Rodger’s college basketball notebook

People wear ugly Christmas sweaters at parties, people wear ugly Christmas for photo ops, people evenwear ugly Christmas sweaters to call NFL games. Frank Martin one-upped everybody by wearing one for a situation you’re supposed to wear a suit and look serious and stuff.

(Photo credits: Jeff Blake, USA Today Sports)

We were watching Eastern Kentucky take a surprising lead on Miami when we noticed Stutz’s headband. It’s apparently been a fixture on his head for the last season. He turned some heads by wearing a more colorful version of the headband to a press conference before the Colonels’ game against Kansas in the NCAA Tournament:

As he explains in this video, he isn’t allowed to wear those colorful bandanas on the court, so he uses a plain white cut-off shirt sleeve:

I was watching Jackson State vs. Tulane because it’s 2 p.m. and I’ll never turn down an opportunity to watch daytime basketball while writing stuff, and I saw this:

Is that... is that an ad for butts? Is that an ad for people who are fans of butts? Is that an ad for people who are fans of large butts?

If you dunk in the 20 minutes before the game starts, you will get assessed a technical foul. We wrote about this when it happened during the NCAA Tournament. North Florida dunked in the warmups before its game against Tennessee Tech:

Poor Ospreys. They just came off a win against Purdue at Purdue, and were actually leading by nine at halftime, but their final margin of defeat was two points. And it all comes back to the two free points they gave away just so they could have fun in warmups.

It looked like Trevor Lacey had given NC State a win over Wofford with a spectacular buzzer-beating running three:

Everybody went crazy!

We see a lot of behind-the-basket distraction devices by college basketball student sections. But I’ve never seen a Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Man:

The cutout heads are neither impressive or original, but...

Incarnate Word went into Lincoln and beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 74-73, getting the go-ahead bucket with two seconds to go on this incredible fadeaway jumper by Kyle Hittle:

Most will focus on the Big Ten’s recent ugly stretch of play against unknowns. Michigan lost to NJIT. Michigan lost to Eastern Michigan. Nebraska lost to Incarnate Word. And these are supposed to top teams in America’s best conference? What is this?

During tonight’s Georgetown-Kansas halftime, there were multiple reports of SKATEBOARDING BULLDOG:

If you’re a real jerk, you will point out that Jack is not technically skateboarding. He just got placed on a skateboard and is smart enough not to shift his weight even a tiny bit while the skateboard is moving. However, if you think I care at all about these semantics, you are sorely mistaken. This is a skateboarding bulldog. It is a very good dog, and it is very good at skateboarding. Good job, Jack. I am giving you skritches and treats in my head.

No. 1 Kentucky dominated Kansas. They beat Texas by double-digits. They have won all their other games by 19 or more points. They are the clear-cut best team in the nation. They trail Columbia, a team that has not beaten a ranked opponent since 1976, 25-23 at the half.

We are posting about it now rather than at the end of the game because we don’t consider it incredibly likely Columbia will win. After opening up the game with an 11-0 lead, the Lions apparently convinced the Wildcats that this game was worth playing, and Kentucky perked up. They began slamming dunks, swatting shots, plucking the ball over Columbia for offensive rebounds, and generally looking like a better team. But it wasn’t enough to erase the deficit.

Idaho is playing UC Davis right now, and this happened:

But what makes this one weird is that it’s about court markings. The markings that are on the court for every game. This is Idaho’s fifth home game of the season. at the Cowan Spectrum. Have refs just not been able to make block/charge calls for the entirety of Idaho’s season? Did none of the previous refs notice this? I mean, it looks pretty obvious when you see the court.

Saturday saw the college hoops upset of the year when No. 17 Michigan was outplayed by unheralded NJIT, as the preposterously hot Highlanders knocked off the Wolverines 72-70 in Ann Arbor.

Before today, there were two notable things about NJIT: That the Highlanders went 0-29 in 2007-08, the only 0-29 year in college hoops history (they followed it up with a 1-30 season) and that they’re the only one of the 351 teams in Division I without a conference. On Saturday, they beat one of the top 25 teams in the country on the road.

Kentucky famously has so many good players that John Calipari has divided his squad into two five-man units, the starters -- the “blue platoon” -- and the 6th-through-10th men -- the “white platoon.” Fans can’t just show up to support one, right? So this is happening:

Sure enough, here’s Kentucky’s student section in blue:

The University of the Sciences -- THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SCIENCES!!!! -- beat Drexel, 54-52, on Thursday night, with Garret Kerr drilling a go-ahead three with two seconds to go to give the Division II Devils the win over the Dragons.

Kerr was the star for the Devils, posting 27 points and 10 rebounds, including the game-winning three. Believe it or not, that’s pretty much average -- the 2014 All-American averages 24.3 points per game and 13.3 rebounds per game, 10th and 2nd in Division II, respectively.

You can throw out the records when Portland and Portland State play! Although you’d be a jerk -- those records did nothing to hurt you. Anyway, with the Pilots up 14 on the Vikings, Portland’s Alec Wintering was contentedly dribbling out the clock when he was approached for a handshake by Portland State’s Bryce White.

White got himself a steal and a dunk to make the final score 83-71. Wintering’s MEHHHHH was pretty great.

I was watching some quality low-level college hoops Monday, a game between Samford and Jacksonville that went to OT, when an ad for the Southern Conference came on. Most of it was normal.

Clip of Steph Curry doing something great? Yeah, he went to Davidson, that checks out.

THROW IT DOWN, SAM DEKKER!

Presumably the Badgers will have about 15 minutes of court time beforehand, so this isn’t actually their warmup for the game, the Badgers are just having fun. They play Georgetown at 3:30 -- hopefully the Hoyas are practicing their imaginary jumpers too.

For starters, let us praise the basketball at the Battle 4 Atlantis. UNC, Wisconsin, Florida, UCLA, Georgetown and Oklahoma are all top-26 Kenpom squads; Butler’s No. 57 and UAB’s a dud, but that’s six very good teams, one good team and one bad team. (UPDATE: Butler beat UNC convincingly, so let’s say seven very good teams.) No other early season tourney has this many good teams, and it isn’t really close.

But before we talk about that, we have to talk about where this is being held:

That’s Steve Wolf of the CBS Sports Network, and, to be fair, it would be preposterous to expect somebody to go to Cancun and not relax on the beach a bunch. But at least try to do so in a way that doesn’t leave your face pretty much the same color as Buzz Williams’ Virginia Tech-colored shirt:

Last night, I was watching BYU-San Diego State in the first round of the Maui Invitational, a double-overtime thriller that featured two tourney teams with a history of distaste going toe to toe, a battle that went late into the night. And while watching it, I saw something disturbing:

Two babies, peacefully sleeping during an incredible basketball game.

29-0 is not a score you see often in basketball. But here you go:

Eventually, the Tigers did score:

Cornell went 1-26 against Division I teams last year, but they’re off to a good start at 2-2 this year. And they were ohhhhhhhh soooooooooo cloooooose to getting a win against Penn State. But they did not get one.

The Big Red led the Nittany Lions 71-67 with under ten seconds to go. PSU’s John Johnson hit a three, and Cornell was up one with five seconds to go. They just needed to inbound it, get fouled, and prevent a full-court play for a basket, and a win was theirs. Instead:

The Paradise Jam! Out of the 30 or so early-season college hoops tournaments, this tournament in the Virgin Islands is probably like the 20th best. It’s in gorgeous St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a place with a lot of beaches. So of course, they built a fake beach for fans to watch games from:

An umbrella, for the glaring stadium lights! A life preserver, in case somebody is drowning! A volleyball net, in case hoops gets boring, and you’d rather play volleyball! Is that ... is that sand? Did they bring in sand from outside and put it inside?

The situation: Clemson is playing Gardner-Webb in the first round of the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands. The Tigers led by five with about a minute to go, but an off-balance Tyler Strange three has made it a tie ballgame. Clemson is going to try to go the length of the court in 6.6 seconds for the win. Here’s what happened when they

You can see Rod Hall pretty clearly signaling for a timeout. The problem: Clemson didn’t have any left. This is the Chris Webber situation.

Dayton stormed back from a 7-point deficit to tie it up with UConn in the first half of their Puerto Rico Tip-Off semifinal game, and after a Kyle Davis block at one end, Kendall Pollard finished a fast break with a thunderous slam! Exciting! But ... he got called for a technical:

The call is for pulling himself up on the rim, which is a rule put in place to prevent showboating. But it really doesn’t look like Pollard was showboating -- he still had a ton of momentum, and needed to steady himself. If he’d let go, he would’ve fallen backwards onto his neck, and that probably wouldn’t be very good! He’s also trying not to kill his teammate, Devon Scott, who passes under him for a second there.

Bill Walton is calling Utah-San Diego State, which is amazing, because it means Bill Walton is calling a college basketball game and asking his broadcast partner if he’s ever been to Austria and stuff like that. It’s also great because it means Walton was able to show the ESPN crew in town to broadcast the game around his house, which features an enormous outdoor tepee.

“My goodness! Levon! This magazine doesn’t even have UCLA in the top five in the Pac-12! Can you believe it?”