QuincyMillerWell, you could take two paths in deciding what you think of 11th-ranked Baylor after its 77-67 victory over San Diego State in Waco on Tuesday afternoon.

You either view them as the team you saw in the first half — An incredibly talented bunch that will likely underachieve and be maddeningly inconsistent, much like Scott Drew's club did last season.

In the second half, though, a focused Baylor bunch turned a close game into a runaway in the closing minutes, gave regular flashes of that limitless potential and, well, looked like it actually deserved its ranking.

Chances are, Baylor will likely show glimpses of both versions at times this season. They just need the latter to overshadow the former.

Just what was the difference, though, in that second half?

Frankly, it was defense.

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SDSU, though still legitimately a top-three team in the Mountain West, doesn't resemble Steve Fisher's loaded squad from a year ago, which won 31 games, won the program's first ever NCAA tournament

The fact that No. 1 North Carolina's 2011-12 season began with a sound 67-55 defeat of Michigan State was a mere footnote on Friday night.

The spectacle that was the two perennial powerhouses facing off on the deck of the USS Carl Vinson on Veteran's Day was like nothing ever seen before in college hoops.

Want to see it again? Here's a look back at the inaugural Carrier Classic in pictures ...

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TexasAMHoops

Right now, there's still nothing more than the words of unnamed, high-ranking sources floating around via several reports, but it seems highly likely that in the next 72 hours, Texas A&M could find itself moving from the Big 12 to the SEC.

As was the case when the conference landscape shifted some a year ago, football is helping drive the bus, and even more schools could change leagues in a domino effect if the Aggies do in fact bolt.

Lost in the mix is what will happen to A&M's fledgling men's basketball program, which next season will have a new head coach in Billy Kennedy and be gunning for its seventh consecutive NCAA tournament berth.

It might be tough for A&M's football program to establish itself as a powerhouse in the SEC West, which includes heavyweights such as Alabama, Auburn, Arkansas and LSU. But fortunately for the hoops program, the foes will be mostly just that — football schools.

Take a look at the SEC West from last season. Only two of the six teams finished with

AllanChaney

What could have been a promising final two years of Allan Chaney's college basketball career at Virginia Tech vanished Wednesday.

Chaney, a 6-foot-9 former blue chip recruit at Florida, will not be medically cleared to play for the Hokies due to a heart condition that came to light a little over a year ago.

Last April, he fainted on the court following a workout on the Tech campus and was diagnosed with viral myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle that can cause scarring. The scarring later became an issue, and despite searching across the country for solutions, he appears to have run out of options.

Tech coach Seth Greenberg told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that Chaney will get a defibrillator for his heart after clearing some more hurdles

"Allan Chaney has been through a great deal in the last year and a half," Greenberg said in a statement. "Everyone in our basketball program feels for him. We will do everything in our power to assist Allan as he goes through his

RoyceWhite

After two years filled with hype, legal issues and strange YouTube appearances, it's almost time to finally see Royce White play college basketball.

The former McDonald's All-American never panned out at Minnesota, with his career at his hometown school ending before it ever started. Now, after sitting out a year at Iowa State, it's almost time to see what all of the fuss was about.

That's not lost on the long-suffering Cyclone fans, who have seen the program struggle to remain relevant for the better part of the last decade.

In a column in Sunday's Des Moines Register, Marc Hansen recalled an interaction with a long-time Cyclone backer at a breakfast club meeting from a few days prior. That unnamed fan claimed that White, when all is said and done, will be the best player to ever don an ISU uniform. Even if it's just a sliver of the fan base thinking this much of White, it's still out there.

No pressure, kid.

Hansen laid out throughout the column several of the names White would have

Richmond

The sad story of former McDonald's All-American Jereme Richmond took on another unfortunate chapter Tuesday.

Richmond, who made the premature leap into the NBA draft pool following one so-so campaign at Illinois last season, was charged with beating a woman and threatening her with a gun.

According to the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald, Richmond and 22-year-old Matthew Riley were arrested Monday afternoon outside of the victim's house when police found a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun in their vehicle.

The victim is a 17-year-old woman who Richmond had been dating, but their relationship recently deteriorated, according to the report. She drove to Richmond's home in Waukegan, Ill., on Sunday to get her cell phone, but Richmond allegedly began arguing with her outside and shoved her back into her car.

On Monday, Richmond allegedly drove to her house and began arguing with her while her mother watched. He's also alleged to have spat on her during the confrontation and

Pitino

Rick Pitino is apparently pretty confused about how his Louisville team wound up with its specific 2011-12 Big East hoops schedule.

And, as per usual, Pitino felt no need to not express his opinion. He did so, though, in a pretty interesting forum.

"We have one of the premier commissioners in athletics, but whoever's doing our scheduling must be doing it with a Ouija board," he said.

This quote wasn't given to a pool of reporters, but rather to the Louisville sports information department for their official release on the schedule being announced. Those releases are typically known for containing the most vanilla, politically correct quotes that a coach can sit down for a minute and craft.

Pitino's biggest beef, which he also expressed later in the quote, is that two of the three opponents that Louisville faces twice are Pitt and Syracuse, who both will likely be joining UL in the preseason Top 25 rankings. The third is DePaul. However, wouldn't you consider those three being of equal

Kansas football players Daymond Patterson and A.J. Steward earned themselves a bit of viral success and some national attention in a back-and-forth exchange with ESPN analyst Mark May on College Football Live two weeks ago thanks to the first installment of their 'DP & A.J. take on KU' series.

In their first of what will allegedly be several challenges against other Jayhawk athletes during the summer, the duo edged a pair of KU women's soccer players in a shootout. The event was filled with trash-talking and capped by Steward crashing into a camera and cutting his forehead while celebrating a 4-3 win with a shirt pulled over his head.

May, while taking a shot at the duo, suggested that they take on the men's basketball team, saying that: "Those guys are 6-3, 230-250. They're going against girls that are, like, 5-8, 160. That's a mismatch. It's not fair."

Ask, and you shall receive.

If their heads were a bit inflated after the initial triumph, then they were humbled some this week by