ESPN Men's Basketball

A scan of the college basketball box scores each night guarantees all kinds of statistical oddities and standout performances. Here are some we found from Tuesday.

Massachusetts 93, Duquesne 83
B.J. Monteiro of Duquesne recorded six personal fouls in the Dukes’ loss to Massachusetts. Monteiro is the fourth player to pick up six fouls in a game this season, joining Darrius Garrett of Richmond, Andres Torres of Hartford and Torian Oglesby of Bowling Green.

Villanova 70, Rutgers 49
Rutgers went just 3-of-25 (12 percent) from the field in the second half in its loss to Villanova.

Hampton 69, Morgan State 65
Darrion Pellum of Morgan State scored 23 points in the win over Hampton. Pellum became the first player this season to score 20-plus points while making three or fewer shots from the field and attempting 20 or more free throws.

Trillion of the Night
Pennsylvania 62, Princeton 52
Marin Kukoc (son of Toni) of Penn played five minutes without accumulating a single stat in the Quakers’ 62-52 loss to Princeton.

The Morning After is our semi-daily recap of the night's best basketball action. Before we jump into today's insanity, here's an abbreviated look back on Tuesday night's almost-quiet affair. Oh, yeah: Try not to make it awkward. Catchphrase!

Seton Hall 109, Providence 106: Note to self: Don't turn off games that feature Seton Hall and Providence, even if one of the teams is up 76-47 with 13:36 left to play. Yes, Seton Hall led the Friars by 29 points with the final quarter or so of the game left, and it didn't really matter: Providence came back anyway, cutting the lead to three on Vincent Council's pull-up jumper with eight seconds remaining. The Pirates then missed two free throws, giving Providence a chance to tie; freshman Duke Mondy launched a bad three that hit the bottom of the rim as time expired. Seton Hall survived. Good thing, too, as the Friars are in desperate need of at least one more win -- tonight vs. Notre Dame could do the trick -- to get themselves off the bad side of the bubble and back, finally, into NCAA tournament consideration.

But anyway, to review: 109-106 after 76-47. Providence's Jamine Peterson scored 38 points and grabbed 16 rebounds. Seton Hall's Herb Pope had 27 and 11. Every starter on both teams scored at least 12 points. I want to play pickup basketball with Seton Hall and Providence. That looks like a lot of fun.

Everywhere else, quickly: Butler handled business in the Horizon League final, walloping Wright State 70-45 and completing the ever-rare perfect conference-plus-conference-tournament season. At 20 wins, the Bulldogs also retained the country's longest winning streak ... You've by now read all about UConn's ugly loss yesterday; Matt Norlander summed up the Huskies' season pretty well at The Dagger last night: "Anybody got a theory as to what this team was for the past five months?" I'm still stumped ... The College Basketball Nation blog (say it five times fast) warmly welcomes two more teams to the NCAA tournament: the Oakland Golden Grizzles and the North Texas Mean Green, two tremendous mid-majors with two tremendous mascot names ... In the A-10, Dayton and Rhode Island both preserved their fading tournament hopes with first round wins; Charlotte did not ... and Cincinnati barely squeaked past Rutgers to advance to the second day of the tournament, a day I'm greatly looking forward to.

Saddle Up is our nightly look at the hoops your TV wants you to watch. Here's Tuesday night's rundown.

No. 2 Kentucky at Mississippi State, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN: Unstoppable force, immovable object. DeMarcus Cousins, Jarvis Varnado. Even if Kentucky rolls over Mississippi State in Starkville tonight -- certainly no guarantee, despite Kentucky's vastly superior backcourt talent -- this matchup alone is worth your undivided attention. Cousins is a dominant freshman with a burgeoning skill set and one of the best interior offensive stat lines in the country. (Cousins gets a ton of offensive rebounds, takes a ton of shots, and makes most of them.) Varnado, meanwhile, is the best shot blocker in the country, and maybe of the past decade -- averaging five blocks a game this season, he's well on his way to setting the NCAA career record for blocked shots. He also leads the Bulldogs in rebounds, many of which come on the defensive end; he's one of the best in the country at that, too.

Unfortunately for Mississippi State, Varnado can shut down Cousins and the Cats can still roll. (Kentucky still has this dude named John Wall. I suppose he's pretty good.) Regardless of the outcome, though, Cousins-Varnado might be the year's best big man matchup, at least until we can get these two to play Cole Aldrich in a game of 21. You should probably watch.

No. 25 Wake Forest at Virginia Tech, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN2: While Indiana is taking its probable beating from Michigan State on ESPN at 7 p.m., you might also flip over to ESPN2, a game with actual tournament implications. (Though I suppose Michigan State could lose to Indiana, and that would have tournament implications ... but whatever, you see what I mean.) See, Virginia Tech is 20-4. That's a gaudy record. It was also amassed against one of the worst schedules in the history of college basketball, and I'm barely exaggerating: The Hokies are ranked No. 344 -- No 344! -- in nonconference strength of schedule this season. They have one win over a team in the RPI's top 50 (Clemson). Their best wins are over Seton Hall, Miami, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia (twice). Sorry, but this is not the résumé of an NCAA tournament team -- at least not yet. Tonight, Va. Tech gets its chance to prove the haters wrong, notch another RPI top-50 win and build momentum for its backloaded ACC slate, which includes games at Duke, vs. Maryland and at Georgia Tech. Contender or pretender? Tonight, the Hokies have a chance to answer.

Everywhere else: The first game of Jordan Eglseder's controversially short suspension is tonight, when UNI plays Creighton in Cedar Falls. ... As mentioned above, Indiana will try to recover from its ugly Big Ten losing streak as MSU attempts to stave off a letdown. ... Texas Tech, still trying to play its way into the tournament, will go to Baylor, which already has. ... Dominique Jones and Lance Stephenson do anything for you? Cincinnati-South Florida sounds entertaining, at least. ... Less entertaining: Rutgers at DePaul. ... North Carolina will look to build on last week's near-miss against rival Duke with a trip to Georgia Tech. ... Drexel will play VCU in a matchup of putative CAA contenders.

• ESPN's college hoops Rumor Central has been following Xavier Henry closely for the last few weeks, and today RC is asking whether Henry is still a one-and-done (Insider). Henry started hot for the Jayhawks but has cooled off in conference play as Sherron Collins has taken on more and more of the scoring load. For what it's worth, Henry is looking like a fringe lottery pick right now -- he's No. 17 in Chad Ford's mock draft (Insider), No. 14 at Draft Express, and No. 15 at NBADraft.net. Henry is super-talented, but maybe he's better off returning to Kansas for a year, running the show, and improving his draft stock, rather than jumping in to an uncertain situation right away. (By the way, that sound you hear is Kansas fans hyperventilating with joy.)
• Speaking of mock drafts, Seth Davis breaks down the mock bracket we media folks drafted last week in Indianapolis. (My recaps on the two day process are here and here.) He has a few qualms, but ultimately, I think Davis lends a seal of approval.
• John Gasaway does his weekly checkup on your favorite conference's tempo-free statistics, only to find the Big East mired in a top-heavy morass of talented-but-imperfect teams. (Look out for Marquette. Seriously, look out.) Meanwhile, the SEC is loaded in the middle, and UTEP is looking dominant in the C-USA. (Oh, and John's guest-hosting for Kyle Whelliston at The Mid-Majority this week; be sure to stop by.)
• The Salt Lake Tribune checks in on BYU's tournament chances, seeing the Cougars as a lock to make the NCAA tournament and pining in advance for a No. 3 seed once they get there. A No. 3 seed would be high for BYU if the season ended today, but if Jimmer Fredette and company keep rolling, it's not impossible.
• Dan Hanner is back with another edition of The Pulse. Always a fun read.
• In the hopes of righting his team's ugly play, Tom Crean is overdosing on caffeine. College basketball coaches: they're just like us!
• Another week, another Gary Parrish Poll Attacks.
• The Louisville Courier-Journal's Rick Bozich hints that Evan Turner is beginning to overtake John Wall in the running for player of the year. This is the just thing; Wall has been great, but he has slowed down in the past month while the Villian has been the country's best player every time he's stepped on the floor. Also, there's no such thing as the "Evan Turner Dance," which can only be considered a good thing. The new POY poll will be released tomorrow; let's see what happens.
• Adam Zagoria checks in on Rutgers rookie Dane Miller, whose coach says he should be the Big East's rookie of the year.
• Ballin Is A Habit writes an ode to the power of Kemba Walker. After last night's performance, such odes are no doubt deserved.

As always, send me your links and tips by following me on Twitter.

• CBS' Gary Parrish makes a valid argument this morning, and Kentucky's rowdy fans aren't going to like it: John Calipari hasn't exactly denied the burgeoning rumors about the New Jersey Nets job, and if the Nets came calling, Cal would have to take the call, right? Calipari's response to the rumors left plenty of wiggle room: "I'm happy," Calipari said. "This school is committed. As long as they're committed to me and this basketball program, where would I want to go?" Factor in the possibility that the Nets could get the No. 1 overall pick -- and Calipari could keep coaching John Wall -- along with the possibility of signing sudden Kentucky booster LeBron James AND redeeming himself for his previous failure at the pro level, well, yeah. The Nets job isn't out of the question, is it?
• Meet Shirtless Bill, Utah State's portly and suddenly legendary free throw distraction extraordinaire.
• Rutgers stunned a top 10 Georgetown team on Sunday, which probably means more for Rutgers than it does for Georgetown. Georgetown's still a good team prone to the occasional letdown; we knew these things already. Rutgers, on the other hand, might have saved coach Fred Hill's job.
• In other Big East news, Dominique Jones made a bold prediction on his Facebook page late last week: "To all the USF fans who continue to ask and comment about the [Notre Dame] game – we played in 1 of the hardest places to win – I didn't play well but I'm good for a bad game every 10 – but now we are in full effect – and I guarantee 4 more Big East wins in a row – copyright this quote." We'll see, 'Nique.
• Jeff Eisenberg thinks the Tennessee Volunteers found the way to beat Kentucky -- using a 3-2 zone to crowd John Wall, dribbling the air out of the ball, and slowing the game down to a methodical half-court pace. If an injured, shorthanded UT team can hang with Kentucky with 40 minutes with this strategy, it should work for others, too.
• Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun made his return to the Huskies this weekend; meanwhile, a UConn recruit is getting nervous about his commitment to Connecticut, given the uncertainty of Calhoun's future.
• John Gasaway on why the Syracuse Orangemen, despite being a very good team, aren't a great one. One major reason? Turnovers.
• Billy Donovan is relatively furious after his team's loss to Xavier at home on Saturday, saying the NCAA tournament is basically out of the question for the Gators these days. At least he's honest: "If you're not winning, you're not going to get [to the tournament]," UF coach Billy Donovan said. "So the fact we didn't win creates a situation where we shouldn't even be talking about it. If we win enough games, then maybe we can talk about it."
• Willie Warren is not feeling particularly well.
• Probably the best recruit left in the 2010 class, Josh Selby hasn't narrowed his list much, but he apparently disqualified Indiana from the running.
• Michigan State will likely debut some new uniforms today; The Only Colors has a cell phone photo.
• An argument -- a convincing argument -- for why Lazar Hayward is the Big East's most valuable player.

Georgia Tech blogger BirdGT at From The Rumble Seat has a beef with his fellow ACC fans. It goes a little somethin' like this:

All I've heard lately is, "Our conference is down!" or "North Carolina is bad so everyone else sucks too!" or "The ACC will only get one berth in the NCAA's!" Blasphemy? Yes. Insanity? Yes.

Mr. GT goes on to make the point, through charts and graphs and facts and figures, that not only is the ACC not down, it's actually fared quite well against other power conferences -- going 8-4 against the Big East, for example. Mr. GT also takes on the perception that the Big East is better merely because it's bigger, which is pervasive; you saw it already today, when Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez revealed his opinion that middle-of-the-pack teams in the Big East should get in the NCAA tournament because the conference itself is so good. That's only partially true. There are plenty of good teams in the Big East. But it's also much bigger than any other conference, meaning its odds of producing elite teams from year to year are slightly higher than its counterparts. Likewise for its bad teams.

That's a digression, though; this is really about the ACC. Is the conference bad or not? That depends how you define "bad." After listing the conference's tempo free margins on Tuesday, John Gasaway made this exact point:

No truly scary teams, right? After all, Duke just got whacked by Georgetown in Washington D.C. on Saturday and, at the risk of skipping ahead, the Hoyas may be merely the Big East's fifth- or sixth-best team. So why is it that by the lights of at least one widely respected measure the ACC is the best conference in the nation? Simple: The league has bad teams but no truly awful ones. Remember this over the next few weeks as debates rage over whether the Big East is better than the Big 12. Talking about a conference through the medium of its NCAA tournament entrants is one thing. Talking about it "top to bottom" is quite another. Define your terms in advance.

The ACC isn't particularly intimidating this year, but that doesn't mean it's a "down" year, at least not if you're interested in looking at every team in every conference and comparing them as such. The ACC has one very good team (Duke), a couple of potentially good teams (Maryland and Georgia Tech, probably) a couple of surprises (Virginia and North Carolina, for different reasons) and a bunch of just-OK to bad squads. There isn't a single Rutgers or LSU or Penn State among them. The ACC might not crown this year's national champion, but let's not be too harsh, huh?

The Morning After is our semi-daily recap of last night's best basketball action. Try not to make it awkward.

No. 16 Wisconsin 67, No. 5 Michigan State 49: Phew. Instead of trying to weave all of this into a coherent narrative -- because who do I look like, F. Scott Hemingway? -- let's take it piece by piece:

1. Shooting. Northwestern's student section wears athletics-department-sanctioned T-shirts that just say "make shots." Most teams' yearly student T-shirts say something like "Year Of Destiny" or "Returning To Glory" -- ostensibly inspirational things designed to rouse fervor in a fan base. Northwestern's was simple and direct, and still the most literally true T-shirt of its kind I've ever seen. It's brilliant, and I love it. Why? Because sometimes basketball is simple. Sometimes you don't make shots -- in Michigan State's case behind the arc, where the Spartans shot a scorching 12.2 percent -- and that makes all the difference. Michigan State only took nine threes. That's is low-risk, low-reward basketball, and without the defense to back it up on the other end, they didn't make nearly enough to slow the Badgers down. Sometimes, you've just got to make shots. First, you've got to take them.
2. No offense to Wisconsin's players, but ... Is it possible that Bo Ryan is the best system coach in college basketball? Let's define system coach first. Let's say a system coach is a guy who seems to be able to plug just about any combination of his type of players into a basketball team and emerge with a winning product year and year out. Bo Ryan is this person! Wisconsin's recruits aren't anything to sneeze at, but they're also rarely at the elite national level. It never seems to matter. Ryan wins anyway. Heck, his best players -- Trevon Hughes and Jon Leuer -- can be in foul trouble and injured, respectiviely, and Ryan can get 19 points from Jason Bohannon and 17 from Jordan Taylor as the Badgers roll to an easy win. No offense to Wisconsin's players, who are obviously very, very good at basketball and deserve plenty of credit for their success ... but we should start some sort of offseason reality show challenge thing wherein Ryan tries to coach a team of out- of-shape rec league players against Big Ten competition. I'd never bet against this team. (OK, yes I would. But you get the point.)
3. Kalin, Kalin, Kalin. Losing your first Big Ten game on the road at Wisconsin is no big deal. Losing your star point guard to injury is. It's still uncertain how long Kalin Lucas will miss with the ankle sprain he suffered in Tuesday night's second half, but any amount of time gone from the court is time the Spartans will dearly miss him. Last night's Wisconsin win has repercussions for the Big Ten going forward, but none are more important than the condition of Lucas' ankle.

No. 3 Kentucky 85, Ole Miss 75: Our own Pat Forde checked in late last night with some of his postgame thoughts, so read those if you want a recap. I have but one thing to add: Did you see Eric Bledsoe's alley-oop? Late in the second half, John Wall -- whose performance will officially put to rest any worries about his frustration with head coach John Calipari -- lightly tossed an oop over a defender's arms. As Bledsoe jumped to catch the pass, the defender barely grazed the ball, slightly altering its trajectory to the near side of the hoop, opposite from where Bledsoe jumped. But somehow, Bledsoe managed to adjust his jump in mid-air, extend his arms completely, grab the floating pass on the near side of the basket, scoop it up, and make the bucket. In a year of silly Kentucky highlights, this was easily the best. So far.

Everywhere else: You have to hand it to Seton Hall, who plays tough on the road in the Big East. But the Pirates just aren't there yet. In the meantime, Scottie Reynolds & Co. keep rolling, now 9-0 in conference and officially prompting my roommates asking me if Reynolds can win the player of the year. If this keeps up, he just might. ... Syracuse had few problems with Providence, and the highlight package is worth a look if only for Friars forward Jamine Peterson's off-the-backboard-to-himself dunk ... Nebraska couldn't follow up its first Big 12 win with another, losing to Kansas State in Lincoln ... Rutgers, once again off the schneid, beat St. John's in Piscataway, doubling the Scarlet Knights' conference win record ... Miami cut the lead to three with just five minutes left at Wake Forest, but C.J. Harris' 12 points helped the Deacons stave off a comeback ... BYU jumped all over TCU and never looked back, going to 7-1 in the Mountain West ... and Northwestern stayed just-barely-alive in the race for its first-ever NCAA tournament berth, beating an officially bad Michigan team in Evanston.

Oh, sure, a win over Notre Dame isn't exactly a season-maker. It's not like the Scarlet Knights toppled Syracuse or Villanova. Beating 2009-10's decidedly mediocre Fighting Irish isn't the stuff Disney movies are made of. But Rutgers' win did give the Scarlet Knights at least one distinction: They're not the worst BCS team in the country! Woo-hoo!

No, that must now go to either LSU or Penn State. Rutgers was in contention for ye olde wooden spoon before Saturday's win, a status largely thanks to, count 'em, nine consecutive losses by an average margin of 18.6 points per game. Yes, that is bad. But is it quite as bad as the LSU Tigers, who have lost 10 of their last 11 and are now 0-7 in the just-OK SEC? Or what about Penn State, whose loss at Purdue Saturday moved them to a whopping 0-9 in the Big Ten? This is the same Big Ten that features the rebuilding Indiana Hoosiers and an Iowa team* decimated by transfers after a particularly bad season.

(*By the way, you can officially remove Iowa from this list. The Hawkeyes are bad, but they're not as bad as Penn State, and they're not nearly as bad as they should be, given their offseason. Iowa fans, including my buddy Tom, can stop harassing me now. You guys were right.)

In any case, Rutgers gets a brief respite from its ugly season, and the attention turns elsewhere. Who will finish at the top -- er, the bottom -- of this list? Let's hear your breakdown in the comments.

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?

• Way back when the men's basketball hoops program at Tennessee was merely an afterthought, back before Lane Kiffin looked around and convinced himself he hit a triple (great line), women's coach Pat Summit was running one of the greatest and most successful programs in college athletics. Now that Tennessee's basketball program has suffered the indignity of drug arrests and its football coach has left for USC under auspicious circumstances, Summit has to answer the questions like a concerned friend trying to explain away her troubled buddies' behavior. Not cool, guys. Not cool.
• Ballin' Is A Habit joins the chorus of those who think Purdue's lack of point guard depth is a major problem for the potential Final Four team.
• Luke Winn profiles Trevon Hughes, whose big performance led Wisconsin over Northwestern last night. Hughes is from New York City, and his adjustment to life in Madison has, at the very least, included a barber shop where he can get his hair properly cut. If Hughes was afraid of the small-town life, he chose his college appropriately: As big Midwestern college towns go, Madison is one of the more cosmopolitan and urban. Which isn't saying much, but still.
• You'd think that was the only SI story about a New York native moving inland. Alas, it is not, as Paul Daugherty evaluates Lance Stephenson's transition from NYC and concludes that Stephenson merely needed a change of scenery to block out the many distractions that plagued his high school years and weighed down his recruitment.
• Deposed Tennessee player Tyler Smith has hired an agent. Insert joke about whether that agent doubles as a criminal attorney ... here.
• Former Rutgers center Greg Echenique has decided where he wants to transfer: Creighton. The Bluejays were one of Echenique's final options in high school, and they'll benefit greatly from his arrival. (They'll need to; Creighton is not rebounding from last year's near NCAA tourney miss very well.)
• John Wall gets some advice from former SI cover athlete Don Buckley. I can just see it now: "Um ... thanks?"
• Kentucky fan Truzenzuzex (go figure: I can spell this name correctly, but consistently screw up Coach K's) takes a long view of Kentucky's rise from the ashes of Billy Gillispie's tenure. My favorite sentence: "Suddenly, even surprisingly, the dark gray funk was lifted. It didn't go gently. It went with difficulty, like childbirth, and not without pain." Does that make former Kentucky player A.J. Stewart the afterbirth? (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
• Dana O'Neil returned from Storrs with some strong impressions of the Big East-undefeated Pittsburgh Panthers; O'Neil sees much of their home city in the way this year's iteration plays.
• Polls are unreliable; objective consensus is fickle. But it's still fun to get a bunch of sports bloggers together and see what their poll looks like, which is exactly what SB Nation does with its myriad college hoops bloggers every week. Be forewarned: These guys know their stuff.

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

Clemson 83, North Carolina 64: Two conclusions. 1). North Carolina is, as of Jan. 14, not very good. 2). Clemson's basketball fan support is at an all-time high, and the Tigers are better for it.

On the first: This isn't exactly a shocker. After all, North Carolina came into Thursday night's game ranked No. 41 in Ken Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency ratings. They're merely OK defensively, and in past years this was fine, because the offense was otherworldy. That's not the case this year; UNC is 40th in points per possession, scoring about 1.1 points per trip. That's just ... meh. (And it doesn't help when you turn the ball over on 30 percent of your possessions, either.) It's certainly not what we've come to expect from Roy Williams' North Carolina teams, who have overwhelmed their opponents on the offensive end since the day Roy found a house in Chapel Hill. This team is young and new and not vintage UNC, and it shows. On nights like Wednesday, it shows badly.

Make no mistake, though, North Carolina wasn't merely bad on Wednesday. Saying so would be a disservice to Clemson and its fans. This is the second conclusion: Don't look now, but Clemson is starting to look like a pretty darn good ACC program. They've got the ability, sure. That's not entirely new; Oliver Purnell's teams have been playing at about this level for a few years now. But more than anything, Wednesday night showed just how far Clemson's fan base has come. It was this time last year that Clemson writers were aghast wondering why so many people were showing up to noon tip-offs at Littlejohn Coliseum. That was unlike Clemson fans, who typically prefer their football. (They're in South Carolina, after all. Don't fish prefer the water?) Newsflash: Clemson basketball has plenty of fans, too, and those fans are relishing the Tigers' stellar on-court product.* Chicken, meet egg.

*Speaking of on-court relish, this of course doesn't excuse the court-storming that went down on Wednesday night, which I'll get to in a later post. Here's a preview: Tsk-tsk, Clemson students. Tsk. Tsk.

Texas 90, Iowa State 83; Kansas 84, Nebraska 72; Missouri 94, Texas Tech 89: Well, it was fun while it lasted. Most of Wednesday's talk revolved around how well Big 12 teams had done at home in 2009-10; the conference was 112-1 going into Wednesday night's games. I said yesterday that that stat would be tested, and if it held up after Wednesday night's games, something seriously freaky was going on. Never mind. All three Big 12 road teams won on Wednesday night, even Missouri -- ostensibly rebuilding after an Elite Eight last year, but quietly 14-3 and 3-0 in conference -- at Texas Tech. I think we can rule out the supernatural.

Michigan State 60, Minnesota 53: Minnesota is almost good enough to be ranked. Almost. The Gophers have lost five of their last six games to ranked teams (that stat courtesy of the wonderful folks in the ESPN research department), including on Wednesday night, when they played Michigan State almost even for 40 minutes in East Lansing and only barely came up short. The Spartans, meanwhile, are starting to find their groove after some struggles in the early nonconference season. Sound familiar? (I meant that rhetorically. Of course it sounds familiar. The Spartans do this every year.)

Pittsburgh 67, Connecticut 57: Dana said it best last night: Pitt is legit. Simple, syntactically rhythmic and also, you know, true. Pittsburgh was supposed to rebuild in 2009-10. They were supposed to feel every pound of DEJuan Blair's body mass lifted from underneath the opponent's basket. (Which, by the way, note to every NBA GM that didn't take Blair in the late first or early second round: You are idiots. I'm not the first to tell you, but I'll gladly join the chorus. Letting Blair go to the Spurs in the late second round. Unbelievable.) Anyway, the point is, Pittsburgh isn't missing its big three nearly as much as we all thought. They're doing just fine, actually, perched quite neatly atop the Big East with wins at Syracuse , at Cincy and now at UConn. Jamie Dixon: coach of the year?

Everywhere else: Duke destroyed Boston College at Cameron, which: duh ... Syracuse dismantled Rutgers in New Jersey, which again: duh ... BYU had no problems with Air Force on its way to a 12th win in a row, and speaking of coach of the year candidates, Dave Rose, come on down ... Northwestern had a chance to notch a huge Big Ten win over Wisconsin but lost hold of the game in the closing minutes, losing 60-50 and taking another step toward a perpetual NCAA tourney-less existence ... Georgia plays hard, that's for sure; unfortunately the Bulldogs' best effort is often not quite good enough, and such was the case in yet another close loss to a ranked team Wednesday night ... Hey, wait a second. Is that Virginia? Beating Georgia Tech? Why yes, yes it is! More on this later in the day ... Utah State outlasted Nevada in a close overtime WAC win ... Vanderbilt barely escaped Alabama in Tuscaloosa ... and Xavier battled toward the top of the A-10 with a win over Charlotte.

Saddle Up is a quick preview of the basketball your TV wants you to watch tonight. Here's Wednesday night's rundown.

No. 13 North Carolina at No. 19 Clemson, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN: Oh, road wins. How fleeting you are. If there's been a theme on the blog today, that's been it. Some schools can get them (Ohio State's win at Purdue Tuesday night, for example) and some schools can't (that would be everyone in the Big 12, naturally). North Carolina gets a chance to bring this debate into the ACC, where the young Tar Heels will visit Littlejohn Coliseum in Clemson, S.C., Wednesday night. At stake for the Heels is a chance to prove their brutal nonconference stretch was a growing experience, that road wins in the ACC will not only be achievable but expected, even for a young team. At stake for Clemson? The Tigers have an opportunity to not only beat a talented team and get an ACC win (duh), but to make their name nationally as a program worth watching. This has been the case for two years now, but Oliver Purnell has yet to receive the requisite recognition. Maybe that starts tonight. Maybe the Tigers can be the random car in the Tar Heels' bus side. Weirder things have happened. (Like, for example, a car hitting the North Carolina bus today. That was definitely weirder.)

No. 20 Pittsburgh at No. 15 Connecticut, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN2: Now here's a confusing conference. The Pac-10 is wide-open because it's bad. The Big 12 is closed -- either Texas or Kansas is taking that thing, obviously -- but its middle portion, the teams that are neither good nor bad, is chock full. The Big Ten is the Big Ten; four teams can win, and the others have no shot. But the Big East? The Big East is wide open because it's good. There are at least seven teams that have been playing quality basketball and can challenge for supremacy before the year is out. Pittsburgh and Connecticut are two of those teams. From a pure efficiency margin standpoint, Pitt has recovered from its slow start and been the better team for a few weeks now, while UConn has had trouble figuring out how to make the most out of its possessions in an uptempo setting. Let's see if either team can win a measure of separation from the pack on Wednesday night.

Boston College at No. 7 Duke, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN: This note is to merely let you know that this game is on. Boston College is barely hanging on to its place in the Pomeroy top 70; Duke is an efficient, balanced team coming off a conference-opening loss to Georgia Tech in Atlanta Saturday. Duke is playing at Cameron Indoor Stadium. You get the idea: It could be a long night for Al Skinner's squad.

No. 1 Texas at Iowa State, 8 p.m. ET, ESPN360: In a way, this is timed perfectly. Duke and BC will be in the second half just as the newly-crowned Longhorns will be taking on Iowa State in Ames, Iowa -- you can fire up your laptop and check out ESPN360 right at 8 p.m. (I'm getting really good at this whole corporate synergy thing, aren't I?) In a rational world, Iowa State wouldn't have the horses to dream of competing against the Longhorns; Craig Brackins is a beast, but he's no match for Damion James and Dexter Pittman and Avery Bradley and Justin Mason and insert other awesome Texas player here, because there are like 10 of them. But we do not live in a rational world. We live in a world in which only one Big 12 team has lost at home all season long. 112 other games have gone the other way -- to the home team. Factor in tonight's Kansas-at-Nebraska matchup, and we'll get a true test of just how much home court really means in the Big 12. I have a feeling that crazy 112-1 home win stat is like the entire O'Doyle family: It's going down. If not, something seriously weird is going on here.

Everywhere else: Syracuse will face a struggling (which is a nice way of saying they're bad and getting worse) Rutgers team in northern New Jersey tonight ... Michigan State will host Minnesota, yet another previously ranked Big Ten team looking to stay in the conference hunt ... West Virginia gets a relative breather with South Florida tonight after WVU's upset loss to Notre Dame Saturday ... If you like incessant motion offense, be sure to tune into Wisconsin at Northwestern ... After an upset of Georgia Tech and a close loss at Kentucky, Mark Fox will try to keep Georgia rolling as Ole Miss comes to town ... In a game that will almost certainly be high-scoring (much to Bob Knight's chagrin), Texas Tech will take on tempo-nuts Missouri in Lubbock ... and, last but not least, your ostensible mid-major game of the night: Charlotte at Xavier.

Get your couch's butt-grove ready. It's going to be an awesome night.

Losing to Illinois in overtime and getting blown out by Michigan State are two surefire ways to lose your Top 25 ranking. Just ask Northwestern.

After all, it was just last week the Wildcats made a triumphant run into the Associated Press' top 25 for the first time since 1969. That was thanks to Northwestern's best start in years -- 11-1 with wins over Butler, Iowa State, and Notre Dame. There was and still is perfectly legitimate talk about whether the Northwestern Wildcats can do what the Northwestern Wildcats have never done: make an NCAA tournament.

They'll have to relaunch that campaign from outside the Top 25; Northwestern's two aforementioned losses, which opened Big Ten play last week, have cost them their spot in the AP's purview, which is OK. The Top 25 is basically meaningless at this point; NCAA tournament teams aren't chosen by how many media votes they received in the first week of January.

Still, though, at least Northwestern was ranked, if only briefly. There are plenty of college hoops teams who would settle for that. The Wall Street Journal and APPollArchive.com put together a list of the remaining longest AP poll droughts. Rutgers, come on down!

The longest gap between poll appearances, according to Keith Meador of APPollArchive.com, now belongs to Rutgers, which was last ranked on March 13, 1979, 541 AP polls ago. Next comes Oregon State, last ranked at the end of the 1989-'90 regular season, when senior guard Gary Payton led the Beavers to a 5th-seed in the NCAA tournament, where they were upset in the first round by Ball State. Oregon State, now coached by President Obama's brother-in-law, hasn't come close to the tournament since then.

Technically, South Florida is the only BCS school never to be ranked in the AP poll, but the Bulls only began playing in a BCS conference -- the Big East -- in 2005.

The team with the next best shot is probably Oregon State. Craig Robinson has effected a quick rebuilding project in Corvallis that, at this pace, should have the Beavers in the Top 25 at some point in the next few years. In the meantime, Northwestern, enjoy it. You may not have stayed very long, but hey, at least you got there.