In the middle of December the college basketball season grinds to a slow crawl, like one of those heavy coal trains taking its sweet time to cross and leaving you stuck at an intersection for an interminable amount of time. We also have now passed the one-month mark for the season, so it’s a good time to take an early look at some RPI numbers. It’s still early in the season, and especially too early to look at individual team RPI numbers too much yet, but we’re starting to get a drift of the pecking order for conferences.