ESPN Men's Basketball

1. This is a huge week for Stanford. The Cardinal are looking for momentum as they start Pac-12 play since they failed to pick up quality wins in games against Missouri and Minnesota in the Battle 4 Atlantis and since they lost a home game to Belmont. The Cardinal are at NC State Tuesday and at Northwestern Friday. Stanford, which won the NIT, is 7-3. "Our effort and defense has been consistent," said Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins. "It has allowed us to be very competitive. We need to improve our field percentage (39.8 for 294th overall in Division I)." The Cardinal can’t afford to leave everything to Pac-12 play. The resume needs something from the pre-conference slate.

2. Creighton’s Doug McDermott has been sensational so far this season, averaging 23.7 points a game and scoring more than 30 in consecutive games against Akron and at Cal. But this isn’t a one-man team. Creighton coach Greg McDermott said guard Grant Gibbs (6.3 apg, 0.9 tpg) has had “a floor game that is off the charts. Austin Chatman has filled in well at point guard (4.3 apg, 2.1 tpg). Gregory Echenique has improved inside. I’m just fortunate to have a group of guys that understand what they can and can’t do. Sounds easy but it’s not in this day and age.’’

3. Butler coach Brad Stevens said he thought BU president James Denko’s statement about the school’s possible interest in leaving the A-10 to join the Big East Catholic seven as being “a proactive way to answer what we’ve all been asked a lot in the past few days.’’ Danko made it clear that Butler will look out for Butler wherever that lands the Bulldogs. There wasn’t a commitment to the A-10 in the statement, just a guarantee the Bulldogs will continue to do what is right for the school.

LOS ANGELES — When the UCLA Bruins basketball players reported for their shootaround Monday morning, they were greeted by a surprise visitor at Pauley Pavilion.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the all-time leading scorer in NBA history and a three-time All-American at UCLA, was there taping an interview for a news program, and coach Ben Howland asked him to speak with the team.

The Bruins great talked for about 10 minutes and touched on basketball and the current season, but also stressed the importance of the overall college experience. The players said it served as a reminder of the proud history of UCLA basketball.

“That was a great experience to speak to a legend not only in the game of basketball but in UCLA history,” freshman Kyle Anderson said. “It just goes to show the legacy here at UCLA and the great players who came through here. Just his presence just humbles us and goes to show what we have to go out there and play for.

“We have to keep the tradition going and play our hardest every time we put the UCLA across our chest.”

Howland said he hoped the players would take Abdul-Jabbar’s message to heart, especially when it comes to leaving UCLA as a well-rounded person.

“Here’s a guy that is the greatest player ever, the leading scorer in the history of the league,” Howland said. “He won nine championships between college and the pros, and for him to talk about how important the overall experience is and giving back to the communities when you go home. Take things that you learn in college and help better your own communities where you are from. Those were all important messages.”

Abdul-Jabbar, who went by the name Lew Alcindor while at UCLA, is one of seven UCLA players with a jersey hanging in the rafters at Pauley Pavilion. He and Bill Walton were the first two to have their numbers retired by UCLA. His accomplishments are too numerous to mention, but they are well known even to the current generation of players, who seemed to have taken to heart everything they heard during Monday’s impromptu visit.

“Being around the greatest scorer who ever played is an eye-opening experience, so you try to soak in whatever he says,” center Travis Wear said. “It’s amazing.”

Jim Boeheim's 900th win began the same way so many others had. His team blitzed an inferior opponent with reliable offense and that patented 2-3 zone, and the Orange went into halftime leading 40-21. Syracuse fans began the second half ready to celebrate, counting down the seconds until Boeheim could pose for photos with his "900" plaque.

Detroit had other ideas. After 36 minutes of lifelessness, the Titans came storming back, eventually cutting the lead to 3 with under 30 seconds left to play. Syracuse had to take care of the ball and make free throws to win the game 72-68. In what was meant to be an easy coronation, the Orange had to overcome actual pressure.

"If we don't make those free throws at the end, we lose the game," Boeheim told ESPN's Doris Burke after the game. "We haven't had a close game all year this year. [Now] we've had one and we know what it's like. I would have rather we not done that tonight. But we'll take the win and learn from it."

At that point, Boeheim thanked the fans in the Carrier Dome, and then tried to make that the end of Burke's postgame interview. Burke stopped him -- "I'm not letting you get away that easy, Coach," she said -- as the coach laughed, reluctantly agreeing to further interrogation. And so even if it was harrowing at times, Boeheim's 900th win ended the way so many others: with gruff modesty, sardonicism and an endearing, cranky impatience. Yeah, yeah, 900 wins, great. Let's get this over with, huh? I've still got work to do.

With Boeheim, you always know what you're going to get. That is, perhaps, the defining trait of his career: consistency. Boeheim enrolled as a student at Syracuse in 1962, when he walked on to a then-fledgling basketball team. For the past 50 years -- 50 years! -- Boeheim has either been a player, assistant coach or head coach at Syracuse. His 37 seasons in charge are the most of any coach in Division I. He has taken 29 teams to the NCAA tournament, the most all time. He has won 20 games or more in 34 seasons, also the most all time. He has 402 Big East wins and 47 Big East tournament wins, also both the most all time.

And he has done it in a way that is both wildly unconventional and, by now, almost mechanically predictable. What other great coach in the history of college basketball has not only utilized zone defense frequently but preferred it, perfected it, turned it into an art form? What other coach has sold players on a system and, despite losing NBA talent year after year, been able to replenish talent, reload his teams and win so frequently for so long?

When you consider this consistency, it remains a shock that it took Boeheim so long to win a national title (2003) and even more surprising that it's Boeheim's only banner to date. It might be one of the great flukes of college hoops, the wacky price of a thrilling, single-elimination tournament. And one of my favorite trivia of all time is as follows: Jim Boeheim didn't win his first national coach of the year award until -- wait for it -- 2010.

There will be more time to consider his legacy. In two games (barring an upset Saturday versus Temple, perhaps), Boeheim will tie Bob Knight's 902 wins. In three games, he'll become the second-winningest coach in the history of the sport, where he is likely to finish his career (Coach K's 936 wins make him nigh uncatchable, and he's not slowing down anytime soon). We will take the time to place Boeheim in the pantheon, to discuss how we judge wins versus titles, to tease out his greatest teams and players, to take stock of a career that only gets more impressive by the day.

In the meantime, Boeheim will keep coaching his team, keep using that 2-3 zone, keep hectoring his players after letdowns and building them up after disappointing performances, and keep doing his best to avoid talking about what it all means.

Because what's the point? There's more work to do.

The man is consistent.

Andy Katz on Jim Boeheim's 900th win as the head coach of Syracuse.

Indiana and Purdue are each other's once and forever rivals. They're Batman and the Joker, depending on which side of the state you live in; they've met twice a year since 1901, and they are destined to do this forever.

The Butler Bulldogs could never replace, or equal, the antipathy Indiana fans feel for Purdue, or vice versa. But watching Saturday's insanity play out from high above the court, I could see Indiana's immense fan base parry the cheers and raucous work of Butler's own hardly-small fan section. As I watched a Butler team play as though it knew it had every right to beat the No. 1 team in the country, and as I watched Brad Stevens not only get the best of Tom Crean but cooly sell his players and program after the fact, I couldn't help but think, Wait a second — we need to do this every season.

Indiana may have found its next new rival just 45 minutes up the road.

For much of the schools' history, this would have been a silly notion. Butler was a tiny little thing, a Horizon League novelty with that cool gym from the tape-measure last scene in "Hoosiers." When Bob Knight's program met with the Bulldogs, the outcome was typically delivered in swift and mostly painless fashion.

You don't need me to tell you how much things have changed. Butler is no longer even in the Horizon League — it is now a member of the more well-heeled Atlantic 10, and could very well become a member of the new Catholic 7 Big East breakoff party, which would make the Bulldogs something close to a high-major program, presumably with the finances to back it up. Even if that doesn't happen, the Atlantic 10 remains a boost.

There is the natural geography, of course, which is always good for some hatred — Butler fans and IU fans sit in close enough proximity to probably drive each other nuts on Mondays like today. As it should be.

But more than anything, if this is a budding rivalry, it is so because it seems to verge on the personal. Consider the past three seasons. In 2010 and 2011, as Stevens led Butler teams to back-to-back Final Fours, Indiana was still fighting its way out of the post-Kelvin Sampson hole, winning 10 and 12 games, respectively. IU fans began to murmur — for some, it was an outright shout — that maybe Crean wasn't the man for the job, that IU needed to hire Stevens yesterday, that here was the guy they were looking for all along.

You could hardly blame them. Stevens is not only already one of the best coaches in the game, with one of its most well-respected programs. He is also from Zionsville, Ind. He fell in love with basketball attending IU games. He went to college in the state. He does things — cliche-but-true alert — the right way. He has flatly turned down every job offer thrown his way in the past three years, many of which would have made him a wealthy man. Maybe he's holding out for the IU job, message board types would write. Could Brad Stevens come to Indiana? chatters would ask, not the least bit in jest, even when it was still way too early to pass judgment on Crean's tenure.

Had Crean had another 12-win season in 2012, maybe we would have gotten an answer. Instead he unleashed Cody Zeller, led the Hoosiers to massive symbolic wins over Kentucky and Ohio State, and took a brilliant offensive team back to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2002.

Crean quieted any Stevens longing last season. But it's hard to imagine a man so intensely competitive, who is just now marshaling ownership over one of college basketball's great jobs, not keeping a wary eye fixed northward.

The subtext was certainly there Saturday. Both coaches traded jabs with referees and each other during the game -- Brian Hamilton's SI.com special captured some of the money quotes:

This was taut competition, not least for the men pacing the sideline, the animation of Stevens and Indiana coach Tom Crean underscoring the grind. When the Hoosiers' irreplaceable star, Cody Zeller, drove hard on the baseline and got body-checked in the air for his efforts, Stevens grinned and applauded the hard foul from his bench. On the other end, Crean was not amused.

"Oh, yeah, you like that?" he bellowed. "Make sure they make a play on the ball!"

On Saturday, when unlikely star Alex Barlow was explaining the final play to reporters, Stevens calmly went out of his way to note what many Indiana fans had immediately screamed after the game: Crean had taken Zeller off the floor. When Crean was asked about this decision in the post game, his impatience was poorly concealed (you can see his reaction at the 2:40 mark here), as if he had anticipated the question and was preemptively sick of it. There were other questions, like why Indiana didn't try its 1-2-2 press earlier in the game, if only to change the pace, and why the Hoosiers had overplayed on the perimeter even as Butler outworked them for offensive rebounds and cutbacks.

The consensus among Indiana fans, and many in the media room, was clear: Crean had been outcoached.

All of which is ephemeral and temporary, of course. It was 40 minutes in December. Crean isn't going anywhere. His program is a beast, a newly well-oiled recruiting machine; he will likely be at Indiana for exactly as long as he'd like. Besides, duh: He's a really good coach. For his part, Stevens seems just as determined to prove that Butler isn't a novelty anymore, regardless of conference — that every now and then, new college basketball powers do rise, and that his is here to stay.

Still, when you combine that ascendance and all of the natural factors that make this a potential rivalry with that just-below-the-surface coaching intrigue — the notion (true or not) that for Crean every game against the coolly smiling Stevens is some kind of unspoken popular-consciousness proving ground — well, sure, it may never be Indiana-Purdue. But it does sound like a game we need to see every year. Who's with me?

Jim Boeheim goes for career win No. 900 tonight when No. 3 Syracuse hosts Detroit (7 ET on ESPN2). Mike Krzyzewski (936) and Bob Knight (902) are the only Division I coaches to achieve that milestone.

Boeheim already holds Division I records for most wins at one school (previously Dean Smith’s 879 at UNC) and wins at one’s alma mater (previously Norm Stewart’s 634 at Missouri). Herb Magee, who has 948 wins at Division III Philadelphia University (his alma mater) is atop the NCAA list in both categories.

Krzyzewski reached win No. 900 in his 1,183rd game and Knight got there in his 1,269th. Tonight is the 1,204th game of Boeheim’s career.

Place in history
• Boeheim’s 37 seasons at Syracuse are the most of any Division I coach at his current school (Dave Bike has been at Sacred Heart for 35 years).

• His 34 career 20-win seasons are the most of any Division I coach (Dean Smith is next with 30).

• His 29 NCAA tournament appearances are the most all time.

• His current streak of 15 consecutive 20-win seasons puts him just one behind Krzyzewski.

• His win over Wisconsin in last season’s Sweet 16 gave him 48 career NCAA tournament wins, breaking a tie with John Wooden for fifth most all time (Jim Calhoun is fourth with 49).

• He’s one of 11 coaches to win the men’s basketball championship at his alma mater.

• His 1,203 games coached are the fifth most in Division I.

• His 402 Big East wins (regular season and tournament) and 47 Big East tournament wins are the most all time.

Jim Boeheim milestone wins
1 -- Nov. 26, 1976, vs. Harvard, 75-48
100 -- March 1, 1980, vs. Villanova, 97-83
200 -- Feb. 14, 1985, vs. Seton Hall, 94-62
300 -- Dec. 30, 1988, vs. St. Francis (Pa.), 105-63
400 -- Jan. 9, 1993, vs. Miami (Fla.), 89-81
500 -- Feb. 22, 1997, vs. Rutgers, 92-62
600 -- March 16, 2001, vs. Hawaii, 79-69
700 -- Feb. 26, 2005, vs. Providence, 91-69
800 -- Nov. 9, 2009, vs. Albany, 75-43
880 -- Feb. 8, 2012, vs. Georgetown, 64-61 (OT) (passes Dean Smith)
900 -- ???

Dave Rice has a wonderful problem.

Former McDonald’s All-American and Pitt transfer Khem Birch is expected to make his debut Monday night at UTEP. Birch transferred midway through the 2011-12 season after averaging 4.4 points per game and 5.0 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game in 10 games (15.0 minutes per game) with the Panthers.

But we didn’t learn a lot about the Canadian big man in that brief stint. He’ll certainly play more with UNLV because Rice needs him.

Mike Moser is sidelined after dislocating his elbow in a game at Cal earlier this month. So Birch arrives at a vulnerable time for the Runnin’ Rebels, who are talented enough to excel without Moser because Anthony Bennett (20.3 ppg, 8.9 rpg) has emerged as a national player of the year candidate.

Once Moser returns next month, however, placing the proven combo forward back into the rotation -- especially if Birch and Bennett are thriving together -- could be a challenge for Rice.

That’s a “problem,” however, most coaches desire. Still, Birch has a lot to prove before any grand assumptions can be made about his potential impact.

But there is a buzz in Las Vegas about Birch’s potential to boost a frontcourt that’s already one of the nation’s best (when healthy), according to the Las Vegas Sun’s Taylor Bern:

Nobody’s expecting Birch to come in and make the same impact on offense. Not right away, at least. What the Rebels do expect is that Birch will anchor their post defense and allow his teammates to guard their men with more freedom.

“We’ll be able to take more risks,” Rice said. “Pressure the basketball more and deny more passes on the wing just because of the fact we’ve got a shot-blocker behind us who can clean things up. Even when he doesn’t block shots, just his presence, the fact that he’s in the game will make a difference defensively.”

Birch had six blocks in one game for Pitt; during his 10 games there, he averaged nearly two blocks per game. Rice said Thomas will start the game against the Miners, but he expects Birch to play maybe 15-20 minutes at center.

Birch’s court time will depend on a few factors, the most important being his conditioning. Birch runs the floor really well, especially for a guy who comes in at 6-foot-9 and 220 pounds, but there’s a difference between what he’s been doing in practice and game shape.

“Last year, I thought I was in shape,” Birch said, “and then I went in the game and played.”

It’s fair to expect some rust after so much time away from the court. No one knows exactly what that will mean as far his production goes, though. One possible scenario is that his timing will be off, perhaps resulting in fouls that in later games could be blocks.

Or maybe UTEP’s front line will immediately face the same problem Thomas and other Rebels such as freshman Savon Goodman have been dealing with every day in practice.

“You’re not going to just lay the ball up and everything’s going to be cool,” Goodman said. “He’s going to try to pin your shot against the backboard. Anybody coming into the lane and seeing him, they’re definitely going to have to re-route their shot.”

Well, that is -- possibly -- a problem for everyone else.

The bottom line is that Birch’s arrival is the most intriguing midyear addition in the country. And there’s minimal pressure on the sophomore because Bennett is playing so well, and Moser could return in the coming weeks, possibly in time for the squad’s conference opener at No. 16 New Mexico Jan. 9. It’s a great situation for the Runnin’ Rebels.

A wonderful problem.

Nine hundred. Nine hundred of almost anything is a lot.

But when it comes to winning college basketball games, it's truly rarefied air. There are only four coaches who have reached that milestone, and their names are Summitt, Krzyzewski, Knight and Conradt.

That exclusive club is about to welcome Jim Boeheim.

You’ve heard most of it before. He’s snarky. He’s stubborn. The 2-3 zone is gimmicky. He never leaves New York state until after the New Year. Some might think he could be a little nicer to the media.

All these things may be true. But he’s also a Hall of Fame coach who has won 75 percent of the games he’s coached in a remarkable 37-year career at Syracuse. He’s been to the Final Four three times and won a national championship in 2003. He’s served on Mike Krzyzewski’s staff on two gold-medal-winning Olympic teams. The list goes on and on.

And while 900 wins -- which he'll attempt to reach tonight against Detroit (7 ET, ESPN2) -- is an impressive statistic, as a coach, the thing that sticks out to me most is what Boeheim has meant to Syracuse and its university. The feeling is definitely mutual.

There’s a famous Rick Pitino story involving Boeheim that sums up what I mean. As it goes, Pitino, Boeheim and their wives were on a beach somewhere. The question was asked among each member of the group: “If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?”

Pitino and the women offer different exotic locations from across the globe. Boeheim, who responded last, says “Syracuse.”

I believe him.

Few sports figures have had an impact on a community like Boeheim has in his central New York neck of the woods. I can’t help drawing parallels to one I saw firsthand: the legendary Pat Summitt.

Pat is to Knoxville as Jim is to Syracuse. She grew up in a small town and spent her entire career at Tennessee, coached a gold-medal Olympic team in 1984, helped set home attendance records for the Lady Vols, has worked tirelessly for local charitable organizations that are important to her and even saw UT’s home basketball court dedicated in her name.

Boeheim has done all those things at Syracuse as well. The most interesting similarity to me, though, is that in an era of constant coaching changes, both legends were rarely attached to other jobs (there once was some talk of Boeheim leaving for Ohio State, but that conversation didn't last 10 minutes) -- even though they would have unquestionably been successful in different ventures.

This, Jim’s 43rd season with a whistle on the Syracuse bench (he served as an assistant for six seasons under Roy Danforth), marks 50 years since he came onto the SU campus as a student way back in 1962. All that’s happened since is that the Orange have made 34 NCAA tournament appearances, won the Big East regular season nine times, produced 35 All-Americans and have become the premier program in one of the most prestigious conferences in the country.

Not bad for a guy who grew up in a little town called Lyons, N.Y., and to some is still more famously known as Dave Bing’s teammate than the third- (soon to be second-) winningest coach in men’s basketball history.

Some of the old-timers will appreciate this list: Lou Carnesecca, Rollie Massimino, John Thompson, Dr. Tom Davis, Bill Raftery, Dom Perno and of course Jim Calhoun. This is a roll call of the coaches who made the Big East into such a giant in the college basketball world (until now). Boeheim not only stands tall among that group, he’s still going! And though he’s spent three-fourths of his life at his alma mater, Boeheim literally scoffs at the mention of retirement.

On a bigger scale, the discussion sometimes turns to whether Syracuse is among the “blue bloods” of college basketball. Both Boeheim and his university aren’t on most people's top-five list, but he’s certainly on mine.

Here’s another list for you: (1) Kentucky; (2) Kansas; (3) North Carolina; (4) Duke; (5) Syracuse. That's a list of the programs with the most wins in Division I history. The Orange are fifth all-time and will have 1,852 wins when Boeheim reaches his 900th. You don’t see UCLA, Louisville or Michigan State on that list. Indiana, UConn and Georgetown aren't on it, either. Syracuse is on it because of Boeheim.

A debate about things like that is for the fans, but the statistics tell a very real story. Jim Boeheim has had a historic career while at Syracuse and deserves to be recognized as one of the game's true icons.

Bobby Knight played at Ohio State and coached at Army, Indiana and Texas Tech. Krzyzewski played and coached at Army before going to Duke.

Boeheim has done it all in one place: Syracuse, N.Y.

There's no place he'd rather be.

College hoops polls might be inconsequential noise, but that doesn't make the arguments any less fun. In that spirit, I present the creatively named Poll Thoughts, which you can expect every Monday until the season is over.

"I don't think too much about rankings. We will probably be ranked after this week but that doesn't make us any better than what we were last week."

After Saturday's win over Indiana, someone asked the victorious Brad Stevens a question about what it meant to beat a No. 1-ranked team, and what the polls would eventually say about his group, and probably something about national respect or whatever, and with a total and utter nonchalance that could not possibly fit the spiritual mission of Poll Thoughts any better, Stevens replied with the above.

This is something I try to say just about every week, but it is a difficult thing to hammer home when you are writing 600 words about that week's Top 25 poll. But it's true all the same: rankings are dumb! If you are a fan who gets worked up about the precise position of your team in the polls, and wait how is that other team ranked higher, and isn't this just a total injustice -- you're wasting your mental energy. If you use rankings as nothing more than a crude snapshot of the current hoops landscape, you will lead a much happier and more fulfilled life. Promise.

If you don't take my word for it, will you take Brad Stevens'?

• Speaking of Stevens, thanks to his Bulldogs, Indiana fell from its preseason No. 1 perch all the way to No. 6 this week. Personally, I am surprised the Hoosiers didn't fall a bit further. Consider the losses of teams ranked below them: Ohio State lost to Duke at Duke, and Florida lost to Arizona at Arizona (more on that below). Indiana lost to previously unranked Butler on a neutral floor (one dominated by IU fans) in Indianapolis after the Bulldogs lost three players to late foul outs. Maybe people were that impressed with Butler; maybe people just think Indiana is better on a per-possession basis -- which is not entirely unfair (at least to Ohio State). But the polls are usually not quite so forgiving.
• Florida shouldn't be ranked so low. I know, the Gators lost, and they melted down a bit in the final minutes of Saturday's Arizona win. (The best was the final possession, when the TV camera panned out to the crowd; Florida players were still scrambling to recover the ball and Billy Donovan was already walking to midcourt to congratulate Sean Miller well before the game finished. The second the ball was mishandled, Donovan knew the deal.) But for one, Arizona appears to be good. Also, the Wildcats were at home. The Gators have had one of the most impressive starts to the season of any team -- they lost and still moved to No. 1 in Ken Pomeroy's per-possession efficiency metric -- and there is absolutely zero shame in leading the entire game at Arizona and then succumbing to pressure on the road in December. It happens. It improved my opinion of Arizona somewhat, but it didn't change my opinion of the Gators one bit.
• NC State crept back into the poll at No. 25. I would be 100 percent all right with that, except ...
• Pittsburgh remains unranked yet again. The Panthers are underrated. I say this every week. I said it last week. I will say it again next week. And the week after that, too, if I have to. Doesn't anyone notice this?! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
• Oregon is still just outside the cusp of the poll, and no one but the Ducks and Panthers received much extraneous love.
• Oh, and Stevens was right: Butler is now the No. 19-ranked team in the country. First Alex Barlow, now this. It's like he can see into the future!

Player of the Weekend - Roosevelt Jones, Butler
Alex Barlow hit the heroic game-winner as Butler knocked off No. 1 Indiana 88-86 in overtime. However, Jones did a little bit of everything before fouling out in regulation.

The sophomore posted a season-high 16 points to with 12 rebounds and a career-high seven assists. The last player to reach all of those levels in a win over the nation’s top-ranked team was Andre Miller in the 1998 Final Four against North Carolina.

Scorer of the Weekend - Doug McDermott, Creighton
McDermott scored a season-high 34 points as Creighton picked up a 74-64 road win over California. That’s back-to-back 30-point efforts for McDermott. He’s the first Bluejay to do that since Bob Harstad in 1990.

After a slow start to the season, McDermott has scored 20 or more in seven straight games, and is third in the nation in scoring (23.7 ppg).

Stat Sheet Stuffer - Richard Howell, NC State
NC State made relatively easy work of Norfolk State on Saturday, as Howell finished with a line to remember. The senior had 12 points, 19 rebounds, five blocks and five assists in the 84-62 win.

No major-conference player has hit all four of those thresholds in a game since Georgetown’s Michael Sweetney in 2003.

Freshman of the Weekend – Mike Gesell, Iowa
Gesell had a breakout performance in Saturday’s win over Northern Iowa, scoring a career-high 23 points. He combined with Roy Devyn Marble (30 points) to score 66 percent of the Hawkeyes’ points.

With three freshmen in the starting lineup, Iowa has defeated in-state rivals Iowa State and Northern Iowa in back-to-back contests.

Ugly Stat Line of the Weekend – UC-Riverside
The Highlanders shot just 19 percent from the field in a 70-26 loss to USC. No starter connected on more than one field goal, and no player scored more than six points. It was the fewest points by a Division I school in over four years, and the fewest allowed by the Trojans since 1946.

This is the second time this season that UC-Riverside has been held to 30 points or fewer.

Andy Katz and Seth Greenberg recap Indiana-Butler and Arizona-Florida. Plus, they talk about the end of the Big East as we know it with Bill Raftery and Jay Bilas.

Last week, Wake Forest radio announced it would discontinue the live call-in portion of its weekly coach's show with head coach Jeff Bzdelik. Athletic director Ron Wellman said the decision was made because fans had a tendency to "preach," and "this is our show." Considering Wake fans' understandable frustration, and the nature of the calls on the show the precipitated the change (look for it on YouTube; it's whatever), it was not a flattering response.

Saying so triggered something strange: A deluge of emails and tweets from furious Wake fans thanking me for bringing attention to how horribly their program was performing.

Over the weekend, those types of notes and letters kept coming, right up to this morning … when everyone started sending along this unabridged Wellman interview with Winston-Salem Journal beat writer Dan Collins instead.

The interview is about what you'd expect: Collins asks pertinent and occasionally pointed questions, and Wellman spends most of his time desperately trying to tease out a positive spin out of Bzdelik's 25-47 record at the school. Wake fans are upset at the entire interview, it seems, because they don't think their athletic director is being entirely honest about the strange hire he made three years ago. But the interview really is mostly the standard AD-speak stuff. (There is one interesting passage when Wellman talks about Bzdelik's seeming inability to "connect" with fans, and writes it off as unimportant when compared to winning basketball games. Which is probably true. But when you're not doing the latter, you better have the former. Wake has neither.)

Except for especially ridiculous portion. That comes when Collins asks a question about Wake's flailing attendance, and Wellman tries to convince Collins that, no, his eyes are fooling him, in fact Wake Forest's crowds actually aren't all that small; Wake Forest fans have never shown up for games in November and December:

MTOW: One thing nobody is seeing is a lot of fans in Joel Coliseum.

Wellman: If you go back in our history, we have never drawn well in December. I remember the great teams that we had, wondering why there weren’t more people in the stands. `This isn’t an ACC type of crowd.’ That’s throughout the ACC. When I look at the attendance figures around the ACC, and see it on TV, oftentimes the attendance isn’t what you might like it to be. That isn’t a reflection upon anything other than people love the ACC and they love the conference schedule probably much more than the nonconference schedule. […] Our fans will come back when the team wins. The fans who are disgruntled right now, I understand their disgruntlement. We’re not winning as much as they want to win. And they want the same thing as I want. And they’ll come back when our team wins. So we just have to win, and we will do that eventually.

MTOW: I haven’t seen crowds this small.

RW: Oh I have.

MTOW: Really?

RW: Oh heavens yes. I remember when I came here, and sitting in the stands, the first December I was here I was thinking `My gosh where is everybody? We’ve got to be drawing better than this.’ And there were four or five thousand at some of those games. So that’s not all that unusual. And again, those fans will come back. When we win they’ll be back. Again, they want the same thing that we all want, and that is for our team to win.

So, you see, it's not that Wake Forest fans are so depressed by their program's drastic and needless plummet that they're avoiding the once-rocking Joel Coliseum altogether. It's that Wake Forest and ACC fans just love the ACC so darn much they don't even really care what happens to their basketball teams in December! What's December basketball, anyway? A-C-C! A-C-C!

Oh, and Wake Forest fans are so passionate about their basketball team they have to be restrained from calling into the Thursday night coach's show ... in December. But they're so laissez faire about what happens to the team, they can't be bothered to show up to games ... in December.

Right.

As I understand it, it'd be one thing if Bzdelik, an altogether respectable if somewhat withdrawn guy, was merely not having success. That'd be a bummer, I'm sure, but Wake fans would deal. It's Year 3. The nature of the hire -- when Wellman plucked a guy whose best season at Colorado was 15-16 to replace a Dino Gaudio, who hadn't missed a tournament -- would still sting, but everyone would at least acknowledge that Bzdelik was doing his best, and let's just let it play out.

But this? This is a seminar in mass alienation. To an outsider with no ties to the school, it's almost kind of funny. To Wake fans, I'm sure, it's anything but.

1. UConn president Susan Herbst struck the right tone over the weekend, not getting into the ridiculousness of conference alignment during such a tragic time for the state after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. She said there would be time to address the issue, but not this weekend and early this week with the grieving still enduring. The Huskies were working on a season-long patch to honor the victims of this horrible tragedy that will be worn by the two highest-profile teams in the men’s and women’s basketball. There isn’t anything Herbst could have said that would change a thing this weekend. The Huskies need to make the best of their current situation until a call comes from the ACC, if it ever does. The Huskies handled the weekend appropriately.

2. Xavier is the obvious team to be coveted by the departing seven Catholic schools. The A-10 can’t afford to lose its marquee program. But the league certainly can’t stand to lose Butler, either. The Bulldogs were a major coup for the A-10 and losing Xavier and Butler would be a crushing blow to the A-10’s future. Saving one will be critical for the conference. VCU could end up being just as important but it doesn’t seem to be as obvious a choice for the Big East departures. The one school that stands to benefit from these moves is Richmond. If the Spiders aren’t seen as a viable choice for the seven and Xavier and/or Butler are poached, Richmond could emerge as the A-10’s elite team with a natural rival contender in VCU. Having a VCU-Richmond anchor in the A-10 would be good theater, and would add a built-in rivalry to the market.

3. The old Big East should make a move to add UMass as an all-sports member. The Minutemen are upgrading football and would fit in the footprint for all sports quite nicely. UConn and Temple are suddenly going to be a bit lonely in the Northeast and could use another team for all sports. The A-10 can afford to lose the Minutemen as long as it doesn’t see the all of the others depart, too. The Minutemen are improving in basketball and can definitely compete with what the Big East would look like in 2015. Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin finally blew off some steam over the weekend in discussing the failings of re-alignment. But if this were to stay as currently projected in 2015, the Bearcats could/should be the premier program in the new Big East.

Creighton improves to 10-1 with 74-64 win over California.

They go by different names that all carry the same meaning.

Gamers. Go-to guys. Ballers. Stars.

Take your pick.

This breed usually reveals itself with the game on the line, the clock winding down. In those moments, its representatives don’t hope, they act.

With seconds to play in his team’s 65-64 win over No. 5 Florida, Arizona’s Mark Lyons ran a play called Mark Lyons. The McKale Center was his stage. And everyone on the floor knew it.

His pupils probably widened when he noticed Florida big man Patric Young near the 3-point line, arms wide and hips low. Lyons attacked, put a shoulder into Young’s broad chest and finished the layup with 7.1 seconds to go.

A final Florida 3-pointer missed the rim.

“So much at the end of the game is an individual player making a big play,” Arizona coach Sean Miller told ESPN.com. “Some players are built for big moments. He’s one of them.”

Last weekend, Lyons led the Wildcats through a rocky stretch against Clemson. A week later, he shook off an early funk and scored the game-winner against a Florida team that had whipped most of its previous opponents.

A year ago, he was just a villain.

On Dec. 10, 2011, Lyons participated in a brawl between his former Xavier teammates and their crosstown rivals at Cincinnati. He was suspended but ultimately returned and helped the Musketeers reach the Sweet 16. But he chose to part ways with the program in the offseason and transfer to Arizona.

The latter seemed like the perfect fit for Lyons. Miller had talent but Arizona needed more swagger. Enter Lyons, who quickly infused the program with his bravado.

“He’s added that belief, that confidence, that toughness in us,” Miller said.

As Florida expanded its lead in the first half Saturday, Lyons snapped, anger mostly directed toward himself after a few turnovers. He also aimed some of it at his teammates.

“We had to calm him down,” said Solomon Hill, who scored a game-high 18 points.

Once he relaxed, the team relaxed.

As the Wildcats pressured in the second half, they made the Gators look as vulnerable as they had all year.

Florida had embarrassed the bulk of the teams on its nonconference schedule entering Saturday’s matchup. Wisconsin by 18. Marquette by 33. Florida State, on the road, by 25.

And the Wildcats nearly suffered a similar fate against the Gators, who led by double-digits midway through the second half. Then, they turned on their newly acquired grit and cut Florida’s lead to three in the last three minutes of the game. But that run seemed to stall for good as they missed 3-pointers and free throws late. Miller, however, wouldn’t let his team end the night like that.

“We just wanted to throw one last press at them,” Miller said.

With 1:01 to play, the Wildcats forced three turnovers over a span of 18 seconds. Hill drove and scored. Kevin Parrom made a pair of free throws, Grant Jerrett collected another.

A one-point game.

Earlier in the day, the Arizona football team defeated Nevada, 49-48, in the Gildan New Mexico Bowl with a dramatic comeback in the fourth quarter. Hours later, Wildcats fans were set to witness more theatrics as Lyons drove by Young with seconds on the game clock in Tucson.

“Before I looked up, he was already at the rim,” Hill said. “You have to believe in a guy like that.”

You have to follow him, too.