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…