Kyisean Reed is the latest in a line of second chance stories at Utah State

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LOGAN, UT - Stew Morrill has built Utah State into a power in the WAC. They've won seven regular season titles since 2000 and made eight NCAA Tournaments in that time. To get an idea of the level that this program has reached, think about this: they packed the 10,270 seat Dee Glen Smith Spectrum at more than 80% capacity -- over 90% capacity in the 4,000 seat student section -- in a down year and it was still considered a mediocre crowd.

Granted, he did take over a team coming off of an NCAA Tournament appearance in 1998, but before Larry Eustachy built that team into a winner, the Aggies hadn't been to an NCAA Tournament in a decade. Recruiting players to spend the winter in Logan, UT, a small town in the northeast corner of Utah that sits squarely in one of the most religious areas of our country, is not an easy sell.

Which is why Morrill has to take some risks.

And those risks don't always pan out.
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18-4, 11 straight wins, five all-leagues players: why is no one talking about Oral Roberts?

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TULSA, OK - On Saturday night, I had the chance to see one of the nation's best-kept secrets play as Dominique Morrison scored 22 points in a 93-86 win over Summit League rival Oakland. Morrison is a four-year starter at Oral Roberts and a guy that has been all over the all-Summit teams throughout his career. And this season, he's playing the best basketball of his career. While his per-game averages aren't all that much better than what he posted as a junior, in league play he's averaging a league-best 23.5 ppg while shooting 56.3% from beyond the arc.

Should I mention that ORU is currently 10-0 in the Summit League, on an 11 game win streak and currently own a 22 point win over the only team in the conference within striking distance, South Dakota State?
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Conner Teahan is living his dream, but would trade it all back. Why?

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LAWRENCE, KS - Conner Teahan is living the dream.

He grew up a mere 30 minutes from the University of Kansas in Leewood, KS, and, like most people that grow up a mere 30 minutes from Lawrence, he's been a lifelong, diehard Jayhawk fan.

"There aren't going to be many bigger KU fans than I was. I'd be crying when they lost," Teahan said with a laugh after scoring five points in a 64-54 win over Texas A&M at Phog Allen Fieldhouse on Monday night. "Whenever I thought about what I wanted to do in college, the number one priority was play basketball at KU. That's all I wanted to do and I got the opportunity to."

Every kid grows up with a dream like that.
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Why did Kyle Weems, a native Kansan, turn down a chance to play for Kansas?

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SPRINGFIELD, MO - No one would have blamed Kyle Weems if he had decided to leave Missouri State after last season.

Weems redshirted as a freshman, meaning that he finished his undergraduate degree this summer with a year of eligibility left in his back pocket. The new trend for high-major programs looking for a one-year stop gap is to recruit players like Weems. Thanks to an NCAA rule that allows a player to apply for a waiver to avoid sitting out a season if he transfers to a school to pursue a graduate degree that isn't offered at his previous school, Illinois found their point guard in Bradley's Sam Maniscalco and Michigan State found a shooting guard in Valparaiso's Brandon Wood.

The recruiters came after Weems as well.
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Creighton isn’t great defensively, but they only need to be “clutch”

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SPRINGFIELD, MO - After Wednesday night's 66-65 win over Missouri State, the No. 18 Creighton Bluejays have taken control of the Missouri Valley race. They are tied with Wichita State at 7-1 in the league with a three game lead on everyone in the conference other than Drake and they have already won on the Shocker's home court, something that is not an easy thing to do.

Ask UNLV.

Creighton has done plenty of damage outside of the league as well. They beat Iowa by 23, knocked off Nebraska by 10 and beat Northwestern. They went into Viejas Arena and knocked off San Diego State despite trailing by 17 in the first half. Again, that's not an easy thing to do.

Ask UNLV.
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Missouri's seasons been a success, but the Tigers aren't satisfied

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COLUMBIA, MO - No team in the country has had to deal with more turmoil over the last year than the Missouri Tigers.

Think about this: after a disappointing finish to the 2011 season -- one that saw the Tigers end up 8-8 in Big 12 play and back in CoMo after the first round of the NCAA Tournament -- Mizzou had not one, but two long and drawn out coaching decisions. After Mike Anderson finally stopped leading Missouri on by accepting the Arkansas job, Matt Painter wavered on his decision before ultimately staying put at Purdue.

Then came the Frank Haith hire and the subsequent barrage of criticism, followed by the flirtation of a couple players with the NBA Draft before, ultimately, July appeared to finally bring the Tigers some continuity.

Or so we thought.
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Even without Woodall, Pitt can turn this streak around

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MILWAUKEE - Pitt lost their fifth consecutive game to open Big East play on Saturday, falling to Marquette 62-57 and finding themselves as the only winless team in the league.

At this point, moral victories are meaningless for the Panthers. They need real, honest-to-god wins to start piling up if they don't want to go down as the biggest disappointment of the 2011-2012 college basketball season. We know this. They know this. And Syracuse, who hosts the Panthers Monday night, knows this.

"They played well," Orange head coach Jim Boeheim said after watching Pitt's loss on Saturday. "They had a real good chance to win. They are a good team. I don't care what their record is. They've got a good team. They will come in here Monday night, and they will play well. I know that."
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Butler's future is bright, but there is work to be done to get there

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INDIANAPOLIS, IN - John Calipari is not normal.

That's not an insult at the man. That's a compliment. The past two seasons, he's sent nine players to the NBA Draft, and this year he may have his most talented team since making the jump from Memphis to Lexington.

Its not supposed to work that way.
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Cleveland State lost Norris Cole but they haven't lost a step this year

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INDIANAPOLIS, IN - The Horizon League has been the preeminent mid-major conference over the past two seasons.

With all due respect to the things that the Missouri Valley, the WCC and the CAA have accomplished, they can't count Butler has a member of their league. All the Bulldogs have done is go to back-to-back national title games. No big deal.

What made their second trip to the title game all the more impressive isn't that they made the run as an eight seed; cinderella stories are a dime-a-dozen in the NCAA Tournament, and given the Madness of March in 2011, Brad Stevens didn't even half to pull an upset in the Final Four for the right to take on UConn on the best Monday night of the season.
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Jae Crowder's a matchup nightmare, but he almost didn't make it out of the JuCo ranks

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MILWAUKEE, WI - Far too often, we overlook the blessings in our lives.

Whether it's because the app we downloaded onto our iPad isn't working or our internet provider doesn't carry ESPN3 or even something as simple accidentally buying the wrong brand of toothpaste, the little things in life always seem to be the most annoying. I know I've come close to throwing my cell phone out the window because the picture I took wouldn't upload to twitter.

Life is hard, you know?

Jae Crowder doesn't look at it that way.
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Minnesota exposes Indiana as a flawed basketball team

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BLOOMINGTON, IN - Indiana fans are going to want to chalk up the Hoosier's 77-74 loss to Minnesota, who was previously winless in Big Ten play, to having an off day.

They wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Indiana did have an off day. Coming off of a game at Penn State where they shot 16-24 from beyond the arc, the Hoosier's pedestrian 4-18 performance provides a stark contrast.
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Introducing TJ McConnell, who may be the nation's most underrated point guard

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CINCINNATI, OH - Ron Everhart knows a thing or two about underrated point guards.

When he was at Northeastern, he had a 5'10" point guard running his team that was averaging 21.0 ppg and 8.4 apg. But that was Northeastern, which, like Duquesne, is a bit off the beaten path for NBA scouts. Everhart thought he deserved more attention nationally, and he ended up being right: that 5'10" point guard played a major role in dethroning King James back in June.
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Xavier: "I guess I got my swagger back". Truth?

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CINCINNATI, OH - No team in the country has faced more scrutiny over the last month than Xavier has, and its all due to 9.4 seconds that everyone in Cincinnati wishes they could take back.

The Crosstown Punchout.

While the Bearcats used the fallout from the Brawl Seen 'Round the World to discover that they were able to effectively play small-ball, Xavier struggled. Despite having their full roster available after just four games -- and their talented back court back in the fold after just two -- the Musketeers entered Atlantic 10 play having lost four of five and promptly dropped their league opener to La Salle in ugly fashion, needing a late rally to make the final score look closer than the game was.
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What makes the Battle of the Boulevard so special, and why it is a rivalry you should care about

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NASHVILLE, TN - The last time that Belmont and Lipscomb played at Memorial Gymnasium -- the home of the Vanderbilt Commodores, a fellow Nashvillian institution of higher learning -- they not only packed the house with 16,000 fans, they had to lock out ticket-holders in order to prevent the fire marshall from shutting down the game.

That was all the way back in 1990.
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Is Terrence Jones really back?

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LEXINGTON, KY - "Terrence Jones is back. Not much to it."

That's how Anthony Davis summed up the performance that his front court mate had in Kentucky's 79-64 win over South Carolina on Saturday afternoon, and he had a very valid point. Jones had been a different player for the past month, starting at halftime of UK's 73-72 win over North Carolina back on December 3rd. Since that game, Jones had only managed to score in double figures once, averaging 5.0 ppg and 3.0 rpg while shooting 32.3% (10-31) from the floor.

It didn't help matter that Jones was dealing with a dislocated finger on his shooting hand, an injury painful enough for him to miss two games.

Jones snapped out of that funk in impressive fashion Saturday, finishing with 20 points in 32 minutes on 8-9 shooting from the floor. He would have finished the game a perfect 8-8 if he hadn't jacked up a three late in the second half.
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Bruce Ellington, South Carolina's two-sport star

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LEXINGTON, KY - Bruce Ellington was South Carolina's best player as a freshman.

The diminutive but obscenely athletic point guard led the team in minutes played, scoring and assists. He took 110 more field goals than anyone else on the roster and shot 65 more threes. He wasn't only the guy that had the ball in his hands at the end of a clock, he was the guy that had the ball in his hands, period.

That is why his decision to hit the gridiron for Steve Spurrier this season was so concerning for Darrin Horn's team. Throw in the transfers of Murphy Holloway and Ramon Galloway and the graduation of Sam Muldrow, and the Gamecocks were looking at a season with a roster stocked with youth and a star player coming off of three months worth of pounding from playing football in the SEC.

And as you might expect, there has been a bit of an adjustment period for Ellington.
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Belmont's struggling, but still has the pieces to win a tournament game

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NASHVILLE, TN - Belmont's chances of getting an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament died a long time ago. If it wasn't when the Bruins came up short in their upset bids at Duke and at Memphis, then it was when they had a stretch of three losses in four games against the likes of Marshall, Miami OH and Middle Tennessee State.

When you play in a conference like the Atlantic Sun, you can't lose three games to teams that have no shot of getting an at-large bid and still expect the committee to call your name come Selection Sunday without your league's auto-bid. You just can't.
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