Tonight’s Lede. Whether you’re a student-athlete feeling the stress of exams or a fan of those players ready to pull your eyelids out with no excitement on the tube this week, the worst is nearly over. On Saturday we’ll have a full slate on the schedule and next week there will be a lot more action around the country in a mad rush before the Christmas holiday weekend. Let’s jump into what little there was going on tonight, secure in the thought that the worst is indeed over…

Dunkdafied. Oregon State’s Jared Cunningham didn’t have the best shooting night, but one of his two buckets on the night more than made up for it…

Tonight’s Quick Hits...

• Oregon State’s 8-2 Start. Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how down certain programs have been for so long, but Oregon State is one of those schools. With tonight’s easy win over Howard, the Beavers moved to 8-2 on the season. That record, a good but not exceptional mark for mid-December, represents the best start to a season in Corvallis since the 1984-85 season. That was last season before the shot clock, folks.
• Murray State’s Frontcourt. The Racers’ front line of Ivan Aska and Ed Daniel combined for 32/8/3 assts/2 blks while shooting a blistering 15-17 from the field, as Murray won its first game ever at home as a ranked team over Lipscomb. Steve Prohm’s team is now 11-0 and one of only nine remaining unbeaten teams in America. As we’ve noted here before, Murray could ride this unblemished streak for quite some time with a really soft schedule the rest of the way.

… and Misses.

• 33 Points. 66-33 reads like a girl’s high school basketball game final, but Savannah State shouldn’t feel too terrible about dropping an LP tonight. In Wisconsin’s 12 games this season, they’ve already held four teams to 33 points or fewer. Consider this: SSU came into Madison averaging 16 three-point attempts per game — against a Badger defense that completely confounded them, they couldn’t even find the shots, much less make them. Horace Broadnax’s team was a measly 0-3 from behind the arc. In the KenPom statistical era that dates back to 2003, Wisconsin’s current 80.7 adjusted defensive efficiency metric blows every other year’s best out of the water. Bo Ryan’s team very well could win 30 games on the defensive end alone.

Thursday’s All-Americans.

• NPOY – John Shurna, Northwestern. The Wildcat forward had a great night with 20/6/5 assts/2 stls/3 blks in an easy Northwestern win over Texas Southern.
• Angus Brandt, Oregon State. The big junior forward had 21/3 on 9-11 shooting in Oregon State’s convincing win over Howard.
  
• Andre Jones, Winthrop. Jones went for 26/4/2 assts on 8-13 shooting in a nice performance as part of an Eagles win over Jacksonville.
• Zeke Marshall, Akron. The big 7-footer dominated the inside against Arkansas-Pine Bluff tonight, dropping 21/6/7 blks in a blowout win for the Zips.
• Michael Dixon, Missouri. Frank Haith’s first guard off the bench came strong with 18/4 assts/3 stls tonight on 5-7 shooting in a blowout win tonight over Kennesaw State.

Tweet of the Night. Um, wow. That’s 2.991 years for those of you counting at home.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2011 at 4:01 am by rtmsf and is filed under after the buzzer, Regular Features. Tagged: Andre Jones, Angus Brandt, Jared Cunningham, joe lunardi, john shurna, Michael Dixon, murray st, oregon st, savannah st, wisconsin, zeke marshall. 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.