Chas Rich Posts

Among the many criteria the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee uses to select and seed the 65 teams for the NCAA Tournament, the most statistically irrelevant is the "last twelve games" criteria. The NCAA has finally seen the light and eliminated the last twelve games from the toolbox.

There are many reasons for the stat's uselessness. There is little statistical correlation to how a team finished their season, and that team's performance in the NCAA Tournament. It is generally misleading, especially in the power conferences where TV scheduling emphasizes that the projected top teams play each other later in the season while the teams expected in the lower half face each other.

For a rather wild day, it looked like things were going to get even weirder than they usually do in the college basketball offseason. Even before the summer recruiting began. In the end, it was a lot of noise but no change. Xavier and C.J. Henry are still going to Kansas for the 2009-10 season, not reversing field to go to Kentucky to be with John Calipari.

Xavier Henry is one of the top-5 high school players in the country. He had already switched his commitment from Memphis to Kansas, but since he could not sign a new National Letter of Intent (NLI) he is not actually bound to Kansas until he shows up on the campus and signs the scholarship papers. His older brother, C.J. Henry, is a walk-on with the New York Yankees paying his way following a failed baseball career.

The rumors started swirling over the weekend that Lance Stephenson, the ultra-talented guard out of New York, was visiting and would commit to Cincinnati. Tuesday, the news broke and was confirmed elsewhere that Stephenson is indeed committing to the Bearcats. Whether official word will come before or after his July 15 court date regarding his misdemeanor sexual assault charge is undetermined.

While teams have been scared off from recruiting Stephenson for plenty of reasons (the sexual assault, meddling father, attitude questions, academics, NCAA eligibility relating to an online documentary on Stephenson), Cincy coach Mick Cronin seems willing to take a chance on Stephenson -- assuming the NCAA clears him to play.

I have no proof that the people in the NCAA that evaluate appeals were laughing and giggling their way through Kelvin Sampson's appeal of his sanctions. I like to think they were. Most people had a good laugh when they found out Sampson was appealing. Not surprisingly, Sampson had his appeal officially rejected today.

Essentially the appeal by Sampson came down to two arguments. The first was that the committee misinterpreted the evidence that was the basis of the penalties. That is, all those excessive phone calls at Indiana, the three-way calls, the "mistakes" that were made. The committee just looked at them the wrong way. The 100 plus phone calls were simply individual mistakes and not reflective of a pattern.

The other claim was that the enforcement staff that investigated and brought the charges before the committee were biased against him. Of course those past violations from Oklahoma that were almost the same as what happened at Indiana should be ignored. To say nothing of how they factored into the harsher penalties on Sampson

The NCAA upheld the penalties handed down by the infractions committee that effectively banned him from coaching in the NCAA for five years. Hopefully Sampson will finally let it go.

He may be done in college basketball, but he still has a coaching future.He is an assistant in the NBA, and has always been a players' coach. His basketball acumen has never been questioned. Just his ethics.

It is really never news when the Oregon Ducks get new uniforms. The Nike fashion template seemingly has variations, alternative jerseys, subtle changes and hundreds of different combinations. So, the announcement of new uniforms being unveiled should have been met with a collective yawn.

It's the claim by Oregon that this is only the "fifth edition of Oregon's football uniform evolution" since 1996 that seems highly implausible.

Yet according to the Ducks, this is truth as long as you only consider the significant changes. Then the timeline goes 1996 Cotton Bowl, the 1999 season, 2003 and then 2006. Things like last year's duck feathers on the shoulders apparently don't count in the way Oregon defines new uniforms in their evolution.

The new uniforms -- which still includes duck feathers as an option -- are again of the mix-and-match combo scheme loved by Oregon and Nike. Between the pants, helmets and jersey choices, there will be some 80 different uniform combinations.

According to the press release, the new uniforms weigh in nearly 25% less than the prior models. They will fit closer. Expect them to have a real slimming effect on the linemen.

Lance Stephenson is one of the top high school players in the country. He was a McDonald's All-American. He is also just about the only major recruit not running screaming from the rubble of USC that is without a college destination.

Where once he seemed headed for Kansas, that door has closed. Arizona opted against wanting him. Now Maryland has decided they are not interested any longer.

If the complete strangeness of what was going on in the Kansas State athletic department while Bob Krause was running things was going on at any other program, you would have to think it would be bigger news. Yet it barely seems to make a ripple in college sports.

First it was learned that Krause gave former head coach Ron Prince a "secret" side deal the summer before Prince's firing. Now it turns out that Krause also rewarded his deputy athletic director, Jim Epps, with a long-term contract, complete with a buy-out clause if he were to be fired.

Fresno State has just received the largest pledged donation in its history, $10 million dollars for the athletic department. Exactly how this pledge will be honored still seems shrouded in mystery.

The money is coming through a former Fresno State football player, Alphonso Bigelow, who played linebacker in the mid-90s. He got his MBA at Fresno State, and still lives in the city. He is also the CEO of a company called Nykel Bam International, LLC. That's where the mystery comes in, because what the company does seems purposefully vague.

Boise State has made a national name for itself in college football, even as a relative newcomer being located in Idaho and in the WAC. They have done it by committing resources to the program, finding up-and-coming coaches and paying a competitive wage to promote the stability.

Economic times are tough, though. The funding has been cut and ticket sales and donations are down. Boise State, like plenty of other programs not in the SEC, is cutting back. They are eliminating printed media guides. Jobs in athletic departments are being cut. They still need to find a way to bring in more money.

The deadline for underclassmen to withdraw from the NBA draft came and went Monday at 5PM. Plenty of underclassmen had already made decisions to not even test the waters (Willie Warren, Oklahoma) or previously decided to return (Patrick Patterson, Kentucky). Still, plenty of others never looked back by hiring an agent right away (Earl Clark, Louisville).

The focus is strictly on the players that took it up until this weekend or even right under the wire Monday afternoon. Before getting to the programs that "won" and "lost" with the decisions to stay or go there are two teams that have counter-intuitive situations.