Saturday, March 20 (all CBS)
1:05pm - Villanova vs. St. Mary's
3:20pm - Butler vs. Murray St
3:35pm - Tennessee vs. Ohio
5:40pm - Kansas vs. Northern Iowa
5:45pm - Baylor vs. Old Dominion
5:50pm - New Mexico vs. Washington
8:10pm - Kansas St vs. BYU
8:15pm - Kentucky vs. Wake Forest
Justifying Our Ballot. We actually had to do this for the first time all season. We ranked Florida above Mississippi St. (#25 in our ballot), and one blogger took offense with this notion. His quote was, “Ranking Florida above MSU absolutely makes no sense, however. None.” So here is our carefully-worded justification:
I just think that Florida is a better team right now than MSU. In other words, on a neutral court, I think Florida wins. I think, by and large, they have better players, better coaching, and a more impressive team. Based on the both the #s [UF is ten spots higher in Sagarin] and what I’ve seen on the court this year, I believe this to be a reasonable stance. The only way it’s an unreasonable stance (your assertion) is if you can demonstrate compelling evidence that there is absolutely no way that Florida can beat MSU on a neutral court. I don’t think you can do that based on anything we’ve seen so far this year.
What think, fair readers? Did we miss something?
Those Left Out. What we couldn’t understand was the continued inclusion of Vanderbilt, who, at ballot time, had lost three of four and were trending downward (they have since lost again last night to Ole Miss 74-58). We also had St. Mary’s at #18 (prior to their Monday night loss), Baylor at #22, and Oklahoma at #24. Obviously, as of this writing, we’d like to have K-State in the poll in favor of Baylor. All votes tallied here.
Variance.Wisconsin and Kansas St. are causing the most blogvoter consternation. We’re not sure how anyone can justify leaving the 16-3 Badgers completely out of the poll, but one blogger did.
Conference Call. The conferences who have messed up middles, as we discussed the other day, are taking hits in the poll.
Kansas Goes Down. For the first time in 25 years, KU went into Manhattan, KS, and came away with a loss. Freshman stars Bill Walker and Michael Beasley, prescient cocky in their predictions of a win, blew up for 47/11 combined, putting to rest the notion that KU has superior talent vis-a-vis everyone else in the country. So how’d they get it done? We caught the second half, and then spent the next two hours trying to splice some video together off our Tivo before giving up and settling (see below), and here were a few observations.
By the numbers, both teams played evenly – FG%, rebounding, turnovers, fouls, and the efficiency stats were roughly the same. With one exception – threes. This game-changing stat was heavily in KSU’s favor (12-26 v. 6-17 for KU).
This coincides with what we actually saw in that second half. Every time it seemed that KU was just this close to making a run to get back into the game, Beasley (4-4) or Walker (3-10) would drop one from long range. We counted four times where KU was within one possession and one of those two would knocked down a three to create some cushion. Clutch.
By the way, how sick is Beasley (preaching to the choir…)? A quick snapshot of his numbers this year – 25/12 in only 30mpg, shooting 56% from the field (and 44% from 3). There will be Oden/Durant debate this year. Michael Beasley is the #1 pick.
Kansas, to their credit, never panicked; they just simply couldn’t get enough stops in the second half to put together a run. From the ten-minute mark, KU never got closer than two possessions. We’re not willing to draw any negative conclusions from this game about the Jayhawks – they didn’t play that poorly; it’s just that KSU, fueled by a frenzied home crowd, simply played better. If anything, it also gets the unbeaten monkey off of their neck, and they can regroup and get about the business of winning the Big 12.
This is a huge win for KSU, however. Frank Martin’s team has come a long way from the listless squad we watched lose to Oregon and Notre Dame earlier this season. It’s doubtful anyone is getting a win out of Manhattan the rest of this season, so something like 13-3 in the conference is not out of the question for the Wildcats. That kind of a record and finish would propel KSU into a top four protected seed in the NCAAs, and their computer profile is already solid (#6 in Pomeroy; #18 in Sagarin).
So we must have missed this around the beginning of the month, but today we came across a neat little analysis performed by the people over at Forbes that reveals the twenty most valuable college basketball programs in the nation. Their analysis takes the following four components into consideration:
We base our valuations on what the basketball programs contribute to four important beneficiaries: their university (money generated by basketball that goes to the institution for academic purposes, including scholarship payments for basketball players); athletic department (the net profit generated by the basketball program retained by the department); conference (the distribution of tournament revenue); and local communities (incremental spending by visitors to the county during the regular season that’s attributable to the program).
Now we’ll leave it to the MBAs in the audience to figure out if theirs is a proper and defensible way to analyze the monetary value of a college hoops program, but for now, here’s their results:
Note: we added the two columns on the far right. We found expenses from 2007 at www.basketballstate.com, and return on investment (ROI) is our calculation dividing profit by expenses.
ROIs.Ohio St. is getting 6.85 times back in profit from what it spends on its program? There’s absolutely no way this is true – methinks this is a reporting issue (did an Enron exec end up on the OSU Board of Trustees?) In the land of economic reality, it appears Arizona, UNC and Louisville are getting tremendous returns on investment, approaching or exceeding a 3:1 ratio in each case. On the flip side, Michigan St. and Syracuse are only getting a 1:1 ratio of profit to expenses (which, if you think about it, is still very successful).
Who is Missing? After the last two years, we’re a little surprised that Florida isn’t on this list – even if they’re not as profitable, we figured their value through revenue from the tournament would be sky high. What about basketball schools such as Big East stalwarts Georgetown and Connecticut? Those aren’t more valuable basketball properties than Wisconsin or Oklahoma St.?
State Schools Rule. With the notable exceptions of traditional powers Duke and Syracuse, and the surprising inclusion of Xavier, the other seventeen schools on the list are big state schools. What’s driving that? The sheer number of fans in those states who buy seats to games? The licensing of all the gear that each school sells to those fans? Local television rights so they can watch all the games?
Flyover Country. The Midwest + Tobacco Road is where it’s at if you want profitable basketball, it appears. The only outliers to that premise are UCLA, Arizona, Texas, Maryland and Syracuse.
Still Unbeaten. #1 Memphis and #2 Kansas remained unbeaten through the weekend, and until both lose a game, this will be the top storyline for the last six weeks of the regular season. This is the latest point in a season that two teams have been undefeated since 2005 (Illinois and Boston College), and there are no signs that either team is slowing down soon. Kansas, the top defensive efficiency team in America, knocked the stuffing out of Nebraska 84-49, but we figure the Big 12 (#2 conf in both KenPom and Sagarin) is too tough as a conference for the Jayhawks to go 16-0 this year (est. KenPom chances of running the table = 38.5%). The real intrigue is whether Memphis (#2 defensive efficiency) will run the table until March, and given that they handled Gonzaga 81-73 in a workmanlike manner on Saturday, we’re feeling like Calipari’s team has a great shot at getting into the postseason unblemished (est. KenPom = 58.3%). He’s no stranger to this kind of pressure, either; remember, in 1996, UMass was 26-0 and #1 deep into February before finally losing a late A10 game to GW. That year also happens to represent Calipari’s sole trip to the F4, before Marcus Camby’s “homemade” bling ultimately led to its vacation by the NCAA. Both teams face somewhat tough opponents on the road Wednesday, however (Memphis @ Houston; Kansas @ Kansas St.), but if they survive those tests we might have a situation similar to 2004 when both Stanford and St. Joseph’s made it to the first week of March unbeaten. It must be noted, though, that neither of those teams made it to the F4.
The Truth About Duke. We were absolutely sure that Duke was going to lose at Maryland yesterday. After watching the first half, where James Gist and Bambale Osby seemingly scored inside at will, we were beyond absolutely convinced that the Terps were on track to beat their second top five opponent in eight days. So what happened? Duke 93, Maryland 84. We’re not going to pile on Gary Williams and his squad for their typical carelessness with the ball, etc., here – that’s what they do, and they were still able to beat UNC in Chapel Hill last weekend. No, we’re going to give all the credit to Duke for their hustle, resilience and clutch play down the stretch last night. It was funny, once Duke got the lead with 12 minutes remaining, we knew in our gut that the game was over. Sure enough, Duke methodically pulled away by getting after the loose balls, battling on the boards despite being undersized, and forcing some of those poor Maryland turnovers. We generally try to avoid the stereotypical “Duke is smarter” BS that you hear the Dick Vitale and Mike Patricks of the world prattle on about, but this year we have to give it to them. Duke plays with a very high basketball IQ, they absolutely get after you defensively, and they simply don’t beat themselves. They just don’t have enough of an inside attack to win another national championship this year, but Duke haters everywhere should prepare themselves for another depressing February and a #1 seed for the Devils in March.
Conference Muddling. The middle of the six BCS conferences are about as wide open as we can remember. In the ACC, after Duke (5-0) and Carolina (4-1), who is the third best team? There are nine other teams with either three or two wins. The Big East is even worse – after Georgetown (6-1) and Louisville (5-2), there are eleven teams with four or three wins, including an absurd six teams with identical 4-3 records. The Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC are a little better, but it’s the Big 10 that is the only league exhibiting true have/have-not behavior. Five teams have five-plus wins, five teams have two or fewer wins, and poor Iowa sits in the middle at 3-5.
Saturday Games. Here are the games that caught our attention on Saturday.
Notre Dame 90, #23 Villanova 80. As soon as we think we’ve got ND figured out, they do something like this.
Connecticut 68, #8 Indiana 63. We watched this game and still can’t figure this one out.
Texas-Pan American 54, NJIT 42. 0-21 now… Circle the home date v. 4-19 Longwood on 2/4 as the breakthrough win.
NC State 69, Florida St. 66. This was pretty much a must-win for the Pack.
#19 Texas A&M 59, Oklahoma St. 56. OSU continues to struggle in the Big 12 (1-4).
Arizona 84, Washington 69. Arizona is starting to look like the third best team in the Pac-10.
Louisville 67, St. John’s 57. Terrence Williams with triple 8s (8/8/8 assts).
UNLV 72, San Diego St. 69. A key road win in the Mtn West for Vegas.
Virginia Tech 81, Boston College 73 (OT). Would the real BC please stand up?
Oklahoma 77, Baylor 71. BU’s first B12 loss is at the hands of the surging Sooners (Blake Griffin with 17/15).
Purdue 60, #11 Wisconsin 56. Very nice home win for the young Boilers (6-1 in the B10).
Mississippi St. 88, #15 Ole Miss 68. MSU is starting to look a little like that team SEC:TGTBTD predicted back in September.
Rutgers 77, #17 Pittsburgh 64. Nice egg-laying by Pitt in this one.
Kansas St. 82, Iowa St. 57. KSU continues to surge (Beastley 33/15).
#18 Drake 58, Northern Iowa 54. The class of the MVC continues to roll…
#6 Washington St. 56, #25 Arizona St. Heartbreaking home loss for the Sun Devils.
#22 Stanford 82, California 77. Once again, it appears as if Cal is the odd man out in the Pac-10.
Richmond 80, #14 Dayton 63. Two straight blowout losses for the Flyers – what happened?
#10 Georgetown 58, West Virginia 57. GTown just keeps sneaking by…
#3 Tennessee 85, Georgia 69. Lofton came out of his shooting slump with 7 threes.
#12 Texas 73, Texas Tech 47. DJ Augustin with 19 as Bob Knight continues to teach mediocrity.
Game of the Night Year?Baylor 116, Texas A&M 110 (5 OT). For the second straight season, possibly probably the game of the year comes to us from the heart of Big 12 country. Let’s get straight to the stats, which are simply astonishing for a college game: 65 minutes of basketball, 191 FG attempts, 106 FT attempts, 69 fouls (!!), 8 player DQs, 120 rebounds, and 216 total points. We’re wondering how anyone had enough energy reserves to finish off this one. More importantly, this was a HUGE road win for the Baylor program, now 16-2 and tied atop the Big 12 standings with Kansas at 4-0. Who could have believed that this program, so maligned after the Dave Bliss/Patrick Dennehy fiasco, could have risen from the ashes to this point so quickly? We could understand a major power rebuilding after such a disaster, but Baylor, one of the annual Big 12 doormats? Major props to head coach Scott Drew for making the Bears one of the feel-good stories of the season thus far. On the flip side, what has happened to Texas A&M? They appear to be imploding, but maybe they were being overvalued (ourselves included) based on that dominant victory over Ohio St. (70-47) back in the Preseason NIT in November. Their next best win was over Oral Roberts (also in Nov) and they’ve only gone 2-4 against the kenpom top 100.
OJ Mayo’s Tickets. So the other big news coming out of yesterday was the possibility that OJ Mayo will be penalized by the NCAA for taking and using a guest ticket provided by Carmelo Anthony for the Lakers-Nuggets game on Mon. night. Tim Floyd, godluvhim, is doing his best to become the fall guy here, knowing full well that at 11-6 (1-3 Pac-10), he needs OJ out there every night to try to secure an NCAA bid in his only year on campus. We’re not sure how Floyd giving Mayo permission to take the ticket somehow exonerates Mayo, but we love his attempt at cover. Nevertheless, we predict a 1-2 game suspension over this violation for Mayo.
Last Night’s Games. There were several interesting results last night:
St. Joseph’s 81, Massachusetts 77. The A10 is going to be wild this year, with six teams in the RPI top 52.
Florida St. 69, Virginia 67. Can anyone definitively tell us who the third best team in the ACC is?
Georgia Tech 77, NC State 74. At 1-3 in the ACC, the Wolfpack really have their work cut out for them.
Rutgers 80, Villanova 68. A really poor loss for Nova.
Purdue 64, Penn St. 42. Don’t look but Purdue is now 5-1 in the Big 10.
#2 Kansas 83, Iowa St. 59. Next week’s game to Manhattan, KS, is looking like the best possibility for a KU loss.
#17 Pittsburgh 81, St. John’s 57. A once-proud program such as St. John’s should be ashamed of itself.
Connecticut 84, Cincinnati 83. We thought Cincy had this one, but this was a necessary with for the Huskies.
William & Mary 73, Drexel 72 (OT). The surprising Tribe are moving up the ranks of the CAA (6-2).
BYU 59, San Diego St. 56. SDSU has gotten less hype than BYU and UNLV, but they’re the top team in the Mtn West right now (4-1, #55 RPI).
West Virginia 66, Marshall 64. Marshall always makes this a hellacious game for WVU.
#1 Memphis 56, Tulsa 41. Line of the night – 2/19/2 blks for Dorsey.
Florida 73, South Carolina 71. The Dave Odom farewell tour continues with another home L.
Texas Tech 92, Missouri 84. Missouri is faltering again in the Big 12 (1-3).
#8 Indiana 65, Iowa 43. The undervalued Hoosiers (17-1, 6-0 Big 10) keep cruising.
#4 UNC 98, Miami (FL) 82. Carolina recovers from its shocking loss to Maryland.
We were off the grid last weekend, which figures, because for all intents and purposes the college hoops season got under way while we were gone. What are we talking about? Upset Saturday, baby.
A couple weeks ago we pointed out that this season to date has been boring uninspiring due largely to the complete lack of upsets among the top teams. No more. Last weekend the carnage in the Top 25 was significant, as nine ranked teams (incl. 3 of the top 10) took a loss. The most shocking were the twin home losses of #2 UNC and #4 UCLA to unranked conference rivals Maryland and USC, respectively. Throw in last night’s loss by #7 Tennessee at Kentucky, and we’re starting to see a trend here.
But we shouldn’t be too shocked. Conference play is tough, no matter who you are or where you’re ranked. And now that we’re heading into late January, some teams that may have looked like complete garbage a month or more ago are starting to show signs that there was a larger plan after all. In addition to the Terps and Trojans, take a bow, UConn, K-State, Kentucky and Cincinnati. Meanwhile, some other teams that looked like worldbeaters in December are now starting to exhibit some mental and/or physical fatigue. UNC, Texas A&M, Marquette and Ole Miss fall into this category.
Let’s Strap In and Enjoy the Ride.
We watched the good weekend games on Tivo last night, and what really struck us as impressive was the level of intensity being played by teams on both ends of the court. For example, we’ve seen Maryland play a handful of times this year, and the Terps have typically looked like they’d rather be somewhere else. Not Saturday – Maryland may have come into Chapel Hill with a record of 11-7 and a loss to American on its resume, but they played every second of the game as if they belonged on the same court with the unbeaten Heels. At Florida, the bloody carcass known as Kentucky may have come into Gainesville with a record of 0-3 on the road, but they played as if Chuck Hayes and Tayshaun Prince were once again taking it to Anthony Roberson and Matt Walsh (in other words, hard). To keep the analogy going, USC may have been a meager 1-3 in the Pac-10, but their HS all-americans played as if they were talking smack and running with the older but slower UCLA guys on the Santa Monica courts.
What all this means is that we’re hitting the last third of the season, and teams are, as usual, finding life in conference play to be tough. For most of the Top 25, there will be far fewer easy victories than before; for the teams that struggled through the first half, seasons can be saved with a few key victories at the right time. Everyone who follows college hoops rightly loves March for its wild and unpredictable nature, but we shouldn’t sleep on the next six weeks either. The end of January and all of February is where the seeds of March Madness are sown. Let’s all strap in and enjoy the ride…
Note: keep in mind the blogpoll does not take into account Tues. and Wed. night games.
Justifying Our Ballot. Frankly, there’s not much we need to justify because we’re not too much at variance with the blogworld this week. We value Indiana a little more, and Pitt/Xavier a little less, but there’s nothing in our ballot that should raise an eyebrow this time around. The two teams we submitted that were left off the blogpoll this week were Oklahoma and Arizona. But we can live with their omissions. Glad to see Drake made the list at #23, but people really need to get Clemson outta here until they get a quality win on the road.
Variance. Georgetown (from #10 to NR) and Dayton (#8 to NR) again.
Conference Call.
ACC – 4
A10, Big 12, Big 10, Big East, Pac-10, SEC – 3 each
Today SI’s Grant Wahl published his annual January synopsis of the eight teams that he feels have sufficient chops to win the national title in April. He likes to point out that in the eight previous years of doing this article, he’s been correct in seven of them (the one miss: 2003 with Syracuse). FYI, here is a spreadsheet of his Magic Eight picks for each year since its inception. Looking at the document with the caveat that we generally like Wahl’s work, in the last eight years the only true “gotcha!” champion was that Cuse team, which raises the question of just how difficult it is to pick eight top-tier teams in the hopes that one of the group cuts the nets down.
The short answer is not very. Had Wahl simply chosen the top eight teams in the AP poll for the correlating January week, he would have nailed six of the eight champions during this period. The only other team he would have missed (besides 2003 Syracuse) would have been 2000 Michigan State, and Wahl would be the first to tell you that the reason for MSU’s relatively low ranking at that point in the 2000 season was completely because of Mateen Cleaves’ foot injury that kept him out of the lineup until conference play. After all, MSU was the preseason #1 team in America that year.
What we think is considerably harder to do is to pick Final Four teams three months ahead of time. The truly elite teams (champions) almost always rise to the top, but with the knowledge that there will inevitably be upsets and great-looking in January will be off the map by March, we figure that if you can consistently pick half of the F4 that far ahead of time, then you’re probably doing something right. Well, it turns out that in the eight years of Wahl’s M8, he’s nailed sixteenof the thirty-two F4 teams for a success rate of exactly 50%. Using our AP ranking measurement mentioned above, he would have gotten fifteen right (47%) by sticking with the poll. So at least he’s beating the chalk.
Which brings us to our analysis of his M8 teams for this season. Here are his eight selections:
Georgetown
Indiana
Kansas
Louisville
Memphis
Tennessee
UCLA
Xavier
Perhaps getting a bit full of his record (or taking a huge gamble in an attempt to look really smart on April 7), this year’s selections omitted the UNC Tar Heels, who are currently 17-0 and the #1 team in both major media polls (#2 in the blogpoll). We can’t figure this one out.
Grant, what are you thinking?
Does Wahl really believe that Xavier (or Dayton, as he claims he almost chose) has a better chance of cutting down the nets than UNC? Is he willfully encouraging hordes of Carolina-blue hatemail upon his inbox? Is he simply trying to up his hit page stats ? We have no idea, but let’s see what his justification is for leaving off one of the four teams that has shown itself to be head & shoulders above the rest of the country this year, and quite possibly a juggernaut.
Carolina just doesn’t defend as well as the other three.
That’s it? While he’s right (they don’t), there is still time for significant improvement on that measure, and it’s not like they’re piss-poor (#31 nationally as of today). But more importantly, the Heels also are one of the very best offensive teams in the country, and that alone should indicate they’re worth a look as one of the eight teams most likely to win the national championship. We just don’t understand his reasoning here. If you don’t think they’ll win it all, that’s fine; but to make a claim that they’re not one of the eight most likely to do so… that’s just criminal. Moving on…
As for his 2008 selections, no Wazzu, no Michigan St., no Duke and no Texas A&M is fine – each of those teams has a major flaw or two. Had we produced a M8, we would have definitely taken UNC over Xavier and probably replaced Tennessee with Michigan St. We may have also left Louisville off because we don’t know where their outside shooting is coming from and who will be injured next, but we’re not sure who we think is a marginally better choice, so we’d probably end up leaving them. But really, no major beefs other than the UNC omission.
FWIW, since it’d be fairly disingenuous to rip Wahl’s picks without providing our own for review, we’re sticking with the F4 selections we made for STF at the beginning of the season – UNC, Indiana, UCLA, Gonzaga. The only one we’re currently nervous about is Gonzaga, simply because they haven’t taken off with the return of Josh Heytvelt like we thought they would. There’s still time, though.
Update: we sent this link to Wahl, and he responded in an email that he thought we had mischaracterized his article in the sense that he never claimed to be picking the eight teams most likely to win the national championship. He said that if that were the case, UNC would have been #4 on his list; however, his intent was to eliminate one of the “Big Four,” so as to make things interesting and avoid the appearance of playing it safe. We thought the intent of the M8 was to create a pool of teams from which he “guarantees” the champ will come – if that’s the case, we still don’t really understand the UNC omission.
CBS was advertising last weekend for its annual March Madness on Demand (MMOD) service, which is now available for sign-up. According to their site, it’s worthwhile to get a VIP pass now (some 61 days from Selection Sunday) because the passes are limited. Was it last year that their servers were overloaded with the throngs of fans who woke up on the Monday morning prior to the Tourney and realized they’ll have to work on Thurs/Fri again this year? This is the message you get after signing up:
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU’RE SIGNED UP!
<!–Click here to view highlights from some of the most memorable NCAA March Madness games of all time.–>
Bookmark This Page — Return to this page to launch the video player. Check back with us in early March, when you’ll be able to watch past NCAA Championship highlights before the live games begin on March 20, 2008.
As a VIP member you will have access to the live games much faster on game day. Plus, you will have access to on-demand highlights, buzzer beaters and detailed recaps all at your fingertips.
So there you have it. Now you too can contribute to the incredible $3.8B corporate timesuck known as March Madness. Or not. Us, we’ll be in Vegas anyway, contributing to their local economy in other ways.
Recap. Interesting weekend of games. We went into the weekend with five unbeatens, and we came out of it with only three as Vandy lost at Kentucky and Wazzu lost at UCLA. That leaves #1 Memphis, #2 UNC, and #3 Kansas as the only remaining unblemished teams. #4 UCLA at 16-1 is undoubtedly the best team of the one-loss group, which brings us to a midseason conclusion that these four teams have laid stakes as the top tier of college basketball this year. After these four teams, there is a fairly significant dropoff in talent, experience and depth. Which, of course, isn’t to say that these four are locks to make the F4 – teams sometimes stop improving, get lethargic and/or simply lose focus by March Madness. But out of the above group, we’d be absolutely and positively shocked if one of them doesn’t cut the nets down on April 7.
Where is GameDay? One other note from Saturday night. Kansas at Nebraska was the featured ESPN Gameday matchup, but for the second consecutive weekend, we noticed that the crew was offsite. Does this mean that ESPN is no longer doing live broadcasts from the schools? If so, that really sucks and is stupid and we hate ESPN and hope it dies. Seriously, though, last year, some of those sites were utterly insane before the games, and that was half of the fun. What’s the problem? (note: if they’re onsite beginning this week, we’ll issue an apology)
Saturday’s Games. Saturday was absolutely packed with games, and for the first time all season, we felt like playtime was over, and it was time for teams to get down to some real business of winning a conference. Here were some highlighted games, and our take:
Florida 72, Auburn 56. We don’t think the Baby Gators are all that good yet, but we have to give credit to Billy D. for scheduling soft this year and giving his young guys some momentum going into conference play. 8-8 might get this team to the NCAAs, and they’re already 2-0 in the SEC.
#2 UNC 93, NC State 62. 43-13 at the half? And NC State was supposed to compete for an ACC title this year??? Pfshaw…
Depaul 60, St. John’s 54. The Blue Demons are now 3-1 in the Big East and appear to be clicking.
Kentucky 79, #17 Vanderbilt 73 (2OT). This was a must-win for UK, but Vandy has to be kicking itself for dropping another winnable one at Rupp.
Missouri 97, #16 Texas 84. Mizzou is going to be tough at home. Damion James with 27/16 in a losing effort.
#10 Georgetown 72, Connecticut 69. Everyone has seen the Roy Hibbert game-winning 3 by now, but how smooth was that shot?
Minnesota 76, Penn St. 73. The UK message boards continue to implode.
Virginia Tech 67, Maryland 66. The Terps (0-2) are digging themselves a huge hole.
#14 Marquette 92, Notre Dame 66. Um, forget what we were saying about ND the other day… carry on… nothing to see here…
Columbia 64, NJIT 52. 0-18 now for the NJITers. 11 games to infamy.
#4 UCLA 81, #4 Washington St. 74. We’re not sure which was more impressive – the UCLA clobbering in the first half, or Wazzu’s comeback in the late second half.
Boston College 112, Wake Forest 73. Where did this come from???
Purdue 75, Ohio St. 68. This one surprised us a little, considering how well OSU has been playing.
Kansas St. 84, Oklahoma 82. A solid road win for KSU – Beastley with 32/11.
USC 66, Washington 51. The battle between teams with great talent but not much in the way of coaching.
Clemson 97, Florida St. 85 (2OT). Clemson was just this close to losing another home game… perhaps the collapse has been averted (for now)?
Indiana St. 64, S. Illinois 62 (2OT). What has happened to the Salukis (7-9) this year?
#14 Dayton 68, St. Louis 57 (OT). SLU took Dayton to OT, but only scored 2 pts in that extra period.
#1 Memphis 68, Marshall 45. The only question is how complacent will the Tigers get?
#7 Tennessee 80, South Carolina 56. Vols roll on…
Drake 65, Missouri St. 54. The Drake (14-1) is a new name to watch in the MVC.
Iowa 43, #6 Michigan St. 36. How does a top 10 team lose like this? 36 pts is pathetic with all their talent.
#3 Kansas 79, Nebraska 58. Methodical and effective. Why wasn’t the GameDay crew in Lincoln again?
Sunday’s Games.
Louisville 64, Rutgers 49. UL continues to get back on track…
#18 Rhode Island 80, Duquesne 78. URI’s Will Daniels with 28/11.
West Virginia 81, Syracuse 61. The Big East is gonna be tough to figure this year.
#8 Indiana 62, Illinois 58. Does anyone get less press than DJ White (15/10)?
Oregon 71, Stanford 66. The Ducks just don’t lose at home.
#8 Duke 87, Virginia 65. UVa looked like it couldn’t even dribble the ball most of this game.
Update: turns out the GameDay show will begin on-site this coming weekend – boy, that Creighton-SIU matchup sure looks the stinker now, doesn’t it? Why doesn’t college hoops make weekly decisions on where to go, like football does???
January 19 Kentucky at Florida
January 26 Creighton at Southern Illinois
February 2 Arizona at UCLA
February 9 Georgetown at Louisville
February 16 Michigan State at Indiana
February 23 Tennessee at Memphis
March 1 Kansas State at Kansas
March 8 North Carolina at Duke
Ok, so this is our first attempt at liveblogging a game, so bear with us if it sucks (or if the game sucks). But it’s worth a shot, so here goes…
10 mins pregame: early scores indicate UNC throttled NC State, Xavier dropped Fordham easily, Florida defeated Auburn, and the suddenly resurgent Depaul Blue Demons beat St. Johns in NYC to go 3-1 in the Big East. Oh, and Kentucky is up ten in the first half against undefeated Vandy (thanks CBS for showing me this worthless Oklahoma St.-Texas Tech game instead).
5 mins pregame: just switched over to FSN to find that the Nebraska-Kansas women’s game still has two minutes left. Thank God this game isn’t going to OT, but STOP FOULING!!
2 mins pregame: this UConn-Georgetown game has the feel of being a good game so far – Hoyas up 1 mid-first half…
1 min pregame: ok good the women’s game is over…
2:30pm: Marques Johnson is the color guy, that’s a good thing. He played at UCLA, right? Frankly, the crowd seemed a little quiet, but maybe they’re not all there yet. After all, it is 11:30am in LA.
2:33pm: UK’s up ten at the half. Vandy did this last week against UMass, but that was at home. Still, we don’t expect that score to hold the entire game. Vandy will hit some 3s and close the gap.
2:34pm: Wow, only the sixth time the Pac-10 has had a Top 5 matchup – wanna bet how many of them involved the Bruins?
2:35pm: Gametime spread is UCLA (-6) – don’t think I’d take that many points this year.
19:22: Collison already shows his worth with a steal on Wazzu’s first possession, then turns it right back over…
18:04: has anyone figured out Kevin Love’s wannabe Justin Timberlake beard thing yet?
16:06: predictably ugly so far, but moreso for Wazzu. Derrick Low is getting penetration, but can’t finish inside. Some particularly poor passing from Wazzu as well – 4 TOs so far. Man, Russell Westbrook can get up…
#4 Washington St. @ #4 UCLA preview. Ok, let’s get this out of the way immediately. Wazzu is 1-49 all-time at Pauley Pavilion. What else do we know? We know that the last four games at UCLA have come down to the last possession of the game (UCLA won all four by 3/3/2/3 pts). We know that both of these teams play old man ball (each has a tempo hovering near the bottom of D1), but they also play stifling defense (Pomeroy has UCLA as the fifth best D and Wazzu as the eighth) and don’t make many mistakes (each is in the top thirty most efficient teams on both ends of the court). We know that both teams play a high-caliber basketball and do not suffer fools lightly (poorly coached teams simply stand no chance against these two). We know that Tony Bennett and Ben Howland are both tremendous motivators and tacticians. We know that Wazzu has been criticized for a soft nonconference schedule (#304 – Pomeroy) to get to their 14-0 mark but we also know that winning at Washington and USC are no cupcakes, and UCLA already lost once this year at Pauley to Texas. And we know that the old-school game of Kevin Love (16/10) and how Wazzu handles him with Aron Baynes (12/7) and Robbie Cowgill (8/5) will probably be the deciding factor in what will likely be another very close matchup tomorrow.
Fwiw, Pomeroy is only giving Wazzu a 24% chance of winning the game, teamrankings.com gives them a 30% chance and Sagarin has the Bruins as a seven-point favorite.
Let’s see what’s coming out of both camps today – it appears that both sides are expecting an all-out war:
Well we are going to need lot more of Love, Mata-Real, Westbrook, Shipp and AA2 on Saturday when taking on the Cougars. Howland described what Saturday is going to be like to Dohn:
“It will be like getting a root canal without any pain killers,” UCLA coach Ben Howland said. “Playing them is going through the grinder. It is unbelievably hard because of how patient they are offensively, and how they just wait for a breakdown.”
Hopefully Luc and DC will be ready to go on Saturday. And if one of them can’t or they are not 100 percent, rest of their team-mates will have to step up through the adversity. It is going to be another all out war. And judging from the past we know our warriors will battle through the adversity and give it everything they have.
If there’s one thing to worry about heading into Saturday, it’s this: Low, Rochestie and Weaver each played 37 minutes or more, including 38 high-effort minutes for Weaver, who had the unenviable task of chasing O.J. Mayo around for most of the game. He’ll likely draw Josh Shipp on Saturday, who doesn’t figure to run off 32 screens the way Mayo did.
One key factor could be the availability of UCLA uber-guard Darren Collison. According to Bruins Nation blog:
“Right now, my hip hurts a lot,” Collison said. “I’m going to be doing treatment (today) and I don’t really know the status of how things are, if I’m even going to play or not. Hopefully, I can play Saturday. Right now, they’re looking at it as a hip contusion.”
“I am frustrated, but I’m going to continue to stay positive,” Collison said. “This team has a bright future ahead, and all I can do is keep my head up and stay positive. I’m going through a lot of adversity right now. It’s going to really challenge me to see how I’m going to progress and mature through those situations.”
If Collison can’t go, Russell Westbrook is a more than adequate replacement at the point. But knowing Howland players’ penchant for toughness, we’d expect to see DC out there tomorrow afternoon. At least we hope so. Should Wazzu pull the upset, we’d like to know that it happened with a full-strength UCLA. Not that we’re calling the upset. Just sayin’…
Recap. The most important thing that happened last night was centered in the City of Angels. On one side of town, #4 UCLA handily took care of business against Washington 69-55, while across town #4 Wazzu kept its unbeaten season alive against USC with little problem 73-58. This sets up the first big matchup of the conference season – UCLA v. Washington St. tomorrow at 2:30pm EDT at Pauley Pavilion. In a normal year, this could have been a #1/#2 matchup, but as we talked about earlier this week, the upsets among the elite have been sparse. Looking at the conference representations in the blogpoll, however, this game and its counterpart in February may be our only chance at top five matchups for the remainder of the season, so let’s enjoy it. Given the enormity of this game, we’ve put together a separate preview which will be posted later today.
Other Games Last Night.
Louisville 63, West Virginia 54. The Cards appear to be getting healthy, and that’s not good news for the rest of the Big East. Earl Clark 11/12 off the bench.
George Washington 49, St. Louis 20. See post here.
Oregon 79, California 70. Just bank it – pick Oregon at home every time, and pick against Cal on the road every time.
Arkansas 76, Auburn 70. Our boy Frank Tolbert had 17/9 in the loss.
Stanford 66, Oregon St. 46. Lopez boys with 20/13 combined.
#19 Wisconsin 70, Illinois 60. Illinois fans have said this year was coming due to Weber’s recruiting (8-8, 0-3 B10).
#12 Butler 74, Wisconsin-Green Bay 65. BU’s Matt Howard with 22/9/2 blks.
San Jose St. 62, Nevada 60. Mark Fox’s team is running out of time to get it together (8-6, 0-1 WAC).
Friday Night. Nothing much going on. Let’s move on to Saturday…
What the hell is going on out there in the nation’s midsection? Just three short days after Savannah St. laid a second-half egg against Kansas St. to the tune of four pts in the second half (25 total for the game), Rick Majerus’ St. Louis squad put up a blistering twenty points last night in its game against George Washington. This total of sixty-nine points (49-20) set a new record for offensive futility in the shot-clock era of D1 basketball. Let’s take a quick look at the Billikens’ stats:
14.6% shooting (7-48 from the field)
5.3% 3FG shooting (1-19)
50% FT shooting (5-10)
0.35 pts per possession
leading scorer (Bryce Husak) came off the bench for 5 pts
SLU missed 23 straight shots at one point in the game
“I thought GW played tough on defense. We had some issues. You have to credit GW for playing very well. We have some issues in terms of our offensive proficiency,” Majerus said. “I tried to keep coaching the game. Sometimes you miss. We are a team that has some issues. That is why we are practicing [Friday]. We did miss some good shots, yes. Anyone can look at us and see we don’t have height, we don’t have depth.”
What gets us is that St. Louis really isn’t that bad of a team. Their record is 9-6 with a win over Southern Illinois to their credit, and their RPI ranking is #144, which puts the Billikens in the range of Maryland and Oklahoma St. Still, their offensive output is troubling in their six losses – 58, 56, 40, 39, 53, 20. We realize their tempo this year is among the slowest in the nation (#336), but clearly something isn’t being communicated well between Majerus and his players. SLU was 20-13 last season and returned four starters, so what’s up? [insert joke here about Majerus spending more time eating than coaching]
We’re back in action, and actually contributing to the blogpoll again!
Note: keep in mind that the blogpoll did not take into account games from Tues. and Wed. nights (i.e., Ole Miss’s loss to Tennessee, or Clemson’s loss to Charlotte).
Justifying Our Ballot. We haven’t voted for a while, but the last time we did, we were voting UCLA #1. We still think they’re the team to beat in March, but they have sice lost to Texas, so we dropped them down a tad. Most of our colleagues are voting Memphis to the top spot, but after Carolina’s scintillating comeback win against Clemson on Sunday night, we’re convinced the Heels deserve the pinnacle for now. It’s notable that every pollster believes that Memphis or UNC is the best team in America, but nobody is voting for Kansas (also undefeated and looking great) at that spot. As for the rest of the poll, we’re pretty closely aligned with the rest of the bloggers with the exceptions of Vanderbilt (we think they’re much better than people are giving them credit for), Clemson (you’ve heard our tirades on the Tigers, but they’ll be outie next week anyway), Oklahoma (not sure why they’re rising faster than, say, Ohio St.), and West Virginia (not sold on them quite yet). We had Stanford (#21), Arizona (#23) and Notre Dame (#24) on our ballot instead.
The Curious Case of Vanderbilt. We understand Marquette, Pitt and Villanova all dropping from last week (hint: they all lost). But we wanted to figure out how an undefeated team actually fell a spot, as Vandy did (from #16 to #17) this week. As far as we can tell, APAIS.net is responsible for this strange occurrence. Slackers like us, they didn’t provide a ballot last week, but this week they ranked the ‘Dores #22, which aggregated their average total a little lower than last week. So send all your hate mail to those guys, Vandy fans. :-)
Variance. As we alluded to earlier this week in our post about the lack of parity this year, the top nine teams are tightly woven into their respective positions. Among the Top 10, only Georgetown creates some dissonance (ranked from #4 to, shockingly, STF has them unranked). Dayton and Clemson (as usual) are the other two teams that have widely variable positions this week.
Kenny George. Yeah, UNC won the game 93-81, Asheville kept it reasonable, and all the other stuff (Psycho-T: 23/9; Lawson: 17/5/7 assts)…
But all we really want to talk about is the sheer enormity that is Kenny George. This was the first time we’d actually seen him standing near other players, and to say that he dwarfed the rest of them is to insult the word itself. George absolutely miniaturized them. It was like some gentle giant had been released from his cave to mortify and terrorize the citizens of Far Far Away or Whoville. Look, for the college game, Tyler Hansbrough is a beast of a guy – 6′9, 250 lbs and cut like a Rodin sculpture – but he looked like a little snot-nosed kid when standing next to George (which isn’t to say that George could handle the Psychotic One – taking advantage of his superior quickness (a hint right there that George is um, rather, lumbering), Hansbrough had a nasty cram below right in George’s mug).
George is listed at 7′6, 360 lbs on the UNCA roster, but we’d like to take a look at the calibration of that scale. He looks more like four bills to us. The thing is, unlike some supersize-me players we’ve seen in the past (Shagari Alleyne and Escalade, er, Troy Jackson come to mind), this guy may actually have a little game. He’s contributing 13/9/5 in just over 22 mins per game (14/11 against Carolina), which is more than double his output from last year. Who knows – with a little more conditioning… he might just redefine the damn sport.
Other interesting games.
Tennessee 85, Ole Miss 83. Looks like Ole Miss is better than we thought. The Rebs were very close to winning this game, and UT has become a difficult place for opponents to win games. Does Cincy regret letting Andy Kennedy get away yet?
Charlotte 82, Clemson 72. Here we go! The annual Clemson collapse is now under way…
Arizona St. 64, Arizona 59 (OT). Hmm… ASU is now quietly 13-2 while Arizona is 10-5. Maybe Herb Sendek can coach a little bit after all?
Dayton 92, Rhode Island 83. The Flyers draw first blood in what will be an exciting and competitive A10 this year.
Mississippi St. 61, LSU 39. Clearly John Brady’s charges were partying all week with the football team. This was in Baton Rouge too.
Vandy & Memphis also remained unbeaten last night, so there are five remaining (+UNC, Kansas and Wazzu).
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