I tweaked my back yesterday. No idea how.  Got out of my car at work and it abruptly hit. About once or twice a year I suddenly find myself moving very gingerly and grimacing when doing anything too sudden. It fades after a few days. A week at worst. My dad has the same problem, and has never gotten a good explanation from doctors as to how or why. Or how to prevent it. Just something that happens. Who doesn’t love the unknown.

Dick Vitale lists Durand Johnson as one of five players coming back (mostly from injuries) that will make a difference.

Grading Steven Adams first NBA season.

I am trying to work on a post on UNC’s neverending academic/athletic scandal in the wake of Rashard McCants statements regarding his fake education and what Roy Williams knew, but spare time  for a side piece has been hard to come by. ESPN’s Outside the Lines will be having a roundtable talk on college basketball coaches role in the education of players with some coaches. Jamie Dixon will be one of the panelists. If you want to see it, consider DVR-ing it because it airs at 8am on Sunday.

ESPN.com had an interesting series of pieces called, “What it would take.” The subject were some of the perennial wishlist basketball coaches and what it would take to get them to leave. This part regarding Greg Marshall of Wichita State resonated.

On Monday, in her excellent introduction to this series, Marshall told Dana O’Neil his philosophy on staying at Wichita State. It’s one John Calipari echoed years before the two staged March’s remarkable matchup, when the former was still at Winthrop and the latter at Memphis:

“Cal said, ‘Effectively, what you’ve done is made Winthrop your next job,'” Marshall said. “That’s so true. He did the same thing at UMass and at Memphis. Instead of making that intermediate step — there were 15 to 20 jobs I could have taken while I was at Winthrop — at the end of each year, I’d sit down and say, ‘This is what we need to do to make Winthrop better.’ That’s what I’m doing now at Wichita State.”

That’s not just about winning and losing. It’s not even really about recruiting. It’s about consistently building all facets of a program: attendance, player recognition, booster support, etc. It’s about making progress so obvious, and yourself so indispensable, that the combination becomes something that transcends conference affiliation. Salary and perks that used to be available only at the high-major football-school level are available to coaches who can pull it off outside that structure now. Marshall is the latest, most prominent example, and neither he nor the program he built is going anywhere anytime soon.

Pitt is not a mid-major, but this is essentially what Jamie Dixon has done at Pitt. He has improved the program. Credit the Pete all you want, but there are plenty of programs that build shiny new arenas that can’t sustain the success or don’t bother with everything else until later.

Over the years Jamie Dixon has listened to offers but stayed at Pitt. In the process he has gotten better contracts (albeit for less money than if he left), but he has also made the program better and stronger. He has made Pitt a place past players come back to in the offseason. He has gotten the players to stay at Pitt in the offseason to train and develop (and stay out of trouble). He has helped get the summer pro-am program as much as the NCAA will let him. He has gotten more money for assistants.

It’s easy to start taking it for granted. And it can be easy to forget, but this is the longest period in Pitt basketball history of being one of the top programs in the country. Not that more isn’t wanted or expected. It’s just that 20 years ago, Pitt would have been on this list as one of the worst jobs out there.

This piece on now VT head basketball coach Buzz Williams and why he left Marquette is a must read.

The second interesting thing was how often Williams began a sentence in that meeting with the words “when they fire me” because I’ve never heard a coach, particularly a successful one who has never been on the so-called hot seat, speak that way, especially not a coach with a fresh contract. And yet he said it over and over again.

When they fire me. When they fire me. When they fire me.

Again, this offered a glimpse into the way Williams thinks and his obsession with data.

He knows, because he’s done all of the research, that almost nobody who enters this profession works as long as they want and retires without a nudge, and so he’s forever planning for the day he’ll be fired. It’s not a defeatist attitude because Williams is a confident person. It’s just that his entire view of the world is rooted in “facts and data,” and the facts and data suggest he’ll eventually be fired like pretty much everybody else. So he obsesses about it and plans for it while trying to put it off as long as possible.
…
He has a fresh contract and fans with fresh sets of expectations.

Williams’ move ensures he doesn’t have to make three Sweet 16s over the next six years to prove to the world he isn’t slipping. He’s now in charge of a program that’s been to exactly one NCAA Tournament since 1996, that’s made just one Sweet 16 ever, and that won a mere two ACC games last season. In other words, the bar is really, really low. And Williams is more likely to spend the next six years outperforming his predecessors at Virginia Tech than he would’ve been to spend the next six years outperforming himself at Marquette.

Buzz Williams is considered a great interview because his so straightforward and tells good stories. This is something else. Extremely logical and rational. I’m impressed.

Pitt fans should be very familiar with demographics and numbers that fall with regards to population growth and recruits — especially for football. Stewart Mandel at SI.com makes the case that so is the Big Ten. That the real reason for their eastward push had as much to do with demographics as it did the money for and from the Big Ten Network.

Most of all, Delany believes the conference had no choice. As the Big Ten’s population moves South and West, the conference’s base is rapidly shrinking: Illinois, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Iowa all rank among the 12 states with the smallest projected growth from 2000 to ’30. Meanwhile, between June ’10, when Nebraska joined the Big Ten and Colorado and Utah joined the Pac-12, and the Maryland and Rutgers announcements in November ’12, the SEC added Texas A&M and Missouri, and most important, the ACC delivered a death knell to the Big East, poaching Syracuse, Pittsburgh and, as a partial member, Delany’s long-coveted target, Notre Dame. The Big Ten, which had long claimed the most populous footprint of any conference, suddenly ranked a distant third. And with Syracuse, Pitt and Notre Dame, the ACC had moved directly into the neighborhood. A still unfolding lawsuit filed last year by Maryland against the ACC over the league’s $52 million exit fee claims that representatives from two ACC schools, acting on the conference’s behalf, contacted two Big Ten schools about joining. “That’s when it changed,” says Delany. “Once people start getting on our doorstep and calling our institutions, then I think it’s important to be able to be offensive and defensive. We came to the conclusion there was more risk in sitting still than there was in exploring other opportunities.”

The ACC does not have that problem.