George Soros - One evil human being ... Thx Ramey H!

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(no subject) Inbox x ramey hoskins 9:58 AM (7 hours ago) to Please read the whole article , very interesting . was somewhat aware of him . One Evil Human FROM STEVE KROFT ("60 Minutes")  A LIBERAL I MIGHT ADD   Glenn Beck has been developing material to show all the ties that Soros has through the nation and world along with his goals. This article is written by Steve Kroft from "60 Minutes". It begins to piece together the rise of Obama and his behavior in leading the nation along with many members of Congress (in particular the Democrats, such as the election of Pelosi  as the minority leader in Congress).   If you have wondered where Obama came from and just how he quickly moved from obscurity to President, or why the media is "selective" in what we are told, here is the man who most probably put him there and is responsible. He controls President Obama's every move. Think this is absurd? Invest a few minutes and read this. You won't regret it.   Who is Obama? Obama is a puppet and here is the explanation of the man or demon that pulls his strings. It’s not by chance that Obama can manipulate the world. I don't think he knows how to tie his shoe laces. After reading this and Obama's reluctance to accept help on the oil spill you wonder if the spill is part of the plan to destroy the US ? "In history, nothing happens by accident. If it happened, you can bet someone planned it."  Franklin Delano Roosevelt   Who Is George Soros? He brought the market down in 2 days. Here is what CBS' Mr. Steve Kroft's research has turned up. It's a bit of a read, and it took 4 months to put it together. "The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States . "George Soros"   "George Soros is an evil man. He's anti-God, anti-family, anti-American, and anti-good." He killed and robbed his own Jewish people. What we have in Soros, is a multi-billionaire atheist, with skewed moral values, and a sociopath's lack of conscience. He considers himself to be an elitist World class philosopher, despises the American way, and just loves to do social engineering and change cultures.   György Schwartz, better known to the world as George Soros, was born August 12, 1930 inHungary . Soros' father, Tivadar, was a fervent practitioner of the Esperanto language invented in 1887, and designed to be the first global language, free of any national identity. The Schwartz's, who were non-practicing Jews, changed the family name to Soros, in order to facilitate assimilation into the Gentile population, as the Nazis spread into Hungary during the 1930s.   When Hitler's henchman Adolf Eichmann arrived in Hungary , to oversee the murder of that country's Jews, George Soros ended up with a man whose job was confiscating property from the Jewish population. Soros went with him on his rounds.   Soros has repeatedly called 1944 "the best year of his life." 70% of Mr. Soros's fellow Jews in Hungary, nearly a half-million human beings, were annihilated in that year, yet he gives no sign that this put any damper on his elation, either at the time or indeed in retrospect" During an interview with "Sixty Minute's" Steve Kroft, Soros was asked about his "best year."   KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson. SOROS: Yes. Yes.   KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from your fellow Jews, friends and neighbors.SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.   KROFT: I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many, years. Was it difficult?   SOROS: No, not at all. Not at all, I rather enjoyed it.   KROFT: No feelings of guilt?   SOROS: No, only feelings of absolute power.   In his article, Muravchik describes how Soros has admitted to having carried some rather "potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble." Be that as it may. After WWII, Soros attended the London School of Economics, where he fell under the thrall of fellow atheist and Hungarian, Karl Popper, one of his professors. Popper was a mentor to Soros until Popper's death in 1994. Two of Popper's most influential teachings concerned "the open society," and Fallibilism.   Fallibilism is the philosophical doctrine that all claims of knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken. (Then again, I could be wrong about that.) The "open society" basically refers to a "test and evaluate" approach to social engineering. Regarding "open society" Roy Childs writes,"Since the Second World War, most of the Western democracies have followed Popper's advice about piecemeal social engineering and democratic social reform, and it has gotten them into a grand mess."   In 1956 Soros moved to New York City , where he worked on Wall Street, and started amassing his fortune. He specialized in hedge funds and currency speculation. Soros is absolutely ruthless, amoral, and clever in his business dealings, and quickly made his fortune. By the 1980s he was well on his way to becoming the global powerhouse that he is today.   In an article Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote for "The American Thinker" she says, "Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England . He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically, almost overnight."   In 1994 Soros crowed in "The New Republic ," that "the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire." The Russia-gate scandal in 1999, which almost collapsed the Russian economy, was labeled by Rep. Jim Leach, then head of the House Banking Committee, to be "one of the greatest social robberies in human history. "The "Soros Empire" indeed. In 1997 Soros almost destroyed the economies of Thailand and Malaysia . At the time, Malaysia 's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad, called Soros "a *-*^% villain, and a moron." Thai activist Weng Tojirakarn said, "We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people."   The website Greek National Pride reports, "Soros was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia and caused trouble in Georgia , Ukraine and Myanmar [Burma] Calling himself a philanthropist, Soros' role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. He is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality."   France has upheld an earlier conviction against Soros, forfelony insider trading. Soros was fined 2.9 million dollars. Recently, his native Hungary fined Soros 2.2 million dollars for "illegal market manipulation." Elizabeth Crum writes that the Hungarian economy has been in a state of transition as the country seeks to become more financially stable and westernized. Soros deliberately driving down the share price of its largest bank put Hungary 's economy into a wicked tailspin, one from which it is still trying to recover.   My point here is that Soros is a planetary parasite. His grasp, greed, and gluttony have a global reach. But what about America?  Soros told Australia 's national newspaper"The Australian." " America , as the centre of the globalised financial markets, was sucking up the savings of the world. This is now over. The game is out," he said, adding that the time has come for "a very serious adjustment" in American's consumption habits. He implied that he was the one with the power to bring this about."   Soros: "World financial crisis was "stimulating" and "in a way, the culmination of my life's work."   Obama has recently promised 10 billion of our tax dollars to Brazil , in order to give them a leg-up in expanding their offshore oil fields. Obama's largesse towards Brazil came shortly after his political financial backer, George Soros, invested heavily in Brazilian oil (Petrobras).   Tait Trussel writes, "The Petrobras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil , but it is a bad deal for the U. S. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that oil exploration in the U S could create 160,000 new, well-paying jobs, as well as $1.7 trillion in revenues to federal, state, and local governments, all while fostering greater energy security and independence."   A blog you might want to keep an eye on is SorosWatch. com. Their mission: "This blog is dedicated to all who have suffered due to the ruthless financial pursuits of George Soros. Your stories are many and varied, but the theme is the same: the destructive power of greed without conscience. We pledge to tirelessly watch Soros wherever he goes and to print the truth in the hope that he will one day be made to stop preying upon the world's poor, that justice will be served."   Back to America . Soros has been actively working to destroy America from the inside out for some years now. People have been warning us. Two years ago, news sources reported that "Soros [is] an extremist who wants open borders, a one-world foreign policy, legalized drugs, euthanasia, and on and on. This is off-the-chart dangerous." In 1997 Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote, "Soros uses his philanthropy to change or more accurately deconstruct the moral values and attitudes of the Western world, and particularly of the American people. His "open society" is not about freedom; it is about license. His vision rejects the notion of ordered liberty, in favor of a PROGRESSIVE ideology of rights and entitlements."   Perhaps the most important of these "whistle blowers" are David Horowitz and Richard Poe. Their book "The Shadow Party" outlines in detail how Soros hijacked the Democratic Party, and now owns it lock, stock, and barrel. Soros has been packing the Democratic Party with radicals, and ousting moderate Democrats for years. The Shadow Party became the Shadow Government, which recently became the Obama Administration.   Discover The Networks. org (another good source) writes,"By his [Soros'] own admission, he helped engineer coups in Slovakia , Croatia , Georgia , and Yugoslavia . When Soros targets a country for "regime change," he begins by creating a shadow government, a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power when the opportunity arises. The Shadow Party he has built in America greatly resembles those he has created in other countries prior to instigating a coup."   November 2008 edition of the German magazine "Der Spiegel," in which Soros gives his opinion on what the next POTUS (President of the U. S. ) should do after taking office. "I think we need a large stimulus package." Soros thought that around 600 billion would be about right. Soros also said that "I think Obama presents us a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U. S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights."   Although Soros doesn't (yet) own the Republican Party, like he does the Democrats, make no mistake, his tentacles are spread throughout the Republican Party as well.   Soros is a partner in the Carlyle Group where he has invested more than 100 million dollars. According to an article by "The Baltimore Chronicle's" Alice Cherbonnier, the Carlye Group is run by "a veritable who's who of former Republican leaders," from CIA man Frank Carlucci, to CIA head and ex-President George Bush, Sr.   In late 2006, Soros bought about 2 million shares of Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old stomping grounds.When the Democrats and Republicans held their conventions in 2000, Soros held Shadow Party conventions in the same cities, at the same time. In 2008, Soros donated $5,000,000,000 ( that’s Five Billion ) to the Democratic National Committee, DNC, to insure Obama's win and wins for many other Alinsky trained Radical Rules Anti-American Socialist. George has been contributing a $ billion plus to the DNC since Clinton came on the scene.   Soros has dirtied both sides of the aisle, trust me. And if that weren't bad enough, he has long held connections with the CIA. And I mustn't forget to mention Soros' involvement with the MSM (Main Stream Media), the entertainment industry (e. g. he owns 2.6 million shares of Time Warner), and the various political advertising organizations he funnels millions to. In short, George Soros controls or influences most of the MSM. Little wonder they ignore the TEA PARTY, Soro's NEMESIS.   As Matthew Vadum writes, "The liberal billionaire-turned-philanthropist has been buying up media properties for years in order to drive home his message to the American public that they are too materialistic, too wasteful, too selfish, and too stupid to decide for themselves how to run their own lives."   Richard Poe writes, "Soros' private philanthropy, totaling nearly $5 billion, continues undermining America 's traditional Western values. His giving has provided funding of abortion rights, atheism, drug legalization, sex education, euthanasia, feminism, gun control, globalization, mass immigration, gay marriage and other radical experiments in social engineering."   Some of the many NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) that Soros funds with his billions are:MoveOn. org, the Apollo Alliance , Media Matters for America , the Tides Foundation, the ACLU, ACORN, PDIA (Project on Death In America ), La Raza, and many more. For a more complete list, with brief descriptions of the NGOs, go to Discover The Networks. org.   Poe continues, "Through his global web of Open Society Institutes and Open Society Foundations, Soros has spent 25 years recruiting, training, indoctrinating and installing a network of loyal operatives in 50 countries, placing them in positions of influence and power in media, government, finance and academia."   Without Soros' money, would the Saul Alinsky's Chicago machine still be rolling? Would SEIU, ACORN, and La Raza still be pursuing their nefarious activities? Would Big Money and lobbyists still be corrupting government? Would our college campuses still be retirement homes for 1960s radicals?   America stands at the brink of an abyss, and that fact is directly attributable to Soros. Soros has vigorously, cleverly, and insidiously planned the ruination of America and his puppet, Barack Obama is leading the way.   The words of Patrick Henry are apropos: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" -------------- Above information researched by CBS Steve kroft "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not."  Thomas Jefferson   If you have read this to the end, and you are a true patriotic American, then you will not have a problem forwarding this to everyone on your email list.   This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm Click here to Reply or Forward

Tell me America has not become a dictatorship ... Thx Ramey H!

You don't have to be Catholic to be upset about this.  Tomorrow it could be your religion being attacked!  Please pass this on - it is an attack on our Freedom of Religion!

On Monday, October 14, 2013 10:13 AM, Thomas More Law Center <thomasmore@thomasmore.org> wrote:

Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Government Shuts down Catholic Services on Navy Base; Church locked; Priest threatened with arrest; TMLC Files Federal Lawsuit In the wake of the government shutdown, despite provisions in the Pay Our Military Act, Catholics at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia are being denied religious services. The Catholic priest who serves this community has been prohibited from even volunteering to celebrate Holy Mass without pay, and was told that if he violated that order, he could be subject to arrest. Protestant services continue to take place.  Only Catholic services have been shutdown. This is an astonishing attack on religious freedom by the federal government, and the latest affront towards the military since the beginning of the shutdown. As a result, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, MI, today, filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Father Ray Leonard, a Catholic priest contracted to serve as base chaplain and Fred Naylor, one of Father Leonard’s parishioners and a retired veteran with over 22 years of service. Fr. Leonard is a civilian Catholic Pastor contracted by the Department of Defense (DoD) to serve as a military chaplain at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia. Fr. Leonard who served Tibetan populations in China for 10 years, informed the court in an affidavit; “In China, I was disallowed from performing public religious services due to the lack of religious freedom in China. I never imagined that when I returned home to the United States, that I would be forbidden from practicing my religious beliefs as I am called to do, and would be forbidden from helping and serving my faith community.” On October 4, 2013, Fr. Leonard was ordered to stop performing all of his duties as the base’s Catholic Chaplain, even on a voluntary basis. He was also told that he could be arrested if he violated that order. The approximately 300 Catholic families, including Fred Naylor’s, served by Fr. Leonard at Kings Bay have been unable to attend Mass on base since the beginning of the shutdown. Additionally, Fr. Leonard was locked out of his on-base office and the chapel. Fr. Leonard was also denied access to the Holy Eucharist and other articles of his Catholic faith. The order has caused the cancellation of daily and weekend mass, confession, marriage preparation classes and baptisms as well as prevented Fr. Leonard from providing the spiritual guidance he was called by his faith to provide. The submarine base is remotely located.  It consists of roughly 16,000 acres, with 4,000 acres comprised of protected wetlands.  There are approximately 10,000 total people on the base. A Catholic Church is located off base in the town of St. Mary’s.  However, many of the parishioners both live and work on base and do not own a car and cannot otherwise access transportation.  Therefore a sixteen (16) mile journey to and from the off-base church is simply not possible.  Moreover, many of the sailors have an extremely limited amount of time off.  With their time highly regimented, they are not given a long enough break time for this exceptionally long walk and the Mass service. Defendants in the lawsuit are the Department of Defense (DoD), Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the Department of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Department of the Navy, Ray Mabus.  Currently, about 25% of the US Armed Forces is Catholic and due to a shortage of active duty Catholic Priests, the DoD contracts Catholic Priests to provide religious services, sacraments and support for other religious practices for military base communities. Catholic Priests serve the Military Archdiocese. For active duty service members, on base religious services are extremely important given issues associated with off base transportation, extremely limited time off and the highly scheduled lifestyle of active military duty. Additionally, as service members tend to have high rates of divorce, depression and suicide, the need for readily available spiritual encouragement and guidance is critical. The Pay Our Military Act, which was enacted before the beginning of the government shutdown, provides provisions for the funding of employees whose responsibilities contribute to the morale and well-being of the military. The government has previously been criticized for interpreting the Act to not include military death benefits. Now, in yet another bizarre interpretation of the Act, some chaplains are not considered covered by these provisions, leaving Catholic members of some military facilities without spiritual guidance.

The best argument against a democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ~~~ Winston Churchill

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Hoops Central: Media Days Live

October, 16, 2013

OCT 16

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The college basketball regular season begins in just three weeks and Wednesday marks the unofficial tipoff for four conferences holding their annual media day. 

Our reporters are in place and ready to bring you the latest, so keep this page open throughout the day as we bring you tweets, quotes, pictures and more from Charlotte (ACC), Memphis (American), New York (Big East) and Hoover, Ala. (SEC). 

MEDIA DAYS LIVE (OCT. 16)

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  Brett Edgerton

  Coverage of media days will be on ESPNU from 1 to 4:30 ET and can be viewed on WatchESPN by clicking here.

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  Nicole Auerbach

  Big East coaches poll: 1. Marquette 2. Gtown 3. Creighton 4. Nova 5. St. John's 6. Providence 7. Xavier 8. Seton Hall 9. Butler 10. DePaul

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  It's #ACC media day here in Charlotte! 
  Watch @Espnu 1-4pm today http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BWseatzIcAA77Bn.jpg

  

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  #ACCMediayDay with coach K. Interesting thoughts on NCAA:http://pbs.twimg.com/media/BWs_RH0CMAAlS9l.jpg

  

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  Coach Boeheim ready for the @Cuse basketball closeup at #ACCMediaDayhttp://pbs.twimg.com/media/BWs_M-cCIAE4J7c.jpg

  

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  McKie on last year's freshmen: This year they've grown as athletes and students. Have more confidence in themselves. #ACCMediaDay

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  Ackerman is like a boxing promoter right now. Big East clearly wants to be recognized in Year 1. #BigEastMBB

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You Gotta See This: The American

October, 16, 2013

OCT 16

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Joe Robbins/Getty ImagesRick Pitino's Cardinals should be The American's best team in 2013-14.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: What The American really means.

The conference realignment wave that hit these past few years left a lot of detritus in its wake. It turned athletic directors and universities into pimply high school kids approaching their would-be prom dates. It proved that football is an unstoppable entertainment force. It cemented the skyrocketing status of live sports in the current marketplace. It left hundreds of schools scrambling to find shelter. It terraformed the college basketball landscape in profound ways. But its crowning achievement -- the one result that says just about everything you need to know about just how fungible these silly collegiate athletics really are -- is the American Athletic Conference.

The American, as it's abbreviated, is not to be confused with that middling George Clooney movie from a few years back (even if Google disagrees). It is instead the conference -- or "conference-like" substance -- derived equally from Big East leftovers.

No one seems particularly happy about it. "Cincinnati and Connecticut, I know, aren't leaving, but they tried like hell to leave just like us," Louisville coach Rick Pitino told ESPN.com's Dana O'Neil Tuesday, and he's right: Bearcats' and Huskies' brass are saying all the right things now, but they wanted out of the American long before that name was focus-grouped. Memphis and Temple eagerly signed up for admission into something like the old Big East, where the "Catholic 7" -- the schools that broke off to form their own basketball-centric league with Butler, Creighton and Xavier -- would have still made the league a truly formidable basketball entity. Louisville isleaving. Rutgers, too.

Which would make it easy to poke fun at the American -- if the sight of a once-proud league split and stripped to the bone wasn't so sad.

And yet, for a league hastily constructed to ward off the impending doom of a football status downgrade, the American provides plenty of basketball interest, at least this season. Louisville is a national title contender. Memphis and UConn are both immensely talented, veteran teams led by good young coaches. Temple is Temple, which is to say it's a consistently strong program under Fran Dunphy; the same goes for Cincinnati under Mick Cronin. The Cincinnati-Memphis-Louisville triumvirate carries over some fun regional rivalry familiarity from the golden days of Conference USA, and the rest of the league around it -- up-and-comers at Houston and SMU, a marquee UConn program, etc. -- is a step up from the C-USA in nearly every way. It's not hard to conceive of a world in which the American was a long-standing, viable basketball league. It certainly will be this season. Why not?

Because Louisville doesn't see it that way. Neither do many of its current members, public pledges of allegiance excepted. These are huge questions about the future viability of the league, and what happens next.

The only certainty -- and it should make UConn fans feel a lot better -- is that in 2013, conference affiliation is barely half the battle. You don't have to be from the ACC or Big Ten to get to the tournament every season. Ask West Coast Conference member Gonzaga. Ask Xavier. Ask Wichita State. Ask Memphis! For as much as we debate which league is strongest every year, conference identity is still a secondary concern in college hoops. There may be more movement ahead; I have no idea what the American will look like in five years' time. That doesn't change how many top-50 wins Memphis needs to get to the tournament this season. There's solace in there somewhere.

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Ivy League team previews

October, 15, 2013

OCT 15

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From Sept. 30 through Oct. 25, Insider will be rolling out its college basketball preview, including breakdowns on every Division I team, projected order of finish for every conference and essays from Insider’s hoops experts. 

Here are previews for each team in the Ivy League: 

Harvard Crimson  
Yale Bulldogs  
Pennsylvania Quakers  
Princeton Tigers  
Brown Bears (FREE) 
Cornell Big Red  
Dartmouth Big Green  
Columbia Lions 

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Big West team previews

October, 15, 2013

OCT 15

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By ESPN.com staff | ESPN.com

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From Sept. 30 through Oct. 25, Insider will be rolling out its college basketball preview, including breakdowns on every Division I team, projected order of finish for every conference and essays from Insider’s hoops experts. 

Here are previews for each team in the Big West: 

Long Beach State 49ers  
UC Irvine Anteaters  
Cal Poly Mustangs  
UC Davis Aggies  
Cal State Northridge Matadors  
UC Santa Barbara Gauchos (FREE) 
Hawaii Warriors  
Cal State Fullerton Titans  
UC Riverside Highlanders 

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You Gotta See This: Ivy League

October, 15, 2013

OCT 15

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Harry How/Getty ImagesHarvard coach Tommy Amaker has a team that's built on depth, experience and talent.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: Harvard's back. That's more intimidating than it used to be. 

Let's take a moment to consider the past two seasons of Harvard Crimson men's basketball. In 2011-12, after a couple of seasons spent knocking on the door and a few more than that spent getting the Crimson to ever-so-slightly nudge their still-brutal academic restrictions in the direction of player accessibility, Tommy Amaker's work in Boston paid off. Harvard won the Ivy League and visited its first NCAA tournament since 1946. 

Not a bad starting point, but arguably not even as crazy as what came next: In late August 2012, Harvard revealed one of the largest academic scandals in school history, which, considering Harvard was founded in 1636, is saying something. Over 100 students were accused of academic dishonesty, and dozens of them were forced to endure a year's suspension before they could return to their degrees. 

Unfortunately for Amaker, not only did two of his players end up involved, it was his two senior captains for 2012-13: guard Brandyn Curry and forward Kyle Casey. They, too, were forced to serve a one-year academic suspension. It is a testament to the depth Amaker has built that most people accurately assumed Harvard would win the Ivy League last season (despite a 20-10 overall record). No one expected what happened in March, when the Crimson toppled No. 3 seed New Mexico, their first modern-format NCAA tournament win. "Bonus" doesn't really begin to describe it. 

Now Curry and Casey are back. They'll join a team that worked hard in their absence last season: Rising junior Wesley Saunders and sophomore guard Siyani Chambers both played more than 92 percent of their team's available minutes last season and were in the top 10 in that category nationally. Senior wingman Laurent Rivard shot 40.2 percent from 3 in 2012-13 (and played 87.4 percent of his available minutes). Steve Moundou-Missi was a beast on the glass. And while it's still in a different galaxy from the Kentuckys and North Carolinas of the world, Amaker is nonetheless a lock to add to his team every summer in a way Harvard never has before. 

The end result is a team that is deep, young, talented and now, strangely enough, experienced -- a team that has every reason to be just as good as the Crimson were in 2012, when they broke that 60-year-old Ivy League streak for the first time. Frankly, they should be better. Now Harvard has a different sort of streak going. Not bad for a couple years work, eh?

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3-point shot: Time for optimism

October, 15, 2013

OCT 15

11:00

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By ESPN.com staff | ESPN.com

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Andy Katz explains why LSU, Baylor and Memphis are each feeling good as the season approaches.

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You Gotta See This: Big West

October, 15, 2013

OCT 15

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Nate Shron/Getty ImagesDan Monson cuts no corners when building Long Beach State's schedule -- and tourney resume.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season — from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: Long Beach State, back into the breach. 

The first time Long Beach State made real national noise under Dan Monson, it was in the lead-up to the 2011-12 season. The prospectus on LBSU was bullish, and for good reason: The 49ers returned four seniors, all of them starters, two of them (Casper Ware and Larry Anderson) out-and-out stars. 

But back in the fall of 2011, what really caught the eye about Dan Monson's team was its schedule. Fearing that the Big West would be a significant drag on his team's RPI (and chances at an at-large bid), and seeking to avoid the thin conference tournament margin for error that punishes so many otherwise deserving mid-majors every season, Monson scheduled like a madman. At Pitt, at San Diego State, at Louisville, at Kansas, at North Carolina, vs. Kansas State and Xavier in Hawaii, at Creighton for the BracketBusters. It was crazier before the season started (and Pitt and Xavier disappointed), sure, but the end result was nonetheless the top nonconference schedule in the country, perhaps the most oft-cited selection committee criterion of the past five seasons. It ended up not mattering: LBSU won the Big West tourney anyway. 

The 49ers' hard-earned trip to the 2012 NCAA tournament ended after just one game with a loss to fifth-seeded New Mexico, and Ware and his three senior counterparts called an end to their era, too. But even with a whole new set of young, inexperienced starters stepping in, Monson kept his schedule strategy constant. That resulted in the 49ers playing at USC, at Arizona, vs. North Carolina, at Syracuse, at Ohio State and at UCLA. Long Beach finished strong in league play, and even won the outright title at Pacific (which took the at-large bid a week later) on the road in the final game of the regular season. 

There is yet more turnover to account for this season, only this time it wasn't planned: In May, Monson dismissed Tony Freeland and Keala King, both transfers from high-major outfits (DePaul and Arizona State, respectively). The good news? UCLA transfer Tyler Lamb becomes eligible at the end of the fall semester and can contribute immediately, and rising junior guard Mike Caffeyand senior forward Dan Jennings are both still in the mix. 

And, of course, the schedule is still crazy: at Arizona, at Kansas State, vs. Michigan (in the first round of Puerto Rico Tip-Off, which also includes potential games against VCU and Georgetown), at Washington, vs. Creighton, at NC State, vs. USC, at Nevada, at Missouri. You get the feeling Monson is going to keep scheduling like this forever: It's good for the RPI, and it's great for recruiting. (How many mid-majors can tell recruits they can play at that many marquee college hoops venues?) But that's the lofty, fuzzy stuff. On the court and in those airplanes, Long Beach State's nonconference schedule is a brutal grind. Fortunately for us, watching Monson's latest bunch take one road upset shot after another has become perhaps the Big West's most noteworthy attraction. All it takes is one.

Tags:

Big West, Dan Monson, Long Beach State, You Gotta See

West Coast Conference team previews

October, 14, 2013

OCT 14

5:00

PM ET

By ESPN.com staff | ESPN.com

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From Sept. 30 through Oct. 25, Insider will be rolling out its college basketball preview, including breakdowns on every Division I team, projected order of finish for every conference and essays from Insider’s hoops experts. 

Here are previews for each team in the West Coast Conference: 

BYU Cougars  
Gonzaga Bulldogs  
Loyola Marymount Lions (Free) 
Pacific Tigers  
Pepperdine Waves  
Portland Pilots  
Saint Mary’s Gaels  
San Diego Toreros  
San Francisco Dons  
Santa Clara Broncos 

Tags:

West Coast Conference, 2013-14 Insider previews

Summit League team previews

October, 14, 2013

OCT 14

4:15

PM ET

By ESPN.com staff | ESPN.com

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From Sept. 30 through Oct. 25, Insider will be rolling out its college basketball preview, including breakdowns on every Division I team, projected order of finish for every conference and essays from Insider’s hoops experts. 

Here are previews for each team in the Summit League: 

Denver Pioneers  
IPFW Mastodons  
IUPUI Jaguars (Free) 
Nebraska-Omaha Mavericks  
North Dakota State Bison  
South Dakota Coyotes  
South Dakota State Jackrabbits  
Western Illinois Leathernecks 

Tags:

Summit, 2013-14 Insider previews

Eustachy right and wrong on contact rules

October, 14, 2013

OCT 14

1:55

PM ET

By Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com

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College basketball was not at its aesthetic best in 2012-13. You might have heard something about this; it was the unifying theme of the season. The pace of the sport, on a downward trajectory since the mid-1990s, slowed even further, with teams trading speed for a slight uptick in efficiency. Scoring stayed way down. Things got pretty ugly. 

When Michigan and Louisville played a thrilling, offensive, up-and-down national title game, it stood out — not only because it was a good game in and of itself but because it ran counter to so much that came before it. It was, frankly, a surprise. 

As Louisville coach Rick Pitino basked in the afterglow, he was asked about the state of the game, about what college basketball needed to change to rid itself of slow, physical play — or whether it even needed to in the first place. Pitino was happy to share his thoughts: 

"What happened in the NBA now is they stopped all the arm bars, all the standing up of screens, all the coming across and chopping the guy," Pitino said in April. "They stopped all that. Now there's freedom of movement in the NBA and you see great offense. …. I always liked to watch the old films of Clyde Frazier and, you don't see defense touch anybody at all. Everybody cuts and passes, freedom of movement. That's what we got to get back to. The only way to do it is the first 10 games of the season, the games have to be ugly and the players will adjust, then you will see great offense again."

A few months later, the NCAA made Pitino's recommendations real. In addition to clarifying the requirements for a defensive player to earn a charge call, the Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved new emphases of current rules outlawing hand-checking and arm contact both on and away from the ball. Most of the sport greeted these new rules with approval. Do not count Colorado State coach Larry Eustachy among that number. Last week, at Mountain West media day, Eustachy pleaded that the new rules would cause players to foul out even more (hat tip:CBS): 

“What are we thinking trying to put players in situations where they can be eliminated even more? We all witnessed it with Colton Iverson last year. It was a tragedy what the officiating did to him,” Eustachy said. “If you pay to go see Celine Dion, she’s not going to be fouled out at intermission. You pay to see Colton Iverson; you may only see four minutes of him. He may get two quick fouls and he has to sit the whole half.

“Louisville isn’t going to have a team if we stick to this because they’re going to all foul out in the first half, and I love the way they play,” Eustachy said. “If you’re going to call touch fouls, it’ll be over in the first 10 minutes. (Rick) Pitino will have to play. It really is crazy.”

You guessed it: Eustachy is both right and wrong at the same time. 

[+] Enlarge

AP Photo/James CrispColorado State coach Larry Eustachy is concerned about foul-outs because of new rules about hand-checking.

In the short term? Sure. Assuming officials truly apply the new hand-checking emphases, there probably will be more foul-outs this season, particularly early in the year. Whole teams who've grown used to lots of contact — who have been coached to create it and use it to their defensive advantage — are in for a major stylistic adjustment. I would argue that Colton Iverson should learn to, oh, I don't know, play defense without fouling, but I see Eustachy's point. The officials have to find their balance, too. The learning curve could be steep. 

But this isn't about the short-term. (Nor is this about tag being "outlawed on playgrounds" and living in a "depressingly soft world," as Coloradan columnist Matt L. Stephens wrote Sunday.) Nor is it about ridding the game of defense altogether, or about fast offensive basketball being inherently better than slow defensive hoops, or about some nascent desire to make the college game more like the NBA. I've had plenty of people write and shout at me about this: I like 55-53 games because I like defense, and the NBA doesn't play any defense and the players are all overpaid and spoiled and why don't you just go watch the NBA if you like it so much! Loud noises! 

That all totally misses the point. The NBA is just the most obvious, applicable test case. (And anyway, sorry, I love college basketball more than anyone should, but if you don't think the NBA has the best pure basketball product on a nightly basis, you're wrong.) This is about correcting college basketball's slide into overly physical drudgery, about restoring balance to the Force. It's about redefining what defense is in the first place. 

Good defense is not equivalent to strength. It is not a measure of how much you can get away with shoving and slapping and grabbing your opponent, or how much you can steer and prevent offensive movement through contact. No one learns to defend that way as a kid. At the college level, coaches have been given every incentive to teach it. But the basics are still the basics: sliding your feet, breaking down on close-outs, talking screens, reading help-side angles, challenging shots vertically, et al. There's no reason why these things can't be applied in the modern college game. I mean, they're already rules! They just aren't being enforced! Constant defensive contact is a crutch. 

So, yes, the near-term effects will be ugly and unpopular. No one wants to watch officials make mechanically dramatic off-the-ball contact calls; no one wants to watch free throws; no one likes foul-outs. That, by the way, is the next rule we should change. 

But once coaches and players adjust, whether it's after 10 games or 35, the sport stands to benefit from the same stylistic trends have improved the NBA's product by eons over the past 10 years. It could be a tough few weeks in November and December, but the benefits should be more than worth that cost.

Tags:

MWC, Rick Pitino, Larry Eustachy, NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel

3-point shot: OSU's scoring needs

October, 14, 2013

OCT 14

11:30

AM ET

By ESPN.com staff | ESPN.com

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Andy Katz discusses a focus for referees, Ohio State's scoring needs and the eligibility status of UConn's Kentan Facey.

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Ohio State Buckeyes, Katz 3-point shot, UConn Huskies

You Gotta See This: WCC

October, 14, 2013

OCT 14

10:00

AM ET

By Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com

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AP Photo/Rogelio V. SolisTyler Haws is a smooth and versatile scorer for the BYU Cougars.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: Get to know Tyler Haws.

You can hardly blame folks for overshadowing the play. I mean, look at what came after it. When BYU fell to Saint Mary's on Matthew Dellavedova's last-second desperation runner, the Cougars were victimized by what might have been the shot of 2012-13 season. Even worse? The play before it -- a face-meltingly beautiful wrong-footed floater by BYU guard Tyler Haws -- should have given the Cougars the win. It was an incredible shot and, nine times out of 10, the winning one. I doubt many people remember it.

There are few more fitting anecdotes to apply to Haws' 2012-13 season. Haws, a prized recruit out of high school and a solid freshman performer in 2010, returned from his two-year Mormon mission to a college basketball landscape that had largely forgotten his existence. He didn't go entirely unnoticed all season, but relative to Gonzaga's No. 1-seed storm, the emergence of Kelly Olynyk and Dellavedova's heroics at Saint Mary's, BYU's lack of nonconference wins and second-tier WCC run kept it from engaging a wider audience. Frankly, the Cougars weren't good enough.

So Haws did his work away from the spotlight, and what work it was: Haws averaged 21.7 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 1.3 steals. He set several BYU records for sophomores, including most total points (780), best scoring average (21.7) and most games with 20 or more points (25), records made doubly impressive by the fact that this guy had played there just two years ago. He shot 51 percent from the field, 38 percent from 3 and 87.7 percent from the free throw line. He drew fouls at a high rate, kept his turnovers low and finished with a 115.7 offensive rating despite taking 30.7 percent of his team's shots. Haws not only did a lot; he did a lot well.

Whether Haws can do more is up for debate, as is a more important question: Does he need to? Saint Mary's lost Dellavedova to graduation this past spring, while Gonzaga waved farewell to Olynyk and seniors Elias Harris and Mike Hart, the former an excellent frontcourt scorer, the latter the best glue guy in the country. Gonzaga will be just fine; coach Mark Few still has his probing backcourt (Kevin Pangos, Gary Bell) and a pair of potential NBA bigs (Sam Dower,Przemek Karnowski). But if the Cougars can tighten things up defensively, Haws and fellow captains Matt Carlino (a former UCLA transfer) and Kyle Collinsworth (back from his own two-year church mission) will put points on the board at a more than workable rate.

That's probably the best-case scenario. The defense is no guarantee. But even the worst case -- really great spread up-tempo offense, with Haws leading the way -- will absolutely be worth watching this season. Haws, at a minimum, is one of the game's great attractions -- a smooth, versatile, lights-out scorer. Don't make the same mistake twice.

Tags:

WCC, BYU Cougars, Mark Few, Tyler Haws, St. Mary's Gaels, Kevin Pangos, Kyle Collinsworth, Sam Dower, Matt Carlino, You Gotta See, Matthew Dellevadova

You Gotta See This: Summit League

October, 14, 2013

OCT 14

9:00

AM ET

By Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com

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Andrew B. Fielding/USA TODAY SportsChris Udofia is a key reason why Denver has become one of the nation's top mid-major programs.

It's college basketball preview season, and you know what that means: tons of preseason info to get you primed for 2013-14. But what do you really need to know? Each day for the next month, we'll highlight the most important, interesting or just plain amusing thing each conference has to offer this season -- from great teams to thrilling players to wild fans and anything in between. Up next: Denver finds a home in the Summit.

If you've been keeping up with You Gotta See This or are particularly attuned to the business of college sports in general, you already know the story of the Western Athletic Conference -- a long-standing, proud mid-major league decimated by recent conference realignment. We spent most of our time these past two years chronicling the quixotic travails of high-major programs (and leagues) trying to keep their heads above the football-cash-clogged water. But no one got it worse than the WAC.

You can imagine the anxiety this caused in Denver. After all, it was just three years ago that the Pioneers eagerly accepted, and joyfully celebrated, their new Western Athletic Conference membership. Denver had wriggled free from its geographically senseless Sun Belt membership, and it was thrilled, trumpeting the storied old mid-major conference and its legacy of success in the Rockies.

Two years later, DU athletic director Peg Bradley-Doppes was telling local reporters, "it became an issue where we were fortunate the Summit wanted DU." What changed? Losing seven members and football will do that to a league.

Is the Summit a better fit for Denver? Maybe. Insofar as the Summit makes sense on a map -- it comprises two teams from Indiana, one from Illinois, one from Nebraska and three from the Dakotas -- it makes sense for Denver. From a long-term basketball perspective, where recruiting is so key, well, who knows? The only thing that seems clear right now is this: Denver is the immediate favorite to win the Summit in 2013-14, and that's a baseline expectation.

Because while the Pioneers' brass was frantically dealing with a disintegrating new conference, the players and coaches, led by top man Joe Scott, have been quietly building one of the best mid-majors in all of college hoops. Star wingman Chris Udofia & Co. finished ranked No. 44 in Ken Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency rankings last season; only two teams, Creighton and Belmont, shot the ball more accurately.

There are precisely two losses to deal with: Senior guard Chase Hallam graduated, while sophomore Royce O'Neale transferred to Baylor. But everyone else, including Udofia, is back. With Oral Roberts now gone, no team in the current Summit League configuration comes close to matching that kind of talent.

What does the future hold for Denver? More realignment could change things at any time. If the basketball program's success continues, it could receive any number of membership offers in the years to come. But whether 2013-14 is the start of a long, productive relationship with the Summit League or a mere layover before something else, the Pioneers on the court right nowshould more than command your attention.

Tags:

Summit, Denver Pioneers, Chris Udofia, Joe Scott, You Gotta See

The SportVU revolution is upon us

October, 11, 2013

OCT 11

3:45

PM ET

By Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com

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If you're an NBA fan — and especially if you're the type of person fascinated by the development and use of advanced analytics in the professional game — you already know all about SportVU. 

If you're not this kind of person, you might be in the dark. Let's catch you up. Essentially, SportVU is a camera system developed by STATS LLC that uses high-speed, wide-angle camera lenses to track everything that happens on a basketball court several times a second. The data possibilities are endless; for the first time ever, teams can track, record and analyze everything a player does while he's on the court. 

[+] Enlarge

Courtesy of SportVUSportVU is installed in every NBA arena. And at least two college programs are buying in as well.

It didn't take long for NBA teams to catch on. Soon after STATS debuted the system, a handful of progressive NBA front offices shelled out to have it installed. In the years since, the MIT Sloan Sports Conference has runneth over with really smart using spatial data to come to new, interesting conclusions about the most efficient way to play the game; ESPN.com sister site Grantland frequently features SportVU-driven spatial analysis by Harvard visiting scholar and geography Ph.D. Kirk Goldsberry. By last season, 15 teams were on board, and in early September, the NBA announced that it would partner with STATS to furnish every NBA arena with cameras. By the time the NBA season opens in a few weeks, every NBA front office will have access to SportVU. 

Watching all of this happen from a college perspective has been somewhat disorienting. College hoops has its fair share of wonks, a bustling advanced analytics community powered by the work of ESPN's Dean Oliver, Ken Pomeroy, John Gasaway, and Synergy Sports scouting data, which you see in this space frequently. The smartest coaches in the game absorb this data and impart it on their players. But college basketball is not the NBA. The games are different and so are the market imperatives. So it wasn't unfair to ask whether college basketball would ever totally get on board. SportVU isn't cheap, and college basketball is almost impossible to standardize. The NBA has no such issue. What if the revolution ended at a price point? 

Now it seems inevitable. According to Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal, the Duke Blue Devils will become the first team to employ SportVU in their arena, Cameron Indoor Stadium, this season. The Blue Devils will also put the cameras to work in practices, adding a large sample of player motion and movement data to track and analyze. That is not a minor decision: Stats senior vice president Brian Kopp told the WSJ that no NBA team had done the same. But it makes sense for a college team whose data windows are limited to just 17 home games. Sample size is everything. 

The Blue Devils might be the first independent purveyor of the Stats tech, and certainly the most high-profile. But they aren't the only one. Because Marquette shares the Bradley Center with the Milwaukee Bucks, the Golden Eagles will share the SportVU system for their 16 home games this season, too. 

"Knowing our coach, two minutes into [Stats'] presentation, we knew it was something he'd want to pursue," said Marquette deputy athletic director Mike Broeker.

No surprise there. Few coaches in the country have so openly embraced advanced analytics as Marquette coach Buzz Williams; only Butler's Brad Stevens scouted and prepared his teams with more impressive game-to-game precision over the past five years. Now Williams will get a chance to look over the next data horizon. Who cares if it's just 16 games? If I was one of Marquette's new conference members, I would be slightly afraid. 

Which is where we get back to the sport at large. Opposing coaches don't like disadvantages. They don't like having substandard facilities. They don't like when they can't charter a plane to see four recruiting targets in 10 hours. They don't like it when they can't budget for top assistants. We can go ahead and posit, then, that these coaches are not going to like it when just one or two schools in their conference are outfitted with uber-precise cameras and an operations staffer plunging into vast amounts of data that they in turn don't have access to. Even if Mike Krzyzewski never once looks at SportVU (you know Williams already has his Howard Hughes-esque screening room set up), other coaches in his conference will hate the idea that he has access to a piece of information they can't obtain. I mean, they will hate it. These are desperately competitive men. It will keep them up nights. 

That's precisely the same force that got us all these glimmering, booster-funded practice facilities in the first place. You can't fall behind. You have to keep pace. Now, keeping pace means adding expensive cameras and hiring quants to analyze the number of potential hockey assists your power forward could have had were he more aware that the defense was only doubling him after his first half-pivot. And the NBA would love nothing more than for its would-be lottery picks to arrive with eight months' worth of spatial data attached. That's the other force at work here: the desire to record and measure everything. Basketball is hardly immune. 

SportVU might not achieve widespread collegiate adoption right away. But is there any doubt it one day will? Already, we know eons more about what makes basketball work than at any time in the sport's history. In reality, we're just getting started. How exciting is that?

Tags:

ACC, Big East, Duke Blue Devils, Marquette Golden Eagles, SportVU, Stats LLC

NCAA tournament is the bar for Iowa

October, 11, 2013

OCT 11

1:45

PM ET

By Myron Medcalf | ESPN.com

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The Iowa men’s basketball program hasn’t reached the NCAA tournament since 2006. That seven-year drought followed back-to-back appearances in the Big Dance in 2005 and 2006. 

Fran McCaffery’s arrival in 2010 reignited a sense of hope for the program’s supporters. Last year, the Hawkeyes earned 25 victories, the second-highest win tally in the school’s history. They finished 9-9 in the Big Ten. They were 44^th in adjusted offensive efficiency and 22^nd in adjusted deficiency, per Ken Pomeroy. 

But that wasn’t sufficient for the Hawkeyes to earn a slot in the Big Dance. 

The latter is the most significant aspiration for the program in 2013-14. 

Iowa returns its key players from last season. Roy Devyn Marble (15.0 PPG) is the star of a talented roster that should make strides this season. 

In comments he made during the team’s media day on Wednesday, McCaffery acknowledged that the bar is higher for this year’s team. 

From the Quad City Times’ Don Doxsie: 

He and his predecessors often have had to sit in front of reporters at preseason media day and try to whip up enthusiasm for the team they were going to put on the court that season. McCaffery now finds himself trying -- at least a little -- to temper the enthusiasm that surrounds the Hawkeyes. 

He’s not very good at it. The truth seeps through. McCaffery, like almost everyone else, thinks he has a pretty good basketball team. 

“I don't think there's any doubt that we are excited that people think enough of our team to rank us in the top 25 and project us to be in the NCAA tournament,’’ McCaffery said Wednesday at the Hawkeyes’ media day. “That's exciting. It's an accomplishment for some of the guys who have been here and haven't had that before. But the reality is now we have to go out and do it.’’ 

McCaffery talked about not believing what all the experts are saying and having the maturity to cope with higher expectations. 

“I just want to get better,’’ he added later while chatting with a few reporters. “Obviously, we’d like to win a Big Ten championship. Are we capable of doing it? Absolutely. A number of other teams feel the same way ... But it’s a reasonable goal.’’

A Big Ten title is certainly an ambitious goal. 

Iowa is among the league’s sleepers. But Michigan State, Michigan and Ohio State comprise a formidable triumvirate that will be difficult to surpass. 

It would be a disappointment, however, if the Hawkeyes missed the NCAA tournament this season. 

The NIT won’t suffice. 

Not this year. 

This is McCaffery’s fourth season. The program has a renovated Carver-Hawkeye Arena that features a new practice facility. He has brought nationally ranked recruits to Iowa City. And he’s retained key veterans who will lead this season. 

This is the season when it all has to come together for Iowa. 

It’s NCAA tournament or bust for a program that has its best roster in nearly a decade. 

McCaffery could run from the expectations. But he’s embracing them, albeit with a somewhat subtle approach. It’s just a matter of time to see if his squad has the same attitude.

Tags:

Big Ten, Iowa Hawkeyes

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Eamonn Brennan

Brennan joined ESPN.com in 2009 after several years of blogging at Yahoo! and other places around the Internet. The Iowa native lives in Chicago with his roommates, his dog, and a crippling addiction to caffeine.

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