustrated about no commissioner being named of the new Big East yet. The coaches and athletic directors meet Monday in Florida and adviser and former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe will be running the meeting unless someone is suddenly hired over the weekend. Williams said the same issues were discussed at the Final Four and he said he wondered if anything new could be talked about since there is still no leadership. The new 10-team Big East starts competition in August in fall sports. Marquette still needs one more game on its schedule with a slate that includes Ohio State, a road game at Arizona State, the three-game tournament in Anaheim, at Wisconsin and playing New Mexico in Las Vegas.

3. It's great to see when schools take a chance on long-time assistant coaches who deserve a shot to lead a program. That's exactly what UMass-Lowell did with Northeastern assistant Pat Duquette. Duquette had as much a role in developing Boston College into a consistent ACC power during Al Skinner's tenure as any other assistant. Duquette -- who, along with Skinner, was instrumental in finding Oklahoma City's Reggie Jackson when he was a high school player in Colorado -- will have a tall task ahead in leading Lowell into Division I. The program has a four-year probationary period in the America East (replacing Boston University, which is off to the Patriot League) before it can play in the postseason. Duquette sought out the best paths to do just that from his former assistant colleague at BC in Bryant's Tim O'Shea, Nebraska's Tim Miles and North Dakota State's Saul Phillips. The latter two had to take the Bison in a similar path to Division I like Bryant.

In the fall of 2011, after Syracuse and Pittsburgh announced their intentions to leave the Big East and join the ACC, commissioner John Swofford held a conference call. On this call, the ACC commish revealed his league's interest in moving the ACC tournament from its traditional mid-southern location -- since 1954, the tournament has typically been played in North Carolina, in either Raleigh or Greensboro, with occasional stops in Maryland, D.C. and Georgia -- into the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.

Purists blanched, and so did then-Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who appeared on Mike Francesca's popular WFAN sports talk show long enough to describe the unpleasant digestive reflexes Swofford's idea induced.

Tranghese: "You know, Gene DeFillippo of Boston College and John Swofford of the ACC -- I don't think it was their intent, but I found it highly objectionable and I found it disrespectful that on the day Dave Gavitt died they're talking about bringing southern-based teams to Madison Square Garden. Like we're going to go to the Clemson-NC State game. Trust me, Mike, I wanted to throw up when I heard that."

Francesca was equally annoyed.

"They're not bringing the ACC tournament to Madison Square Garden. That is never happening."

Of course, the world looks much different now. Tranghese's replacement, John Marinatto "resigned" and was replaced by former CBS executive Mike Aresco. The Big East's Catholic institutions split to form their own basketball league, and took the old Big East name with them; Aresco was forced to settle on the entirely generic "American Athletic Conference." The Big East as we knew it now looks much more like the old C-USA, and that's before Louisville jumps ship for the ACC in 2014. The Big East as we knew it is dead.

And oh by the way? As ESPN's Brett McMurphy reported Thursday, the ACC is still determined to get its conference tournament in the Garden:

Sources on Wednesday said the conference is "thoroughly investigating" playing its tournament at the Garden, with one source adamant that it eventually would be held in the World's Most Famous Arena, which would take it out of traditional ACC country for the first time.

"We'll be playing there," a source said. "It's just a matter of getting all the legal ramifications worked out."

After all, who is going to stop them? The new Catholic 7-infused Big East has a deal with the building through 2026, but MSG can get out of the deal if the league doesn't meet "certain benchmarks." The ACC is locked in to Greensboro through 2015, but is free to explore its options after that.

Does that mean the ACC should move its tournament to Madison Square Garden? Not exactly. As Pitt coach Jamie Dixon, a proponent of the move, has said, it's going to be "difficult to overcome the tournament's Tobacco Road roots." That's a pretty fair appraisal. Even with Pitt and Syracuse and Notre Dame, unlike the AAC, the ACC still feels like the ACC. It has expanded outward, but its roots are still firmly affixed to the Triangle.

Even so, you can see the appeal. For years, the Big East tournament was the pre-eminent non-NCAA March college hoops event. That had to do with the quality of the league, sure, but it also had to do with the special atmosphere in the Garden, which Dana O'Neil and Conor Nevins captured so brilliantly in this spring's oral history of the tournament. The ACC tournament has never come close to that sort of cachet, atmosphere or coverage, and it's not hard to figure out why Swofford & Co. would be interested in filling what they must see as a rather large hole where the old Big East used to be.

In any case, Francesca's "that is never happening" prediction is looking less and less viable every day. The Big East had a milkshake, but Swofford's straw stretched across the room. You know how that one ends.