Think Memphis is getting the shaft in the polls?

How about Illinois, which can’t break in despite a 13-2 record, road wins at Vandy, Missouri and Purdue and home losses to unbeaten Clemson and on the road at Michigan?

Or how about Michigan, which is also sitting out despite wins over Duke and UCLA?

Or how about Cal, Arkansas and UNLV? All of them have legit gripes.

The problem with the polls is, results of games just don’t seem to move some people. Here are the four ranked teams that clearly don’t deserve to be ranked, in my opinion:

1) Notre Dame - Since its win over Texas in Maui (a LONG time ago), they’ve lost to Carolina, Ohio State and now St. Johns with not even one decent win.

2) Louisville - Got beat at home by UNLV, whose best player wasn’t available and still has that “What the heck” loss to Western Kentucky.

3) Tennessee - You can’t get blown out every time you go on the road and be a top-25 club - to unranked teams, no less. Like Notre Dame they’re living off a six-week-old win.

4) Villanova - I believe that teams can prove their quality in losses as well as wins. But even in Villanova’s two losses - to Texas and Marquette - they just didn’t look like a high-quality team. Besides those two games, they have played a creampuff non-conference schedule.

It looks like your NCAA record of 38 wins is going to be safe this year after all. I guess it’s possible that North Carolina will win at Wake next Sunday, sweep Duke, survive trips to Miami, Maryland and Florida State, win the ACC Tournament and then win the NCAA title - but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even if Carolina never loses again, they’ll only get to 38 wins. (And, for the record, I don’t think Pitt, Wake, Clemson or Illinois St. is running the table, either).

Seriously, though, even though UNC is still the favorite to win it all, I really think there are 35 teams out there who could get there if things break the right way. They’ve all got warts, including Carolina, who still looks as average defensively as they were in San Antonio last April when Kansas was dicing them up in the national semifinals.

And that’s why, long term, I’ll always be bullish on the teams that defend really well. I think even teams that have had some issues - I’d put Memphis, Louisville, UCLA and USC in this category - will have a shot to go far when it’s all said and done.

From the moment I watched Tyreke Evans play for the first time last year, I never understood why he was labeled selfish and other guys like Eric Gordon, for instance, were praised for their “relentless will to score.” But an unfortunate reality of our media business is the herd mentality, and there is no doubt that the easy thing to do was bash the over-exposed urban kid who took a lot of shots.

But the reality of Tyreke Evans today is the same as it was when I met him in Philadelphia last summer.

1) He’s a really good kid who works hard, is not self-absorbed and responds to coaching.
2) He’s a tremendous talent who is quickly figuring out how to play college basketball.

Unfortunately, a lot of people who should know better wanted to write him off after 10 games. But so far, moving him to point guard is proving to be a brilliant play by John Calipari. Evans had three outstanding performances this week as the starting point guard, and the stuff about being selfish is just laughable. Did Evans take bad shots early in the season? Yes, he did. But if you ask anyone in the program - players, coaches - they will tell you those bad shots were taken not because he was selfish but because he didn’t understand what to do. When you’re confused or unsure as a player, you usually do the easiest thing possible, which is to shoot the ball. But how many bad shots has Evans taken in the last three games? Not many.

There’s a reason why Memphis players, after the Syracuse loss, wanted Evans to be the point guard. They’re all getting better shots now that Evans is running the show — including Evans himself. As Calipari said tonight, Evans has his hands on the ball 90 percent of the time right now. “We’ve got to figure out how he can have it 95 percent of the time,” he said.

What to look for tonight:

- How do the Tigers exploit the small guards from Lamar? These guys are 5-9, 5-10. The Tigers should be able to post up Tyreke Evans for a few baskets.

- Does Evans continue to progress as a point guard? The way he’s played the last two games, the Memphis staff really, really wishes they had made this move sooner.

- Will Doneal Mack snap out of his shooting slump?

- Pierre Henderson-Niles had a pretty good practice yesterday. Will it carry over?

- The shooting guard position continues to be a dogfight for minutes. Will anyone step forward and play as though they want the minutes?

- And, finally, will Tic Price get any sort of reaction or reception from the Tiger fans?

…has clearly become the premiere non-BCS league in college hoops, and it’s not even close. In fact, there are more good teams in the MWC than the SEC right now (After watching these teams play, I would take UNLV and BYU on a neutral court against anyone in the SEC except for perhaps Tennessee. Perhaps.) In the last 48 hours, they’ve got big road wins over Louisville (UNLV) and Tulsa (BYU), as well as a home win over Gonzaga (Utah).

The MWC should be a very good basketball league. You’ve got four programs with good tradition, good facilities and good fan bases in UNLV, BYU, Utah and New Mexico and a fifth with potential in San Diego State.

But you could also argue that C-USA should be right there with Memphis, Tulsa, UTEP and UAB. Program-for-program, those four have similar facilities, fan bases and success on a national level with Houston falling short only in facilities and UCF comparable to San Diego State in terms of potential (great facility, big city, big campus, etc.).

So what needs to happen for C-USA to get there? What should the order of non-BCS leagues be? Should Conference USA be equal to or better than the MWC? What about the A-10? What about the Valley? Discuss…

Since the question has been raised here and was a big topic yesterday on my radio show on 560, I’ll briefly address why Willie Kemp hasn’t played the past two games. Some of the message board innuendo has insinuated there is something going on behind the scenes, which is a natural but inaccurate reaction.

There’s nothing mysterious or sinister about Kemp’s situation. It’s all about performance. John Calipari is tightening up the rotation right now to try to get some guys into a better flow, which means seven guys will play a lot of minutes and an eighth guy will play some depending on the situation. Right now, Calipari believes that Roburt Sallie, Doneal Mack and Wesley Witherspoon are more deserving of those minutes. The follow-up to that is why do those guys deserve to play over Kemp when they weren’t exactly lighting it up against Cincinnati? It’s a fair question.

The answer is that Kemp has frustrated the Memphis coaching staff by making the same kinds of mistakes he made as a freshman - not necessarily big, obvious things but a bunch of more subtle things that fans might not see. It’s stuff like passing to the wrong guy on a fastbreak or going under a screen to give up an open three after it had just been discussed in the huddle or missing a shot and then jogging back after a long rebound, which gives up a layup. It was a problem his freshman year, it was a problem last year and it’s been a problem this year, which is why Kemp is sitting right now.

It’s not like Kemp will never get another chance to play. He might play today, for all we know. But know this for sure: Coaches are in the business of winning games, and they’re going to play the guys they think give them a chance to win. If Kemp performs in practice, he’ll get minutes in the games.

As an outdoors writer and a longtime deer hunter, I’ve been hearing hunters talk about the so-called “second rut” among whitetail deer for years.

But in five states, I’ve never seen a buck chasing a doe past the main rut (the annual mating season for deer).

In Tennessee, the main rut usually takes place in November. But I frequently hear hunters talking about bucks chasing does well into late December.

I’ve heard many such reports this year, so I decided to ask someone if a second rut actually takes place.

Turns out, it does.

Chad Harden, the excellent new big game biologist for TWRA’s Region I office in Jackson, had the following to say about the whitetail deer rut:

“The ‘rut’ or breeding season is actually triggered by photoperiod or day length,” Harden said. “In Tennessee, this usually occurs in the second week of November. Most does come into heat at this time. However, they don’t all come in at the same time and they don’t all get bred in that timeframe in November.

“If they are not successfully bred, they will come back into heat a month later for the second rut. A doe will continue to cycle until she is bred. As long as does are coming into heat, bucks will exhibit chasing behavior. Usually all breeding is done by January in Tennessee.”

So that settles it.

There really is a second rut, and you’re not crazy if you thought you saw a buck chasing a doe in mid- or late December.

That means there’s still a chance to catch a big buck with its defenses lowered, even though the main rut is over.

Happy hunting.