How much do you think Ben Howland is missing Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook right now?

How much do you think John Calipari is missing Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts right now?

The answer is the same to both questions: A lot.

How about a whole heck of a lot?

Sure, the preseason polls had the Bruins ranked No. 4 and the Tigers ranked No. 13 to start the year, but both Howland and Calipari know that that their respective rankings are merely based more on the potential of their teams than the way they are playing at the moment.

The Bruins, for one, looked totally confused in their loss last Thursday night in the semifinals of the 2K Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden, letting Michigan coach John Beilein’s 1-3-1 zone eat them alive in the second half after staging a 29-23 halftime lead.

With little inside scoring to lean on (a total of 15 points from Josh Shipp, James Keefe and Alfred Aboya), UCLA struggled in the final 20 minutes against the Wolverines, shooting just 33.3 percent (8-for-24) from the field and 25 percent (2-for-8) from three.

Michigan, on the other hand, burned through the net in that same time, shooting 61 percent (13-for-21) from the floor and 50 percent (4-for-8) from long range to spark what some might point to later on this season as the program-changing win that Beilein needed to turn things around in Ann Arbor.

“It was a great win for our team," Beilein said after his team finally beat a ranked opponent for the first time in 13 tries. "Early season wins are terrific, but you have to put them in perspective."

Howland, meanwhile, knows this isn’t nearly the same kind of team that he had last year, and to be honest, it probably won’t be by the time the calendar turns March, either.

After all, you don’t just replace two NBA lottery picks and a second rounder in a matter of months.

"It's early and we're a very young team," Howland said regarding the loss to Michigan.

But Howland’s teams seem to overachieve more often than they underachieve, in part due to his tough, physical man-to-man defense, and while the Bruins didn’t happen to raise a 12th national championship banner in Pauley Pavilion last year after suffering a third straight defeat in the Final Four, UCLA is still the favorite to win a much weaker Pac-10 this season.

Those sorts of expectations are realistic for a team that boasts arguably the nation’s top point guard (Darren Collison) and top freshman (Jrue Holiday), but it won’t be easy even so.

Likewise, it won't be easy out in Graceland, as the expectations are plenty high and plenty realistic for Memphis, too.

Yet after last year’s heartbreaking loss to Kansas in the national championship game, the Tigers are nowhere near the same kind of team that they were a year ago.

That’s no secret to Calipari, of course.

“This year's team is so different from last year's team and the year before,” he said following Memphis’ loss to Xavier Sunday in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off championship game. “Hopefully, we get better as the season goes on. I want guys to make plays and play to win.”

Nevertheless, Memphis is expected by most to plow through Conference USA — still thought to be one of the worst conferences, along with the WAC and SWAC, in college basketball — with one of the nation’s top frontcourts (Shawn Taggart, Robert Dozier and Pierre Henderson-Niles) and another potential one-and-done freshman (Tyreke Evans).

Unfortunately for UCLA and Memphis fans, though, believing that either team can return to the Final Four this season might be wishful thinking.

Because even with all the freshmen talent that has come into the college game the past two seasons and into Howland’s and Calipari’s programs, Kansas made it clear last year that a team filled with experienced sophomores, juniors and seniors is really the best prepared to cut down the nets when that clock hits 0:00 in early April.

Nearly three weeks have passed in the college football season (and yes, I’ve been slacking considerably with my entries lately), but if you had any doubts about how good East Carolina could be this year, you might want to start reconsidering Skip Holtz's team now.

Conference USA hasn't been known much for its football prowess since Louisville and Cincinnati bounced and moved over to the Big East in 2005, yet the Pirates might just have the right combination of talent and experience this season to win over a few BCS voters when December rolls around.

ECU, after all, has its toughest games behind them and a 2-0 record to show for it — along with a No. 14 ranking in this week’s AP poll.

It just goes to show you what two good weeks of football can do for you.

In the first week, it was a punt block with two minutes remaining that led to a go-ahead touchdown and a 27-22 upset over then-No. 17 Virginia Tech in Charlotte, N.C.

Then last Saturday, the Pirates treated their fans to an absolute beat down of West Virginia, a team ranked No. 8 at the time that had its BCS national championship hopes spoiled at home in the final week of the season last year by arch-rival Pittsburgh. 

It was one of the main reasons why Pat White didn’t test the NFL draft waters last spring and decided to return to school in hopes of contending for another national title with his teammates.

But that dream has nearly all been lost in a 24-3 embarrassment at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium.

“There are some things that need to be ironed out and there will be things that are ironed out,” West Virginia coach Bill Stewart said after watching ECU fans storm the field in celebration of its first win over a top 10 team since 1999, when Steve Logan manned the sidelines for the Pirates.

“We will work hard and learn from this game. We need to get better defensively and work on our receivers. It is a long season and the naysayers cannot end our players’ season after two games.”

Yeah, I'm sorry to inform you Bill, but I happen to be one of those naysayers.

I mean, come on, are you serious?

ECU has a better chance at reaching the BCS national championship game than your team does after the a-whooping that they got handed.

Depending on who wins Saturday’s mini national championship game between No. 1 USC and No. 5 Ohio State at the L.A. Coliseum — and my bet’s on the Trojans after that annihilation of Virginia Aug. 30 in Charlottesville — the Mountaineers would have to hope that Georgia, Florida, Missouri, LSU, Oklahoma and USC all lose at least once (maybe even twice for the SEC champ) before getting any reconsideration for this year’s title game.

And at this point in the season, all six of those teams are far and above better than the Mountaineers.

In addition, their quarterbacks are also proving to be superior.

White, a senior and preseason Heisman Trophy candidate, couldn’t throw the ball a lick against the Pirates’ defense, and it showed in the box score with just 72 yards in the air in comparison to 179 on the ground.

"I told them it wasn't going to take an out-of-body experience to beat West Virginia," Holtz, the third-year coach, said.

It certainly didn't even with East Carolina throwing for 243 yards in the air (386 in total compared to WVU's 251) and recording eight more first downs than the Mountaineers, but afterward, it was more of an out-of-mind experience for ECU fans and the rest of the nation.

“I don’t think you can put it into words,” Holtz further added about the win. “I am so proud of these players the way they have come out and competed the last few weeks. We played two elite programs and I am just proud of the way our team has grown. They are playing with desire, passion and togetherness. It is so fun right now to stand on that sideline and watch our defense play as good as it is. Every facet of our team from the offense to special teams was fantastic tonight. The players really believe in themselves right now.”

And for some fans, who were accosted and then beaten excessively by police officers — it was later confirmed by several local Charlotte TV stations that ESPN viewers could in fact see a Lenoir County deputy punching a fan with a closed fist as other students and fans rushed the field in celebration of the win — it was an ugly finish to a memorable moment in ECU football history.

Fortunately, the now No. 14-ranked Pirates won’t have to worry about any similar incidents this weekend, as they head to the Big Easy for their first Conference USA game against a Tulane team that lost last week, 20-6, to Alabama in its season opener.

The Green Waves, with all due respect, don’t stand much of a chance if the Pirates play like they did in their first two contests, but Virginia Tech, West Virginia and Tulane most likely won’t be the only wins Holtz’s team will be seizing this year.

Because with a winnable schedule the rest of the way, including non-conference games at N.C. State and Virginia and an innocuous C-USA slate (and Tulsa, the one league threat, not on it unless the two meet on Dec. 6 in the conference championship game), ECU may have finally found that silver slipper as the next BCS Cinderella playing in early January.

If there's one group of fans that I managed to tick off the most in my previous blog for CSTV.com, it had to be Memphis basketball fans.

And while they almost proved me wrong this past April — that is, until Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts choked on the free throw line with two minutes left in the national championship game — it was head coach John Calipari, his players and the Memphis faithful who were ultimately heartbroken on that Monday night in San Antonio (I know because I saw their tears and heard their disappointment afterward in the post-game press conference).

But having a national championship slip out of their hands isn't something they should be concerned with at this point.

At least not after seeing the story that FOXSports.com's senior college basketball writer, Jeff Goodman, a friend and colleague of mine, broke Thursday regarding a Memphis booster's phone call to Oseye Gaddy, mother of highly touted recruit Abdul Gaddy.

As Goodman explains, FedEx Express president and CEO David Bronczek made the call to Oseye, one of the company's customer service representatives in Tacoma, Wash., just a few days after Calipari contacted the family.

But what Bronczek, a member of the exclusive 32-member Ambassador's Athletic Foundation, didn't know is that school boosters are not allowed to contact recruits under NCAA regulations.

Of course, there's no denying Bronczek's status as a booster.

After all, Bronczek is a "representative of an institution's athletic interests" and serves as a member on the Tiger Athletic Advisory Board of Directors. Better yet, each member of the Ambassador's Athletic Foundation has donated at least $500,000 to Memphis' basketball program and many have exceeded the $1 million mark.

"He's absolutely a booster, there's no question about it," Johnson told Goodman in discussing Bronczek's role with the program.

According to NCAA rules, a "representative of an institution's athletic interests" is someone who either makes financial contributions to the athletic department or a specific athletic program or promotes the school’s athletics through an agency or organization.

And as Rule 13.1.3.5.1 states in the NCAA Division I Manual, “Representatives of an institution’s athletics interests are prohibited from making telephonic communications with a prospective student-athlete or the prospective student-athlete’s relatives or legal guardians.”

So that’s where Bronczek went wrong.

Yes, it was only a phone call.

But as we saw with former Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson, a phone call or two can get you in an awful lot of trouble.

That’s quite possibly what could come the Tigers way now, whether it is a probation sentence, a loss of scholarships/scholarship money or even worse, a season without Abdul Gaddy.

All that over something that neither Calipari nor Johnson could control. All that over something that Bronczek didn’t even know was wrong to do.

But in this day and age where college basketball recruits are so easily lured by gifts and riches — just look at O.J. Mayo for instance — it’s not too surprising to see Calipari and Memphis sitting under the NCAA's microscope now.

After all, who could forget the Marcus Camby scandal that Calipari endured at UMass back in 1996 as he saw his star player take the Minutemen to the Final Four, only to have it ruined when the NCAA discovered that Camby accepted $28,000 from a couple of sports agents.

Sure, Bronczek’s call isn’t quite what Camby did during his junior season, but who’s to say that Calipari hasn’t turned his eye on other NCAA violations while he’s been at Memphis?

Because with the phone call that Bronczek made this summer, more and more doubt will grow about the recruitment process of Derrick Rose, the NBA’s top draft pick last month, and Tyreke Evans, one of the nation’s top backcourt recruits who committed to the Tigers in April following the 2007-08 college basketball season.

For some reason — I can't tell you why — I have a feeling there's more to this story than what has already transpired.

Still, no one knows for now whether Bronczek’s mistake will trigger a further investigation into Calipari’s program, but with the NCAA aware of the violation and Gaddy still deciding between Memphis and Arizona, the Tigers can only hope that Bronczek’s mistake won’t cost them a chance at reaching next year's Final Four in Detroit.

Heck, I wouldn't even consider the NCAA Tournament a guarantee at this point.