I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will kick off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on twitter @IRenkoHoops.
On Wednesday night in Philadelphia, two teams found themselves on the flip sides of a great victory and a mournful defeat that may have dramatically altered the trajectory of their previously divergent seasons. Only they were playing 14 miles away from each other, in two different arenas.
Coming into the season, most expected Xavier and Temple to go toe-to-toe for the Atlantic 10 title. Sure, some teams like St. Louis and even St. Bonaventure were lurking. But the Musketeers were a Top 25 team, and Temple came close in both polls, while none of the other A-10 teams even garnered a vote. If there was a date to circle on your calendar, it was February 11, when Xavier would travel to Philly to face Temple in their only meeting this season.
For much of the fall of 2011, it looked like the two teams had taken divergent paths. Xavier got off to a fast start, climbing into the top 10 on the strength of impressive comeback wins at Vanderbilt and against Purdue at home. Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons were touted — in this space, among others — as the best two-man backcourt in the country. Holloway earned serious talk as a potential National Player of the Year. Temple, meanwhile, lost the services of starting center Micheal Eric for six weeks after a knee injury four games into the season. The undersized Owls went on to post disappointing losses against Bowling Green and Texas. As late as last week, they were lucky to scrape by Buffalo at home and at Delaware. They dropped from a top 20 Pomeroy rating to outside the top 40, and St. Louis passed them by in the A-10 pecking order.
As 2011 crept toward 2012, the momentum started to turn in southwest Ohio. Xavier scored another big win on the court against Cincinnati, but a massive loss off of it as a result of post-brawl suspensions and media scrutiny. They lost their next three games, including an embarassing overtime defeat to Hawaii after both Holloway and Lyons had returned from suspensions. They stopped the bleeding with a win over Southern Illinois, but followed that up with a New Year’s Eve loss to Gonzaga on their home floor.
Still, Xavier started A-10 play on January 4 with a clean slate. They headed to Philly, not to meet the Owls, but their crosstown rivals LaSalle, a team that had won eight of nine but against entirely middling competition. This was an opportunity for the Musketeers to put 2011 behind them — the good, the bad, and the ugly — and start off the year and conference play on the right foot. On the same night, in the same city, Temple kicked off the new year by hosting Duke. Yes, that Duke. A perennial championship contender, a program as elite as any in the country, a top five team this year, one so good that the game had to be played at an NBA arena rather than Temple’s on-campus venue. You’d be forgiven for expecting Duke to roll over the wounded Owls, who after all had just barely managed to beat Delaware (no disrespect to Monte Ross’ squad).
But the new year had new ideas. Temple outplayed Duke over 40 minutes, putting forth arguably its best offensive performance of the season against arguably the best defense they’ve faced all year. The Owls shot 56.4% from the floor. Five players reached double figures, led by junior Khalif Wyatt’s 22 points. Wyatt’s back-to-back three pointers with just under five minutes to go — which pushed Temple’s lead from three to nine — may have been Temple’s biggest shots of the year. It was an offensive performance strong enough to overcome the inability to contain the Plumlee brothers on the interior as Duke’s big men combined for 33 points on 15-24 shooting.
Across town, Xavier punctuated its post-brawl implosion with a ten-point loss to LaSalle. After the first 12 minutes, it wasn’t even close. LaSalle went on a 22-6 run to close out the first half, and that was all she wrote. Holloway scored 15 points, but 11 came from the free throw line, as he shot just 2-12 (0-6 from three-point range) from the floor. Worse, Holloway and Lyons combined for eight turnovers — one more than the entire LaSalle team.
Was January 4 a genuine inflection point, putting Temple back on a path towards a conference title? Perhaps, especially with Eric due back later this month. But they won’t be able to wait that long to start making their mark in conference play, with big games against Dayton and St. Louis looming this week. Xavier’s turning point came earlier, with the brawl itself, but it wasn’t until this past Wednesday that their failure to recover from its after-effects put a dent in its A-10 title hopes. We don’t know yet what their trajectories will be the the next time Temple and Xavier play in Philly on the same night — and on the same court. But it may be that this time around it’s the hometown team who is the conference favorite, while the visitors look to reclaim a once-promising season.
After our updated, Xavier-less top 15, more on the week that was and the week that will be.
Top 15
Looking Back: The Hangover
We look back on the bevy of top TO26 matchups that dotted our New Year’s Eve.
- Gonzaga 72, Xavier 65 — Although Xavier shut down Kevin Pangos, forcing him into 3-10 shooting (1-7 from 3-point range) and 5 turnovers, they struggled with Gonzaga’s skilled big men, Sam Dower and Elias Harris. Time and again, Dower and Harris stretched Xavier’s compact defense and hit them with jumpers or drives. Dower was especially impressive, scoring a season-high 20 points on 7-11 shooting. His freshman season was marked with periodic offensive outbursts like this, but he was unreliable and inconsistent. But after just one double-figure point total in his first seven games this year, Dower has posted five in his last seven. For Xavier, Tu Holloway had a fairly quiet 15 points, Mark Holloway took 16 shots to score 15 points (5-16, 1-7 from three-point range), and Dezmine Wells was a pedestrian 2-7 in his first game back from suspension. Xavier is now 0-2 at home since the Cincy brawl.
- Creighton 68, Wichita State 61 — The key to this result was Wichita State’s uncharacteristically poor shooting from behind the arc — 5-26 for a putrid 19.2%. Creighton doesn’t normally allow a lot of three-point attempts, but they consistently collapsed to the ball line whenever the Shockers fed the post or drove to the basket, leaving shooters good looks on the perimeter. The bottom line is that Wichita State didn’t make shots. On the other side of the court, although Doug McDermott was held to half his scoring average (12 points), the Bluejays’ supporting cast really stepped up. Greg Echenique had some key baskets in the first half to keep Creighton in the game. In the second half, it was Antoine Young, with some help from Grant Gibbs, who led Creighton to the win with confident drives to the basket. All three of those players scored in double figures, and Young finished with a game-high 19. One last note: The Shockers wasted a terrific lunchbucket performance from forward Carl Hall, who not only scored 17 points and pulled down 13 rebounds, but displayed the kind of toughness and grit that doesn’t always show up in the box score.
- Harvard 74, St. Joseph’s 69 — Harvard won this game at home with a 9-1 run in the final 3-plus minutes. Kyle Casey hit two key jumpers during that stretc, including a 3-pointer with 41 seconds left that effectively won the game. Casey — who, despite what you might read, is the Crimson’s best player — finished with a game-high 26 points. Overall, the two teams posted very similar lines, but the key was missed free throws by St. Joe’s. Carl Jones scored a team-high 22 points, but the 80-plus percent free throw shooter hurt his team by knocking down just four of his eight free throw attempts.
- New Mexico 64, St. Louis 60 — As we speculated last week, this game ended up being won by New Mexico at the free throw line. The Lobos like to get there, and the Bilikens like to put people there, and the result was New Mexico shooting a whopping 35 free throws — just four fewer than their total field goal attempts. Drew Gordon scored eight of his team-high 18 points from the charity stripe. The other key to the game was New Mexico’s clamping down on St. Louis’s usually outstanding three-point shooting. The Bilikens average over 40 percent from three-point range on the season, but shot just 3-18 at The Pit.
Looking Back: Inching Up
Three teams who have yet to crack our top 15 — but are getting there — posted big wins.
- Robert Morris 70, Ohio 67 — This was a statistically astounding result. Robert Morris committed a whopping 31 turnovers. Consequently, they took 21 fewer shots than Ohio. But they won! Ohio shot disastrously from the field, as their starting backcourt of D.J. Cooper and Walter Offutt combined for an ugly 6-32 night. Cooper was 3-17, including 2-12 from three point range. As a team the Bobcats were 3-26 from three-point range, including an 0-7 night from reserve T.J. Hall. Velton Jones paced the Colonials with 17 points and 6 assists.
- Georgia State 58, Drexel 44/ Georgia State 55, VCU 53 — Yes, the Panthers are for real. After being picked to finish 11th in the 12-team CAA and starting the season 0-3, the Panthers reeled off nine straight wins, but against mediocre competition. Then, this past week, they took out the preseason numbers one and three with what is now their trademark stifling defense. They held Drexel to 32% FG shooting and VCU to 27%.
- Oral Roberts 89, Oakland 80 / Oral Roberts 89, North Dakota State 80 — ORU has reinforced its position as the team to beat in the Summit League with identical 89-80 wins over two of its three biggest competitors. They’ll have a chance to make it 3-for-3 when they face South Dakota State this weekend. Though their defense has left something to be desired, the offense has been proficient, led by Dominique Morrison, who dropped 44 points in the two games this past week.
Looking Back: Yet Another Spin on the Valley’s Roulette Wheel
It was another wild week in the Missouri Valley Conference, the most unpredictable, and arguably exciting, conference in the country. Northern Iowa started their week by losing on their home floor to Evansville by 11 points, which dropped them to 0-2 in conference play. The Panthers promptly rebounded and spanked preseason co-favorites Indiana State by 17 on the Sycamores’ court on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, Wichita State rebounded from its home loss to Creighton to nip Evansville on the road 67-66. Although Evansville’s Colt Ryan scored 31 points (to follow his 29-point game against Northern Iowa), it wasn’t enough. For once, the Shockers won without much scoring balance, as this was the Garrett Stutz show all the way. The senior center scored 29 points on 12-14 shooting and added 10 rebounds, four assists, and three blocks. But wait, we’re not done with Wednesday yet. Missouri State, coming off of a big road win at Creighton last week, managed to lose at home to Illinois State, who were not even predicted to finish in the Valley’s top five, but now sit at 2-1 (10-4 overall) with wins over Northern Iowa and Missouri State.
So where do we stand three games into the Valley season? Six of the conference’s 10 teams are tied at the top of the standings with 2-1 records. And that doesn’t include two of the four preseason favorites, Indiana State and Northern Iowa, who sport 1-2 records.
Looking Forward: Face-off for First
Three fights to sit atop the early conference standings.
- Gonzaga at St. Mary’s (1/12, 11 PM) — Time to rekindle what has become one of the country’s best rivalry games. I always look forward to those late Thursday nights in winter when these two teams square off in a gym that seems like the size of your backyard. This edition will take place at the 3,500 seat McKeon Pavilion. You can be sure that what McKeon may lack in seating capacity, it will more than make up for in volume. After beating the Zags at home three out of four times from 2005 to 2008, St. Mary’s has lost three straight to the Zags at home.
- Georgia State at George Mason (1/7, 7 PM) — The preseason poll expected this to be a game between the CAA’s second best team and its second worst team. Instead, it’s a battle for first between two conference undefeateds. Georgia State has a chance to cap an incredible week by beating the CAA’s preseason top three in a span of six days. It won’t be easy, as the Patriots haven’t lost a conference home game since the 2009-10 season. But will they be able to solve Georgia State’s suffocating defense?
- Southern Mississippi at Memphis (1/11, 7 PM) — Southern Miss is 14-2 and hasn’t lost since an overtime defeat to Murray State in November. They’ll have a chance to find out just how good they are with a trip to Memphis next week. If they’re to have a chance against a suddenly revitalized Memphis squad, the Golden Eagles will have to crash the offensive glass as they’ve done all year and/or get to the free throw line. And they need to find a way to defend without fouling. Odds aren’t great for an upset, but if Larry Eustachy and his boys can pull it off, the NCAA Tournament could be in sight for the first time in 20 years.
Looking Forward: Double Trouble
Three conference contenders will face tough back-to-back tests.
- Temple vs. Dayton (1/7, 12 PM) / Temple at St. Louis (1/11, 9 PM) — The Owls won’t have much time to revel in their upset win over Duke, as they bear down on two big matchups against conference contenders.
- Utah State vs. Nevada (9:05 PM) / Utah State at New Mexico State (9:05 PM) — Utah State has dominated the WAC for the past three years, but this may be the season that ends their run at the top. Nevada and New Mexico State are best-positioned to knock the Aggies from their pedestal.
- Buffalo vs. Kent State (1/7, 7 PM) / Buffalo vs. Akron (1/11, 7 PM) — Buffalo is a legitimate contender in the MAC, but we’ll find out how legitimate soon enough, as they face off against two Ohio teams who should be in the mix for a conference crown.
Looking Forward: The Missouri Valley Conference
I give up. Picking just one or two games from The Valley’s slate to highlight seems like a fool’s errand given the conference’s volatility. This week, in the three most notable games, Missouri State visits Indiana State (1/7), Northern Iowa travels to Creighton (1/10), and Wichita State hosts Illinois State. But don’t sleep on Evansville, which travels to Illinois State (1/7) and Indiana State (1/10). Oh, and then there’s the in-state battle between Drake and Northern Iowa (1/7). Sigh. Maybe I just start appending the full league schedule.