We're running a contest at CBS Sports that's very, very easy to participate in: Snap a photo of all your Syracuse gear (preferably in your cubicle in work) and upload it here: http://on.fb.me/CubeMania. The photos with the most votes will be featured on our Final Four Show broadcast. You can also go here and vote for any Syracuse entries that are uploaded to make sure Syracuse is well represented. You can vote each day.

Michael Bolton’s performance at the Emmy’s has inspired me to make a Pirates of the Caribbean metaphor to initially explain Syracuse’s departure to the ACC.

Let's put it this way: Syracuse could either be Davy Jones or it could be Jack Sparrow chained to a ship, staring into never ending teeth of a Kraken. The Orange chose to be Davy Jones; therefore, they’re responsible for sending that Kraken to the rest of the Big East to be devoured and sent to an underworld lacking automatic BCS bids. (Also, let’s face it: no one has a problem with feeding the Kraken junk food like Rutgers and Snooki).

Chancellor Nancy Cantor released a statement (which doesn’t make a bad analogy about a bad movie sequel) about the move:

"We are very excited to be joining the ACC," Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor said. "This is a tremendous opportunity for Syracuse, and with its outstanding academic quality and athletic excellence, the ACC is a perfect fit for us. The ACC is home to excellent national research universities with very strong academic quality, and is a group that Syracuse will contribute to significantly and benefit from considerably.

As a comprehensive, all-sports conference, the ACC provides Syracuse tremendous opportunities for quality competition and growth in all sports, while also renewing some of our historic rivalries. This move will also bolster our continued efforts to look outward, engage, and extend Syracuse’s reach to key areas of the country, including the southeast, as we grow and expand our national connections to alumni, partners and the students of the future. We are pleased that Syracuse adds a New York City dimension to the ACC, a region in which we have built strong identity and affinity, and we look forward to bringing ACC games to the Big Apple.  Overall, for Syracuse, this opportunity provides long-term conference stability in what is an uncertain, evolving, and rapidly shifting national landscape."

So now some thoughts/analysis (partially culled from my Twitter feed and expanded on here).

• Cantor’s last line says it all, "Overall, for Syracuse, this opportunity provides long-term conference stability in what is an uncertain, evolving, and rapidly shifting national landscape." She and Darryl Gross realize it’s time to bail before everyone bails on you.
• There's also hypocrisy in that final line. Syracuse seeks long-term conference stability, but the Orange is the one creating it.
• Football is undoubtedly better off for this move. Syracuse-Pitt isn’t a huge rivalry, but that classic Big East series will stay in tact. There’s history between Syracuse and Virginia Tech, Miami, and Boston College. The Orange is losing some tradition, but gaining back a significant amount as well.

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The departure of one player has completely revamped the way Jay Wright’s Wildcats function on the basketball court. With Scottie Reynolds in 2010, ‘Nova could best be described as "we’re going to run and gun and then run and gun some more and if you’re going to run and gun with us, we’re just going to foul you."

Fortunately for the ‘Cats they run and gunned better than almost anybody with incredible efficiency in transition because of stellar guard play led by Reynolds.

The problem with Reynolds was he didn’t defend much at all. He was frequently losing his man in half-court sets and he didn’t defend on the ball very well.

The result: ‘Nova ranked 12^th in offensive efficiency and 62^nd in defensive efficiency. The significance of those numbers made it clear, Villanova wasn’t going to the Final Four:

"Teams ranked outside of the top 25 in Ken Pomeroy's adjusted defensive efficiency rankings have never made the Final Four in the eight years Pomeroy has provided statistics."

Looking at this year, Villanova is clearly a Final Four contender if you’re looking at just statistics. The ‘Cats rank in the top 25 in both offensive and defensive efficiency which is a stark contrast from last year. 

But if you’ve seen enough of Jay Wright’s squad, it’s obvious this team backs up those stats because this team can win games on the offensive and defensive ends of the floor, much like Syracuse could do last year and has done throughout this season.

Against Maryland, Villanova Pittsburgh’d Maryland in the second half, going on a 19-0 run after the Terps had been thumping the ‘Cats on both ends of the floor. They slowed down Jordan Williams who was in full Marshawn Lynch BEAST Mode for most of the game, and ‘Nova made penetration for the Maryland guards difficult.

Although Williams tore Villanova to pieces on the interior, the Wildcats should be better prepared to guard the Orange on the inside. Last year, Rick Jackson and Arinze Onuaku combined for 36 points. With only Jackson to worry about and two capable defenders in the post, points in the paint will be hard to come by.

Antonio Pena has always done a decent job in the paint defending for Jay Wright, but it’s Mouphtaou Yarou who has improved vastly from last year. To understand Yarou’s struggles, picture Fab Melo this year who is lost on nearly every defensive possession. Yarou wasn’t nearly as bad, but he provided more than enough "scream at the TV in frustration" moments. To say the least, Yarou was incompetent, but not incompetent enough that Wright couldn’t play him. This year, it is much different. Yarou has played significant minutes and turned into an outstanding rebounder, solid shot blocker, and has decreased his tendency to foul.

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I think a few of my closest friends and I will be headed into New York City tomorrow to watching Syracuse play Notre Dame. I wanted to take us to a Syracuse bar or a good sports bar in general. Where do Orange fans generally congregate for a game?

I don't have enough words, so I'll add how I proud I was for the seniors yesterday to win that bowl game. I was lucky enough to have class with many of the upperclassmen (Andrew Lewis, although he was suspended, Chandler Jones, Derrell Smith, Doug Hogue, Van Chew, Nick Provo...) and they worked so hard in the classes  I had with them. I took Intro to Coaching with about 25 SU athletes, and they routinely were the only ones who actually gave a damn in the class because the class was a joke. They saved our professor from crashing and burning routinely.

One class, our professor invited three special Olympic floor hockey players to play their version of floor hockey. Chandler and Van Chew took the game immediately, interacting with the three special Olympic kids. At one point, Van darted down the court, weaving his way through SU athletes from all sports to get a shot on goal against one of the S.O. kids playing goalie. The S.O. stuffed him and I'll never forget the wide smile that came on both his and the S.O. kid's face.

/Heartwarming story time over.

Last night, Rick Jackson and Vincent Council collided on the basketball court. That is cut and dry. There's no doubt that Jackson's elbow made contact with Council's face. Predictably, Jackson's elbow won that battle.

While there is no "point of emphasis" this year, the NCAA did change the way elbows would be called in an attempt to make the game safer. Basically, the NCAA doesn't want anymore of this.

That's perfectly understandable.

The wonderful Seth Davis did the leg work about three weeks ago to track down what the new rule is and explained it easily, but thoroughly.

First, let's break down what happened. You can view the incident here. Fast-forward to the 18 second mark for the incident.

The play begins with Rick Jackson grabbing a rebound. Nothing out of the ordinary there considering he does it a dozen times per game.

What Jackson does next is where the trouble begins. He establishes a pivot foot and begins to clear space with his elbows AS he pivots. When Jackson stops swinging his elbows, Council runs straight into Jackson's stationary elbow.

So now let's examine how this play fits into the rule book. Jackson's initial elbow swinging doesn't actually hit anything. So according to Seth Davis:

Did he swing his elbow as part of a "basketball play," or was the move "excessive?"

The rule book describes "excessive" as "moving the elbows faster than the torso."

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This discussion pops up every year. It always does. It always will for as long as Jim Boeheim calls the coaching box home.

But this year is different.

This is the first year in awhile the Orange has had 10 players, distributed through the five positions evenly, that can contribute in every game. There's 10 talented players that bring a variety of skill sets to both the offensive and defensive ends of the floor.

There's 10 players that need to play in every game from here on out.

Take that in for a moment.

10 players. They can all play. They all deserve to play.

The whole "Mookie Jones and James Southerland are awful defenders and can't be trusted on the floor" argument is out of the window. It's a lazy excuse to fall back into the comforts of that seven, maybe eight man rotation.

Jones and Southerland have improved enough defensively that they are no longer utter disasters on that end of the floor. In fact, they are more balanced players than a recent fan favorite who received his fair share of playing time.

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While The Post-Standard didn't insult our intelligence in anything this week (oh wait, yes they did. More on that tomorrow), they didn't really give readers an accurate gauge on how good this Iona team actually is and how good of a win Saturday's victory was.

Now Iona isn't exactly going to grab headlines (yet), but the Gaels are arguably the best squad in the MAAC, a conference that produced all these great Siena teams of late.

I covered the Old Spice Classic in Florida last season. Iona was technically the host team in the tournament which included the likes of Baylor, Florida State, Xavier, Marquette, and a few other teams. Iona left that tournament 1-2, but played Baylor (and its ridiculously long 2-3 zone) and Florida State (also, ungodly long), pushing those teams to the brink.

The Seminoles mustered just 54 points against the Gaels while the Bears needed overtime to escape.

This year's Gaels returned their starting five and added Michael Glover who showed on Saturday that he belongs in the Big East where he intended to be several years ago.

Iona already beat a Richmond team that could easily be the top option to be this year's Butler.

All this said, the P-S should have made it clear how good this Iona team actually is.

And with that said, there's a lot of good and bad that went on Saturday.

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A very close friend of mine is entered in a contest to become the new host of a morning show in Providence. She can automatically become one of the five finalists for the spot if she wins the voting contest online.

This is where you, Nunes Nation, come in. All you have to do is click the link and let the video for Christian Henson (Class of 2010) play through until the end. Letting the video play to the end (don't stop it at any point) counts as a vote for Christian. Between the short ad and her video, it's only a minute long.

Here's the link for Christian.

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Bleacher Report writer Andrew Bailer and I did a breakdown of the OU/SU Sweet 16. He gave the Oklahoma perspective while I broke things down from the 'Cuse's viewpoint. Here's the article.

I'm very familiar with the Orange offense as a Syracuse student, so I also wrote a complete breakdown of Syracuse's offense for OU fans who may know the Orange's parts, but not exactly how they operate. Here's the breakdown.

I'm sitting in the upper press row at the Big East Tournament and on my way up to my spot in the rafters I passed two Syracuse fans. The DePaul pep band in attendance (talk about an expensive trip for the sake of one day probably) started playing the Hey Song. The two Syracuse fans watching the abonimation of a game between Cincinnati and DePaul started doing SU's version of the Hey Song, scaring the crap out of all the fans around them (which was about eight people considing MSG is completely empty right now. There might be 1000 people here for the opening game.

EA Sports has a new promotion out where fans can vote for their favorite team's homecourt as the toughest place to play in America. I'm guessing they'll use the voting to determine the rankings in the new game next year. Syracuse has been slipping in past games usually ranking down towards the bottom of the top 25 if not out of the top 25. With 30,000 people at the top games, this place has to be one of the hardest places to play against in big games.