College Basketball Capsules - Men: Texas A&M unable to control Robinson, No. 5 Kansas

Louis Munks and Ryan Gesiakowski added 15 points apiece and Demondre Chapman 14 for the Panthers (8-12, 4-3 Southwestern Athletic), who have won three of their last four.

Lazabian Jackson hit five 3-pointers and scored 21 for the Golden Lions (2-18, 1-6). Daniel Broughton added 20 and SWAC scoring leader Savalace Townsend 16.

Broughton's three-point play put Arkansas-Pine Bluff ahead 75-72 with 1:14 to go before Chapman's jumper cut it to 75-74 with 1:01 left.

After Townsend missed a shot with 36 seconds to go, DeMuynck was fouled and converted both free throws. Arkansas-Pine Bluff had one last chance, but Mitchell Anderson misfired on a 3-pointer. Arkansas-Pine Bluff had won 11 of its last 13 against the Panthers.

Polls

The Cavaliers played stout defense without him on Sunday night, holding Virginia Tech to 47 points and 45 percent shooting. But they managed just 45 points in their first home loss of the season.

The absence of their shot-blocking threat was felt at both ends of the floor, and coach Tony Bennett eventually switched to a four-guard lineup looking for more speed on the perimeter defensively, and someone — anyone — who could score points.

Against the Hokies, 6-8 Akil Mitchell got the second start of his career, but managed just two points and one rebound in 25 minutes. He also twice lost track of Virginia Tech guard Jarell Eddie, who made back-to-back 3-pointers to beat the shot clock during a first-half Hokies run.

"We still have to adjust without Assane," Bennett said. "We have to take a look at those things and look at our scoring drought so we can get to the line and create some offense."

The Cavaliers host Boston College Thursday night.

Sene averages only 4.9 points, but his presence makes it more difficult for teams to double- and triple-team Mike Scott because Scott is an effective passer, and Sene is a huge target.

"It made a difference offensively and defensively," Scott said of Sene's absence.

The problem against Virginia Tech was twofold: The Hokies played suffocating defense, especially on Scott, and when the Cavaliers got open looks from outside, they didn't convert.

Virginia shot a season-low 32.6 percent from the field. Sammy Zeglinski, who is recovering from the flu, was 0 for 7, including 0 for 6 on 3-point shots, where Virginia was just 1 of 14.

Point guard Jontel Evans was more assertive than normal offensively, aggressively driving to the basket. He led the team with 12 field goal attempts, but he made just four and missed several times from in close — including once on a fast break after a steal at midcourt.

The Cavaliers also played 6-6 Joe Harris at power forward some, trying to get some scoring production from that spot, and he made 4 of 8 shots to share team scoring honors with 10 points.

"It was just one of those nights when the ball wasn't going down for us," he said.

The Hokies scored just 18 points in the paint, but two big ones came when Dorenzo Hudson drove in for a baby hook with 1:11 remaining, extending the Hokies' lead to 44-41.

It was the kind of play that Sene's presence would have made tougher to execute.

"We miss him a lot," said Evans, who has quick hands, but is just 5-11. "He's a great communicator. He really helps on the weak side, so it was tough playing without him."

The Cavaliers have no choice, though, and after two defections from the team right before Christmas, Bennett has only eight able-bodied scholarship players still available.

"We are a little limited with our numbers," he said. "We have to figure out what is best."

-- Hank Kurz Jr.

Veteran Seminoles finally in sync after slow start

"I couldn't sleep last night just knowing that I had to go see the doctor," Aska said. "I'm very happy to be back."

Aska is a starter and the leading rebounder for the 11th-ranked Racers, but broke the hand in the first half of a victory at Eastern Illinois on Dec. 30. The Racers (20-0, 8-0 Ohio Valley Conference) have a rematch with Eastern Illinois at home on Saturday.

"A lot of key rebounds that we really haven't been getting when we needed them, we know he's going to handle that. Those are the rebounds we usually get," point guard Isaiah Canaan said. "Just to have another big body down low, another bull down low to get rebounds when we need them is great."

Murray State was outrebounded in four of the six games Aska missed, but the 6-foot-7 forward said he had confidence that the Racers wouldn't lose when he grabbed the team to the side shortly after his injury with a message.

"I had confidence and I knew they were going to keep on winning because I had a long talk with all the players," Aska said. "They did the things they had to do and held themselves accountable. They just went hard every game."

Aska averaged 12.6 points and six rebounds in his first 14 games. The senior had played in 113 consecutive games before the injury.

"They showed what a team is all about," Aska said. "That's the real meaning of team — if one of your leaders is out, you still have a team bond that everybody stepped it up another notch since you've been gone."

News & Notes

The Hoosiers, who have tumbled from the Top 10, now realize that they can't afford to relax in the Big Ten this season. It's too tough. It's a lesson that unexpected losses tend to deliver more effectively than words from a coach.

"If we get three more stops combined in the Minnesota and Nebraska games, we likely win two games, and that's a big deal," Indiana coach Tom Crean said.

Indiana, now ranked 16th, isn't the only league team to get a reality check during league play. Among the head scratchers this month: Penn State over Illinois, Northwestern over Michigan State and Iowa over Michigan. In each case, an unranked team in the lower half of the standings defeated a ranked team and jumbled the conference race.

Perhaps the word "upset" shouldn't apply.

"I'm not sure what's an upset, if there are upsets," Illinois coach Bruce Weber said a day after losing at home to Wisconsin. "You've got a very balanced league, you've got to bring your game, you've got to play. Your main guys have got to play and be consistent if you're going to have success, and you can't have any off days."

As of Monday, the Big Ten was the only Division I conference in which every team has at least two wins and at least two losses in league play.

You could call it 'January Madness.'

"I think we sometimes tend to, especially these days, to jump to March so early," Iowa coach Fran McCaffery said. "Every week the standings change. Every week there are what are perceived to be upsets, but I'm not sure they are. Along the way, you're going to see some people get knocked off and you're going to see some people moving up, maybe some surprises, maybe a couple teams sneak into that top tier and then get into the NCAA tournament. That's what we're trying to do."

The balance doesn't appear to be a case of mediocrity. The league has an .802 non-conference winning percentage, the best in the nation. The Big Ten won the Big Ten/ACC Challenge 8-4, and that was before Indiana shocked No. 1 Kentucky on Dec. 10. Eight Big Ten teams are ranked in the top 45 in Jeff Sagarin's ratings, and he ranks the league No. 1.

"I think it's a very well-rounded league, and I think anybody that looks at it and doesn't see a lot of very talented, tough-minded, well-coached teams in this league is not looking at it from a realistic view," Crean said. "It is a high-powered league that's been years in the making."

Michigan State's Tom Izzo, Wisconsin's Bo Ryan, Illinois' Weber, Ohio State's Thad Matta and Minnesota's Tubby Smith have had long, successful careers. Purdue's Matt Painter has been one of the nation's most successful coaches the past five years. John Beilein is reviving the Michigan program, and Crean is doing the same at Indiana. Northwestern's Bill Carmody, Iowa's McCaffery, Nebraska's Doc Sadler and Penn State's Patrick Chambers already have big wins in league play.

"There's a lot of set programs here," Crean said. "Even the guys that are new in the league like Doc Sadler and Pat Chambers know exactly what they want to do, and they're running strong programs. It's an extremely well-coached league that's got excellent continuity in it, and have had success, sustained success over a period of time."

Crean said the tendency for Big Ten players to stay in school improves the quality of play. They include Ohio State's Jared Sullinger.

"It's not a league that has a lot of players jumping out early," he said. "There are very good young players in the league, but there's an excellent amount of juniors and seniors on the teams that have been through so many different things."

Then, there's playing on the road in the conference. Penn State, for example, has a 10-11 overall record, but is 8-4 at home, including a win over then-first-place Illinois and a 20-point victory over Purdue.

"If somebody is ready to play and they're hooked up and they have the talent, it's going to be tough to beat them on their home court," Painter said. "It just is in this league. You really have to be special when you go on the road, or the other team has to be down or something has to be going on within their program, an injury, things of that nature."

Painter believes the tough league play will serve the conference's teams well in the NCAA tournament.

"We're always quick to say we've got the best league in the country," he said. "We're one of them."

-- Cliff Brunt

Caldwell-Pope, Georgia to face No. 1 Kentucky

Fox was hoping Caldwell-Pope would become one of Georgia's biggest signees in 20 years. Fox's airplane was rolling down the runway when his cellphone rang.

"I looked down at my phone and I thought 'I better answer this,' so I answered my phone," Fox recalled on Monday.

"This flight attendant was saying 'You have to hang up your phone.' And he said 'I've got good news for you.' I said 'Ken, that's great, thanks for calling.' The flight attendant at this point, she was basically standing over me. I said 'I've got to call you back.' We were actually airborne at the time and I lost the connection. I didn't finish it."

Fox was left to contemplate the call for the remainder of the flight. He said his staff already had used its one allotted weekly call to Caldwell-Pope, so he couldn't call back when his plane landed.

Fox said he waited a few days to hear Caldwell-Pope complete his call.

"Eventually, he called me and said 'I'm coming to Georgia,'" Fox said.

Caldwell-Pope, from Greenville (Ga.) High School, became the first McDonald's All-American to sign with Georgia out of high school since Carlos Strong in 1992. Damien Wilkins was a McDonald's All-American who played two years at N.C. State before transferring to Georgia in 2002.

Fox, Caldwell-Pope and the Bulldogs play No. 1 Kentucky (19-1 overall, 5-0 Southeastern Conference) and its group of talented freshman on Tuesday night.

Caldwell-Pope has provided hope for Georgia as the Bulldogs have struggled to recover from the losses of two NBA draft picks — Trey Thompkins and Travis Leslie — from their 2011 NCAA tournament team.

Caldwell-Pope leads Georgia (10-9, 1-4) and is tied for sixth in the league with his average of 14.7 points per game, including a career-high 25 points in Saturday's 66-63 loss to Mississippi.

The freshman also ranks among the league's top 10 in steals, 3-point shooting and minutes.

Caldwell-Pope, a 6-5 guard, has caught the attention of Kentucky coach John Calipari.

"He's a terrific player," Calipari said Monday. "I'm telling you, he's one of the best in our league and forget about class. I think anymore when you start looking at class, you're making a mistake. If a kid can play, he can play, and forget about age.

"These kids are mature. They play against each other. They play all over the country as 10th and 11th and 12th graders. He's a terrific player. He can get his own shots. He's a game-changer as a player for their program."

Fox's team has been slowed by a lack of an inside game and inconsistent outside shooting.

Caldwell-Pope has produced as Fox hoped, even though he has been asked to defend bigger small forwards in Georgia's three-guard lineup.

"We thought he would be an impact player, I really did," Fox said. "We've thrown him into the fire and kept him into the fire more than is probably fair. He's had to move to the small forward because Travis left school early and so now he's playing a different position than he was recruited to play.

"He's having to defend a position where he's a little bit outsized. And he's done it all with zero complaint and has been very productive."

Caldwell-Pope is adjusting to more attention from opposing defenses.

"From the start, I didn't get as much attention as I'm getting now with teams coming to me, trying to keep me from putting up shots," Caldwell-Pope said before Monday's practice. "They're just playing hard on me to try to stop me from scoring."

Fox is telling his players they should relish the nationally televised visit from the top-ranked Wildcats as a rare opportunity.

"How many people get this chance in life, you know?" Fox asked. "How many people get this chance? I never got it as a player. You don't get it real often as a coach. It's just a great opportunity."

Caldwell-Pope said he is familiar with some of Kentucky's talented freshmen, including Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Anthony Davis, from AAU basketball.

"I get motivated because they're the No. 1 team in the country and the guys on their team are guys I played against in AAU," he said. "It's pretty exciting to play against them again. ... Gilchrist is the main one I was always playing against."

Caldwell-Pope said he was recruited by Kentucky but chose to remain with his in-state team.

"He's a wonderful young man and has already made an impact on our team and will continue to," Fox said.

"It is important to recruit the best players to help us win and there's a lot of them in this state."

-- Charles Odum

Commodores' goal is to stop losing at Memorial Gym

The Commodores are coming off their fourth loss in the Southeastern Conference's oldest basketball arena, a place where they traditionally find some magic with all the crowd noise bouncing off the cinderblock walls. They snapped an eight-game winning streak with a 78-77 overtime loss to then-No. 20 Mississippi State over the weekend.

Next up is Tennessee on Tuesday night with Vandy's instate rival coming off a big win over defending national champion Connecticut, and the Vols have swept Vanderbilt two of the past three seasons.

"I don't even want to lose anymore home games," Vanderbilt senior Lance Goulbourne said Monday before practice. "We've lost enough of them here. Not lose anymore home games, not losing to Tennessee, not losing my last one against Tennessee here, so it'll be a pretty big one for us."

Vanderbilt (14-5, 5-1 Southeastern Conference) looked like it had fixed its second-half lapses that led to home losses to then-No. 18 Xavier and Indiana State and on the road to then-No. 6 Louisville during the winning streak. The Commodores had been allowing 58.1 points per game during the eight straight wins and holding opponents to 38.1 percent shooting.

Against Mississippi State, the Commodores let the Bulldogs hit eight of nine points to open the second half. They led twice in overtime but missed a shot at the end of regulation and overtime in losing. Goulbourne said it's hard in the moment to tell what's going on but they understand it's about not letting their intensity drop.

Blowing leads in the second half highlighted last season for Vanderbilt. The Commodores were up 11 in the second half only to lose both games to Tennessee, and they blew a nine-point lead in the second half over Richmond in losing in the NCAA tournament opener.

"We just didn't have it like we did in the first half for what reason I don't know why ...," Goulbourne said. "We were a little flat even in the halftime locker room situation. We want to make sure we maintain our same intensity, but during the time it's really hard to pinpoint what's really going wrong. Just kind of got to learn from it and not let it happen again."

Both the Commodores and coach Kevin Stallings can't wait to get back on the court.

"We feel like we let a game get away that we, for whatever reason, stopped defending the way we had been defending for a good several games," Stallings said.

It won't be easy against Tennessee (9-10, 1-3), a team that has big home wins of its own against Florida and Connecticut this month. Freshman Jarnell Stokes was named the SEC's freshman of the week Monday for 16 points and 12 rebounds in that 60-57 win over UConn. Goulbourne called that a big win for the SEC and makes the Vols a team that Vanderbilt can't overlook.

Tennessee's challenge is getting a road win. The Vols have lost at the College of Charleston, Memphis, Mississippi State and Georgia. Tennessee coach Cuonzo Martin said Monday wins like last weekend show the Vols are good enough to win on the road.

"Now it's just a matter of the mental part taking over down the stretch of games," Martin said. "You've put yourself in position to win the game, now you just have to win it. But it's not an easy thing to do to win games on the road, even for some of the best teams in America. It's just putting ourselves in position and then trying to win the game."

This will be Martin's first trip to Memorial where team benches are on the end lines rather than the sideline. His first look will be Tuesday's shootaround, but he said some of his assistants and several of the Vols have played in Memorial. A key for the Vols will be they don't call plays vocally, which should help.

There's also a different level of respect between the coaches in this rivalry now. Bruce Pearl, fired in March, pulled out his bright orange blazer for games with Vanderbilt.

Martin, like Stallings, played at Purdue for coach Gene Keady, though in 1995 a few years after Stallings finished 1982. Stallings said he hasn't had a chance to talk with Martin, who was an assistant coach with the U.S. team and worked with Vanderbilt junior guard John Jenkins at the World University Games in China last summer.

"He's doing a terrific job I think with their program," Stallings said. "I think their team plays well and plays the right way and acts the right way, and they just I just think he's doing a nice job."

-- Teresa M. Walker

Former OSU guard Gulley enrolls at Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) — Fred Gulley appeared right at home walking onto Arkansas' home court. The former Oklahoma State guard and Fayetteville, Ark., native was in the arena Monday to watch the Razorbacks practice, but he plans to do more than just watch in the near future.

WHITEFISH, Mont. (AP) — Athletes from the University of Great Falls and Montana Tech are the Frontier Conference basketball players of the week.

UGF junior guard Melvin Williams of Philadelphia won the men's award. He averaged 18 points, six rebounds and 2.5 assists as the Argos beat Rocky Mountain 75-61 and Carroll College 60-51. It was UGF's first win over Carroll since rejoining the Frontier Conference in 1999.

Tech freshman guard Mandy Machinal of Richland, Wash., won the women's award. Machinal scored a school record 37 points in Tech's 84-71 win over Montana Western, which had been receiving votes in the NAIA poll. Machinal made 9 of 11 shots from the field, including 5 of 6 from 3-point range, and all 14 of her free throws. She added four assists.

G Lindsey transfers to Rider from St. John's

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. (AP) — Former St. John's sophomore guard Nurideen Lindsey has enrolled at Rider for the spring semester and will be a member of the Broncs next season. Rider coach Tommy Dempsey announced the transfer on Monday.

Lindsey averaged 11.8 points, 4.9 rebounds and 2.9 assists in nine games this season for the Red Storm. He is a Philadelphia native who also played at Redlands (Okla.) CC. Rider is 7-14 this season, including a 4-5 mark in the MAAC.