Rush The Court

The Obama Curse.  South Carolina 68, #1 Kentucky 62.  First the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid, next Martha Coakley’s Senate race, now Kentucky’s short-lived reign at #1.  Just hours after President Obama had telephoned the Wildcat team to congratulate them on reaching the top ranking and raising over a million bucks in their Hoops for Haiti telethon, UK got lit up by South Carolina’s Devan Downey in Columbia to give the Gamecocks their first-ever win over a #1-ranked team.   Much like the president over the course of the last year, John Calipari and his team tonight learned the hard way that it’s considerably tougher playing the game with a giant blue target on your back.  Now, about this Downey kid.  Last weekend he was spectacular in a shoulda-been-win at Florida.  His one-on-five dribble drive to get through the entire Gator defense and make a running bank shot to give his team the lead was legendary.  Tonight he had three of those.  Or at least it seemed like he did.  What we do know for a fact was that there was nobody on the Kentucky defense who could stay in front of the guy (can anyone in America?), as he sliced, diced, and spiced his way through Wildcat defenders for 30/5/3 assts like Heidi Montag’s plastic surgeon with a scalpel in his hand.  He didn’t shoot well (9-29 FG), especially in the first half, but when it counted, it was Downey who appeared to be the best player on the floor (real estate shared tonight by at least three lottery picks).  UK’s superstar guard John Wall did his best to bring the Cats back late in the game, as Downey and he went mano a mano, but his 19/4 was too little, too late, and the result is that there will be another new #1 team next week.  So what can we take from this loss by Kentucky?  Well, we wrote last week that there was a large disconnect between Kentucky as top team in the human polls and Kentucky as a top 10-15 team in the computer numbers.  But the two areas that concerned us — three-point defense and forcing turnovers — weren’t the root cause of tonight’s loss.  The defense was good enough (.941 PPP holding SC to 34% from the field and 25% from three), but it was the Cats’ second-worst offensive performance of the year that made this happen.  The stat ESPN kept quoting was that Kentucky’s freshmen were scoring all of the second-half points, but what it really should have said is that DeMarcus Cousins (a dominant 27/12/3 blks) and John Wall were putting in the work.  Fellow freshman Eric Bledsoe (4/5 assts) is a helluva player in his own right, and he had the only other two second-half points, while UK’s junior all-american, Patrick Patterson, was completely forgotten the entire game (five points on four shots).  When Calipari’s offense is clicking, Kentucky puts four or more players into double-figures; tonight it was only two.  If Kentucky has aspirations to reach the top spot again this season (and we think they do), the key to making that happen will be impressing upon the youngsters to get more touches to one of the most versatile and efficient players in America, Patterson.  When all three of he, Wall and Cousins are clicking, few teams have the ability to match that kind of firepower.  Final note: beautiful, well-executed RTC by the Gamecock students — security can put up all the yellow tape they want, but RTCs on nights like tonight can’t be suppressed (start at the 1:20 mark).

Call 1-866-rtc-wins For Our Tip Hotline.  And there are no unbeatens left.  Just a quick aside, but three weeks ago we posted an article examining when we thought were the most likely games the four remaining unbeatens would lose.  3-1 ain’t bad.  The lone miss we had was Kansas’ stumble at Tennessee a couple of weekends ago, and we’re ok with that.

Battle of the Great Lake State.  Michigan State 57, Michigan 56.  Everyone knows how these are two teams heading in opposite directions, but come on.  If you didn’t expect something special, here, then you haven’t watched much college basketball in your life.  Forget conference rivalry, forget in-state rivalry…this is a rivalry that often splits households for a night and sometimes longer.  Sure, Michigan has been a disappointment, but the prevailing thought is that the Michigan team that was ranked in the preseason is still in there somewhere, but just can’t get out for some reason.  You knew you’d see something of it tonight, just because of the opponent.  The result — a game in which neither side ever led by more than seven, the outcome of which was decided by two shots within the last 3.5 seconds.  Raymar Morgan turned in another excellent game for the Spartans, posting 20/8 on an incredible 8-9 shooting night.  But it was Kalin Lucas that provided the late-game heroics.  His side down one with about six seconds left, he took a pass from the point, moved to his left, put down a dribble toward the right elbow and went up with five seconds remaining…and released a shot that, if you watch it in super-slow motion, you can actually see the confidence dripping from it from the moment it leaves his hand.  Michigan had a chance for the game-winner with 1.5 seconds left, but, to be sure, it’s really something that Michigan even got the shot that they got.  Stu Douglass in-bounded the ball from the right side near the hash mark and hurled a long, high pass to DeShawn Sims on the opposite block.  He caught it and released it in the air as an alley-oop.  The pass was a difficult one but had to be good to even land in Sims’ hands.  It was a little behind Sims, who was moving to his left as he tried to put it off glass for the winner…and it just rolled out.  On a night where the Wolverines turn the ball over only four times, Michigan State plays ten players; five of them scored, all but one of them in double-figures.  Do they have too much talent or too little?  Michigan was led, as usual, by Sims (19/5) and Manny Harris (16/4/5/5 stls), the latter coming off the bench after his recent suspension.  They now find themselves at 10-10 with ten games left, needing to win most of those and pair that with a nice Big Ten Tournament run to stay in the NCAA Tournament conversation.

Other Games of National Interest.

• #9 West Virginia 62, DePaul 46. The Blue Demons proved to be the tonic that WVU needed to get over the recent first-half blues they’ve suffered.  The Mountaineers led 37-28 at the half and quickly extended that lead to 45-30 just after the break.  The closest it ever got after that was 11.  WVU had four starters with 14 points each — Da’Sean Butler, Wellington Smith, Devin Ebanks, and Darryl Bryant.  Not surprising, with the ‘Neers’ bench only playing 15% of the possible minutes.
• #13 Kansas State 76, Baylor 74.  But for the #1 losing and Kalin Lucas’ heroics, this would have been the top game tonight.  A back-and-forth battle between two ranked teams in Waco is a rarity (as in, never), but it was visiting Jacob Pullen (25/4 on 6-7 3FGs) who completely outplayed his high-scoring Big 12 counterpart LaceDarius Dunn (9/5 stls on 3-13 FGs) tonight as K-State came out of its post-Texas hangover and won a tough roadie.  This win will be a major piece of the Wildcats’ run at a top-four seed and bye in the Big 12 Tourney, as they’ve already played two of their toughest three conference road games (1-1).
• Boston College 75, #21 Clemson 69.  Clemson has started its annual slide down the ACC standings a little early this year.  Getting themselves down nineteen just before halftime showed once again just how difficult is has become for the Tigers to score points in the halfcourt.  Trevor Booker (19/8) was one of only two players in double-figures for Clemson, who has now dropped three in a row after having started 3-1 in the ACC.  Four of the next five at home will make or break their season.  As for BC, they’ve now proven that they can beat another ACC team other than Miami (FL), but we’re still not sold on the Eagles just yet.
• #25 UAB 65, Tulsa 55.  The Blazers are currently the kings of CUSA after winning the battle of conference unbeatens in Birmingham.  They squandered a 16-point halftime lead in doing it, but a run of thirteen straight second half free throws and a big game from Elijah Millsap (19/12/4) helped UAB take down the team projected as the CUSA champion this year.  Unfortunately for the Golden Hurricane, it’s their only meeting this season.
• Maryland 81, Miami (FL) 59.  Is it safe to now say that Maryland has officially turned the corner from the team that lost three early games and a home date versus William & Mary?  Greivis Vasquez had 16/9 assts in another well-balanced performance from the Terps, with seven players having 8+ points tonight.  Gary Williams’ team moved to 4-1 and sole possession of first place in the ACC with this dominant win, and even though the Ws are by virtue of a light schedule, the Terps have left no doubt in any of them.
• UNC 77, NC State 63.  Roy Williams successfully avoided a devastating four-game losing streak that would have put his Heels into a 1-4 hole in the ACC tonight, using a 22-4 run in the mid-second half after it had appeared that NC State was going to blow the doors off the place in much the same way the Wolfpack did to Duke last week.  The UNC defense keyed in everyone but Tracy Smith (20/4) and Javy Gonzalez (19/4) to ensure that the unthinkable wouldn’t happen again.  It was a much-needed win for Carolina, whose next four games (Virginia, @ Va Tech, @ Maryland, Duke) are collectively no walk in the park in terms of the ACC race.
• Rhode Island 65, Dayton 64.  Rhode Island, now 16-3 (4-2), is looking more like a possible NCAA Tournament team than Dayton (14-6, 3-3), who enjoyed some early-season time in the Top 25. The Flyers were up 33-24 at halftime but that lead was all but erased when Rhode Island stung Dayton early in the second half with an 11-2 run that lasted all of a minute and 19 seconds.  Neither team led by more than five after that, and URI — led by Delroy James’ 22 points and Keith Cothran’s 17/7 — got a game-winning three from Marquis Jones with five seconds left to steal an important A-10 win on the road.
• Minnesota 65, Northwestern 61.  Both of these teams needed this game in Minneapolis tonight, but Northwestern probably needed it a little more with a trip to East Lansing looming over the weekend.  John Shurna did his best to give his Wildcats a chance to pull the upset with 19/7 including a strong second half performance that allowed NW to take the lead with nearly five minutes remaining.  But Minnesota sharpshooter Blake Hoffarber (20/7/4 assts) got open to hit one of his five threes and the Gophers hung on down the stretch to get the key win.