Not everything we wrote from Conference USA basketball media day made its way into print this morning. Sure, there was a main story about Tiger dominance. Geoff Calkins weighed in on the talkative big kid, Joey Dorsey. And we had a a good-sized notebook with various odds and ends.

But there was more. And here it is:

High hopes for UAB

Much of the talk at Thursday’s Conference USA Basketball Tipoff at FedExForum centered on which league team(s) might join a consensus top-five University of Memphis team in this year’s NCAA tournament. UAB guard Paul Delaney took issue with the notion that the Blazers were playing for second place in C-USA.

“We’re not coming for that second spot, we’re coming for that first spot,” he said. “We’re not gonna settle for No. 2.”

It’s hard to imagine the Blazers not improving significantly on last year’s eighth-place finish in C-USA.

In addition to their woeful lack of depth, the Blazers shot a miserable 60.9 percent from the free-throw line. That helps explain why UAB lost nine games by seven or fewer points.
But the team’s problems may have extended beyond 15 feet.

“We had a couple guys that really didn’t buy into coach’s system from the day he got here,” Delaney said. “We had some people with different agendas.”

Mike Davis’ halfcourt game was a major departure from the Arkansas-style up-tempo employed his predecessor, Mike Anderson. Whereas the Blazers averaged 74.4 points per game under Anderson in 2005-06, when they received an NCAA at-large bid, they scored a meager 66.2 per game in Davis’ debut season.

Delaney, however, said the Blazers’ problem was more one of substance than style. “There’s more to basketball than running and gunning,” he said.

If they can all get along and pull in the same direction this season, the Blazers should return to the NCAAs for the fourth time in five years.

“We’ve got a lot of talent,” said forward Robert Vaden, a transfer from Indiana. “Not a lot of people are talking about us, but we should be pretty good.”

RPI talk
A lot of college basketball coaches say they don’t want their players looking at where they stand in the RPI. Tulsa coach Doug Wojcik has taken the opposite approach. In fact, Wojcik said one of his team’s goals this year is finishing above 70 in the RPI since that is a likely target for postseason play.

“Connecticut, Iowa, Missouri and Washington didn’t get into the NIT last year. How are we getting in unless our RPI is above 70?” he said. “How do you raise your RPI? It doesn’t allow you to really stub your toe at home too much in the nonconference, and for us, our next step is to beat a BCS school and maintain it throughout the season. And that’s not easy to do.”

Fresh start
Last season, East Carolina wasn’t just the worst team in Conference USA. At 6-24 and with just there wins over D-1 opponents, it was easily one of the worst teams in the country.

But when Ricky Stokes was fired in August and replaced with former Chattanooga coach Mack McCarthy, it offered the Pirates a chance to begin anew. Though he hasn’t been on the job long, McCarthy said the staff has changed a lot of things philosophically, including a weight training program that has already paid dividends.

“We’ve had a tumultuous summer, to say the least,” McCarthy said. “We’ve got a lot of new faces. They’re excited. It’s basically a clean slate for them. I think they learned an awful lot, and they’re excited about the opportunity to come back and show they’re a little better basketball team and basketball program than we showed at times last year.”