ESPN Men's Basketball

In an age when Rick Majerus finds flying commercial to be the ultimate in inconvenience, college basketball teams don't spend too much time rolling around on buses anymore. They certainly don't take too many seven-hour bus trips. Most journeys that long would take place aboard chartered jets, with caviar, champagne, and Beatz by Dre. (OK, so maybe not the first two.)

Not in the Ivy League, and not at Cornell. The Big Red had a seven-hour bus trip back from their wins at Dartmouth and Harvard this weekend. How did the victors pass the time? Duh, you guys! With truth or dare! Ugh, Mom, GET OUT OF MY ROOM I HAVE FRIENDS OVER:

Like a bunch of teenage girls at a slumber party, we began to play Truth or Dare on Jeff Foote’s iPhone. [...] Truths were revealing, as always, but the Dares proved to be the most entertaining.

Geoff Reeves was picked on early and often: he was dared to simultaneously wear an article of clothing from each participating player until his next turn, then one turn later was required to give himself a toothpaste mustache. I was dared to let a blindfolded Ryan Wittman draw a highlighter mustache on my face. He didn’t do a terrible job either. (The color was green, if you were curious.) The game got old pretty fast, however, and the bus ride sailed along smoothly until we literally hit a bump in the road.

Truth or dare managed to get boring, so the players decided to build a fort with bed sheets -- no boys allowed, and that means you too, Dad, gosh -- and watched "Scream" and "Scream 2" because those movies are, like, totes the scariest. LOL. Then they stayed up way past their bedtime and talked about boys at school. OMG you guys. Best. Slumber party. Ever.

OK, not really; Cornell's bus driver encountered a family of deer, one of which found its run-in with a large charter bus to be fatal. Then Cornell went home, having built its record to 23-4 and retained its commanding lead in the race for the Ivy League regular season crown. Truth or dare? Truth: The Big Red are looking pretty good.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Dare we say Cornell was a bit soft prior to the Penn loss?

Well, Cornell coach Steve Donahue thought there was almost too much of a businessman’s approach to the Ivy League games.

And it cost the Big Red dearly when three-win Penn shocked Cornell and hung a 15-point L on the Big Red last Friday night at the Palestra.

“We’ve got nice kids, real nice kids,’’ said Donahue on Friday night at Harvard's Lavietes Pavilion. “But when you compete, you’ve got to be a little angry, a little nasty. You’ve got to compete harder. I don’t want to use the word hatred but there are two teams out there and one wants to win. I think we thought if we do our stuff we’ll be fine.’’

So Donahue had a sit-down with the Big Red in the 24 hours after the Penn loss and lit into them prior to the road game 24 hours later at Princeton.

Cornell beat league-unbeaten Princeton by three that night. Then on Friday, in front of easily the most raucous crowd ever at Harvard, the Big Red put a 3-point hurt on the Crimson and won 79-70 behind a dozen treys, six from Ryan Wittman (27 points) and four from Louis Dale (20), as well as a giant foot -- as in Jeff Foote (11 points, seven boards) -- imprinted on the Crimson inside.

“I challenged them more than I ever have the past four years,’’ Donahue said. “This past week of practice was super-competitive. We saw the stuff we wanted to see.’’

Cornell won a defensive struggle against Princeton. The Big Red went on an offensive onslaught and contained Jeremy Lin (24 points but had to work hard for his seven field goals and he missed all three 3s). This all comes on the heels of the Big Red getting into the top 25 for the first time ever in the USA Today/ESPN Coaches poll.

“We’ve had so much publicity the past two years in making the tournament,’’ Donahue said. “And then for those two weeks when we were ranked I’ve never seen anything like that on campus. It was everywhere, on Wall Street, all over our alumni. It probably screwed us up a bit. We somewhat needed a loss. But if we were going to have one last weekend it was more important to be at Penn, not at Princeton, because we needed to give them a loss.’’

Seeing Cornell in person Friday night gave an even clearer indication of how important Foote and Wittman are to this team’s success. Foote’s long reach can be disturbing for teams. He is an equalizer for the higher-level teams. Harvard coach Tommy Amaker reiterated how much he thinks Foote is the difference for the Big Red and the reason why they could be trouble for teams in March.

But Wittman’s leadership -- his ability to know time, score and when to catch-and-shoot on the fly -- is even more apparent in person. Wittman was quick to credit Dale’s ability to put him in position to score. But Dale said Wittman is “always sprinting the floor. I know his feet will be set, he’ll be ready to shoot. You can’t give him much space because he’ll knock it down.’’

The Big Red also showed their depth with Errick Peck coming off the bench to nail a 3-pointer and a key bucket. This team is flawed of course and might not handle pressure as much or have the ability to absorb front-court fouls. But when the shooting is on, the Big Red should be able to hang with most of the teams in the field, save possibly seeds 1-4 (although Kansas might not want to see this team again).

That means the Big Red could win a game – or two -- in the NCAA tournament.

But first the Big Red has to win the Ivy. Beat Princeton at home next Friday and the race is essentially over and the automatic bid may be a mere formality.

The Big Red is now akin to Butler in the Horizon and Gonzaga in the WCC -- they get the best crowd and the opposing team’s best shot. Students stormed the Palestra court at Penn. They were rocking at Princeton last Saturday and Harvard’s students were amped up for this one with chants of “safety school,’’ a halftime change from white to black t-shirts and plenty of noise.

“This is great,’’ Dale said. “We want to be that team that is looked upon as the top team that every team gives you their best shot. We want to play in games like this. There is so much at stake with no Ivy League tournament.’’

Cornell should beat Princeton and win the league. But that's familiar by now.

The difference is, for the first time during this successful run, the Big Red may also be tough enough to win a game in mid-March.

That's an unfamiliarity Cornell could get used to.

The week's new Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today top 25 polls are out, and what do you know? Kansas is back on top. Surprised?

Few should be. Kansas' ascension to the top of both polls was a given after its gutty overtime win at Kansas State Saturday. Had Kansas lost, the Syracuse-Villanova debate would have raged for at least a day, and then everyone would have remembered that the polls don't really matter at this point in the season, and then everyone would have calmed down. Kansas' road mettle prevented that dire scenario. We should all be thankful.

In the meantime, a big round of applause -- first person to do that thing where they clap in a circle (ha, "round" of applause, get it?) gets punched in the face -- for mighty Cornell. The Big Red dominated Jeremy Lin and Harvard on Friday night, and that win, along with their 18-3 record and high-profile near-toppling of Kansas on Jan. 6, earned Cornell the first ranking in the history of its basketball program. Banner day! According to ESPN research, Cornell is the first Ivy League team to land in the top 25 since Princeton in 1997-98, when the Tigers were ranked the entire season.

This is good news for a variety of reasons. The first? It's always good to see the Ivy League in the national picture. The second? Kids at Ivy League schools have it pretty rough, sports-wise and this is something to rally around. Third? More Andy Bernard jokes! There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

• A postmortem of Indiana's last-second loss at Illinois Saturday.
• Ken Pomeroy has had his suspicions about Gonzaga for a few weeks now, but being the polite, deferential man that he is, kept them in his "back pocket" until they became relevant. On Saturday, thanks to a four-point upset loss at San Fransisco, they did, and Pomeroy is here to explain why.
• Meanwhile, Slipper Still Fits thinks Gonzaga fans should have known a loss was coming eventually and prepared themselves accordingly.
• Is the ACC worse than anyone thought? In the wake of Georgetown's rather convincing offensive flurry against Duke, Ballin Is A Habit questions the Devils', and the ACC's, legitimacy.
• After easily handling Harvard Friday night, Cornell isn't just your Ivy League favorite. They're also a batch of wild and crazy guys. Senior John Jacques, writing at the Quad, tells stories of how Cornell stays loose and fancy free in their down time. Sadly, there's no mention of famous Cornell grad Andy Bernard's a capella group, "Here Comes Treble."
• Yet Another Basketball Blog's Dan Hanner continued his coach-heavy coverage this weekend with a rankings-free look at the "pulse" of college basketball's teams as we head into February.
• I wrote last week that Georgia Tech was confusing; I can no more wrap my head around the Yellow Jackets now than before this week's blowout wins. It's good to see Mike DeCourcy shares my confusion.

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Polls are a snapshot of a team over the course of a week, a quick glimpse of who is playing well from Monday to Sunday.

Kansas deserves to be No. 1. The Jayhawks won at Kansas State in overtime in a place where Texas could not. The win will be enough to propel the Jayhawks to No. 1 in the country when the polls are announced on Monday.

But who is No. 2?

That’s where the debate gets interesting between late Saturday and Monday morning.

I would lean toward Syracuse. The Orange had quite a week. Remember, this is about what you have done during the week. It's not necessarily about a team's entire body of work.

Syracuse had one of the more impressive wins earlier in the week when the Orange steamrolled Georgetown in the final 30 minutes at home last Monday. That's the same Georgetown team that took out Duke in convincing fashion Saturday.

Villanova has quite an argument as well with a home win over Notre Dame for its only game of the week. But Syracuse has played a tougher slate than Villanova. Overall, if you compare their sole losses, then losing to Pitt, even at home, may be a tad better than losing at Temple. This argument has holes on both sides so deciding who is most worthy of the No. 2 spot right now might come down to how you feel about the pair. And right now, after Syracuse found a way to win at DePaul when it didn’t play well, the edge could go to the Orange.

Of course, the Kentucky nation would have an issue with the Wildcats not being No. 2 after dismantling one of the hottest teams in the country in Vanderbilt. The Wildcats looked quite special in running away from the Commodores. The question is does Kentucky get knocked down this week because it lost a game, even though it was on the road at South Carolina? The answer for now is yes. Remember the poll isn’t about where teams will finish in March but how they’re playing over the course of a week.

• One thing is certain: Texas is dropping lower than No. 6 and Michigan State will at least stay put at No. 5 after a week in which the Longhorns fell to Baylor and Michigan State beat Northwestern.

• Maybe I shouldn’t have dumped off my original sleeper team so early. UTEP beat UAB in double overtime in Birmingham to draw into a first-place tie with the Blazers in Conference USA. I still think UAB is the only team in the league that can get in as an at-large unless Tulsa wins at Duke.

• Here’s what’s great about the Ivy League. You go, you dress and maybe you can get into the game. Cornell played 18 players in the first strike against Harvard in the Ivy League chase.

• San Francisco will not have another crowd like the one it had to beat Gonzaga late Saturday night. But credit the Dons, they did what Santa Clara and others in the league could not -- hold on to beat the mighty Zags. Other WCC teams tend to freeze when they have a chance to shut down the Zags.

• The Big East will investigate how the officials handled the West Virginia-Louisville game, especially in going to the monitor to (ahem) look at the shot clock when they may have actually been looking at who should have possession on an out-of-bounds play. Official Mike Kitts didn’t make a call and when no call is made on the floor, the possession goes to the team with the alternating possession arrow, which was Louisville. The ball actually did go off Louisville and West Virginia got the ball. So while the call was right it was not handled correctly. Louisville coach Rick Pitino criticized the officials by saying he was “tired of the officiating.” The Big East says it will investigate.

• Marquette’s Jimmy Butler told me Saturday he was speechless after making the game-winning shot to beat Connecticut. The Golden Eagles had been 1-7 in games decided in the final five minutes this season.

• Notre Dame’s loss at Rutgers is the kind of defeat that can send a team to the NIT.

• Siena’s win over Marist should clinch the Saints’ BracketBuster date at Butler. Announcements are due Monday.

• Maybe the most bizarre event of Saturday occurred in the USC-Oregon game. USC manager Stan Holt got a technical foul after saying something to official Bobby McRoy, which led to the game becoming tied at 47-47 with 4:35 left. Holt left the bench and the Ducks went on a 10-0 run to essentially win the game 67-57. USC coach Kevin O’Neill was quoted in the Oregonian late Saturday night saying, “That’s on me and that will be rectified -- it already has been -- he’s gone. That’s incomprehensible to me, in a two-point game, that our manager would get a technical foul. It’s unforgivable, it’s unprofessional. I apologized to our team for it, also." Holt was a three-year graduate manager. The only remaining question was how he did he get home from Eugene after O’Neill clearly tossed him off the roster?

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• Education secretary Arne Duncan, whose first name always looks weird to me when I type it -- not that I type "Arne Duncan" all that often, but still -- is hitting college basketball where it hurts: Graduation rates. This might be worthy of a longer discussion later, but Duncan's idea is to tie graduation rates to NCAA tournament admission; if you're not graduating players, you can't play in the postseason: "You had four teams that didn't graduate any African-American players. Zero. If that was my son, I don't know if I would want him playing there," Duncan said. "And why did we allow them to play in this tournament, make all this money, be on national TV, and they're not graduating any kids?" Oooh, I know! (Furiously raises hand.) Because no one actually thinks college basketball is an academic enterprise? That only the most naive college basketball viewers argue that college basketball is great because they're watching student-athletes? That, for better or worse (definitely worse), no one really cares? Is that why?
• I have no idea who to believe in this mess, because no one -- neither Mike Garrett nor Tim Floyd -- seems particularly trustworthy.
• Speaking of USC, women's coach Michael Cooper (yes, the Showtime Lakers Michael Cooper) issued an apology for opening a news conference with, "My opening statement is [expletive] UCLA." Hilarious! Also kind of mean, and definitely the sort of thing you have to apologize for if you plan on being a head coach at any program for very long. But still, Michael Cooper, well done. Big round of applause. You, sir, are 90 percent onions.
• Saturday's Cornell-Columbia game at Columbia's Levien Gymnasium is sold out. Yes, a sold out Ivy League basketball game at CUNY. What? It's not like there's anything better to do in New York.
• UCLA still believes it can improve. This is where a smart aleck like me says that at 7-10, there's no way UCLA can get worse, and so promising improvement is a little like me promising that I'll get better at blogging today: When you're this bad, there's nowhere to go but up.
• Royce White returns! After retiring from basketball, the Minnesota forward has returned to Tubby Smith's squad at long last. White's legal issues still need to be resolved -- White plead guilty to disorderly conduct and theft for his role in a mall altercation last year, and he's still a focus of an investigation involving a stolen laptop -- but if Smith allows him, White could return to the floor soon.
• New Orleans quit the Sun Belt, which brings the school one step closer to settling in at the Division III level. When asked for comment, one New Orleans fan screamed "Uh, OK? GO SAINNNNNTSSSSSAHHH!"
• I like college basketball. I like ridiculous haircuts. You can find me wherever the 'twain shall meet.
• Casual Hoya breaks down and aggregates Georgetown's huge win over Pitt last night.
• From the ESPN file, check out Dana O'Neil's excellent look at the surprising Binghamton Bearcats, who suffered one of the worst offseasons of all-time and are somehow not only not winless, but downright competitive. Keep in mind this is a team that had to have open tryouts on campus to fill the 2009-10 squad. It's shocking, really. And speaking of Dana, IU blog Inside The Hall sat her down for a Q & A on her gig, the Hoosiers, and her current All-American picks.
• A Sea Of Blue takes a look at Kentucky's average margin of victory in 2009-10 and compares it to years' past. Despite the occasional Wildcat letdown and Kentucky's willingness to allow inferior teams to stick around -- think Georgia at Rupp Arena, for example -- the Cats' average margin of victory compares well with the more successful of former coach Rick Pitino's teams.
• Finally, one quick note on this nonsense: Saying regular-season games don't matter is like saying any given week of the NFL doesn't matter. By itself, no. It's just one-sixteenth, or in college basketball's case, one-thirty-second of a season. The marginal value is low. But the games matter in the aggregate. Which team wins the NCAA title has as much to do with seeding and chance as talent, and every game on the way to the tournament has tiny little reverberations and consequences for March's massive payoff. You know, just like any other sport. Decrying college basketball's regular season as nothing but entertaining TV filler seems more than a little off-base.

Wednesday night was Cornell's moment in the sun. You know this formula: Tiny Ivy League [or insert mid-major conference of your choice here] team plays to the wire with [dominant, historic program here], but how? Skill? Pshaw. Not skill. Not ability. Not the cold, mathematical reality of efficient hoops. No, it must have been something magic, something inspirational, something about the underdogs having great heart and the will to persevere and just enough luck to, for one night only, go toe-to-toe with the nation's best. It must have been something ... intangible. Was Norman Dale on the sideline?

Nonsense, says The Mid-Majority's Damon Lewis (who, if you can't tell by the name, has turned his obsessive interest in mid-majors into a one-man cottage industry). Lewis says many will jump off the Cornell bandwagon in a few days. Many will forget. After all, they've already forgotten about College Of Charleston, who beat North Carolina just a few days ago. But Cornell is far better than the bandwagon-jumpers deserve:

How this team could stroll into Allen Fieldhouse with such moxie will be "mind-boggling." Honestly, is there that much difference between 16,000 fans in Lawrence, and 10,000 fans in Tuscaloosa? We know better, Hoops Nation. We know better. You'll be told in some spaces how Cornell could make a case for an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament. The real question, however, is how many writers will make that case if the Big Red slip up just once (and it's bound to happen) in the Ivy League? I'd imagine you know the answer.

Remember last night, and how you felt as you watched this game play out. Remember the highs and lows, and embrace them. It's a good dress rehearsal for March. Remember too, that the Big Red didn't arrive last night. A close loss against Kansas doesn't make any team magically better than they were the day before. They've been a very good basketball team for a long time, they know it, and that's why they were able to thrill the masses last night.

All of which is not to say that Cornell is as good as Kansas; obviously, it isn't. Kansas is really, really good. The Jayhawks exist almost on a separate plane from Big Red in regards to funding, recruiting, talent, all of it. But if there's one thing we've learned from the past, oh, 10 years of basketball, it's that the gap between the Kansases and the Cornells of the world is closing more rapidly by the season.

We seem to forget this little piece of information every year. Maybe we like to be pleasantly surprised by the flurry of upsets every March, so we temporarily, unconsciously convince ourselves that upsets don't happen, that the "best" team always wins. (It doesn't hurt this illusion when No. 1 seeds keep going to Final Fours, as in the past two seasons.) And then, with every March upset, we relearn the pleasant fact all over again: Cornell is here, and it didn't show up for fun. Thank goodness for that.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Kansas is No. 1 in the country for a reason. The Jayhawks are stacked from top to bottom; they feature two All-American veterans and a deep veteran core; and they managed to pick up the second-best freshman (and one of the best scorers, period) in the country. Kansas is, as the kids say, legit.

But 467-51? If we're to believe the brief TV scoreboard typo during Kansas-Cornell Wednesday night, then the Jayhawks are far better than anyone imagined. Or they're playing Jock Jams rules. Ten points from half court? Why wouldn't I take that shot?!

The Morning After is our semi-daily morning recap post. Try not to make it awkward.

Michigan State 54, Wisconsin 47: Now this is a Big Ten basketball game. After their uptempo, runaway win over Northwestern Saturday, it was reasonable to assume the Spartans would want to push the pace against the slow, plodding, methodically effective Wisconsin Badgers. That did not happen: These teams shared 59 possessions (the national average is about 70), and they weren't particularly effective with even those limited opportunities. The AP report is characterizing this game as a "defensive struggle" -- Bo Ryan said much the same -- and that's partially true. Each team prevented the other from getting anywhere near their current averages for points or efficiency. But neither team shot well, and that has plenty to do with it, too.

The good news for the Spartans is that they took care of business at home against what appears to be the second most likely challenger for their Big Ten throne. Everywhere else (with the possible exception of an Evan Turner-fielding Ohio State team) looks a little bit worse than expected; Purdue, Michigan State, and Wisconsin are your three Big Ten teams worth their national salt.

Kansas 71, Cornell 66: Three cheers for Cornell, huh? This is a team that went into Allen Fieldhouse, one of the most historic and intimidating basketball arenas in the world, and not only hung with Kansas but very nearly beat them. Cornell took a one-point lead into the final minute, and you know the rest: Sherron Collins took over the game, scoring nine straight points at the end and singlehandedly refusing to cede the lead back to Big Red. What does the win mean? Well, Kansas got its first legitimate test. It had a poor shooting night and still survived. Bill Self will be pleased. But more than anything it means that Sherron Collins is still the de facto leader and go-to guy of the Kansas Jayhawks, no matter how good Xavier Henry has been. Henry might be the more talented scorer, but when the game and season are on the line, Collins will have the ball in his hands. As it should be, eh?

Connecticut 71, Seton Hall 63: Seton Hall could have used this one, but what should you expect? Connecticut isn't vintage Connecticut, but they're still a good, athletic team, and they're still going to win the games they should win at home. So maybe hoping for a Hall win would have been too optimistic. The point is that Bobby Gonzalez's team, after starting 9-1, has now lost four straight. Granted, three of those losses were understandable (to West Virginia in OT, to Syracuse, and to UConn) but one was an indictment of the Pirates altogether (the 102-94 OT loss to Virginia Tech without Malcolm Delaney on Saturday). Seton Hall entered Big East play with a legitimate shot at reaching the NCAA tournament. Those hopes are fading fast.

Tennessee 88, Charlotte 71: On Dec. 5, Charlotte played an injury-bit Louisville team and beat them by 22 points. Last night's game had the potential for similarity: Tennessee is reeling after the suspension of four players, one of whom was star forward Tyler Smith, for gun-related arrests. If any team looks ready to fold in the season, it's Tennessee. But that didn't happen. Rather, the exact opposite did: Tennessee put a whoopin' (as they say in Tennessee) on Charlotte from the opening tip. Wayne Chism led the way with 18 points as all five Tennessee starters scored in double digits. Hey, maybe Bruce Pearl was right. The Vols do still have weapons.

Everywhere else: Syracuse got a minor challenge from Memphis before pulling away late ... One of two things is happening here: Either Marquette is surprisingly good again, or Georgetown has another disappointing team. Or maybe both. Either way, the Golden Eagles upset the No. 12 Hoyas in Milwaukee last night ... No. 23 BYU survived its first conference test of the season, winning by four over UNLV ... Indiana received the blunt end of an Evan Turner welcoming party at Value City Arena ... Craig Robinson's Oregon State rebuilding project suffered its worst loss to date, dropping a lifeless 99-48 game to, get this, Seattle ... and the Pac-10 suffered yet another indictment, this one directed at the team most people still have national hopes for, Cal; a bad UCLA team beat the Golden Bears 76-75 in Berkeley Wednesday night, and I think it's official: The Pac-10 is beyond redemption. Let's just ignore it from now on, OK? (I'm kidding! I love all conferences equally, even when they're really bad.)