Acie Law and the Aggies are top-10 material -- with a schedule to match. Bill Frakes/SI

Weakest in 2004-05               Weakest in 2005-06
Rk.  Team             SOS        Rk.  Team               SOS
1.   Baylor           329        1.   Florida State      316
2.   Texas A&M        320        2.   Oregon State       312
3.   Virginia Tech    312        3.   Virginia Tech      290
4.   West Virginia    269        4.   Boston College     282
5.   Notre Dame       267        5.   Colorado           271
6.   Pittsburgh       262        6.   Ole Miss           270
7.   N.C. State       259        7.   Florida            253
8.   Kansas State     257        8.   Penn State         248
9.   Arkansas         249        9.   USC                245
10.  Ole Miss         237        10.  Nebraska           242
                                 12.  Texas A&M          240

Fat Joe's Terror Squad warms up ... for the game that never started. Luke Winn/SI

Top: Fat Joe, consulting. Bottom: Starbury, holding court. Luke Winn/SI

I left the SI offices early last night and hopped on the D Train, uptown. Jumped off four stops later, in Harlem. The destination: Rucker Park. I was psyched; it was going to be my first night at the street hoops mecca on 155th and Frederick Douglass. 'Twas the night of the Entertainer's Basketball Classic championship game, pitting rapper Fat Joe's Terror Squad (with ex-Arkansas Razorback Kareem Reid and prep phenom Lance Stephenson) against The Game's Black Wall Street (with ex-LIU stars Richie Parker and Charles Jones).

There was no (The) Game, the rapper. He didn't show. And there was no actual game, either.

It was, all in all, pretty embarrassing. The championship, scheduled to start at 6 p.m., was delayed due to a massive dispute over referees. Fat Joe, according to four different (and independent) sources I questioned on the court, refused to accept -- or let his team play with -- the female official who was heading the original crew. "They're letting Joe call the shots because he's a big rap artist," said a man at the scorer's table. "I've never seen anything like this, letting somebody dictate the refs." The officiating crew, frustrated, left the premises. The game kept being delayed and delayed ... and delayed, until at 9:20 p.m., they called the whole thing off until Monday.

And so I left, with the absurdity of the scene in my head and just one good sound bite in my tape recorder. This, from Fat Joe, whom I stood with behind the stands at 8:30 p.m.: "There were people saying I didn't want some of the refs, which is really just a rumor that wasn't true. And it turned out that the refs got tired of hearing all the rumors, and they left. But I can't believe the refs would leave the championship game. I just don't want them to pin this sh-- on me!"

I did get to mingle on the court for a couple of hours amid the chaos. Watched a few celebs come and go. Ja Rule was hanging around for a while. They tried to get him to sing the national anthem. He eventually left. Stephon Marbury -- or Starbury, at Rucker -- came, did some interviews, and split. Someone asked him to ref, and he said, "I'm not reffing! That's f---ing crazy!" Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made his first trip to the court in decades ... but he left, frustrated, by 7:30 p.m.

The crowd's intensity reached its peak when an, um, "video star"-slash-"model" named "Buffie The Body" rolled in during the delay and was mobbed on the court by the emcees, who were struggling to make idle chatter to keep the fans in the crowd -- a few thousand strong -- from getting restless.

"A big shout-out to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar! Is he still here?" one emcee said.
"No, Kareem bounced," another shot back.
"Oh, Kareem left? Maybe Buffy would have given Kareem a lap dance."

There were no lap dances. To fill the time, the emcees later recruited spectators at random to play a pickup game, while the actual players watched from the benches. Rucker, I'm guessing, has seen better nights.

In case you're unfamiliar with the calendar concept ... Nebraska AD Steve Pederson points out his timetable for hiring a basketball coach. AP Pederson, left, with new Pitt coach Ben Howland, center, on March 8, 1999. AP

When embattled Nebraska coach Barry Collier stepped -- or, some would say, backed -- out of Lincoln to take the athletic director's job at his alma mater, Butler, on Tuesday, he restarted a carousel that had been closed for the summer. In Collier's wake, the "who's-next" lists have followed an age-old formula, identifying non-BCS-conference overachievers (Creighton's Dana Altman, Nevada's Mark Fox, George Washington's Karl Hobbs), coaches with ties to the state (Altman again; Wyoming's Steve McClain; ex-Husker assistant Scott Spinelli, now at Wichita State), and coaches with even the remotest of connections to Nebraska AD Steve Pederson (Kent State's Jim Christian, a former Pitt assistant; UCLA assistant Kerry Keating, Ben Howland's ace recruiter).

This, however, is one occasion where the list is no lock to contain the successor -- because the man doing the hiring, Pederson, has a history of bucking conventional wisdom. Need evidence? Rewind to the last time Pederson was charged with hiring a coach to turn around a slumping hoops program, seven and a half years ago at Pittsburgh:

On Feb. 2, 1999, Panthers coach Ralph Willard announced he would resign at the end of the '98-99 season. The first list of rumored candidates that the public saw (the day after Willard's revelation) included the unemployed Fran Fraschilla, Nebraska's Danny Nee, Siena's Paul Hewitt, Marquette's Mike Deane, Quinnipiac's Joe DeSantis, Minnesota assistant Bobby Jones and N.C. State assistant Sean Miller, a former Panthers player. Newspaper stories from Feb. 9 began to talk about Hewitt and Xavier's Skip Prosser as the leaders.

By Feb. 19 -- 17 days after Willard's revelation -- two ex-NBA coaches, Bob Hill and Dick Versace, were thrown into the media mix. And one line, almost as an afterthought in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story headlined "PROSSER MIGHT BE OUT, BUT 2 EX-NBA COACHES ENTER PITT PICTURE" mentioned that a coach from Northern Arizona named Ben Howland, "a Rick Majerus disciple who comes heavily recommended by the Utah coach," would also be considered.

Pederson conducted a face-to-face interview with just one guy: Howland, who was working in the obscurity of Flagstaff, Ariz., and the Big Sky conference. Howland got the Pitt job and went on (with the Panthers and presently, UCLA) to win two conference titles, reach two Sweet 16s and one Final Four since 2000 -- a resume that trumps that of any of the other coaches who were on the media's initial short list.

An actual list, no doubt, exists in Pederson's head for his latest basketball opening. He declined to return an interview request on Thursday, but I expect that he's considering at least a couple of outside-the-box candidates. Does he dare drop down to Division II and grab fundamentals guru Mike Dunlap of Denver's Metro State? Or follow Texas A&M's lead and hire a relatively unknown UTEP head coach (Doc Sadler, who apprenticed under the Aggies' Billy Gillispie) to rebuild the Huskers? Or, just as Pederson with Bill Callahan for the football team, surprisingly give another ex-pro skipper new life in Lincoln?

Pederson prefers to put his own stamp on his hires, rather than echo public opinion. He's in a tough spot with this one, though; early spring, not late summer, is the best time to find a new basketball coach, and he intends to have someone in place by Aug. 21, when Nebraska begins fall classes. Can Pederson find another gem like Howland, or will one of the obvious candidates suit him this time? Husker fans are eagerly awaiting the surprise.

Point guard Chris Wright is one of a trio of 5-star recruits in the D.C. area for the Class of 2007. Greg Nelson/SI

Monday's blog launch looked at some of the new heavies (including Purdue!) on the national recruiting scene. Today, the focus is much narrower: the changing dynamics of the Washington D.C. talent market.

In last November's college basketball preview issue, SI ran a four-page spread entitled "Hoops Hotbeds: SI's Survey of America's Basketball Boomtowns," with Washington D.C. as one of the featured hotbeds, albeit in a secondary position behind New York. The story listed "Pipelines" for each hotbed; for D.C., it read, "Maryland and Georgetown have divided the city's spoils in recent years, but North Carolina's Roy Williams has muscled in to sign freshman Marcus Ginyard and '06 freshman Tywon Lawson."

While NYC has since stagnated to a point where it has no 4- or 5-star recruits, the D.C. area has blown up: Its Class of 2007 crop includes three 5-star prospects -- PF Michael Beasley (headed to Kansas State), SG Austin Freeman (Georgetown) and PG Chris Wright (uncommitted) -- and four with 4-star grades -- PF Jeff Allen (Virginia Tech), center Anthony McClain (uncommitted), SG Nolan Smith (Duke) and PF Julian Vaughn (uncommitted). From that group, all but Wright and Allen play for the D.C. Assault, an adidas outfit that may be the East Coast's top AAU team.

So how does an outsider program without the cachet of a Duke or UNC infiltrate a market in which there's intense competition from the local powers? It's easier than you think: Just go out and add someone to your staff who has connections to the Assault. That's what Kansas State did in April; new coach Bob Huggins shrewdly hired Dalonte Hill, an ex-Assault coach and Charlotte assistant. Hill is a father figure to Beasley, the No. 5 overall player in the '07 class … and lo and behold, Beasley backed out of his verbal commitment to Charlotte and said this summer that he intends to play at K-State instead.

The Wildcats, however, are not the only ones crashing the D.C. party. Next up? Pittsburgh, which must forge a new recruiting identity after losing ace assistant Barry "Slice" Rohrssen -- a Sopranos-like character -- to the top job at Manhattan. Rohrssen is a Brooklyn guy who dominated NYC recruiting and stocked the Panthers' with talents such as Chris Taft, Carl Krauser, Levance Fields and Ronald Ramon. Pitt's '05-06 roster had six players from New York as opposed to one (Sam Young) from the D.C. area.

A nice story in Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette describes how coach Jamie Dixon is banking on newly hired director of basketball operations David Cox to help make Pitt a player in D.C. recruiting. Cox, to put it lightly, is "hooked up" inside the Beltway after serving as an assistant with the Assault for seven years. Coincidentally, with Cox in the fold in July, the Panthers landed Darnell Dodson, a 6-foot-6, three-star wing player for the Assault. They're also now in the hunt for Vaughn and McClain and are said to be considered by Beasley as a possible back-up option should he change his mind about K-State. Cox also gives Dixon more pull in his battle against Huggins for Herb Pope, an ultra-talented power forward from Alquippa, Pa., who formerly played for the Assault.

Oh -- and Chris Wright, the lone, five-star D.C. prospect who hasn't made his college decision? He doesn't play for the Assault, but that doesn't mean he's unfamiliar with Cox. "Actually," Wright told Scout.com this summer, "[Cox] was the assistant principal at my school [St. John's College High]. We had a very good relationship before he went to the University of Pittsburgh.”

Wright has two Big East schools on his short list: Georgetown … and Pittsburgh. Is anyone surprised?

A screenshot of Patterson's MySpace page. SI

Digging into the mailbag ... Last week I penned a column about the potentially large number of recruiting violations occurring between alleged "boosters" and recruits on MySpace.com pages. It was based on the fact that Kentucky had self-reported violations after its fans had posted recruiting-related messages on the MySpace page of Patrick Patterson, a five-star power forward out of West Virginia. And it pointed out that if UK's "violation" was actually punishable, a number of other major schools -- from UNC, to UCLA, to Kansas -- were in similar trouble due to the actions of their Internet-savvy (and overzealous) fans.

I figured I'd run a handful of responses -- with my comments -- here in the blog. (If you're unfamiliar with the topic, read this first.)

Don't you find the behavior of these fans a little, um, creepy?
-- Patrick Johnson, Ooltewah, Tenn.

Um, yeah. While simply being on MySpace is not creepy (fellow SI.commer Stew Mandel just joined, and is a 1,200-friend star), tracking down 17-year-olds and enticing them with photos of the dance team, as well as sexually suggestive comments (as the UK fans did to Patterson) is more than a little weird. While some recruits may be swayed by those methods, Patterson said he was unaffected; I think if I were in his shoes, I'd find it a tad uncomfortable that fans were already being so intrusive into my personal life. And c'mon -- Patterson, who has since made his profile private, is old enough to already be aware of the existence of sports-loving co-eds at major state schools. As his mom, Tywanna, told the Lexington Herald-Leader (seriously, I'm not making this up), "You can get that anywhere. You don't have to go to Kentucky to get hotties. You can get hotties everywhere."

If the NCAA is going to consider MySpace comments to be improper recruitment by "boosters," then my prescription is to encourage as many fans as possible to use MySpace and leave such messages. Only when the NCAA realizes their regulations are ineffectual and ill-suited to reality will they finally consider meaningful reform. Asking fans to cut back on MySpace messages only begs the NCAA rules committee to churn out more ridiculous, unenforceable, and unfair nonsense for ADs and coaches to deal with.
-- Andrew, Long Beach, Calif.

I hope it wouldn't take a deluge of (creepy) fan-on-recruit MySpace commenting to convince the NCAA that any rules dealing with that site are futile. Then again, you're talking about an organization that has waited until 2006 to address the concept of the Internet in its recruiting rules, so it would be wrong to assume the NCAA actually has a solid grasp on how to regulate new technologies. Perhaps Alaskan Sen. Ted Stevens -- the guy who recently described the Internet as "a series of tubes" -- could be brought in to advise at the September meeting.

I practice entertainment law, and I have to ask myself how the NCAA can really monitor this and patrol it effectively. Is not MySpace like real life? What would happen to a recruit if he lived in the area of a big school and all the fans wanted him to stay at home and pressed him on the street every day? What then? Those fans are NOT boosters. They're fans. Secondly, what gives the NCAA ANY jurisdiction over what happens on MySpace? It is not as if the NCAA has any affiliation over MySpace. They are all separate, PRIVATE entities.
-- Anthony Verna, Hoboken, N.J.

Fans deliver verbal recruiting messages all the time. Remember last year, when Jon Scheyer, the prep scoring star who played for Bruce Weber's brother, Dave, in Glenbrook, Ill., picked Duke over the Illini? Scheyer was forced to hear Illini fans' pleas on a near daily basis before he made us his mind. If you adopt Kentucky's hard-line interpretation that any fan who involves him/herself in the recruiting process is considered a booster, even that could be called improper contact. It's all very similar to a MySpace comment -- except that the Web stuff falls under the heading of "written communication."

As for the NCAA's jurisdiction over MySpace, it has none. But it can react to what happens there, and hand out punishments accordingly. Let's hope it just leaves the site alone.