Like VCU it has been announced that Butler will be joining the A-10 immediately. Unlike VCU, Butler shouldn't be considered one of the favorites to win the conference. Not unless everything goes perfect.

Butler, by making two straight Final Fours created unrealistic expectations about the team and Brad Stevens. And then last season they struggled a bit and failed to make the NCAAs. Of course "struggling" is relative for Butler - if you throw away the ridiculous expectations then you'll see that the Bulldogs had a very solid 3rd place finish in the Horizon regular season. But last years Horizon and next year's A-10 are different beasts.

In Brad Stevens first four seasons his offense never averaged below 1.10 points per possession, and on the national level (out of 345+ teams), they ranked 30th, 61st, 50th and 50th. Then came last year - 0.98 points per possession, 223rd nationally. Ouch.

Their shooting - to put it simply - was awful. They were 204th at shooting 2s, 341st (!) from beyond the arc, and 302nd from the line. The only player they lose in Ronald Nored who didn't help in the 2s or 3s department, but he did have the 3rd highest FT Rate in the nation and once he got there he made 71%.

Just before the holiday weekend Jon Rothstein published his list of ten best mid-major guards. He didn't explicitly state that they were the ten "best," but he did number them one through ten, and since he provided the list sans descriptive text (because he's really just trolling for hits) we have to make assumptions. More importantly, like everything he writes, the piece oscillated between the Rothstein poles of 2/3 "spot-on" and 1/3 "wtf?" It's a mystery how he can be both one of the ten best college basketball analysts and one of the ten worst college basketball analysts (sometimes in the same sentence), but he's perfected it. We'll call that dichotomy The Rothstein.

Over the weekend I had planned on deconstructing the list as I'm want to do with a couple old school, smoking jacket wearing, ACC writers. But this is Rothstein. We don't need to deconstruct. Instead, I'll take on the harder task of providing a better list. Here goes. (*Note: discovered that John Templon of Big Apple Buckets provided a list as well)

1. Isaiah Canaan - Murray State

If you need me to diagram the why of Canaan sitting atop this list, then you're probably not a college basketball fan and you'll have left this site before the end of this sentence. He's the best. The end.

2. Nate Wolters - South Dakota State

As a junior, Wolters was about as close to a one-man show as it's possible to be in a sport where five guys play at all times. He used 32.5% of SD State's possessions, which was the 11th most in the nation. And he took more than a third of their shots when he was on the floor. And he was really really good. He averaged 21.2 points, 5.9 assists 5.1 boards a game, while maintaining the highest assist rate in the Summit and the 3rd lowest turnover rate.

3. CJ McCollum - Lehigh

McCollum has been the star at Lehigh since he walked on campus. He averaged 19.1 ppg as a freshman, and bumped that to 21.9 this year. He also averaged 6.5 rebounds a game, and has made more than 80% of his FTs in all three seasons. Every team the Mountain Hawks play know that the ball is going to be in McCollum's hands, and still, he performs. The only reason he isn't in Canaan's league is that he's inconsistent from beyond the arc - 42% as a freshman, 32% as a sophomore and 34% as a junior.

During an off-season of decidedly ball hungry players transferring schools, South Carolina's Damontre Harris provides a very different story. The defensive specialist, who rarely shoots, is moving from one SEC school to another, and will enroll at Florida where he will sit out a year.

South Carolina's coach - Darrin Horn - was fired, and Harris picked this time to move on.

As a freshman Harris only attempted 10.8% of the shots when he was on the floor. That bumped up to 13.7% as a sophomore. No Gator starter took less than 19% this year, and the last player that Gator head coach Billy Donovan coached who was a low-volume as Harris was Dan Werner a couple seasons ago.

So - for a player who hasn't averaged 7 points in his first two seasons - why were his final two schools the caliber of Florida and Kansas? Defense. Offensive rebounding. Potential.

The college basketball off-season has been punctuated by a rash of high-volume but inefficient scorers transferring schools. And one of the early ones was 6-5 Trey Zeigler, leaving Central Michigan after his father was fired as coach. He ended up choosing Pitt over Duke, and now has found out that he won't have to sit out a season. He'll be eligible next year, and will have two years of eligibility.

Nearly every story points out that the wing averaged nearly 16 points a game at Central Michigan. That's the good news. The bad news is how inefficient he was while scoring those points. His offensive rating was a woeful 95.7. That was a significant upgrade from his freshman season (86.6). So it's a glass-half-full scenario. Yes, he was highly inefficient, but he also improved a great deal.

For reference, not a single Pitt Panther who played significant minutes had an offensive rating below 105.

The reason Zeigler was able to score 15.8 a game was simple: volume. He attempted 31% of the shots when he was on the floor, which is higher than any player Jamie Dixon has ever coached.

The Lithuanian National Team head coach - Kestutis Kemzura - announced the roster for his team, and for college basketball fans there was a familiar name. Deividas Dulkys, who just graduated from Florida State, has made the 19-man roster.

There are several other former college players, but none besides Dulkys who played this year. Dulkys averaged 7.0 points per game as a senior, and made 38% of his 3s. For his career, he finished 3rd all-time at FSU for 3-pointers made. His most famous moment came when he made 8-10 vs North Carolina on his way to a career high 32 points.

New head  coach James Johnson's first task has been to hold the Virginia Tech roster together. Unfortunately - as is typically the case with coaching changes - he hasn't been that successful. Dorian Finney-Smith is transferring, and Montrezl Harrell has pulled out of his commitment. Another intriguing player is Allan Chaney who has apparently been cleared to play by doctors. There's a lot of history there though, so don't be surprised if he elects to play somewhere else (if VT even clears him).

One bit of good news for the Hokies did come across the wires yesterday. UNC-Wilmington sophomore Adam Smith is transferring to Blacksburg.

Most of the news stories begin something like this:

Smith started 29 games for the Seahawks as a freshman and was second on the team with a 13.7-point scoring average. He did some of his best work in the biggest games, scoring 32 against Wake Forest and 23 against Maryland.

So clearly, the diminutive Smith (5-11) can light it up. But, looking a bit deeper at the data, this is primarily a case of volume.

Wisconsin junior-to-be Ben Brust has been places in his college career. From Chicago he ended up committing at the University of Iowa, where - after the firing of head coach Todd Lickliter - a Big Ten panel ruled that he was eligible to transfer to another Big Ten school. Whereupon, he settled on Wisconsin.

Now, heading into his third season in Madison, the 6-1 Brust is the top returning 3-point shooter for the Badgers, having connected on 39% of his attempts. So surely he's in the gym working on his mechanics and getting ready for next season. That, and writing about NASCAR.

Wait, what?

In March the SEC ended in improbable fashion with Vanderbilt knocking off Kentucky for the conference title. The world was righted when Kentucky once again assumed juggernaut form in the NCAA tourney on their way to the national title. After they cut down the nets Kentucky went home with the trophy, and now the conference seeks a new identity. The SEC is primed for a shakeup the likes of which they haven't seen in many years.

THE TEAMS

The new guys: Missouri and Texas A&M will be making their SEC debuts. Of course Missouri - who was knocked off by No. 15 seed Norfolk State - is entering having lost five of their top seven players to graduation. And adding to the new look will be a slew of transfers into the program. A&M, for their part, loses three starters from what was a very disappointing team.

THE PLAYERS

The early exits: No conference lost as much as the SEC in terms of players jumping early to the NBA draft. In all, twelve players left, which is four more than any other conference. Kentucky lost their entire starting lineup. Mississippi State lost their best player (Arnett Moultrie) and their most-famous-for-all-the-wrong-reasons player (Renardo Sidney). Florida (Brad Beal) and Vanderbilt (John Jenkins) both lost their best players. LSU lost Justin Hamilton. Bama lost Tony Mitchell. And Texas A&M lost Khris Middleton.

The transfers: Anthony Gill and Damontre Harris (South Carolina), Kadeem Green (Mizzou), Charles Hankerson (Bama), Naji Hibbert (A&M), Rodney Hood (Mississippi State), Jamal Jones and Dundrecous Nelson (Ole Miss),Willy Kouassi and Josh Langford and Cedric McAfee and Bernard Morena (Auburn), Julysses Nobles (Arkansas), Walter Pitchford (UF), Ralston Turner (LSU), Wes Washpun and Renaldo Woolridge (UT)

The seniors: Those that played at least 40% of their team's minutes: Darius Miller (UK), Erving Walker (UF), Jeffery Taylor, Lance Goulbourne, Brad Tinsley, Steve Tchiengang and Festus Ezeli (Vanderbillt), Cameron Tatum (Tennessee), JaMychal Green (Bama), Terrance Henry (Ole Miss), Dee Bost and Brian Bryant (Mississippi State), Storm Warren (LSU), Michael Sanchez (Arkansas), Gerald Robinson and Dustin Ware (Georgia), Kenny Gabriel (Auburn) and Malik Cooke (South Carolina).

Maryland Terrapin fans were delivered a bit of a shock when Terrell Stoglin opted for the NBA in the final moments of underclassmen declarations. It turned out that he'd been suspended for the year, so he really had little choice. Couple this with Pe'Shon Howard's knee surgery, Sean Mosley's graduation and the transfer of Mychal Parker, and depth on Maryland's perimeter suddenly became a concern.

Enter the graduate transfer rule. Shooting guard Logan Aronhalt has graduated from Albany, and now will be enrolling in grad school at Maryland. That, and playing basketball.

Aronhalt is coming off surgery of his own, though he should be good to go in a couple months.

At Albany, Aronhalt was a high volume player. He took over 26% of the shots in all three of his seasons, and maintained an assist rate under 10 (in other words, be careful when you give him the ball because you ain't getting it back). But he does something which the rest of the Maryland players cannot do.

The Stony Brook Seawolves didn't have much success after entering Division I a little more than a decade ago. They had losing seasons. They faced probation due to low APR scores. And they were burried at the bottom of a less-than-powerful conference. In 2008-09 they had their best season, finishing 8-9 in the America East conference. Then in 2009-10 they rode senior Muhammad El-Amin to a 13-3 conference record and their first regular season championship. Last year, they repeated.

A little more than 10 years in Division I and things are looking up. The next step is winning the AE tournament and advancing to the NCAA's.

Today, Stony Brook announced the commencement of their $21.1 million dollar renovation to Stony Brook Arena. It won't be online for over a year, but it will be an impressive facility on Long Island. And it will be a great recruiting tool.

Check out the artists' rendering after the jump.