ESPN Men's Basketball

1. College basketball teams are allowed to start practice Sept. 27, but not everyone is enamored with the new schedule that opens up 30 practice days in a 42-day window before the first game. "We are really easing in to the start of practice, so we will be doing a ton of skill work," said Creighton coach Greg McDermott. "I'm not convinced the early start is a great idea. It's already a long season, and we have to make sure we have some legs in February." McDermott said he won't have the team practice three consecutive days until Oct. 11.

2. A number of schools will sprinkle in "Midnight Madness" events earlier than Oct. 18. The purpose has been to build these around important official visit recruiting weekends, and that won't change with the new early start date. The uniformity of some sort of special tipoff now with practice and/or an event is gone. Hoop teams will be sporadically starting and having madness-type events on random weekends throughout October.

3. UTEP lost Isaac Hamilton to UCLA (although Hamilton can't play this season), but the Miners still have some potential pop and can't be counted out in bloated CUSA. UTEP coach Tim Floyd said he has seen "lots of potential and lots of intrigue with this team." Floyd said 7-foot-1 freshmen Matt Wilms and 6-8 Vince Hunter could play on most teams. He likened 6-7 point McKenzie Moore to former USC point guard Daniel Hackett, who played for Floyd with the Trojans. And he expects Julian Washburn to have an all-league type season again. Floyd showed reciprocal loyalty to Bob Cantu in hiring the former USC assistant coach in a similar role. Cantu was faithful to Floyd throughout his USC tenure and never disparaged him during any of the NCAA investigation. Cantu stayed on with Kevin O'Neill, then replaced him as the interim coach last season.

Editor's Note: We want to be clear: This is not a piece about the hot seat. Rather, it's one that identifies three secure coaches who nevertheless have a lot on the line in 2013-14, whether it’s taking that first big step, fulfilling sky-high expectations or trying to prove doubters wrong.

Jason King: Steve Alford, UCLA

In some ways, it doesn’t make much sense to say that Steve Alford has something to prove. In his six years at New Mexico, Alford averaged 25.8 victories and won five Mountain West Conference titles. There’s no question the man can coach. Alford, though, will be operating under a whole new set of circumstances at UCLA, where expectations will be unreasonably high. This, after all, is a school that in March fired a coach who had been to three Final Fours and was weeks removed from winning the outright Pac-12 title. That might cut it at some programs, but it didn’t do Ben Howland any good in Westwood, where sub-30-win seasons are considered a failure.

Alford won’t have the grace period that most coaches are extended during their first season. He inherited a team that returns a likely first-round NBA draft pick in Kyle Anderson and a trio of proven forwards in David and Travis Wear and Jordan Adams. Arizona may be the clear-cut favorite in the Pac-12, but UCLA will be expected to at least make the race interesting. If the Bruins don’t, Alford will endure a boatload of criticism, especially considering the lukewarm reception to his hiring by fans and media. Alford’s lack of NCAA tournament success -- and his mediocre performance on the recruiting trail thus far -- has prompted some concerns about his ability to return UCLA to its days of dominance. And his often prickly personality may make it tough to win over fans. As a player at Indiana, Alford grew used to being in the spotlight. But never during his coaching career has he encountered what lies ahead during his first season at UCLA.

Myron Medcalf: John Calipari, Kentucky

It’s odd for a man with a national championship and Final Four appearances in two of the past three seasons to have something to prove. But that’s the position John Calipari is in after assembling the greatest recruiting class in college basketball history. Sure, there’s no guarantee this class will live up to the hype. But no group -- ever -- has warranted this much hoopla and excitement. He has six McDonald’s All Americans, and that’s just the freshmen. In all, Calipari boasts eight players who might be first-round picks in next summer’s NBA draft.

So what could go wrong? Well, last season, another talented young crew in Lexington lost to Robert Morris in the first round of the NIT. Was that a fluke? There’s immense pressure on Calipari and this Kentucky squad to prove that it was. He’s always been a premier recruiter, but recruiting alone, as we learned last year, is not the only quality that breeds success within the coaching ranks. Developing talent is critical. Calipari did that when he won a national title in 2012 with a squad that was led by freshmen Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. The same result will be anticipated by Big Blue Nation in 2013-14. Yet the stench of last season’s tumult remains. The only relief will be a rally that ends in Texas with a Final Four appearance. Many will expect -- demand -- a national title. That’s what happens when a coach brings so many stars together. But can Calipari lead an inexperienced yet advanced group of young players to the championship again? Anything short of that could be considered a disappointment.

Dana O'Neil: Josh Pastner, Memphis

The news that Michael Dixon would be eligible immediately at Memphis turned the Tigers’ already terrific backcourt into arguably one of the best in the nation. It also upped the ante for the team overall, which means even higher expectations for Josh Pastner. The fifth-year coach has some questions on the inside, namely can Shaq Goodwin continue to make strides to help replace Adonis Thomas. But he’s got awfully good answers on the perimeter. Dixon, Joe Jackson, Geron Johnson and Chris Crawford are all different but all very good and, more important, all seniors. If Pastner can steal a page from Jay Wright’s four-guard handbook, he’s got the makings of a pretty good team.

Pastner has done a more-than-admirable job since taking over for Calipari. In three of his four years, the Tigers have made the NCAA tournament and last season won their first NCAA game in his tenure, beating Saint Mary’s before losing to Michigan State to finish 31-5. The trouble is, before Pastner arrived, winning an NCAA tournament game was a foregone conclusion. Calipari’s last four teams went Elite Eight, Elite Eight, national title game, Sweet 16. It’s an absurdly high bar. It’s frankly unfair to measure a team by its NCAA success only. Matchups and injuries can alter so many fates, but it is definitely Pastner’s reality. The folks of Memphis love their coach and love their Tigers, but they want to see the tourney's second weekend again.

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.

Danny Kanell discusses NCAA president Mark Emmert's comments saying that it isn't a good idea to pay athletes.

Just six months after suffering a gruesome leg injury, Louisville Cardinals guard Kevin Ware is back dunking.

Hey, everyone! You know what we can all agree on? I do! We can all agree that the NCAA is bad. Bad, bad, bad. How bad is up to you, of course. The gamut typically runs anywhere from "outdated and slightly silly product of 19th-century noblesse oblige to "modern slavery." Either way, the grumbling has long since graduated from complaints about violations to genuine outrage over the amateur model. This is a good thing. I agree! But sometimes we get a little carried away.

Case in point: The noise has gotten so loud that the man in the center of this mess, NCAA president Mark Emmert, has practically reached villain status, which is impressive, considering how hard it is to become a villain when you sit atop a boring bureaucracy whose stated mission is basically "education and sports, fun right?" Things have not gone well for Emmert since he took over in Indianapolis, from the Miami scandal that turned into an NCAA scandal to that combative April press conference to pretty much everything else. The struggle is too real.

But, that all said, here are three things worth keeping in mind when you talk about the President of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

1) Being NCAA president is a lot like being the commissioner of a pro sports league. You are the powerful-seeming public face of a bunch of dudes that are actually powerful. Being actually powerful, they don't want to be all that public. It is really easy to get mad at Roger Goodell (and rightfully so, because that guy is just the worst) and David Stern, but those men typically act on the word of the 32 (or whatever) immensely wealthy men who chose them for the position in the first place. So it is with Emmert. He is a representative of the membership. It does no good to comment on this story; talk to your favorite university president instead.

2) Emmert hears you. He gets it. Sort of. I think.

"One thing that sets the fundamental tone is there's very few members and, virtually no university president, that thinks it's a good idea to convert student-athletes into paid employees. Literally into professionals," NCAA president Mark Emmert said Monday at Marquette University. "Then you have something very different from collegiate athletics. One of the guiding principles (of the NCAA) has been that this is about students who play sports."

That quote, from this story, was received Monday as "NCAA president says players will never be paid, twirls mustache, laughs maniacally," when really all it was was Emmert reiterating to the public that the NCAA has a place it will not even consider going. That place is "directly employing players." Obviously. Duh. The NCAA would rather be sued by 100 duck-sized Ed O'Bannons than think about actually paying players a salary. I don't know exactly why there is such solemn resistance to doing so, and maybe that will change if the facade continues to crumble. But this is not exactly news, you know? It's more like a reminder.

What Emmert didn't say is that the membership was opposed to all reform. In fact, his emphasis of what the membership wouldn't do seems to almost intentionally build a contrast. Maybe I'm reading too much into that. Maybe I'm wishcasting. But doesn't that seem like he's laying down basic framework for the debate to come? It does, right? Right?

Anyway, one more thing to remember:

3) The NCAA didn't create the NFL's, or the NBA's, age limits.

It's actually sort of shocking how often people seem to forget this. It's also shocking how often people forget that there are plenty of professional leagues in the world and that, if a player is good enough, he could probably get to the NBA just by working out with folding chairs for a year. (Word to Yi Jianlian.) But the point is the NCAA does not force anyone to go to college. The NBA and the NFL do. That is their prerogative as businesses. You can argue that players should have the right to earn money from the use of their own likeness whether they're a player at an NCAA institution or not, and that argument is a completely valid one.

But people always seem to forget that the percentage of everyone in college basketball, from the wealthiest coach on down, who would love to see the one-and-done rule wiped from this Earth is like 99.999. Maybe a clean 100.0. In the meantime, if college football players like Johnny Manziel have a serious philosophical issue with not being able to sign autographs for money — which is fair! — they can always choose not to play college football. Or organize on their own behalf. In practice, I realize, things are not that simple, especially for college football players. But you kind of have to know what you sign up for, right? And shouldn't the rest of us at least remember which organization is really to blame?

I'd like to clarify: None of the above is an argument on the NCAA's behalf. I don't really agree with Emmert, because once you get past my rhetorical needle-search, you see Emmert is a man making an argument on behalf of his employers that is essentially "because that's how it's always worked." Which is, I don't know, the worst argument ever? It's up there.

What the above is, like Emmert's hard line against employment, a mere reminder. "Emmert" doesn't equal "NCAA." The pro leagues have a part to play. And the NCAA membership seems to hear the waters rising around them. Think about college sports 30 years ago. Think about how often university presidents got together with the NCAA chief to gauge everyone's thoughts on paying players. Think about how out of place that conversation would have seemed.

Look at the NCAA now. If only barely, it appears the conversation it desperately needs to have -- the one about the type of survival it will be willing to accept -- is getting its alpha test.

What teams have the most to prove in the 2013-14 season? Here are 10 that immediately come to mind:

1. Kentucky: There may be a lonely faction out there in the Internet hinterlands who would assume this argument is about John Calipari. Sorry, but no: Calipari has nothing to prove. Yeah, Robert Morris in the NIT, I know, I know, but come on: We're not even two full years removed from Kentucky's national title. Remember that? When Calipari got the top two picks in the NBA draft to happily settle for the fourth- and fifth-highest percentage of their team's shots en route to a 38-2 championship season? You remember that, right? Clearly, Calipari can mesh a class of hyper-talented freshmen with a mix of almost-equally-talented returners and win a national title, which is the be-all goal of Kentucky's 2013-14 campaign. That exact thing just happened!

No, this designation is about Kentucky's players. Forget Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist; forget John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins; forget Derrick Rose. Calipari has had a lot of crazy recruiting classes in his career, but none of them have come close to this kind of hype. In March, less than 15 hours after the Wildcats' embarrassing loss to Robert Morris, Julius Randle committed to Kentucky. A few hours later, ESPN.com recruiting guru Dave Telep wrote that Calipari's class was the best ever -- better even than Michigan's Fab Five, "the standard bearer for recruiting classes."

So, yeah, Randle and his classmates -- No. 5 ranked Andrew Harrison, No. 7-ranked Dakari Johnson, No. 8-ranked James Young, No. 9-ranked Aaron Harrison, and No. 25-ranked Marcus Lee -- have something to prove. That goes double for disappointing sophomore holdovers Alex Poythress and Willie Cauley-Stein. The ceiling here is unfathomable -- like, undefeated-season-unfathomable -- and it's almost impossible to envision Calipari presiding over another disaster. Not with this talent. But it is incumbent upon a very confident, cocksure group to come together, to sublimate their individual desires for the good of the team — all of that boring, cliche stuff. The inverse of "best recruiting class ever" is "most disappointing recruiting class ever," and that's a legacy no one wants to leave behind.

2. Creighton: Doug McDermott's shot to become the first player since Wayman Tisdale and Patrick Ewing to win three straight first-team All-Americans is -- well, it's a lot of things. It's fantastic shorthand for the evolution (devolution?) of college basketball in the past 20 years. It's a fascinating footnote in the narrative of a player whose father didn't even recruit him to play at Iowa State. And, of course, it's testament to McDermott's consistent individual brilliance. What it is not is a sign of Creighton's collective national success. McDermott has been must-watch viewing these past two seasons, and his teams have been just as brilliant offensively -- free-flowing, smart, up-tempo, fun. But because the Bluejays have never quite built a solid defense on the other end of the floor, they've been limited -- unable to get big stops when they need them in the NCAA tournament. This year, individual brilliance and offensive aesthetics will be old hat. This year, Creighton is expected to do even more. First, they have to prove they can guard.

3. Tennessee: Last fall, when myself, Myron Medcalf, Fran Fraschilla and Joe Lunardi convened for our first-ever college basketball draft, I got lost in the Jarnell Stokes hype. A young freshman who joined Tennessee a semester early in 2011-12, Stokes had helped the Vols surge late in a previously nondescript season, and looked poised to dominate the low block all season in 2012-13. Not so much. Part of that was Stokes' fault -- his desire to prove his power forward bonafides to NBA scouts took him away from the basket, which is a bad idea -- and part of it was the injury to senior forward Jeronne Maymon, who redshirted thanks to a knee injury. After a brief, well-reasoned dalliance with the NBA this spring, Stokes is back, as is Maymon, as is leading scorer and All-SEC first-teamer Jordan McRae -- there's a huge year ahead in Knoxville, Tenn. Now the Vols have to make good on it.

4. Memphis: A lot of this comes down to Joe Jackson. We've discussed this in depth before this offseason, in our list of seniors facing the most pivotal seasons of their careers. (I also discussed that at more length on ESPN Radio in Memphis back in July.) Jackson was No. 1 on that list. But Memphis isn't limited to just one beleaguered-but-still-promising would-be hometown hero. After getting the NCAA tournament win monkey off Josh Pastner's back, this season the Tigers return a veteran backcourt and a massively talented frontcourt and should, by all accounts, be capable of a deep tournament run. (Oh, and there's the new league: The American may not be the old Big East, but it's not recent-vintage Conference USA, either.)

5. VCU: Word out of Richmond is that this may well be Shaka Smart's most talented team, which is something considering the Rams (A) went to the Final Four in 2011 and (B) finished the 2012-13 season ranked No. 16 in Ken Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency rankings and (C) lost seniors Darius Theus and Troy Daniels. In some ways, the Rams have very little to prove: They have a young, in-demand coach who has quickly morphed an OK basketball program into a very good one; a unique, effectively branded defensive style ("HAVOC"); and a pretty great pep band. So why are they here? Because last season, HAVOC got a little bit gimmicky. That's fine, in so far as it works; I want to go on record saying how much I love watching VCU chase hapless guards around the park. But in 2012-13, the Rams became so dependent on turnovers on the defensive end (and were so bad at checking opposing shooters and chasing down rebounds) that good teams with good point guards -- see, Michigan; Burke, Trey -- could dismantle them with relative ease. This season, the goal is to meld all that HAVOC with some good old-fashioned convention.

6. Virginia: The Cavaliers, like the team directly below them, were a very good team in 2012-13 whose results -- specifically their performance against a dreadful nonconference schedule -- doomed them to the NIT. That can't happen this season, not with Joe Harris shooting 42.5 percent from 3 and looking like a sleeper candidate for ACC Player of the Year, not with senior Akil Mitchell doing quality work on the block, not with all the returning players so expert at Tony Bennett's grinning Wisconsin-style flavor. It's tournament or bust for Virginia, and even that bar is probably too low.

7. Iowa: The Hawkeyes are your other obvious breakout candidate of 2013-14, for many of the same reasons as Virginia: A bad nonconference schedule and a series of brutally close losses during Big Ten play kept an otherwise worthy team (which finished with a top-25 efficiency defense) from gaining widespread national acclaim. Now the hype has turned, and everyone is spending less time talking about the Hawkeyes vis-a-vis the NCAA tournament than their status as a Big Ten title contender. I'm not sure if I'd go that far, but it's clear Iowa has a huge opportunity here. Fran McCaffery finally has a deep, experienced group peppered with genuine high-level collegiate talents, and a defense that will give most of the Big Ten fits. Carver-Hawkeye, so quiet for so much of the past decade, is reaching peak rowdiness levels again. It's time to seal the deal.

8. Boise State: The Broncos did manage to get into the tournament last season, albeit it as a play-in team that failed to survive Dayton. But the appearance was an accomplishment in itself for third-year coach Leon Rice, who has assembled an impressive group of previously unheralded players -- all of whom are back this season. Derrick Marks is an inconsistent but genuinely gifted scorer; Anthony Drmic is a versatile wing with deep 3-point range; Jeff Elorriaga is an even better shooter who made 44.7 percent of his 3s last season; and on down the line. It's the kind of talent that makes any celebration of a No. 12 seed feel quaint. This group is capable of ascending much more notable heights.

9. Oklahoma State: OK, OK, so everyone agrees that Marcus Smart is good at basketball. Smart's decision to return to college despite his Freshman of the Year award-worthy campaign, and the lofty opinions of him at the highest echelons of USA Basketball, have put the Cowboys on the short list of the teams you absolutely need to see this season. Trust me, I'm excited too. But that excitement shouldn't overshadow the fact that Oklahoma State had some issues on the offensive end last season, or the fact that it was summarily stumped by Oregon in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Le'Bryan Nash was the highly touted savior before Smart arrived; he has to live up to his potential. Markel Brown needs to make his overlooked contributions impossible to ignore. And Travis Ford's team needs to find some shooting somewhere -- Phil Forte? Brown? Bueller? -- to compete in the same space as Kentucky, Michigan State, Kansas and …

10. Louisville: Yes, Louisville is on this list. Weird, right? I know! But hear me out. Last spring, after four months of (almost) uninterrupted dominance, the Louisville Cardinals won the national title. Soon thereafter, their best player -- arguably the country's best player, period -- announced his intentions to return to school. So did the power forward who put up 15 and 12 in the national title game. So did the swingman who made 12 of his 17 3s, and scored 42 total points, in two Final Four games. This team, by the way, is also adding a universally heralded point guard prospect and two other ESPN 100 recruits. And despite all that, this team is probably not going to start the season ranked No. 1 overall. Even worse? Their rivals, the Kentucky Wildcats, probably will. How's that for something to prove?

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.

I had doubts when Illinois picked John Groce to lead its program in 2012 after Bruce Weber was dismissed.

My doubts were really tied to Illinois, not Groce. He clearly had credentials. He’d led Ohio to that season’s Sweet 16, where the Bobcats lost an overtime war to North Carolina. Prior to his tenure in the MAC, he’d spent time under Thad Matta at Ohio State.

Yet, he’d entered a challenging situation. Weber reached the 2005 national title game with Dee Brown and Deron Williams but he never found that perch again. Years of disappointment followed that achievement.

The recruiting battles he lost -- many involving kids in nearby Chicago -- were critical in the team’s gradual decline.

So once Groce took the job, he immediately faced one major question: Can he bring elite talent to Champaign?

That’s the only question any coach has to answer. But Illinois’ leaders have faced even more scrutiny due to their proximity to a recruiting hub named Chicago (although it’s really not that close to Chicago).

Well, Groce’s latest coup proves that Illinois’ spot on the recruiting map has been elevated -- locally and nationally -- since he arrived.

Quentin Snider, ranked 28^th in the 2014 class per RecruitingNation, chose Illinois last week, even though some thought he’d pick UCLA (see my colleague Eamonn Brennan’s post on the SoCal recruiting war). But Groce made a fourth-quarter pitch to the point guard that obviously worked.

More on the Snider move from ESPN.com’s Adam Finkelstein:

But Illinois made a late push to get Snider on campus last weekend, allowing it to make a final impression. The Illini followed that up by traveling to Louisville the next day to conduct an in-home visit to help Groce seal the deal.

Snider was a late addition to this year's point guard market after having previously been committed to Louisville for almost two years.

He decommitted on July 31 due to concerns about the number of other talented guards on the Cardinals' roster. In Illinois and UCLA, Snider narrowed his choices to two programs who could provide him what Louisville could not -- an opportunity to run the show from the start.

The commitment is a potentially huge addition for Illinois because it was able to land one of the last remaining point guards capable of making an immediate impact. After Groce's 2013 recruiting class was headlined by a pair of ESPN 100 swingmen in Kendrick Nunn and Malcolm Hill, along with an athletic and skilled big man in Austin Colbert, his top priorities in 2014 were to get a post player and a point guard.

Groce’s 2014 class is now ranked fourth overall by RecruitingNation. With Nunn and Hill -- a pair of Illinois kids -- anchoring his 2013 class, UI finished 15^th nationally.

Next year could be a tough one for an Illinois team that will rely on multiple transfers and young faces after losing Brandon Paul and D.J. Richardson. Then again, Nunn and Co. could make an immediate impact and push the Illini into another NCAA tournament slot.

But regardless of what happens this season, the talent pipeline is rich. Groce has already proven many doubters wrong. Last season, he led the team to an upset of No. 1 Indiana and an NCAA tournament victory in his first year on the sideline.

If the program’s prospects fulfill their potential and stick around for more than a year, Groce could turn Illinois into a Big Ten player and national title contender again.

That might not seem clear in 2013-14.

But Groce is definitely loading up in Champaign.

Illinois is rising. Quickly.

Thanks to Ben Howland's "Hey, Please Don't Fire Me!" 2012 recruiting class, his replacement, Steve Alford, has a handful of interesting players at his disposal in his first season in Westwood. Shooting guard Jordan Adams displayed prodigious, efficient scoring ability last season; he might average 25 points a game this year. Tony Parker is a big, physical, promising forward. Even David and Travis Wear have developed into solid face-up bigs.

But none of those pieces is as intriguing, or as pivotal, as Kyle Anderson.

Anderson is different. He's -- and I mean this in the strictest basketball sense -- weird. During his senior year, he was the No. 5-ranked player in the 2012 class. Had Shabazz Muhammad not decided to take his talents and fuzzy biography to Los Angeles, Anderson would have been the gem of Howland's last-ditch talent infusion, the star of his desperate show.

He would up a secondary figure instead. Anderson is a lanky 6-foot-9 guard who doesn't check his man particularly well but gobbles up defensive rebounds; who can hook-shot mismatches to death but seems to hate playing with his back to the basket; who is probably best-used as a point-forward distributor type at the top of the key, even though he can't shoot 3s. See what I mean? It's all very weird.

In 2012-13, UCLA never really found a place for that strange blend of skills. Howland had Larry Drew II handle the ball. Muhammad and Adams did most of the work on the perimeter; the Wear twins played on the block. Often, Anderson just sort of floated. He was lost.

But even then you could see it: The things that made it so difficult for Anderson to star in his first collegiate season are also the things that put a glint in NBA scouts' eyes. His blend of size and ball skills is unusual, and his desire to stand back and distribute -- his clear belief that his best skill is his passing -- is immediately attractive. Who wouldn't take a chance on a 6-9 pass-first point guard? Who wouldn't want to develop a guy with that combination of skills?

Which is why Monday's news wasn't really all that surprising, at least not in and of itself. From ESPN's Jeff Goodman:

"Kyle has made great strides in his mental approach to the game and his work ethic since being at UCLA," his father, Kyle Anderson Sr., told ESPN.com. "The major deficiencies in his overall game are his lack of strength, quickness and explosion, and inconsistent shooting. We feel that both of which can be addressed more efficiently with more time and repetition. It's more than likely that it will be time for Kyle to move on at the end of this college season."

As Jeff notes, the 2014 draft is brutal, particularly at the top, and particularly for small forwards and power forwards. Depth at those positions is going to be crazy; Anderson doesn't really look like a lottery pick. Given all that, you might be wondering why Anderson's family would be so willing to project the end of his college career. What if this season doesn't go as planned? What if he has to come back? This isn't exactly Marcus Smart we're dealing with, after all.

Then again, so what? Anderson can always change his mind; it's not like UCLA won't have him back if he does. And, as with Smart, I tend to see this sort of open-book move as a positive for everybody involved. Why cloak your ambitions anyway? Why pay exhaustive lip service to your school, fans, program, coach, etc. when everyone already knows the score? Remember when Howland was chided for saying (before Muhammad could) that his star was definitely leaving for the 2013 draft? Every year, it's like everyone in the sport agrees to pretend that everyone else wants to be exactly where they are, and this illusion must be maintained until the season is over, at which point you are free to admit that you one day want to achieve your dream of making millions of dollars for playing a game you love. Huh? Why? It's completely silly.

No, the pertinent question is not whether Anderson should set a deadline for his college career. Whatever. The real question is whether he can close the deal in time. Can he showcase some improved shooting? Can he be more than a matchup-based change of pace at point guard, and be a viable, collected team leader at the position instead? Can he leverage his size for more than surface impressions? Can he guard? Can he be a two-way threat? Can he combine his skills into an effective package -- can he be more than the sum of his own individual parts?

These are the questions that will define Anderson's second, and apparently last, season in Westwood. The clock is officially ticking.

Villanova associate head coach Billy Lange has declined an offer to become the head coach of the Houston Rockets Developmental League affiliate, the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, a source told ESPN.com.

Lange is still considering a position with the Philadelphia 76ers, the source said.

Lange, who worked as Jay Wright's director of basketball operations from 2001-04, returned to the Villanova bench in 2011 after seven seasons as the head coach at Navy.

In NCAA-land, there are no snap decisions. Before genuine progress can be made, discussion must be had -- loud, long, unfocused discussion. Some regrettable things will be said. Some unfortunate emails may see the light of day. A scandal or two or 10 will be made plain. Outrage will be enjoyed. It's the usual deal, and then the NCAA gets a large enough group of schools to push through new legislation (or not), and then it's on to the next one.

We're still very much in the discussion phase where transfer policy is concerned. But that's good news in and of itself because the NCAA's policy on transfers -- more specifically, when it does and does not grant "hardship" (or legislative relief) exceptions to its typical transfer rules -- is pretty much just flat broken.

This offseason, which has been filled with confusing and conflicting approaches to seemingly similar cases, has put the entire waiver system under question. And that shouldn't obscure the fact that even transfers who don't need or ask for hardship exceptions are in a laughably powerless position, relative to their very well-compensated coaches -- forced to ask for "permission to contact" for the right to move to schools where they'll have sit out a season before they can play in the first place. Coaches, as you may have noticed, are in practice free to come and go as they please. It's kind of messed up.

Fortunately, the NCAA itself has begun to take notice. Two weeks ago, NCAA officials told ESPN.com's Dana O'Neil that some transfer rules could change as early as next season:

"It would be a situation where a kid would provide notice that he's transferring and wants to talk to these five schools, for example," Kevin Lennon, the NCAA vice president for academic and membership affairs, told ESPN.com. "Schools can't say, we're giving you permission but not to these five schools. It's in the student's control more."

Which is good stuff, but it still doesn't seem to address to the mess that is the hardship waiver system. Frankly, there don't seem to be many great ideas for solving that just yet. It's not easy to balance the genuine needs of players with ill family members and other special circumstances with those whose coaches or families would take advantage of the rule to facilitate a speedier return to the court. It's a tough balance to strike.

Which might be why Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski thinks a more stringent approach is needed. Also from Dana O'Neil:

"There should be no exceptions," Krzyzewski told ESPN.com. "Everybody should have to sit out, that includes a fifth-year player, just to make it equal. I think it's a farce, really."

"Giving certain kids the right to play and others not the right to play, it should be done the same," he said. "If they want to let everybody play right away, then let everybody play right away. Everybody should be treated the same. I don't understand why there are exceptions to this rule."

Delightfully draconian with strong hints of impatience, this Coach K varietal eschews last week's well-received pop-culture detours and returns the flavor to its more stern, militaristic origins. Three out of five stars.

More seriously, I'm not sure it's in the NCAA's best interest -- or the best interest of its student-athletes, which, I know, just go with it -- to blanket basketball's entire Division I with a "No ifs, ands or buts" policy. There probably should be exceptions to the rule. They just have to be employed carefully. And, most importantly, consistently.

Because that is the issue Coach K is highlighting, and the biggest one overall: If the way transfers were handled felt in any way consistent from case to case, then you wouldn't have college basketball's most iconic current coach publicly calling your policies a farce. People just want to know where they stand. When they don't, they get confused. Then they get outraged. Then they basically assume you're being arbitrary and unfair, even when you're not, and decide they might as well start trying to exploit loopholes, too. Why not, right? Who cares?

Krzyzewski's solution may or may not be immediately viable -- I'm going to tend toward the latter -- but he's right in principle. The NCAA needs to streamline its transfer policies. Even if it doesn't make them more fair, it needs to make them easier to understand. You've got to start somewhere, right?

Retirement never seemed like it would fit Jim Calhoun. He struggled against it, or seemed to, for years. He was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005. In 2008, 2009 and 2010, Calhoun had variously serious health problems -- from treatment for squamous cell carcinoma to the ribs he broke falling off his bike -- and as his recruiting pipeline began to slow and his Huskies teams began to look less vintage, it was fair to wonder whether Calhoun wouldn't have been better off retiring, whether he was holding on too long.

Instead, he held on long enough to win one more national title with Kemba Walker in 2011. It was about as perfect a penultimate season as a coach can have, and it was won through tooth-gritting competitive spite -- the things that fueled Calhoun his entire career hadn't faded in the least. A year ago, he got around to calling it quits, but not before installing his chosen successor (Kevin Ollie) in his old job. Since then, Calhoun has settled into sort of a self-fashioned emeritus role. He still has an office at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs, Conn., but he does a lot less coaching than he used to. In fact, a year after his retirement, Calhoun still seems to be getting used to the entire idea.

From the Hartford Courant:

"It seems like I have to tap-dance for people to believe I'm happy," Calhoun says. "But I'm happy. ... I gave up the keys to the car for all the right reasons. I felt it was the right time. ... But it's hard to be swimming in a particular direction and then have to stand. You don't know kind of what to do. You've done something for 40-something years, I'm used to waking up at five o'clock in the morning and solving problems, setting up my day mentally."

"With all those things I'm doing and things I've done the last year," he says, "I truly believe the void of basketball is one I'm having a difficult time filling. I spent a few minutes out there this morning talking to [Shabazz Napier]; I spent some time with Tyler. I miss the game, the game itself, the way guys can improve. I gave the keys up to the car for all the right reasons. ... But there's a little itch there, about basketball and the kids. I've talked to people, I don't know how to scratch that itch. I will. I'll find a way to scratch that itch."

In other words, Calhoun is happy -- he promises he is happy, so please don't make him tap-dance. But he's also clearly struggling with some of the same things every successful retired person goes through: the lack of a tangible daily goal, the open-ended afternoons, the sense of wandering. I imagine retirement is a little like being a college kid who comes home for the summer without a good internship. You sort of just hang out, watch movies, do yard work and occasionally go meet up with friends.

Who wouldn't be unsettled, at least to some degree, by that? Now imagine Calhoun, one of the most famously competitive men in basketball, suddenly finding himself without a foe. That's not easy. We paper it over with jokes about rounds of golf, but that stuff is never easy.

All of which seems to be pointing toward one conclusion: We haven't seen the last of Jim Calhoun just yet. More from the Courant:

[...] Calhoun, however, is not sure what more, or what else, he might consider doing. The idea of coaching a national team overseas, for instance, intrigues him. "It would have to be the right situation," he said.

He is talking with satellite radio about doing a sports talk show -- all sports. "I love talking about what makes guys good, in all sports," he said.

I would totally listen to that show.

1. Colorado coach Tad Boyle, his staff and players helped on campus Saturday to aid those in need after floods in the Boulder area that have affected thousands. The team fed displaced families and helped cover short-staffed crews in the cafeteria.

2. BYU coach Dave Rose is expected to be released from the hospital Monday after last week's surgery to remove cancerous spots. Rose will have to take it easy the next few weeks, but the Cougars' staff expects him to be ready for the start of BYU practice Oct. 7. Teams are allowed to start practicing on Sept. 27. But the new rule is for 30 practices within 42 days of a team's first game, so schools can manage the start time to their schedule. That means there will be staggered practice days from Sept. 27 with not every team practicing on the same days.

3. No one should be surprised by former UTEP signee Isaac Hamilton ending up at UCLA. Hamilton's family made it clear that he wanted to be at USC or UCLA once he told UTEP he wasn't going to attend so he could be closer to his ailing grandmother. According to Hamilton's father, Greg, Isaac can be on a scholarship but without being released from his national letter of intent, he cannot play this season. UCLA cannot comment on Hamilton's arrival until all his paperwork is in to the school. UCLA coach Steve Alford is on the lookout for talent that can produce from Southern California. The onus will be on Hamilton to be a force in the fall of 2014 by using this ineligible season to his advantage.

Something has always stood in the way. For decades, it was John Wooden's unapproachable dominance. For just as long, it was USC's inability to care about basketball. In recent years, even the Trojans' most engaged hoops moments -- a flashy new arena, the inspired hiring of Rick Majerus, apparent recruiting momentum under Tim Floyd -- have almost always fallen flat.

Majerus, who passed away in 2012, withdrew from the job after five days, citing his already flagging health (and, later, his mother's disapproval of the distance). Floyd's greatest recruiting success, landing star O.J. Mayo out of the ether, was subsumed by accusations that he hand-delivered an envelope of money to a Mayo handler; he resigned while under NCAA investigation in 2009. (Eventually, the NCAA ruling forced USC to vacate the 2007-08 season … during which USC won all of 21 games. If you have to vacate a season in which you won fewer than 30 games, you are doing it wrong.) Then came the Kevin O'Neill era, about which the less said the better.

Of course, it has not been the most enjoyable era of UCLA basketball, either. Sure, while USC was hiring and then not-hiring Majerus (and how different this story could have been had he taken the job) the Bruins went to three straight Final Fours under Ben Howland. But Howland lost control of his program soon after. George Dohrmann's famous Sports Illustrated piece ("Special Report: Not the UCLA Way," which is now every sports information director's go-to cold sweat nightmare) spelled impending doom, and one last-ditch recruiting class couldn't save the day.

This spring, UCLA fired Howland and hired New Mexico coach Steve Alford. That didn't go so well, either. It did, however, coincide nicely with USC's hiring of Florida Gulf Coast coach Andy Enfield.

A UCLA program brought low. A USC program with an aggressive, exciting young coach with nothing to lose. A great modern leveling has put both programs in places they aren't particularly accustomed to: recruiting against each other.

This competitive dynamic has been playing out in gyms and over text messages all summer, but it took until September for the first public salvos to be fired. On Sept. 2, Indianapolis native and top-50 2014 wing Trevon Bluitt committed to UCLA, the first proof of Alford's concept that his Indiana connections would give the Bruins a pipeline in the midwest. (Alford hired Bluiett's former high school coach, Ed Schilling, as an assistant.) Bluiett committed after a visit he shared with Louisville decommit and the No. 7-ranked 2014 point guard, Quentin Snider, whom analysts predicted would sign with UCLA.

Recruiting is a constantly shifting mass of causes and effects, actions and reactions. On Wednesday, Jordan McLaughlin, the No. 18 player in the ESPN 100, committed to USC. McLaughlin, who attended Etiwanda High in San Bernandino, Calif., was long considered a favorite to select UCLA. But the firing of Howland at UCLA and hiring of Enfield at USC -- and Enfield's ability to sell McLaughlin on a roll as his flashy uptempo distributor and, yes, UCLA's increased focus on Snider -- convinced the highly-touted point guard to choose the Trojans instead.

Then, on Thursday, Snider surprised almost everyone by choosing Illinois. (John Groce reportedly worked hard to get Snider on campus one last time before he made his decision. It paid off. Don't look now, but Groce is going to get Illinois good again in a hurry.) More cause, more effect: On Friday, Jeff Goodman reported that Isaac Hamilton, who initially signed with UTEP, had chosen his Southern California destination after all.

This is where things get especially confusing. Hamilton, you see, was the prize of UTEP's 2013 class. UTEP, as you may know, is coached by Tim Floyd. This summer, Hamilton had second thoughts about his letter of intent -- his family said he wanted to stay closer to home, wanted his ailing grandmother to be able to see him play. They were also "triggered," Hamilton's father said, by rumors that Floyd could return to USC. (For some reason, USC AD Pat Haden had called Floyd about the USC job. Your guess is as good as mine.)

In July, Floyd out-and-out accused USC of tampering:

Floyd is suspicious. He said he was called by two Pac-12 coaches and one WCC head coach saying Isaac was going to get out of his NLI. He called new USC coach Andy Enfield and told him to back off of Hamilton and said on June 4 he got a text from the Hamiltons saying that Isaac wasn't going to go to the first summer session and was concerned about what that would mean. […]

"I called Andy Enfield and he told me he's not taking Isaac Hamilton, that 'we're out of that.' But I told him the damage had already been done," Floyd said.

As recently as last week, Floyd was sticking to his guns.

"I'm sorry his grandmother is having health problems," Floyd said in July. "But what I'm doing, I'm doing for UTEP and for everyone else. The NLI is in place so you can field a team. Young people don't have to sign a national letter of intent. You can sign a scholarship paper. The policy is in place to protect the institutions after they've spent all this money in recruiting and built their schedule around and turned down other players."

Floyd's refusal to let Hamilton out of his NLI doesn't mean he can't play somewhere else. But it does mean he has to wait a season to play, and pay tuition while doing so. Which meant that a former USC coach was preventing a would-be USC player from playing at the school because he, the old USC coach, thought a new USC coach had been tampering. See? Confusing.

Even more confusing? After all that, Hamilton didn't even choose USC. He chose UCLA. From Jeff Goodman's report:

Hamilton, who is from Los Angeles, said he wanted to play closer to his ailing grandmother. He was thought to be headed to Southern California, but the Trojans backed off and UCLA wound up admitting him just one day after new Bruins coach Steve Alford lost out on guard Quentin Snider to Illinois.

Causes and effects, actions and reactions. Elite recruits from California choosing between USC and UCLA; allegations of tampering leveled at a school that didn't even get the player they allegedly tampered with.

I think this means it's official. Begun, the SoCal recruiting war has. It's about time.