Breakfast Buffet: Loss at Iowa State may be costly for Colorado

1. On the verge of earning an NCAA tournament berth after its stunning comeback victory against Texas last weekend, Colorado instead reverted back to its lackluster defense from earlier in the year against Iowa State. A 95-90 loss to the previously struggling Cyclones leaves the Buffs needing a victory over Nebraska in their regular-season finale just to get back to .500 in the Big 12.    

2. With Texas once again mired in a late-season slump, coach Rick Barnes is facing familiar questions about his 19-18 career NCAA tournament record and the tendency for his teams not to improve over the course of the season. "I would have cared 10 years ago," he told the New York Times. "This is not the most important thing in my life. It's what I do, but it's not the most important thing in my life."

3. As if Villanova's recent struggles aren't worrisome enough, the Wildcats have some injury concerns as well: Senior guard Corey Fisher will undergo an MRI on his knee to determine the source of lingering pain. "He's got a deep thigh bruise, which is bothersome, so he's been struggling a little bit," coach Jay Wright said. "But he's also had a nagging injury in his knee all year. We thought it was tendinitis. We still think it's tendinitis, but we want to get it checked."

4. Considering USC's flurry of early bad losses to the likes of Rider and TCU, it's amazing the Trojans are even in the conversation for an at-large bid at this point. At 17-12 overall and 9-7 in the Pac-10, USC likely needs a pair of wins at Washington State and Washington and then at least one Pac-10 tournament victory to have a realistic hope.  

5. It was only three years ago that UCLA big man Kevin Love returned to Oregon and played in front of fans so hostile they chanted obscenities at him, held up derogatory signs about his family members and threw things at his dad. Freshman Joshua Smith is expecting a similar but perhaps less vicious crowd Thursday night at Washington since he chose the Bruins over his home-state Huskies.

As bad as Marquette coach Buzz Williams is in this karaoke video, he's still nowhere near as awful as the Ohio State trio singing Miley Cyrus' Party in the USA a couple months ago. Highlight of Williams' effort: Him asking whether "All the Single Ladies" was an Alicia Keys song. 

"Any time you're losing, people aren't in a good mood, myself included. I don't think I've ever gone through a losing streak like this, and I don't think Coach has either." -- Minnesota guard Blake Hoffarber on the on-court argument he and coach Tubby Smith had late in Minnesota's loss to Northwestern. The Gophers have now lost four in a row to fall to 6-11 in the Big Ten.  (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

• Virginia Military Institute at Coastal Carolina, 6 p.m. ET

• No. 15 St. John's at Seton Hall, 7 p.m. ET

• Tennessee at South Carolina, 7 p.m. ET

• UCLA at Washington, 9 p.m. ET

• USC at Washington State , 10 p.m. ET 

Related: Iowa State Cyclones

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Breakfast buffet: Finally some good news for Louisville

Pull up a chair and sit down at the breakfast buffet, an assortment of all the freshest newsworthy college hoops stories on the net. To make a submission, contact me via email or Twitter.

• Louisville fans are so starved for good news after this nightmarish offseason that the reinstatement of under-the-radar freshman Gorgui Dieng on Tuesday was practically cause for celebration. The 6-foot-10 big men won his appeal after the NCAA initially ruled him academically ineligible, providing the Cardinals with some much-needed size in the wake of Samardo Samuels' unexpected early departure.

• For those college players eager to turn pro at the earliest point possible, it might be worth listening to Carmelo Anthony reflect on his lone season at Syracuse in his new documentary "Carmelo's Way." "Those were the best seven or eight months of my life," Anthony said. "We were The Beatles up there." 

• Northern Iowa's NCAA tournament run last season might have elevated the program's status nationally, but the Panthers aren't the preseason favorites in the Missouri Valley Conference next season. That status belongs to Wichita State, which received 33 of 39 first place votes in the preseason poll released Tuesday to claim the top spot for the first time since the 2003-04 season. 

• Arkansas State coach John Brady isn't happy about the Sun Belt Conference's new mandate that its programs only schedule teams with an RPI of 150 or better in order to improve the league's computer ratings come NCAA tournament time. "I don't think it's the answer," he told FoxSports.com. "And I don't like anyone telling me who to schedule and how to schedule."

• Memphis freshman Jelan Kendrick is confident his indefinite suspension will not last long, tweeting on Tuesday night "I will be in the fed ex forum in no time. I'm handling my business growing into a man day by day." Commercial-Appeal columnist Dan Wolken pens a superb column on the Kendrick saga, concluding that the talented freshman can only succeed if he confronts his problems instead of running from them.

• Darkhorse Atlantic 10 contender Duquesne sustained a significant loss on Tuesday when starting point guard Eric Evans learned he will need surgery to repair a fractured right foot. Evans, one of four returning starters from last year's mildly underachieving .500 team, will miss approximately eight weeks as a result of the injury. 

• Arizona State walk-on point guard Marcus Jackson thought he might be cut from the team when an assistant coach told him to meet with Herb Sendek in mid-August. Instead Sendek offered him a scholarship for the remainder of the season, a landmark moment for an undersized guard who attracted little interest from Division I schools in high school.

• Some interesting research from the website Golden Grizzlies Gameplan suggests that coaches from the Summit League have a longer average tenure at their schools than any other conference in the nation. Summit League coaches have averaged 9.4 years at the helm of their respective programs, slightly ahead of the Atlantic Sun and the ACC.

• Shot selection has never been Jeremy Hazell's greatest strength, but the high-scoring Seton Hall star told Yahoo! Sports' Jason King that he intends to take less off-balance jumpers this season and rely on his teammates more. "Coach Willard said I still have the green light," Hazell said. "But he's making me understand that it's OK to go ahead and make that pass sometimes instead of shooting a tough shot."

• Author George Dohrmann's publicity tour in support of his eye-opening new book "Play Their Hearts Out" continued this week with a Q&A with the college hoops-themed blog Ballin' is a Habit. Especially interesting? Dohrmann's response to a question about whether he ever felt tempted to intervene when Demetrius Walker or one of the other boys was being exploited.

• Three of Tobacco Road's most prominent coaches each have very different opinions on college players interacting with fans via social media. Duke's Mike Krzyzewski encourages players to express themselves. North Carolina's Roy Williams tolerates it but warned players that anything they write that embarrasses the university will not be tolerated. NC State's Sidney Lowe has banned twitter altogether. 

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