Holy pants. I can't be the only person who exclaimed "WTF!"—yes, I speak in internet acronyms IRL LOL—when Beadie Russell from The Wire showed up on The Office. For some reason I expect that people on The Wire are real and that seeing, for instance, D'Angelo Barksdale's mother on an episode of NCIS* means Pure Evil has undergone a shocking career change.

So, yeah, this from reader Ba Orao was pretty freaky:

Clockwise from top left:

• DT commit Pearlie Graves, a dead ringer for Marlo muscle Chris
• WR commit Jeremy Gallon, who could not possibly look more like Marlo muscle Snoop despite the fact that Snoop is, you know, a girl
• DE commit Anthony LaLota, a pretty good facsimile of Nick Sobotka
• RB coach Fred Jackson, a less scarred version of Norman Wilson, the mayor's right hand man

The first two are astounding.

*(Watched involuntarily, in case anyone has actually seen that abomination and is now reconsidering their allegiance to this blog.)

I want your… nah, too easy. Penn State defensive line coach/recruiting ninja Larry Johnson is under consideration for the Illinois defensive coordinator job, which strikes Black Shoe Diaries as very bad news:

I don't have to tell you this is bad bad bad. With an 82 year old head coach who can't spend more than two hours sitting down in a car or airplane, the assistant coaches are our greatest asset when it comes to recruiting. And Larry Johnson is one of the best of them. … To lose him would be, in a word, disastrous for our program.

Johnson's a Penn State lifer—he's been there since 1993 and both of his kids played for PSU—but cash rules everything around us:

…as a defensive coordinator, Johnson would receive a salary increase from his estimated $200,000 salary. Penn State is not known for boosting its assistants' pay, and Illinois is apparently willing to pay what's necessary in the increasingly competitive world of assistant salaries. That might be even more true after it lost offensive line coach Eric Wolford, who will make $325,000 a year with his move to South Carolina.

So I'm thinking to myself "this would be a really good idea for Illinois; Johnson is a killer recruiter and have you seen Penn State's defensive line at any point in the past decade?" And it occurs to me: hey, would that be a good idea for us? Yeah, maybe. And maybe we're in on it. Same article:

Illinois is in discussions with Penn State defensive line coach Larry Johnson about becoming the new Illinois defensive coordinator, but Michigan also could be interested in hiring Johnson, sources said.

With Tom Bradley's status as the real ultimate power at Penn State, Johnson is going to be locked out of a coordinator spot until such time as Joe Paterno finally steps down, which could be never-ever-ever. Now might be the time to move.

I'd be a happy man if Johnson was the new DC, though the chances of that seem low. Dollars to donuts he uses the leverage to squeeze a raise out of Penn State.

Bob Knight, ladies and gentlemen. Zack Novak on the General:

"He'd usually tell us, girls are going to tear you down -- if you see a nice-looking girl, turn the other way because she's going to kill you," Novak said. "I remember thinking, I'm in third grade and he's telling me about girls. But I think that's kind of why you've got to appreciate him."

I always thought Knight would make a good Batman villain, no?

Yikes. I didn't mean for this to be Basketball Downer day, but, eh… yeah. Luke Winn busts out the tempo-free stats to evaluate overvalued and undervalued teams based on, you know, reasons. Key findings:

No Final Four team in the past five years has been ranked outside the top 25 in adjusted defensive efficiency (a competition-adjusted figure). And only two Elite Eight teams in the past five years have ranked outside the top 50 in adjusted defensive efficiency. It's unlikely that a team will make a deep NCAA tournament run with just a good offense, and only a mediocre D.

The good news, such as it is: one of those two Elite Eight teams to flout Winn's cutoff was 2005 West Virginia, which finished 78th in adjusted D efficiency and was an overtime away from the Final Four.

The bad news:

Which teams in the AP's top 30 might be suspect in the postseason because of their lack of a quality defense? Eight ranked schools had adjusted defensive efficiency ratings outside the top 60. Unless they shape up over the next few months, the odds are stacked against them making deep NCAA tournament runs:

Team AP Adj. OffEff. (Nat'l Rk.) Adj. DefEff. (Nat'l Rk.) Oklahoma 6 117.7 (8) 93.8 (66) Notre Dame 13 119.7 (3) 99.1 (146) Boston Coll. 17 112.2 (32) 96.1 (86) Minnesota 22 109.4 (51) 96.1 (88) Baylor 23 117.0 (11) 95.4 (78) Michigan 26 116.6 (13) 101.2 (185) California 27 115.6 (20) 93.5 (63) Arkansas 28 106.2 (79) 96.8 (103)

That's pretty frightening right there: Michigan has by far the worst defense of any team in the AP top 30. That bodes unwell for the short term.

For the long term: I'm slightly concerned. Beilein's last two West Virginia teams were 53rd and 57th in AdjDE, and I think they're slightly underrated because his teams force a lot of turnovers, which in theory should lead to a larger than normal proportion of fast break buckets and higher offensive efficiency. The higher-quality recruits he hypothetically has access to at Michigan may allow the team to play better defense than he's thrown out there before.

But the concern comes in when Huggins arrives at WVA. In year one, defensive efficiency moves from 57th to 24th, and in year two they're second, using mostly the same players Beilein recruited. They're older and better, certainly. Is that the only difference? Probably not.

Etc.: Chalk talk on zone blitzes from Gsimmons; Orson obliterates Rick Reilly and Dr. Saturday does likewise with John Feinstein.