Welcome to the off season of the dream

Image above is enhanced while you listen to this.

Now begins the most dreaded part of the year where there is no more college basketball left. The sadness of this consumes us. We will try and past the time with other ventures, like paying attention to our significant others. Also, this blog will downshift from the hyperactive multiple daily posts to occasional posts about our second loves like cooking, politics and college football. We will resume full power basketball operations in November.

You can still follow us on our "world famous" Twitter feed as well where the 140 character snark will probably continue uninterrupted. So be safe out there and Mahalo.


Aw, buck up. It's only 7 months...

The whole story on Brandon Davies dismissal from BYU

Scene: Monday evening, February 28th around 8:45 pm in Provo, UT. BYU forward Brandon Davies is walking home from the school library. An unassuming gentleman with a short sleeve white shirt and black tie approaches...

Unassuming gentleman: "Hey, you're Brandon Davies!"
Davies: "Yes."
Unassuming gentleman: "Cool, great win against San Diego State! You guys swept them."
Davies: "Yeah, thanks man."
Unassuming gentleman: "Your rebounds and assists were crucial in that game. You kept the momentum from swinging to those guys."
Davies: "Yeah. We were just working hard against a real good team."
Unassuming gentleman (extending hand to shake): "Indeed! By the way, my name is Marcus. Pleasure to meet you. I'm a big fan of yours."
Davies (reciprocates handshake): "Nice to meet you... Wait, did you say you're a fan of mine?"
Marcus: "Yes!"
Davies: "What about Jimmer?"
Marcus: "Yeah, he is good too. But I am a student of the game and I know that without a great supporting cast he would not be all that. Plus I like the unsung heroes."
Davies: "Wow, thanks a lot. I appreciate that."
Marcus: "No problem. Hey, I have a friend that I would like you to meet."
(A mysterious woman appears from the bushes wearing a long buttoned up brown trench coat. Davies recognizes her immediately.)
Davies: "Uhhhhh, that's my girlfriend. Hey honey, why are you dressed like that?"
Marcus: "Oh, she has a present for you. To celebrate your win."
Davies: "Honey, how do you know this guy?"
Girlfriend: "Brandon baby, this is for you. I think it's time now."
(She unbuttons her coat and exposes herself to the chilly night air)
Davies (jaw drops): "What. The. Fuuuuuu..."
Marcus: "Yes sir."
Davies: "Honey, you know we can't do that. The Code and all."
Marcus: "Aw, come on. She's a Black man's kryptonite! A White girl with a big booty. We call 'em PAWGs around my area. How you resisted for so long amazes me. Just let yourself go, no one is looking."
Davies: "Uhhhhhh....."
Girlfriend: "Take me, take me now Brandon!"
(Davies almost uncontrollably grabs her luscious rear end and starts kissing her. Amazingly, BYU's Athletic Director Tom Holmoe just happens to strolls by)
Holmoe: "What is going on here?! Mr. Davies, you know how seriously we take the Honor Code."
Davies: "But but but..."
Holmoe: "I will need to have a talk with coach Rose about this."

Brandon looks around for help but unable to find any as Marcus and Davies' girlfriend have run off. The only thing that he sees is a crumpled game program on the ground that says "SDSU - BYU, Saturday, February 26th @ Viejas Arena" on it.

fin.

You knew this was coming

SDSU coach Fisher was chastised by the Mountain West for calling shit like he saw it in the firing of former Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer:

"For a coach to be fired with six weeks to go in the season is inexcusable," Fisher said. "We talk to our players about commitment, not cutting and running, and yet when things go south a little bit, often our administrators say, 'What do we do to please our biggest donor or the perception standpoint?'"

We still felt that he should have been fired, but agree that the timing left much to be desired.

Hindsight is 20/20

John Adams, head of NCAA Officiating and Coordination has recommended to the Basketball Rules Committee that they should begin using monitors to review close out of bounds calls.

Too little too late for Penn State, don't you think?



I'm sure Mr. Adams would say lo siento.

Condemnation

Kansas State guard Jacob Pullen and forward Curtis Kelly have been suspended from the team for taking some "free" clothing.

Did we mention that Pullen and Kelly are the only starting seniors on that team?

Did we also mention that this suspension happened just hours before their game against UNLV?



Result of that suspension can be found here.

A new start?

Basketball season officially starts the 2nd Friday in November according to the NCAA. Well we don't blame you if you didn't know since schools start playing between the 1st and 15 of November (take THAT, NCAA). There is not a single defining point of time when you know college basketball has started, outside of March of course and if you are one of those people you are probably not reading this.

To take it a step further college basketball is the only sport that doesn't have an opening day. And the powers that be are looking to change that next year.

"We were watching games, and we really thought if we had an event of some nature that brought attention and awareness right off the bat to the first games right away. We're blessed right now with the (ESPN) 24 hours of hoops marathon just concluding. In the first week, it didn't seem to have the energy and excitement that we felt the start of the season should have."
- Division I men's basketball committee chair Gene Smith.



Hey, what a novel idea Gene...

If this does indeed take shape next season it would be a good start. After that it would be nice for them to start looking at that stupid one-and-done rule. Or maybe we are just asking for too much.

The six game itch

Josh Selby, the former national five star recruit that Kansas so desperately sucked dick to sign has been banned from playing in 6 games for the Jayhawks because he accepted illegal benefits (Editor's note: Wow, it seems the NCAA has been busy lately).

That will put him in the game in time for the Southern Cal warm-up before heading off to Big 12 action in January. Coach Self was obviously excited about getting the point guard back. But there are a few folks out there who could care less about Selby:

"In the case of Selby being a Jayhawk, I’ll be honest... I’m not sure it even matters. Selby isn’t good enough to make much difference."

Perhaps, but that was harsh. Guess we will see next year. Kansas has pretty high standards obviously, but we're not willing to totally write him off yet. We think Selby will start to make some noise come late February.

Sense and Sensibility in the NCAA

What does Ted Forstmann, Vegas and Rachel Newman-Baker have in common?

So let's get this straight. President of powerful talent agency company makes deal to represent college basketball coaches? Check. Also makes deal for licensing and marketing of college basketball? Check. Then turns around and starts betting on college basketball games to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars? Check. So the NCAA Director of Agent, Gambling and Amateurism tells the public she intends to do nothing? Check.

But she then turns around and bans a poor kid from Turkey from playing for Kentucky because he made a couple of bones playing for his national team? Oh, we got that checked.

Oi vey, NCAA.

Calipari is laughing

Yes, that is life...

Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl has been a very busy bee this off-season. Yesterday he held a press conference to finally talk about what he has been doing:

1) Lying to NCAA investigators
2) Lying to NCAA investigators with the intent to hide illegal recruiting activities he and his staff were engaged in
3) Covering up lying to NCAA investigators with the intent to hide illegal recruiting activities he and his staff were engaged in

South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson had had some choice words for Pearl in light of these finding. Ultimately the hammer came down on Pearl with a one year recruiting ban for the Vols coach. In addition he has been fined $1.5 million which works out to about a $300,000 per year salary deduction on the life of his contract with Tennessee.

Some feel Pearl should be fired. Some are wondering why the hell not? We feel his 126-46 record may have something to do with that. Good job, coach!

The Rules of Engagement (off season)

Well that was fun...

Our only regret this season was not buying tickets from one of the many ticket brokers out there to go to an actual game. But such is life and more on that later. Now we start the time of year where there is no college basketball to occupy us. There isn't even so much as college football to bide our time. We call this banishment. Others have another term for it.

Yeah...

During this time of year we here at M2M switch into our off season posting rules. We are making some changes though from last year's rules:

1) Expect 1 to 2 posts a week. That will now change to whenever something interesting pops up, such as the man responsible for leading Siena to three NCAA Tournament births celebrating a little too much. Good job, Ronald!

2) Wednesday's Moment of Zen will continue. Although we would like to make this promise our wives have been completely ignored this season. We had to promise to take them out a LOT so we might not have the time to do this weekly. Save your boos until the end.

3) Off topic? Yes citizens, we will be doing a lot of off topic posts. Cooking and politics still gives us grist for the mill.

The look back / ahead
Although we didn't get tickets to any of the games we had our correspondents. Plus we organized our annual blogosphere famous trips to Vegas, this time for Selection Sunday. While that was beyond fun we really need to get our asses to actual games. Either we need to grab ourselves regular season tickets to ncaa basketball games or at the very least tickets for March Madness. Seriously, this is our goal for the 2010-2011 season. Blog brethren like Rush The Court is leaving us in the dust in this area.

So there you have it. Stay warm, keep hydrated and we will be back in force come October.

I want money. That's what I want.

Have we said how much we love the NCAA in their infinite wisdom?

No?

Well then.

We don't really. They treat these kids like indentured servants, come up with the most asinine rules (our fav was when they penalized a school because one of their basketball players went back home to whatever foreign country they were from to compete in the Olympics on that player's national team. Why would the NCAA penalize the school for that? Because the player got a small stipend from the country's government.), we can go on and on. Looks like this idea of expanding the NCAA Tournament from 65 teams to 96 teams with the first 32 teams getting a bye is going to come true. Never in our wildest nightmares could we imagine the NCAA fucking something up so badly.

There can only be ONE reason for this. Hit it, Diddy.

Yup. Fuckers.

An Inconvenient Truth

"This tournament at its heart is a huge money-making operation that makes millions of dollars for coaches, television networks and the NCAA, which is the sport's governing body.

It makes this money by shamelessly exploiting athletes, many of whom would never find their way onto campus if not for their ability to shoot a basketball. Although their coaches sign lucrative contracts, the players can be expelled for as much as taking a pair of shoes.

Ah, but they get a free education. But in too many cases, demanding classes are discouraged and athletes are directed to courses specifically designed to meet minimal academic standards."

All true. And we here at M2M have always advocated that Student-Athletes should at the very least receive a monthly stipend derived directly from the profits of their chosen sport.

But until that day comes where the NCAA comes to their senses, compensate these kids a little, enforce more stringent rules concerning classes taken and GPAs earned, let us ignore all of this and enjoy the splendor of the Sweet 16. It's go time.

No grades, no tourney!

United States Education Secretary Arne Duncan lives in a right and honorable world. He believes that if you go to college you need to make passing grades. You need to graduate. And if you play college sports on a team that fails to graduate the majority of its players you should definitely not be playing in the post season. He even bristled when initial plans called for a ban on teams who graduate less that 40 percent of their players:

"Frankly, that's a low bar, and not many teams would be ineligible," Duncan, who played college basketball at Harvard, said on a conference call. "Over time, we should set a higher bar. But it's a minimum, a bright line, which every program should meet to vie for postseason honors."

However the NCAA powers that be just laughed in his face. We guess this won't get much traction.

The SEC is turning into the NFL

As in the No Fun League...

SEC Bylaw 10.5 – Sportsmanship
SEC Sportsmanship Policy On Access To Competition Areas

The institutions of the Southeastern Conference have approved new sportsmanship policies designed to limit access to competition areas for all sports.

The policy imposes significant institutional financial penalties for violations in the sports of football, men’s and women’s basketball, at the discretion of the commissioner. Institutional financial penalties range from:

* $5,000 for a first offense
* up to $25,000 for a second offense
* up to $50,000 for a third and subsequent offense.

Well the University of South Carolina got caught up in this mess after beating #1 ranked Kentucky. What's worse is this was their second infraction. Yup kids, reference rule above to see how much that fine was. Thank goodness the students chipped in to help defray the cost. Once again the SEC in their infinite wisdom makes a boneheaded decision.

The SEC is smrt

Wow, what's next for the languishing Southeastern Conference? They already knew how bad they sucked on the court, now they know how bad they suck in the classroom too.

Men's basketball programs at Alabama and Auburn each fell below the NCAA mandated cut-off line in annual Academic Progress Rate scores released Wednesday.

Auburn was docked a scholarship for not reaching the NCAA's standard of 925 points out of a possible 1,000. Coach Jeff Lebo's Tigers scored an 899.

Auburn's AD gives the usual "unacceptable" line here. Which to us is kind of like saying it was "unacceptable" for your friend to have driven your new car off a cliff. *zing*

We think the proper response is what are you going to freakin' do about it (and we think the answer will be probably nothing).

The Rules of Engagement

We've mentioned all this in bits and pieces throughout this blog, but we thought maybe it would be a perfect time to distill it down in one bite sized post. We call these our off-season posting rules.

Now that college hoops is done, we switch over to our three other loves in life to help occupy us in the void (in no particular order):

A) College football
B) Politics
C) Cooking

So expect a healthy dose of our adventures in the kitchen, why Florida QB Tim Tebow is not a man but in fact a machine, and why we think Present Obama is the only hope you have left, citizen.

Also, we always made a point to at least post once a day, if not more. During the off-season expect us to shift that down and post 1 to 2 times a week.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Will the Moment of Zen Wednesdays continue? It's the only joy I have in my life.
Of course, meat beater. We would never give that up.

When will you stop with the off-topic crap and get back to the hoops?
Between October and November.

Does this mean you guys will NOT talk about college basketball until October?
Sure we will. If there is a breaking story or something we find interesting, you'll find it here. Like how could Kent State be so stupid as to try to recruit a guy who has previously broken commitments with Miami of Ohio, Providence, Long Beach State and Oregon State? And now it looks like he will leave the Golden Flashes for Hawaii. Good job.

What else do you guys do when there is no college hoops on?
Drink and make drinks for others to drink.

Well, what would you expect?

Remember future face of the UConn program and irresistible Nate Miles, who apparently was very much resistible to some? Well, come to find out Connecticut might have broken some NCAA recruiting laws in their quest to land Mr. Miles who they subsequently expelled.

Multiple sources were cited in establishing a relationship between Miles and Josh Nochimson, who became an agent after his years as a UConn student manager. By N.C.A.A. rules, Yahoo reported, Nochimson would be a representative of the college’s athletic interests. Therefore, providing Miles with lodging, transportation and meals, which the report alleges, would be a serious violation.

A violation indeed. We doubt this will even be a minor issue for the Huskies as they continue their run for the NCAA Tournament title. But it is funny how such a flame out could cause all this.

The enlightened President

Yeah, we are in the middle of a horrifying recession. But our president needs to concentrate on what really matters.

Like turning a blind eye to March Madness office pools.

Although the US Department of Justice stubbornly insists all Internet gambling is illegal, the only law on the books has been interpreted by the courts to specifically bar online sports betting.

Barack Obama showed he shares the people's disregard for online gambling laws by appearing on ESPN to make his own bracket picks.

You know, we have never met anyone or seen a situation where someone was busted for this. People need to freakin' relax. Even this contributes to the economy.

Rule 4, Section 66

While we can all appreciate Duke guard Jon Scheyer's amazing quickness in matters on and off the court, he's not above the law.

Travel (or walk):

Art. 1. Traveling occurs when a player holding the ball moves a foot or
both feet in any direction in excess of prescribed limits described in this
Rule.

Art. 4. After coming to a stop and establishing the pivot foot:
a. The pivot foot may be lifted, but not returned to the playing court,
before the ball is released on a pass or try for goal;
b. The pivot foot shall not be lifted before the ball is released to start a
dribble.



Ever a violation if we've seen one. We bet our blogging brother NCAA Hoops Today is screaming bloody murder right now.

He knew the rule but just didn't care

NCAA rules define contact as "any face-to-face encounter between a prospect or the prospect’s parents, relatives or legal guardian(s) and an institutional staff member or athletics representative during which any dialogue occurs in excess of an exchange of a greeting."

Kansas is now investigating a possible violation of this rule by coach Bill Self.

A column in the Springfield News-Leader detailed an exchange that took place between Self and (prep recruit John) Wall outside Wall’s locker room after his game had finished.

Self reportedly said to Wall, "Johnny, great win, man. You really played well." Wall thanked Self, who then said, "I’m not supposed to be talking to you, and you know that, but I just wanted to tell you that was a great win."

When we first saw that we were like meh... But something kept bothering us. The fact that Self acknowledged the rule prohibiting him from talking to a recruit and still continued to talk to him.

That alone deserves a slap upside the head and a "you big dummy". Not a big deal but a what were you thinking deal.