ESPN Men's Basketball

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.

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.

1. ESPN top 100 recruit Alex Robinson, a guard out of Arlington, Texas, told CBS Sports.com that opposing coaches tried to use Texas A&M coach Billy Kennedy's Parkinson's disease against him in recruiting. If that did occur then it's another smear against coaches in what can be a muddied water of recruiting. Late Tuesday night, when asked if he was aware of negative recruiting against him due to his condition, Kennedy responded by saying, "I guess." Kennedy added he's doing great and has a "great future." Kennedy moves deliberately and slowly at times. But that hasn't affected his ability to coach. His intensity is still as high as ever, and he has tirelessly worked the recruiting circuit and is making every attempt to make the Aggies relevant in the SEC. Good for Robinson for staying true to a commitment despite the reported negative recruiting tactic.

2. The NIT Season Tip-Off needed two non-Division I schools to fill out its 16-team bracket, released Tuesday. Filling these tournaments with non-Division I schools shouldn't come as a shock. There are so many tournaments and not enough teams to fill them. Part of the problem is the rule preventing teams from the same conference participating in an event. There have been some unavoidable situations due to realignment, with two teams in an event from the same conference, who weren't in the same conference when they signed up for the tournament. The answer might be to waive that rule and allow tournaments to schedule at least one other conference team in an event. The mega conferences will make it even harder to schedule events without taking two teams from the same conference.

3. I do like the seeding, though, for the NIT. Arizona was the No. 1 seed, while Duke was No. 2, Alabama No. 3 and Rutgers No. 4. While the NIT is the last early-season tournament where you have to play your way to the neutral site, I would like to see more matchups in the early rounds of these tournaments based on seeding instead of random draws.

1. Rutgers coach Eddie Jordan said Iowa State transfer Kerwin Okoro will be the Scarlet Knights' fourth guard. Okoro, who received his waiver to play immediately due to his personal hardship, can also play small forward. "Our three guards are all under six-feet tall,'' said Jordan. "We need Kerwin to defend bigger guards.'' Rutgers is still waiting on Pitt transfer J.J. Moore's waiver appeal to play immediately. Jordan said the Scarlet Knights are hoping to hear something this week. Rutgers got good news last week to help clean up a depth issue when Junior Etou was deemed a qualifier. Meanwhile, Illinois coach John Groce said Oregon State transfer Ahmad Starks is still waiting to hear on his waiver to play immediately. The same is true at Oregon where the Ducks are awaiting news on whether Houston's Joseph Young will be allowed to play immediately without sitting out a year.

2. Ole Miss got two injured players back but lost another. Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy said sophomore Terry Brutus is done for the season with a torn ACL, suffered last week in practice. But the Rebels do have forward Aaron Jones back from his ACL injury, which occurred against Kentucky on Jan. 29. Forward Demarco Cox is also back after missing all but seven games last season with a stress fracture in his foot. The depth can still be there for the Rebels up front, despite the loss of Brutus. But the Rebels will go as far as Marshall Henderson can carry them. He is currently suspended but the SEC's top scorer is expected to be back in the good graces by the heart of the season, giving Ole Miss a potent offensive option.

3. The NIT Season Tip-Off is supposed to release its long-awaited bracket Tuesday. This is what we know for sure: the four hosts are Arizona, Duke, Rutgers and Alabama. And you can lock in Arizona and Duke will be on opposite sides of the bracket so they can meet in a potential final at Madison Square Garden the day after Thanksgiving on Nov. 29. If that occurs then you'll get a treat of seeing two of the top freshmen in the country in Arizona's Aaron Gordon and Duke's Jabari Parker. Both of these teams should be considered Final Four contenders. The NIT bracket has been "the best secret in college sports,'' according to Arizona coach Sean Miller. That's called sarcasm and he's right. The bracket has taken way too long to be revealed.

John Saunders shares his thoughts on the NCAA denying a hardship waiver to Kerwin Okoro, who in the span of two months lost his brother to cancer and his father to a stroke.

A former Tennessee women's volleyball assistant coach and a number of staffers at Louisville came to the defense of new Rutgers athletic director Julie Hermann on Sunday, denying allegations made by her former Vols players and championing her character during a 15-year tenure as an administrator at Louisville.

"I was in every huddle and involved in every volleyball substitution, and what they are saying is crazy," said Kim Tibbetts (formerly Kim Zenner), an assistant coach under Hermann beginning in 1992.

For more, read Andy Katz's report here.

NEWARK, N.J. -- The woman hired to clean up Rutgers' scandal-scarred athletic program quit as Tennessee's women's volleyball coach 16 years ago after her players submitted a letter complaining she ruled through humiliation, fear and emotional abuse, The Star-Ledger reported Saturday night on its website.

"The mental cruelty that we as a team have suffered is unbearable," the players wrote about Julie Hermann, hired May 15 as Rutgers' athletic director after serving as the No. 2 athletic administrator at Louisville.

Read more on Hermann by clicking here.