1. It’s Groundhog Day 2010, and just for a little perspective, let’s look back one year ago.  On February 2, 2009, the nation’s #1 team in the AP poll was UConn (ok), #2 was Oklahoma (alright), #3 was UNC (definitely ok), and #4 was Duke (um, no).  The other two Final Four teams besides the Huskies and Heels — Michigan State and Villanova — were #13 and #17, respectively.  Look at a few of the other names in the top ten… #7 Wake Forest, #8 Marquette, #10 Clemson.  There’s a lot of season left, folks.
2. We always love this… when conference officials admit to a bad call or calls that impact whether a team wins a game by stating there were “procedural and communications errors” without giving specifics as to what those were (as Big East officials did after the Louisville-West Virginia game).  Maybe they should just start going back and disallowing baskets based on the replay, similar to how they vacate wins for using an ineligible player?
3. Jameson Fleming at the Bleacher Report recently interviewed ESPN analyst Doug Gottlieb about his somewhat abrasive honest style of analysis, which endears him to few fans other than lonely bloggers who appreciate hearing something beyond Team X is “getting it done” and Player Y has the “total package.”
4. A lot of people are understandably focusing on the small rift that seemed to manifest over the weekend between John Wall and his coach, John Calipari, but the underlying truth of the matter is that Wall’s play has fallen off considerably in 2010.  The question we have is not whether there’s some kind of problem between player and coach, but whether Wall has the ability to bounce back for the last 6-8 weeks of the season.
5. We hope to have an analysis of these up later today, but the Bracketbuster matchups were announced last night, and the obvious choice for the best game on the docket is Siena visiting Butler in Hinkle Fieldhouse.  Some other games of major interest in our book are: 1) Old Dominion @ Northern Iowa; 2) Charleston @ George Mason; and 3) Wichita State @ Utah State.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 2:54 am by rtmsf and is filed under morning 5, Regular Features. Tagged: big east, bracketbusters, doug gottlieb, john calipari, john wall, kentucky, louisville, west virginia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.