- Troy Nunes is an Absolute Magician: Here’s a good brief context piece on where Syracuse is this season. The national media has started paying attention to college basketball again, and not surprisingly, as one of the best teams in the country, Syracuse has been getting its fair share of love. So has Tyler Ennis. But we’re just now getting to the point in the season where people start talking about undefeated seasons. Here’s where I (mostly) side with Sean Keeley: Syracuse isn’t going undefeated. Trips to Pittsburgh, Duke, Virginia and Florida State all but guarantee that. In fact, four of the team’s last five games are on the road. My only disagreement is that I think Wichita State has a reasonably good chance to finish the regular season undefeated. Not a great chance, but not zero either. Keeley nails everything else.
- Charleston Post and Courier: Don’t look now but Clemson is 4-1 in conference play. Yep, the same Clemson we picked eighth and the conference media picked –gulp, 14th — is tied for second in the loss column (along with Pittsburgh and Virginia). That said, it’s about to get real for the Tigers. They play five of their next six games on the road, including trips to Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Florida State and Syracuse. Yeesh. The most winnable game there looks like — double gulp — at North Carolina? Clemson has to find a way to keep its collective head over the next couple of weeks, or our 7-9 finish with a trip to the NIT prediction might not look too far off.
- Tallahassee Democrat: Florida State’s Boris Bojanovsky and Michael Ojo are totally different players this season, but Tony Bennett did a good job shutting the pair down by doubling them every time they got the ball in the post. I’m not sure how long the tactic will be effective though because both players measure over seven feet. So long as they keep their heads about them when doubled, they should be able to pass out to an open player. But if this proves an effective strategy for other teams (which admittedly won’t have double-teams as readily accessible as Bennett’s pack-line), it could spell trouble for the Seminoles.
- Real GM: Awesome stuff from Dan Hanner, who took a look at how teams have fared with and without different players in the lineup. From the ACC, he has stats for Notre Dame, Maryland, North Carolina, NC State and Georgia Tech. Most surprising was Jordan Vandenberg‘s defensive impact: Without him in the lineup NC State’s defense is 11.1 points worse per 100 possessions. That’s a huge difference. By comparison, Georgia Tech is only 2.1 points per 100 possessions worse on defense without Robert Carter, and Notre Dame is 3.7 points per 100 possessions worse without Jerian Grant. The sample size for a lot of this is pretty low, but still great to see the trends.
- Sports Illustrated: Seth Davis spends a good amount of time discussing Bruce Pearl to kick off his weekly “Hoop Thoughts” column. He notes several things of interest: (1) Pearl is a Boston College alumnus; (2) Pearl “has received several serious inquiries from Division I schools to be a head coach, but as he put it, ‘the opportunities were not at the level that I would be interested in.'” The first we already knew, but it is worth a reminder that Boston College sits at 5-13 on the year. The second point is interesting because Pearl’s show-cause doesn’t expire until August this year. That makes me think that the offers were from low-major schools hoping to hit a home run. And while the Eagles probably wouldn’t pay Pearl quite what Tennessee did (partially because his market value dropped with the NCAA business), that’s somewhere where “at the level” makes more sense. Food for thought.