Rush The Court

So When Do Boise and Alabama Play? The interminable bowl season finally came to an end with the only game that mattered, as Texas’ Colt McCoy got knocked out of the BCS National faux-Championship Game and Alabama’s Nick Saban earned his second title as a member of a rival SEC school.  So we’re once again left with more than one unbeaten team in the college football season and we have no legitimate way of separating those teams other than using statistics and computer printouts, a tenuous proposition at best.  After all, Cal was a ten-point favorite versus UCLA last night.  That’s what all of the computer algorithms told us.  So they’re clearly the better team, right?  No reason to even play the game, right?  Let’s just declare Cal the winner based on their strength of schedule and power rating…  Get outta here with that nonsense.  Seriously.  Thankfully we’re moving on to basketball, where our championships are earned on the court.  (ed. note: we’re going to publish this picture every time it’s appropriate, which, given the BCS’s foibles year after year, will be annually).

Other Games of National Interest.  Well, sorta.  Slow night.  There was only one game involving any of the BCS conference teams, and they were both from the Big Ten.  Guess they knew that league wouldn’t be playing on the gridiron tonight.

• Michigan 64, Penn State 55.  The Wolverines got off to a horrid start in State College, shooting 0-12 from three and finding themselves down 31-16 at the half.  But they kept their poise and made a huge second-half run of 38-13 to close out the game and put John Beilein’s team at 2-1 in the Big Ten.  DeShawn Sims was huge, scoring 25 points and pulling six boards, but it was really Laval Lucas-Perry’s four second-half treys that helped spur the run.  With games against Northwestern and Indiana coming up at home, UM has a good shot to go to 4-1 before trips to Madison and West Lafayette later this month.
• Western Kentucky 67, South Alabama 64 (OT).  This was a key early-season game in the Sun Belt, and WKU got the leg up by taking this one in overtime tonight.  Steffphon Pettigrew (16/5) hit a layup with five seconds remaining to tie the game and send it to the extra period.  In the OT, which  only saw a total of seven points between the two teams, AJ Slaughter (18/5) hit the go-ahead three and WKU hung on.  USA will get another chance at the Hilltoppers in Bowling Green on February 18.
• Xavier 68, La Salle 62.  XU got a win in its A10 opener after nearly blowing a 20-point second half lead on the road tonight in Philadelphia.  Jordan Crawford had 22/6/4 assts to improve upon his 19 PPG average coming into the contest.  Of course, he’s also thirteenth in the nation in shot% at 35.4, which means he’s our candidate for Human Cannon Midwest.
• Oakland 67, Oral Roberts 64.  Oakland picked up a key Summit League win tonight on the road against its likely toughest competition in Tulsa behind Keith Benson’s 13/8/5 blks and Johnathan Jones’ 16/4 assts/3 stls.  Interesting that Jones was the nation’s leading assist man last season at 8.1 per game, but he’s only dropping 5.6 dimes so far this year.