Friday Look Ahead: Pirates, Mountaineers set to open Big East season

There isn't much happening in the world of college basketball this weekend.

So the Friday Look Ahead can't really be considered a present.

Da'Sean Butler leads WVU with 16.0 points a game. (AP)

Best game of the weekend: Nobody wants to play basketball the day after Christmas. But if you need somebody to play basketball the day after Christmas, a call like the following is a good first step: "Hey, this is CBS. We were curious if you'd like to play on national television on Dec. 26?" More times than not, you'll have a commitment within seconds. Saturday's game between No. 6 West Virginia and Seton Hall serves as proof.

Guaranteed to be a blowout: I tabbed Washington as the Pac-10 favorite, but lost confidence in the 22nd-ranked Huskies when they stumbled at Texas Tech, and a subsequent loss to Georgetown didn't help. But Washington has since thrashed Portland and handled Texas A&M, and that's why I'll be a believer again Sunday when Lorenzo Romar's team improves to 9-2 with a lopsided victory over San Francisco.

Guaranteed to be an upset: I'd like to take a moment to make sure everybody knows I never bother with point spreads in this category, and that more times than not I forget to even look at them. I stopped gambling on sports years ago, about six months after I realized you can't win money doing it. So when I promise to pick an "upset" in this space every week, what I'm really promising is to pick an unranked team to beat a ranked team. That's it. Got it? Good. Now let me guarantee that unranked Southern California will beat UNLV late Friday in Hawaii. The Rebels are ranked 20th in the Coaches poll. They won't be come Monday.

Player trying to keep rolling: Missouri's Kim English, otherwise known as college basketball's gift to Twitter, finished with seven points in a loss to Oral Roberts early this month, got upset and closed his Twitter account. It was a sad day for social networking. But if that's what it took to get back on track, so be it. English has averaged 20.7 points in Missouri's past three games -- wins over Fairleigh Dickinson, Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Illinois. Next up is Sunday's game against Austin Peay. If English gets 25, I'll name him the "Player who deserves extra benefits" in the Monday Look Back, but only if he Tweets about it by Sunday night.

Player trying to get rolling: I've been hearing about the greatness of Ater Majok for months, from people connected to the Connecticut program as well as totally neutral observers. Everybody loves Majok's talent. Still, the 6-10 forward is averaging just 3.0 points and 3.5 rebounds through two games. That's not great. But perhaps Majok will get going Sunday against Iona. If the 11th-ranked Huskies are to challenge for the Big East title, he needs to emerge, and sooner rather than later.

Three things you need to know

1. It remains too early to put much stock in the RPI, but it's still fun to track. Heading into the weekend, the top five are Duke, Kansas State, Temple, West Virginia and Texas.

2. The nation's leading rebounder is Radford's Artsiom Parakhouski, a 6-11 center from Belarus who is averaging 14.0 boards per game. It'll be interesting to see how he fairs against Louisville's Samardo Samuels on Sunday.

3. Texas A&M senior Derrick Roland is scheduled to leave Seattle's Harborview Medical Center on Friday and return home for the first time since breaking his tibia and fibula in Tuesday's loss to Washington. Doctors have said Roland should heal well enough to resume his basketball career, but his college career is over unless the NCAA ignores its own rules and grants Roland a medical hardship waiver, which is unlikely. Either way, it's a sad deal.

Final thought: Why would an elite program like Michigan State fly commercial for a mid-week game at Texas?

The answer is in the NCAA rulebook.

According to NCAA rules, schools can provide flights to and from every road game for players, but there's nothing stating that the players have to fly back to campus, or even close to campus. That's the key. So rather than book a charter for Tuesday's game at Texas -- a charter would've gone from East Lansing to Austin and then back to East Lansing -- the team flew commercial because it allowed the players to fly to Texas together, but then fly from Texas separately and to anywhere in the country -- i.e., home for the holidays -- all on the MSU expense account. In other words, every Michigan State player received a free flight home Wednesday morning because the Spartans flew commercial to Texas rather than charter to Texas.

The only bad part?

They had to catch the bus to the airport at 3:40 a.m.

I'd personally rather pay for my own flight than catch a bus at 3:40 a.m.

But whatever.

Merry Christmas.