NCAA Basketball 2015-16 Catch-All

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EDIT: March Madness GWJ here.
And second chance Sweet 16 group here.

First off, congratulations to Duke, your 2015 champions. Also congratulations to Wisconsin for stopping Kentucky at 38-1.

Starting the thread a little early (pre-October) this year, mostly because Louisville is playing in a summer trip in August, using the once-ever-four-years allowed summer games. They start today in Puerto Rico, and play 9 games over the next 6 days. This is part of Rick Pitino coaching the PR national team. Whatever, it means I get to watch my team play in August.

For other news, ESPN did a Still Too Early Top 25 last week. Even worse, Lunardi did a round of Bracketology. Clearly the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, as some ranked teams aren't seeded 6 or higher, and some teams seeded 4-5 are not ranked.

There's also a top 25 players article today, but that's for insiders only.

For what it's worth, I feel like UNC should probably be the early season favorite. They return basically everyone except Tokoto from a very good team that made the ACC Tournament finals last year, and lost in March to eventual runner-up Wisconsin. Honestly surprised ESPN went with Maryland over UNC in their top 25. Not that most of this matters until the games are played. But fun to talk about.

Looking forward to a fun year.

Ags made it onto one of those ESPN top 25 lists for the first time in forever, and reasonably so, considering our loaded recruiting class. Is Kennedy finally righting the ship? Last year was disappointing, as we lost our final stretch of games and cost ourselves an NCAA bid. Excited to see what these new players can do!

I'm watching live college basketball in August. Whee.

Cal has managed to show up as a top 15 team in that ranking and the highest ranked Pac-12 school. Lunardi has us as a 4 seed.

The Hype is way too strong here. Need some old fashioned Cal cold water dumped on it at some point or we'll explode. I'm sure the football season will help that.

Saw draft projections for 2016 this week and have 2 Cal players projected in the lottery. No cold water to be found, it's like a drought.

I'm guessing those two are Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb who are the 2 5-star freshmen Cal brought in this year. That and first team all-Pac-12 senior Tyrone Wallace mean its do or die for Cal this year to make a big splash in the NCAAs.

San Diego State just lost their best 3 point shooter to a torn ACL.

Not a good sign for us.

Iowa State is playing games in Spain this month and are 1-1 so far. It's way to early and they didn't take the full squad, but any struggles will start the doubting of Coach Phrom.

Jucofett wrote:

Iowa State is playing games in Spain this month and are 1-1 so far. It's way to early and they didn't take the full squad, but any struggles will start the doubting of Coach Phrom.

Louisville lost a couple to the Puerto Rico national team, it happens. Still feeling pretty good about the team, as playing a bunch of 30 year olds, most of who play in professional leagues, is not the same as college competition. Should make them better for the upcoming year. And they did win a couple at the end of the week. Yes, JJ Barea wasn't playing for PR that night, but still.

Cal is in Australia and beat a local team 100-66, with freshman Jaylen Brown leading the charge and other super frosh Ivan Rabb with a double double. Doesn't count so whatever, but good to get these freshman some real game experience before the games actually do count.

College tipoff marathon schedule announced.

Date/Time (ET) Game Network
Mon, Nov 16
5:30 p.m. No. 1 UConn at No. 13 Ohio State (women) ESPN2
7:30 p.m. No. 4 Virginia at George Washington ESPN2
9 p.m. Legends Classic: Kennesaw State at LSU ESPNU
9:30 p.m. San Diego State at No. 13 Utah ESPN2
11:30 p.m. No. 17 Baylor at Oregon ESPN2
Tue, Nov 17
1:45 a.m. BYU at Long Beach State ESPN2
4 a.m. Nevada at Hawaii ESPN2
6 a.m. Green Bay at East Tennessee State ESPN2
8 a.m. Stephen F. Austin at Northern Iowa ESPN2
10 a.m. Valparaiso at Rhode Island ESPN2
1 p.m. Alabama at Dayton ESPN
3 p.m. Colorado at Auburn ESPN
5 p.m. No. 8 Oklahoma at Memphis ESPN
7:30 p.m. State Farm Champions Classic (Chicago): No. 3 Kentucky vs. No. 6 Duke ESPN
9 p.m. Georgetown at No. 1 Maryland ESPN2
10 p.m. State Farm Champions Classic (Chicago): No. 5 Kansas vs. No. 19 Michigan State

Formatting sucks but whatever.

Just for you, carlbear. Cal on the 5 teams to watch this season list by ESPN.

Nice. We went to pick out our seats this week. Haas isn't all that big, so hard to get a bad seat but we got one in the corner, but still on the courtside, not on the ends. We actually moved a bit over to the left of this pic so people coming through that tunnel don't block our way, but this will be our view for the season. We'll see what this does for Cal hoops. This will be first time in a while for a lot of alums so if we don't live up to the hype, who knows if we'll all renew again next year.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/ARQfLCb.jpg)

And SDSU under investigation.

A source said the potential violations include possible improper benefits to prospects.

In theory, a source said, the NCAA could eventually charge SDSU with Level 1 violations.

According to the NCAA, Level 1 violations are violations "that seriously undermine or threaten the integrity of the NCAA collegiate model as set forth in the Constitution and bylaws, including any violation that provides or is intended to provide a substantial or extensive recruiting, competitive or other advantage, or a substantial or extensive impermissible benefit."

SDSU officials declined comment Tuesday when contacted by CBS Sports.

San Diego State's program is led by Steve Fisher, who previously had NCAA issues after guiding Michigan to the 1989 national title. Fisher was fired in October 1997 because of his connection to what's commonly called the "Ed Martin Scandal." Martin, now deceased, provided improper benefits to several Michigan players, including Chris Webber. The NCAA's investigation resulted in the Wolverines vacating their 1992 and 1993 Final Fours.

http://www.ibj.com/articles/55155-bo...

I think this was a scene in He Got Game.

With a month until the season starts, ESPN does a nice "30 things to get you ready"

Coaches poll

UNC and Kentucky are tied for 1st, with UNC receiving more first place votes, yet the poll lists Kentucky first?

Anyway, here's the list:

1 Kentucky (11)
1 North Carolina (12)
3 Maryland (5)
4 Duke (3)
5 Kansas (1)
6 Virginia
7 Iowa State
8 Oklahoma
9 Villanova
10 Arizona
11 Gonzaga
12 Wichita St
13 Michigan State
14 California
15 Indiana
16 Utah
17 Wisconsin
18 Notre Dame
19 LSU
20 Vanderbilt
21 Baylor
22 Butler
23 West Virginia
24 Connecticut
24 Purdue

They have the same total points so they are listed alphabetically. K comes before N in the alphabet. Just because you hate a school doesn't make everything a conspiracy.

All righty.. now that Cal football has reverted back to horribleness, time for basketball!

Going to go to this Exhibition game tomorrow night to see how the team looks. Shouldn't be any issues before our first real game on Friday against the Rice Owls. Cal is ranked top 15 in both AP and Coaches, and as I've said, the Hype is Strong with 2 5-star freshman and the best returning player in the Pac-12 with Ty Wallace. There's a good chance our super freshmen (wing Jaylen Brown and power forward Ivan Rabb) will be one-and-done so if we're going to make it happen this is the year.

Nice opening win for Cal.. It was an exhibition against clearly overmatched D3 team, but good to see the team in action.

Jaylen Brown is a lot bigger than I thought. NBA size small forward. Rabb, playing PF, or C if we were going small, still needs to bulk up a bit, but has great technique inside and has a soft touch shooting when he's around the key. Jaylen seemed a bit sloppy with the ball to start but he settled down quickly. Most of his shots were driving to the basket, but we'll need him to be able to hit jumpers once we start playing against bigger opponents.

Ty Wallace, really is the leader of this team. Playing mostly point, he has good court vision and likes to drive to the hoop.

Our bench played well in relief. We have shooters who should be able to benefit from kickout passes from slashing Brown and Ty Wallace and I think we'll have a real presence inside with Ivan Rabb.

Good start.. of course you could replace those names with Goff, Lawler and Lasco and change a few descriptors and that's what our football team looked like as well against Grambling.

All the pre season hype that is starting to come out about Iowa State is making me nervous. I'm not use to such lofty expectations. Most seasons start off with hope and as the season builds you start to see that the team may be better than expected and could do well in the Big XII. Also every time we do get propped up as the next big thing, Hampton and UAB happen. I'm excited to see how we do this Friday against Colorado and what the new coach will bring to the team.

Oh and on a side note, it's strange to see the Chicago Bulls running the Iowa State offense this year.

SB Nation season preview

Could spend quite a while reading all that.

Enjoying the SB Nation preview so far, 2 highlights: the Kentucky write-up being done by a Louisville writer (he is really good, just a poor taste in teams) and the comments following anything mentioning Kentucky (haters gonna hate).

Go Cats!

Indeed. Rutherford was a lot more fair in his assessment of UK than someone like say, Matt Jones, ever has been of Louisville.

Living and working in the Louisville area, I completely get Jones' over the top diatribes on the Cards. But he did give a fair assessment on the radio earlier this week, UL is long, should be great defensively and will have trouble scoring.

Yippee, it's finally game day! I can put another sad football season to bed and dream of Big XII title runs!

Yes, opening night. So excited.

Monmouth 84, UCLA 81.

Also:
Western Illinois 69, #17 Wisconsin 67
Chattanooga 92, Georgia 90, in OT
North Florida 93, Illinois 81
William & Mary 85, NC St. 68
Belmont 83, Marquette 80
Sacramento St 66, Arizona St 63

Several power conference teams didn't show up ready to play on opening day. All of those are home games that are supposed to be early season tune-ups. Makes you appreciate teams that take care of business.

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