Heading into the Wednesday night's game with Denver the Rockets are on a bit of negative run. Since beating the Clippers before Christmas they went 7-9 in their next 16 game. In their last ten games they are in the bottom quarter of the league in offensive and defensive FG% and are fifth worst in the NBA in 3 point FG%.

In other words, things are not going well. Is it part of the ebb and flow of a long season or have they been figured out by the league?

The answer is yes. They have have been scouted, analyzed and, in many cases, played multiple times as teams have solved whatever mystery the Rockets had going early.

This is a year of built in forgiveness. With $40 Million on the sideline you can hardly blame the Rockets for struggling. The big question is what kind of deal Daryl Morey can strike (if any) before the trade deadline. The next question is can they get themselves into the playoffs and upset somebody.

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UK lost Tuesday night. John Calipari talked about the big bulls eye on the Wildcats' backs and South Carolina hit it dead center in UK's first bid to protect the ranking. It's a long season and now all the undefeated talk will go away enabling the 'Cats to concentrate on going deep in the NCAA Tournament.

Former Calipari assistant Tony Barbee is doing a nice job at UTEP which lost to Houston a couple of weeks ago at UH but upset Memphis last week and demolished Central Florida over the weekend. It's going to be the best C-USA Tournament in a while because Memphis is not as good as recent years and doesn't host this time. We'll see if the Coogs can improve on a shaky 3-3 conference start to do some damage in the post season.