Boom Goes the Dynamite: 02.08.09 Edition
Posted by nvr1983 on February 8th, 2009
We’re back today with another edition of BGTD. Today’s edition won’t be a long as yesterday’s BGTD because today’s games aren’t nearly as good as yesterday, but there are several worth watching. For a quick run-down of the games we’ll be focusing in on today, check out today’s Set Your Tivos. As always, you’re invited to join in on the comment section to tell me if something interesting is happen elsewhere or to correct my mistakes.
12:15 PM: Not much is going on yet. Just a couple of games featuring teams near the bottom of the Big East and MAAC. In the Big East contest, Seton Hall leads Rutgers by 2 with 11:49 left in the first half. Meanwhile, in the MAAC, Canisius is beating St. Peter’s 31-19 with 4:02 left in the first half. And that’s the last time you will hear any of those programs mentioned today (and for probably quite a while) unless something crazy happens (like a brother walking out on the court). I’ll be back around 1 PM when the real games start.
1:00 PM: Ok. We finally have some decent games getting underway pretty soon. Purdue at Illinois on CBS and Alabama at LSU on ESPN360. We’ll be following these games on BGTD.
1:20 PM: Pretty entertaining start with Illinois up 11-7 on Purdue with 15:41 left in the first half. It looks like we might have an entertaining Big Ten game today.
1:30 PM: Illinois is holding onto a 6-point lead with less 9:53 left. Matt Painter needs E’Twaun Moore to step it up (0 points so far) if he wants to steal one on the road. In other news, the CBS guys just made a joke about Jeffrey Jordan getting a scholarship.
1:45 PM: Illinois has opened up a 10-point lead with 4 minutes left. If the Boilermakers aren’t careful, they could get run out of the gym by halftime. In the SEC, LSU has a 13-point lead on Alabama with less than 4 minutes left in the half.
1:55 PM: Nice little run by Purdue to cut it to 3, but Demetri McCamey just converted a 3-point play to slow some of their momentum. Purdue responds with a basket to make it a 4-point game at half. Moore has just 2 points at half. Purdue has to be happy to go into half only down by 4 with Moore’s low output.
2:00 PM: Louisville and St. John’s are playing a close game midway through the first half. LSU is up by a dozen at half. We’ll be back in a bit when something interesting happens. I’ll probably be following the Purdue-Illinois game, but will be keeping an eye on the Louisville game.
2:05 PM: Seth Davis says Alabama is willing to pay north of $2 million per year for a head coach. He calls it “Tubby money”. The two guys he mentioned were Jeff Capel and Mike Davis.
2:15 PM: They just played “American Boy” by Estelle. I know it’s a promo/lead-in to a Grammy Awards mention, but couldn’t they have picked something a little better for a men’s college basketball game?
2:20 PM: Illinois has opened up a 9-point lead as Purdue calls a timeout. The Boilermakers have been lucky to stay in this game without Moore’s scoring and Robbie Hummel‘s continued absence.
2:30 PM: Purdue has cut it back to 4, but has not been able to take the lead as Illinois has led the entire way. Thanks to Scott for pointing out the awful Louisville-St. John’s game, which St. John’s leads 22-19. I’ll keep an eye on the 2nd half on ESPN360.com.
2:45 PM: Quick run-down of the scores. Illinois is up 51-40 on Purdue with less than 9 minutes left in the game. Charlotte is up 55-49 on Dayton with 7:56 left (potential upset there). NC State is up by 14 at half on Virginia Tech. Louisville is down by 1 at St. John’s early in the 2nd half. LSU is crushing Alabama.
We’ll be following the Illinois-Purdue, Charlotte-Dayton, and Louisville-St. John’s game for now.
2:55 PM: It looks like we might have 2 upsets here. Charlotte (7-14) is up by 13 with less than 5 minutes left against Dayton (21-2). St. John’s (12-10) is up 30-28 against #7 Louisville (17-4) with 14:35 left.
Update courtesy of Scott: Samardo Samuels is in the hospital after getting some teeth knocked out. I’m assuming that means we won’t be seeing Samuels again today.
3:00 PM: Illinois has opened up a 21-point lead with 4 minutes left (read: it’s over). I’m going to turn my attention to Louisville-St. John’s on ESPN360 and Charlotte-Dayton on GameCast the rest of the way.
3:05 PM: Illinois wins 66-48. Great job by Chester Frazier shutting down Moore today. I think that was the key to the game (6 points, which is 8 below his season average).
3:10 PM: Louisville is up by 4 with 7:39 left. Charlotte just knocked off Dayton, 79-66. That’s probably the biggest upset of weekend. Creighton is up by 1 at Northern Iowa at half.
3:25 PM: Louisville is 47-41 with 2:09 left and has called a timeout. The Cardinals will probably escape with a win here, but this isn’t exactly the statement game that Rick Pitino wanted after they were crushed by UConn.
3:30 PM: ESPN360 is acting up on me so I’m going by GameCast if you’re wondering why the coverage has been spotty. It’s a 6-point game with 1:11 left. Louisville ball. St. John’s is probably going to make this a FT contest now.
3:35 PM: And Louisville escapes with a 60-47. Hopefully the voters watched this game to see how poorly Louisville played because it was much closer than the final score indicates.
3:40 PM: Close game at Virginia Tech where NC State leads 74-70 with 1:07 left.
3:45 PM: Dennis Horner, an 86% FT shooter, just missed 2 at the line. Looks like someone got a little tight.
3:50 PM: A.D. Vassallo just hit a jumper on Courtney Fells to tie it at 76 with 17.9 seconds left. It looks like we’re going to OT.
4:00 PM: In other news, Creighton upset Northern Iowa. I’d like to point out that this is the 2nd upset of a #1 team in the conference at home that I told you to watch for. The other one was the College of Charleston against Davidson. Ok, I’m done bragging. Virginia Tech is up by 5 with 1:09 left in OT. This would be a nice win for Seth Greenberg.
4:05 PM: “And that’s the money shot!” -The color guy for the NC State-Virginia Tech game after Malcolm Delaney hit a long jumper. Someone needs to clear that up for him next time unless he plans on working games for Comcast in Arizona. If anybody has video of that call, send it in to us.
4:10 PM: Virginia Tech hangs on for the win 91-87. I’m going to take a little break now since we have a while until the games get interesting. Be back in a bit.
5:00 PM: Wake Forest trails Boston College by 1 at half. Jeff Teague is having a huge game, but nobody else on Wake Forest has come to play today. A Wake loss would probably drop them to a 4 seed right now.
5:45 PM: Wake has opened up a 81-67 lead with 7:30 left as Al-Farouq Aminu has exploded for 17 in the second half (7-for-7 from the field).
5:50 PM: James Johnson just had a ridiculous follow-up dunk waived off for interference. Rakim Sanders just went out with what looks like a wrist injury.
6:00 PM: Wake wins 93-76. Stanford is up 25-21 at home against Washington with 7:24 left in the first half. I’ll be handing it off to rtmsf here. He’ll take you into the night again.
6:30 PM: Not a lot of hoops action left today, but Stanford-Washington is tight at halftime with UW up 1. Just a couple of comments from games today… Wake still doesn’t look “right” to us, but they looked better in the second half. Huge comeback win for Va Tech – they couldn’t afford a home loss to NC State… And Louisville looked terrible in a road win at St. John’s. The Cards should be favored in their last eight games, but we really don’t think they come out of it better than 6-2.
6:42 PM: Can’t wait for the second half of the FSN doubleheader – 3-5 Maryland at 1-7 Georgia Tech. You’ll forgive us if we flake on that one. Washington just went on a mini-run to go up 8 pts, but we saw them do this at Cal on Thursday night, so we’re not sold yet.
6:52 PM: This Isaiah Thomas kid at UW is an interesting player. He’s going to get the inevitable comparisons to former Husky Nate Robinson due to his size (5’9), but he’s not nearly as athletic yet he has a little better repertoire of an offensive game.
7:05 PM: UW is on a 41-18 run since the mid-first half. It’s becoming clearer to us how the Pac-10 stacks up. UCLA on top, UW/ASU are second – one for offense, one for defense, Cal is 4th, and everybody else fighting for fifth. USC is the wildcard.
7:08 PM: Stanford made a little bit of a run, but Thomas answered with a double-clutch floater. He just has a knack for making shots like that, as most scorers do. The key to beating UW will be to get in their heads defensively, much as Cal did the other night. Stanford is an ok team, but they have the look of an NIT squad this year.
7:15 PM: The Cardinal is creeping back into this, based on several bad Washington turnovers. Oh MY – Josh Owens just took off from somewhere in the East Bay to throw that one down!!!
7:22 PM: Stanford has no business winning this game, yet they’re right there, only down 3, with two minutes to go. Landry Fields‘ 22/10 has inspired the comeback, but once again Isaiah Thomas makes a ridiculous shot to push it back to two possessions.
7:26 PM: Weird stat of the year. Somehow Stanford had made it through Feb. 8th and twenty games without having anyone foul out in a game, until Jeremy Green just picked up his fifth a few seconds ago.
7:29 PM: Hard to believe Washington hadn’t won at Maples since 1993 – fifteen consecutive losses coming into today. Ok, who’s excited for Maryland-Ga Tech?!?! Not us either.
9:14 PM: We really don’t have a lot to say about this Maryland-Ga Tech game other than both teams should be better than they are. We’ll stay with it in case something amazing happens, but otherwise, don’t expect much else.
9:45 PM: Ok, pretty entertaining finish, as Iman Shumpert wasn’t able to pull off the last second-shot to win the game. If the Terps are going to make a postseason run (now 3-5 in the ACC), it starts tonight. They play Duke, UNC and Wake all at home in the next few weeks.
9:47 PM: That’s it for another college hoops weekend of BGTD. We’ll be back a little later with a weekend wrapup.
i don’t know if you have been watching the louisville-st john’s game, but wow it has been awful. this game is the reason the 3 pt percentage is going to be down this year from last year.
samardo samuels went to the hospital at half time because he got teeth knocked out in the first half
I’m a Seton Hall fan and will be the first to admit we haven’t played well and haven’t met expectations this year. However, can you at least give us a little respect?
1) We are not “near the bottom of the Big East” and were not entering the game. While a 3-6 BE record entering the game is certainly nothing to brag about, we were in 11th place in the 16 team league. That’s not “near the bottom of the Big East.” Near the bottom would be 13th and lower.
2) After the game we are now 4-6 and in 10th place, which is basically middle of the pack. We are ahead of vaunted “powers” such as Georgetown and Notre Dame. 13-9 (4-6) is respectable in the Big East this year, especially if you consider the results of our games. While the 4 wins aren’t great, they are 4 wins.
To lump us in with the dregs of the Big East (DePaul, Rutgers, USF, St. John’s) is pretty disrespectful to an average to decent team.
Brian–
Seton Hall is not as bad as DePaul or Rutgers, but I’d have a hard time saying they are that far above St. John’s and USF.
I’m not going to argue your record right now because that is a pointless argument since they didn’t have that record at the time I made the argument. So we’ll just go with the 3-6 record and 11th in a 16-team league.
At 3-6 they were 1/2 a game ahead of Notre Dame, USF, and St. John’s who were all tied for 12th (through 14th place) in the Big East. I’m not sure where you are getting this arbitrary cut-off as 13th (or the bottom quarter) of the conference being “near the bottom”, but I would consider that position pretty far down in the conference.
I would agree that Georgetown and Notre Dame have been awful this year. You can clearly see that from my comments about them in the past few weeks.
As for the Pirates conference record, I think it’s useful to see that all of their wins except for a home win against a Hoya team that is falling apart (seriously NJIT should schedule them now) have been against the two worst teams in the conference. I understand that some team’s get an easy conference schedule when the conference schedule’s are unbalanced, but Seton Hall won the lottery this year with their conference schedule this year. This four-game stretch against Rutgers twice, DePaul, and St. John’s is probably easier than what some of the mid-majors are going through right now.
Anyways, congrats on the win today.
I beg to differ. USF is under .500 overall and in league play and we just dominated St. John’s the other night. We’re well ahead of those teams.
I can’t believe this because I hate Bobby Gonzalez and want him fired, but we’re not a terrible team. We did beat USC and Va Tech in non-conf play as well.
Some are saying next year we’ll be really good with Jeff Robinson, Keon Lawrence, and Herb Pope coming in (Transfer U, pathetic isn’t it?) but I think those fans are drinking the kool-aid. No doubt those 3 are pretty good players and they’ll fit in nicely with Mitchell, Hazell (a rising star in the BE), and Harvey, but the same fundamental problems (lack of defense, boxing out/rebounding, etc) will continue to linger as long as Gonzalez is the coach. I am not ready to pencil in a NCAA bid next year like most of our (sometimes delusional) fans are. What do you think about next year for us?