Adams acknowledged that enforcement of the newly emphasized rules against contacting ballhandlers was superior in November and December to what it has been in January and February, but declared the game “is still in a better place” than a year ago.

There are statistics to support this position. In 2012-13, college basketball teams scored fewer points per game than at any point in six decades. Even in the past week, according to statistics compiled by Kevin Pauga of Michigan State’s basketball office, we were up roughly a basket per team from a year ago.

Whereas last year started awfully for the efficacy of college offenses and got slightly worse, this year’s decline through the course of the season has been more severe. But not enough so to counteract the best aspects of the new rules, which make handchecking and other forms of contact against ballhandlers strictly illegal.

Adams sees more plays made at the rim: more dunks, more blocks, more athleticism. He said the previous path of the game was “unsustainable” because it was becoming so rough and unattractive.

When he sees rough games now, he considers them outliers.

That likely would be his position on the handling of the controversial Louisville-Cincinnati game, when the officials reviewed an out-of-bounds play, made a determination to reverse the original decision to award the ball to the Cardinals, then re-checked and decided the Bearcats had touched it before it crossed the boundary. The process took seven minutes.

As well, there was the stunning decision by official Tony Greene to call a charge on Syracuse forward C.J. Fair with about 10 seconds left and the Orange down a basket in what became an SU loss at Duke. The new rule regarding charges specifies the help defender must be in legal guarding position when the ballhandler begins his motion to shoot or pass; Fair was 8 feet out of the lane when he gathered to shoot; Duke’s Rodney Hood still was up the lane guarding forward Jerami Grant at that point.

Greene called it a charge anyway, leading SU coach Jim Boeheim to throw a fit that got him ejected.

So it wasn’t the best day for college basketball officials. There were scores of other games played Saturday, though, and most passed without incident. We are a week away from March, and Adams is promising officials who work the NCAA Tournament will be graded on whether there is “constant enforcement” of rule 10-1-4 — the recitation of what constitutes a personal foul — as well as the entire rule book.

So don’t expect the NCAA Tournament to be as physical as conference games have been. Officials want to advance in the tournament, same as coaches and players do. The final scores decide what becomes of the teams; the refs are graded by Adams and his crew.

“If no one complains, sometimes an official will take the path of least resistance,” Adams told Sporting News about some of the physical games he sees. “These have been fouls for 20 years. We just weren’t calling them before.”


Smart can write his ending


Oklahoma State guard Marcus Smart probably could not have picked a worse time to get himself suspended, but at least the timing of his comeback was reasonably good.

Smart missed what would have been the final Bedlam Series game of his career and watched the Cowboys fall by three to rival Oklahoma. He missed a road trip to Baylor against fellow bubble team Baylor and watched them fall in overtime to the Bears. And OK State already was on a four-game losing streak when all of this began.

There’s still time, though. After returning in a comfortable home victory Saturday over Texas Tech, Smart has four regular-season games remaining in his college career: at TCU, home to Kansas and Kansas State, at Iowa State. What lasting impression will he leave?

It’s not like anyone’s really going to forget what happened with Smart at Texas Tech, but plenty have already forgiven him given the on-the-face absurdity of a middle-aged adult calling a young college student “a piece of crap.” And in a basketball sense, Smart’s moment of indiscipline conceivably could be the foundation of another story of redemption — the kind writers and broadcasters so love to tell.

Of course, for all that to develop, OK State has to win.

It will not be easy, but only someone who is not a student of NCAA Tournament history — and, indeed, who does not know Smart’s game — would dismiss the Cowboys (17-10) as a candidate for an at-large bid.

We still are talking about a team with three top-50 wins, and even without what’s available in the Big 12 Tournament, OK State could add as many as three more. We still are talking about a team with one of America’s best college players at the controls — someone who came off a three-game suspension and delivered 16 points and 10 assists in his first time out.

It seemed telling that Smart took only 10 shots in Saturday’s game, missing three times from 3-point range and concentrating mostly on setting up his teammates; the other four starters all finished in double figures.

Smart had played beyond desperately in the games leading up to his Lubbock implosion. He needed to become Marcus Smart again.

“I hit the gym,” he said following Saturday’s win. “While they were gone, I was up at 7:30 every morning getting up shots and working on my game. I understand that it’s a lot of pressure being put on this team, and individuals on this team. We have gotten in our minds that we need to let each other relieve some of the pressure off each other.”

The only real pressure on a college basketball team is to take advantage of the opportunity that’s available now — and that won’t recur. For a senior, there never will be another chance to do whatever is possible: a winning season, a tournament appearance, a Final Four or a title. Smart is the equivalent, having pledged to enter the NBA draft following this, his sophomore season. The suspension certainly increased the consequences of the games he has left, but how he manages them will define whether Lubbock will be part of his story or the definitive chapter.


Can Badgers climb to top seed?


Because voters fell out of love with them during the course of a dismal January, you must strap a headlamp to your helmet to go deep enough into the college basketball polls to locate the Wisconsin Badgers. If they continue on their present path, however, it’s conceivable you could soon find them near the very top of the NCAA Tournament bracket.

The Badgers as a No. 1 seed? It’s not crazy.

Though they currently stand third in the Big Ten Conference, the Badgers own five victories against the RPI top 25, second only to Arizona’s six. They have eight top-50 victories. Only Kansas and Arizona have more; only Iowa State and Syracuse have as many.

More impressive is that Wisconsin has earned two of its top-25 victories on the road and one on a neutral floor, in addition to Saturday’s decision over No. 35 Iowa at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Wins over St. John’s and Green Bay are just outside that top-50 level.

Among the teams the Badgers defeated are Florida, which presently appears to be in line to receive the No. 1 seed in the NCAA South Region, and both the teams ahead of them in the Big Ten standings: Michigan State and Michigan.

The Badgers have been through the most difficult part of their conference schedule and now close with this stretch of games: Indiana, at Purdue, Penn State, at Nebraska. There aren’t any high-level victories available in that stretch, although Nebraska could be playing for a spot in the NCAA Tournament and has been excellent at its new home court. But this could be good for the Badgers, who already have the whole “quality win” thing covered and now could stand to build up the overall record.

Some might have an issue with a team that isn’t leading its conference even discussed as a No. 1 seed. But even though the committee does grant respect for league champions — they automatically are placed on the board for at-large discussion even if not voted into that status initially by committee members — league standings are not as important as they might have been in the past. That’s because expansion has led to such an imbalance even in league schedules.

And there have been teams that finished deeper in their conference and still earned No. 1 seeds, according to Jerry Palm of CBS Sports. He told Sporting News that Duke received a top NCAA seed after finishing third in the ACC in 2005, behind North Carolina and Wake Forest, and Oklahoma got one in 2003 from the same position.

What caused poll voters to abandon Wisconsin even in the face of one of college basketball’s best resumes will remain the team’s biggest obstacle to earning a No. 1 seed: a 1-5 stretch near the end of January that included defeats against Indiana and Northwestern. The Wildcats are ranked outside the RPI top 100, and IU is dancing along that line at No. 95. The only RPI top-10 teams with 100-plus losses are Syracuse (Boston College) and Duke (Notre Dame).

It’s going to be very difficult for Wisconsin to climb past the teams that appear to be in front of them. Kansas and Florida do not have daunting schedules to end the season, either, and Wichita State appears to be disinclined to lose any game, ever. It’s quite an achievement to have recovered in a month to even enter this conversation, though. Not everyone’s caught on, but that always seems to be the way with Wisconsin in the Bo Ryan era. You don’t notice them until they beat your team.


Self's KU dynasty


There are many reasons to love Kansas fans, but one of the best became apparent when I attended a charity event coach Bill Self had arranged for his foundation at which several college basketball voices were gathered to discuss the state of the game.

Along with Self, the speakers were Fran Fraschilla and Jay Bilas of ESPN and Blair Kerkhoff of the Kansas City Star. And, yeah, me too. Somewhere in the course of the evening — I apologize if you’ve heard me tell this story before — I had the occasion to ask the 500 fans in attendance if the Jayhawks’ streak of consecutive conference championships had great meaning to them.

I’m sure more than 500 hands were raised, because some in the audience lifted both.

If KU wins one more game — one of its last four, mind you — it will clinch a share of the Big 12 title and run that string to 10 consecutive seasons. It will be the third-longest such run in Division I history.

The truth is this: to call that a streak is a misnomer. A streak can be an impressive feat, but most are actually empty at their core. They amuse us, sometimes fascinate us. But if Joe DiMaggio had hit in 30 consecutive games, had an oh-for, then went 26 more before having another tough day, he would have contributed to about the same number of victories.

What Kansas is doing is not a streak. It is a dynasty. The roster has turned over how many times in that period? Not many of the star players remained four full seasons. Sherron Collins, the most underrated player in KU history, he did. But Cole Aldrich, the Morris twins, Mario Chalmers and JaRon Rush — they all left early. Xavier Henry stayed one year. It might be that way for a player or two on this season’s team.

It is so easily forgotten now, as we enjoy the talents of freshmen Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid and appreciate the quiet consistency of power forward Perry Ellis, that KU lost all five starters from last year’s Sweet 16 team, which entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed but fell to eventual national runner-up Michigan.

How good is Self? This is his 13th year as a high-major coach, starting in 2000-01 at Illinois. In the previous 12 years — since the NCAA selection committee shafted his last, brilliant Tulsa team with a No. 7 seed — he never has coached a team that earned an NCAA seed lower than No. 4. There have been five No. 1s, a No. 2, two No. 3s and four No. 4s. That’s ridiculous.

We expect performances such as this from Self and Kansas, though, because it’s what they deliver, every year. That does not mean it is not extraordinary.