ESPN Men's Basketball

USC president-elect Max Nikias is trumpeting the idea that USC compliance is no longer an oxymoron.

In the wake of NCAA sanctions, he announced Tuesday the hiring of a vice president of athletic compliance and also the beefing up of the school's compliance office to nine staffers.

"With this increased size and new leadership, it is my belief that the USC athletic compliance office will be one of the preeminent compliance teams in the nation," Nikias said in a statement.

UConn might want to take note. The NCAA has accused its men's basketball program of major violations and said coach Jim Calhoun is failing to "promote an atmosphere of compliance."

Also, according to a Stamford Advocate report from last month, the school's two full-time compliance officers make up one of the smallest compliance staffs among Big East football schools and is the same number of staffers the NCAA bashed USC for having.

In its recent decision to ban the University of Southern California from college football's postseason for two years and take away 30 scholarships from the Trojans, the NCAA clearly indicated it expects schools to devote considerable time and money to compliance if they expect to compete at the highest levels.

"NCAA members, including USC, invest substantial resources to compete in athletics competition at the highest levels, particularly in football and men's basketball," part of the NCAA's final report on USC read. "They must commit comparable resources to detect violations and monitor conduct with a realistic understanding and appraisal of what that effort entails, and what it will cost.

"In this regard, and particularly during the time of the football violations, the institution fell far short," the NCAA wrote of USC. "In fact, the compliance director at the time reported that there were only two compliance staff members at the institution for most of his tenure and it was 'just myself for a couple of months.'"

So the NCAA is putting the word out there and USC has complied with the idea that two compliance staff members isn't enough.

Will UConn do the same? For now, the program has hired former Penn head coach Glen Miller as a director of basketball administration to assist in compliance matters.

Rather than hire a director of basketball operations replacement, UConn decided on changing the title of the position to director of basketball administration and bringing on former Penn head coach Glen Miller. Transactions yawner?

Maybe, but Miller takes over for Beau Archibald, who was forced to resign his post in May while the program works on providing its response to the NCAA's accusations that it committed eight major violations.

Does the fact that UConn went with the experienced Miller and gave him seemingly more duties in compliance help the program's image in the eyes of the NCAA?

According to the Hartford Courant:

The director of administration position, previously referred to as director of operations, has an expanded job description. The one-year deal Miller signed will pay him $120,000, and calls for him to perform a wide range of duties.

The director largely focuses on issues such as NCAA compliance -- obviously now a key area for UConn -- academics and housing of athletes. With a recent tweak in NCAA bylaws, the job now also allows for more interaction with the rest of the staff on basketball issues, such as game plans and film breakdown. The director of operations position was not as involved, focusing mostly on day-to-day team activities, such as practice times and travel plans. Given the modified job description, Calhoun was seeking someone with experience in every aspect of a program's needs.

Miller, who was fired at Penn last December, played for UConn, graduated from UConn, and previously spent years under Jim Calhoun on the Huskies' staff.

Miller will look at returning to Storrs as somewhat of a steppingstone back into coaching, considering what he told the New Haven Register:

"It is what it is," Miller said on Friday. "It's a step backward, the first time I've had to experience a step back like this, but I'm just very excited to get this opportunity. I’m looking at it as I'm not on the floor coaching this year, but I'll have a chance to help in a lot of other areas, and it will enhance me as a coach."

Friday night usually only matters twice a year in college basketball:

1) The first weekend of the season, when schools are generally trying to avoid Saturday conflicts with football.

2) The postseason, when conference and NCAA tournament games are being played.

Not so this year. We have just completed the freakiest February Friday ever, with notable upsets in triplicate. It demands some attention and analysis, and perhaps some smelling salts.

We had a Friday in which a 3-15 team (Penn) laid a 15-point smackdown on a ranked 20-3 team (Cornell) that was favored by 17 points. That’s certainly the biggest league upset of the year nationwide. Might be the biggest upset, period.

We had a Friday in which a struggling team in the lower half of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (Niagara) rose up and took down the 14-0 big dog of the league (Siena) by 13 points. That reverses an 18-point loss last month.

And to top it off, we had two ranked rivals from the Big East exchanging huge shots and huge mistakes through three dramatic overtimes (Pittsburgh 98, West Virginia 95).

Earlier this week, I wrote about the eight teams trying to get through conference play unbeaten. That number already is down to six after the losses by the Big Red and the Saints – teams I thought were among the most likely to run the league table.

The upsets derailed the considerable momentum of both Cornell (eight-game winning streak shot) and Siena (15-game winning streak, longest in the nation, done). It also cast doubt upon both the Big Red and the Saints as potential NCAA at-large teams. Neither team has a victory over an RPI top-50 opponent and now each has a fresh loss that will hurt their own RPI numbers.

Both can still earn automatic bids, of course – Siena by winning the MAAC tourney at home and Cornell by winning the Ivy regular season. But the Saints, who struggled to beat Fairfield at home earlier this week, might now seem mortal to their league brethren. And the Big Red now sits in second place in the Ivy behind 5-0 Princeton – though the two still meet twice.

But instead of solely examining the damage to the losers, we should take a moment to appreciate what the winners did.

Penn threw a 15-0 haymaker at Cornell to open the second half and pull away. Niagara put a 24-3 run on Siena during a five-minute stretch of the second half to do the same.

At Penn, school president Amy Gutmann went into the postgame locker room to congratulate the team. This might have been the victory that gives interim coach and former Quaker hero Jerome Allen a solid chance at the job on a full-time basis.

Allen was elevated from assistant when the school surprisingly fired Glen Miller after a 0-7 start. The record got to 0-10 before the Quakers finally got in the win column – but now they’ve won three of their last four, including this absolute stunner, rallying around a guy who had zero coaching experience before joining the staff in September.

Allen and his staff had a smart, slow-the-tempo plan that included doubling Cornell star center Jeff Foote every time he caught the ball.

“This was a 54-possession game,” Penn assistant John Gallagher said. “For us to win any game, it’s got to be played between 54 and 65 possessions. Anything over that, we will not win. We ended up controlling tempo.”

They also ended up shooting the lights out. A team that entered the game shooting 39 percent from the field, 29 percent from 3-point range and 74 percent from the foul line went 56 percent, 52 percent and 82 percent, respectively.

Among the heroes for the Quakers was guard Zack Rosen, who had 22 points, five assists and three steals. The previous two games, Penn’s leading scorer had two assists and 13 turnovers. This bounce-back performance illustrated the sophomore’s character.

“He’s a great leader,” Allen said. “He wins every sprint. Whatever you ask him to do, he does it. I think every coach in America would love to have a guy like that on their team.”

Problem is, there is literally no time to celebrate in the Ivy League. Teams play back-to-back games on Friday and Saturday, and the Quakers went quickly Friday night into a meeting to preview their game against Columbia.

“I told them, ‘You guys got about 30 minutes to enjoy the victory,’ “ Allen said. “I really wanted them to stay in the moment, because it is a big deal. But my job doesn’t allow that.”

Niagara at least has a day between games to savor beating Siena. The two have had a lively rivalry in recent years as the premier programs in the MAAC, but the Purple Eagles have dipped below .500 in league play this season and were no match for the Saints on the road last month.

But Joe Mihalich’s team rose to the occasion at home, in a game I targeted Tuesday as Siena’s biggest threat to running the MAAC table.

For a long time, it looked as if the upsets in the Ivy and the MAAC were the dominant Friday storylines. Then Pitt and West Virginia played a game that conjured memories of the Syracuse-Connecticut six-OT game from last year’s Big East tournament.

Neither team gave up – which was wise, because neither team would shut the door on the other.

Pitt was down seven points with 45 seconds left in regulation, but WVU all but quit playing and allowed the Panthers to hit enough shots to force overtime. Then Pitt gave Truck Bryant an open 3 in the final three seconds of the first overtime while up three. (Choosing not to foul in those situations never fails to amaze.) And the Panthers compounded that in the second OT by fouling Da’Sean Butler on a 3 while leading by three in the final 25 seconds.

That’s how you get to triple OT. Once there, Pitt finally stopped the madness – though not before giving West Virginia another shot at a tying 3 in the final seconds. But the fatigued basketball gods spoke: “No, send that shot off the rim and let’s save a little something for Saturday.”

A day that has a hard act to follow.

By the end of January 2009, two coaches -- Mark Gottfried at Alabama and Dennis Felton at Georgia -- had been giving their walking papers and coaches everywhere noted the disturbing trend in college hoops.

So where does that put this season? Two weeks before the anniversaries of Gottfried and Felton's departures, three coaches are out: Glen Miller at Penn, Dereck Whittenburg at Fordham and now Jerry Wainwright at DePaul (Dartmouth's Terry Dunn resigned).

None have been caught in any sort of scandal and none are employed by deep-pocketed state universities with football money to burn, yet all three universities decided they couldn't wait another two months.

It is really strange when you consider that none of them were very good last year. For reasons that are every bit as perplexing as their in-season dismissals are surprising, all three were retained.

What changed: angry boosters, transferring players and most of all mounting losses. Penn was winless when it let go of Miller and it's deep-pocketed alumni were staying away from the Palestra; Fordham was in the Atlantic 10 basement again and star player Jio Fontan decided to pull the plug on his time in the Bronx and DePaul, winless in the Big East regular-season last year, was starting on the same goose-egged foot.

Certainly losing is cause for dismissal in college athletics but firing a coach in season blurs the line between the college and professional game even more. Worse it sends a frightening message to the athletes and puts even more pressure on 18 to 22 year olds to win. And win now or else.

Firing coaches mid-season is more than a dangerous trend. As the numbers show from one January to the next, it's a growing trend.

The news that Penn had dismissed coach Glen Miller before the calendar even flipped to January has left me somehow stunned and not surprised at the same time. Sounds impossible, I know.

I'm stunned simply because it's rare a college program dismisses a coach -- any coach -- before the season is out. It reaffirms the dirty little secret that college athletics like to pretend doesn't exists -- that winning matters most. Yet Miller is the second coach to be forced out before the conference season begins, joining Fordham's Dereck Whittenburg.

That an Ivy League school would make such an unusual move only doubles the wow factor.

But that's how badly things had turned at Penn, which leads to the not surprising part. The Quakers went from conference kings to non-factor after Fran Dunphy crossed the city to Temple, a body blow to a school and an athletics program that prides itself on a rich history of winning.

But Miller's problems went deeper than his 0-7 start. Some of it wasn't his fault. He was a risky hire for Steve Bilsky, an outsider in the parochial city of Philadelphia and the even more parochial world of Penn athletics. With plenty of choices that had either Philly or Quaker ties -- Lafayette coach Fran O'Hanlon, Cornell's Steve Donahue, to name a few -- Bilsky went with a guy from Brown. His rationale wasn't flawed. Miller had made Brown into a contender and with the resources and history at Penn, logic followed that he could do the same in West Philly.

Fans and alums never embraced Miller and he never did much to bridge that gap. Maybe he never could because he simply "wasn't one of them,'' but when Governor Ed Rendell, a regular at the Palestra, is a no-show, you have problems.

The lack of connection and interest doomed Miller as much as the Quakers' poor play, a fact made all the more evident by his decision to tab Jerome Allen as interim coach. Assistant coach John Gallagher has more coaching experience than Allen. He worked at St. Joe's, La Salle and Hartford compared to Allen, who just joined the Penn staff this season. But Allen has all the Penn pedigree that Miller did not. He is a Penn graduate, a former team captain who not only took the Quakers to the NCAA Tournament, he actually helped them win a game there.

Who knows if Allen can salvage this season. He'll have the benefit of a two-week game hiatus to rally his troops. The Quakers don't play again until Dec. 28.

But he certainly will rally the fan base and stir the sagging interest in the program and for now, that will qualify as a win for Penn basketball.