The Other 26: Week 12

Posted by IRenko on February 18th, 2012

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.

The mid-major hoops feast that is Bracketbuster weekend has arrived. It kicked off Friday night with VCU defeating Northern Iowa and Loyola Marymount following up their upset of St. Mary’s with a win over Horizon League leader Valparaiso. We previewed all of the televised Bracketbuster matchups when they were released, so we won’t rehash all the here. But we do regret that that the two biggest games on the schedule — Murray State v. St. Mary’s and Creighton v. Long Beach State — have lost a bit of their luster.  The Racers saw their undefeated run end in less-than-gallant fashion, with a loss at home to Tennessee State, while the Gaels have dropped 2 of their last 3 games by a combined 29 points. Meanwhile, Creighton’s recent three-game skid, punctuated by a huge loss to Wichita State, has taken some of the sheen off of their otherwise stellar season. Still, these are all teams likely headed for the Big Dance, and today’s big games will give them a chance to re-ignite their season and build some momentum as they head towards March.

After the updated top 15, we recap five big games from the week that was, including a dramatic buzzer-beater.  We also take a look at four tumultuous conference races and the two big non-Bracketbuster games to keep an eye on this week.

Looking Back:  Five Key Results
  • George Mason 62, VCU 61 — This was a big game between two of the CAA’s three conference co-leaders, and it didn’t disappoint. Sherrod Wright won the game on a dramatic three-point buzzer beater.  (See it for yourself, many times over, below.)  The broader keys to Mason’s win were the two things that have sustained them all year — defense and forward Ryan Pearson.  The Patriots held VCU to under 40% FG shooting, and Pearson led the team with 24 points and 11 rebounds.

  • Loyola Marymount 75, St. Mary’s 60 — Down 35-34 early in the second half, LMU went on a 13-2 run and never looked back, stunning the first-place Gaels with a 15-point defeat on their home floor.  How did LMU pull off the upset?  First, they managed to get to the line 27 times against a team that doesn’t usually give their opponent that many free throw attempts.  Second, they contained St. Mary’s starting backcourt, holding Matthew Dellavedova, Jorden Page, and Stephen Holt to a combined 5-19 shooting, including a miserable 0-9 from three-point range. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Other 26: Week 11

Posted by IRenko on February 11th, 2012

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.

It was a brutal week for the TO26 top 15, as the top four teams lost five games combined.  Read on to see how that shuffled the rankings.  After the revised top 15, we look at the top 10 results of the past week, sorting through both the headline-grabbing upsets and the big games that may have slipped past your radar.  Then we preview the top 10 games of the coming week, which includes a bounty of top matchups this Saturday and several small conference teams putting their first-place records on the line against their stiffest competition.

Top 10 Results of the Past Week

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The Other 26: Week Ten

Posted by IRenko on February 4th, 2012


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.

Given this past week’s special Bracketbuster edition, this week’s regular column will be a bit shorter than usual.  We’ll hit the highlights of what you should be watching for this week right after the updated Top 15.

Looking Forward:  What to Watch

  • Xavier at Memphis (2/4, 1 PM) — What looked like a premier non-conference matchup in November has lost its luster, but will still be a critical game for two teams looking to bolster their at-large resumes.
  • Middle Tennessee State at Denver (2/4, 4 PM) — The Blue Raiders put their undefeated Sun Belt mark on the line against a tough Denver squad.
  • Dayton at St. Louis (2/4, 5pm) — At various points, each of these teams has looked like the A-10’s best, but neither has been consistent enough to hold on to the claim.
  • Oral Roberts at North Dakota State (2/4, 8:30 PM) — ORU looked invincible just a few days ago, but after a 15-point whipping at South Dakota State, they lead the Summit League by just one game.  Their tough road trip continues at the league’s third place team, and the pressure will be on, as a loss will drop the Golden Eagles into a tie with South Dakota State for first.
  • Iona at Manhattan (2/4, 7pm) / Iona at Loyola (MD) (2/10, 7p PM) — This may not be known, given the relative hype for Iona this year, but the Gaels are in a three-way tie for first in the MAAC.  And this week, they will travel to play their co-leaders on the road.
  • Valparaiso at Cleveland State (2/9, 7 PM) — The Horizon League’s top two teams square off, with CSU trying to avenge a six-point loss at Valpo a few weeks ago.
  • St. Mary’s at Gonzaga (2/9, 11 PM) — A bit of a role reversal from years past, as the Zags will be trying to catch the ranked Gaels in the standings.
  • Harvard at Penn (2/10, 7 PM) — This may be the toughest league game the Crimson play all year.  If they lose at one-loss Penn, the race for the League title may be tougher than they hope.
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Four Thoughts on Georgetown vs. Connecticut

Posted by IRenko on February 2nd, 2012

I. Renko is a DC-based correspondent for Rush the Court.  You can follow him on twitter @IRenkoHoops.

The headline numbers from Georgetown’s win over Connecticut last night are the Huskies’ paltry 44 points on horrendous 27.6% field goal shooting.  It was the third-lowest point total in team history.  RTC was there live in the District, and here are four things we saw as the keys to Georgetown’s humbling of the Huskies.

It Was a Rough Night for Jim Calhoun and the Huskies (Damien Strohmeyer/SI)

  1. (Lack of) Veteran Leadership — UConn had three players on the floor last night who played more than 25 minutes in the NCAA Championship game last year:  Jeremy Lamb, Shabazz Napier, and Alex Oriakhi.  They were a combined 4-28 from the field, including 2-13 from three-point range.  I guess Oriakhi’s defense is that he only played seven minutes as part of his ongoing disappearing act — though that was more than enough time for him to rack up two fouls and three turnovers to go with his single rebound.  But Lamb and Napier, who lead the team in scoring, were out of sync all night.  While Lamb didn’t stop shooting, he couldn’t stop missing either.  Contested or open, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference on a miserable night for the sophomore guard.  By contrast, Georgetown’s big three — seniors Jason Clark, Henry Sims and junior Hollis Thompson — combined for 42 points on 16-34 shooting.  After the game, Jim Calhoun dismissed, in characteristically colorful fashion, the fact that his team is the sixth youngest in America:  “I have no idea what that means.  It means sh*t in plain English.”  And indeed, it probably shouldn’t mean much to a team that that returns four starters from a championship squad.  Sure, Andre Drummond stepped up for UConn with 18 points on 9-12 shooting, but you can’t rely on freshmen to lead the way on the road in the Big East. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Other 26: Bracketbuster Preview and Analysis

Posted by IRenko on January 31st, 2012

I. Renko is an RTC columnist. You can normally find him kicking off each weekend during the season with his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences. Follow him on twitter @IRenkoHoops.

In this special mid-week edition of The Other 26, we take a look at all of the premier (read: televised) Bracketbuster matchups that were announced on Monday and offer a guide to the uninitiated on what to watch for. The annual mid-major hoops feast typically offers a host of compelling contests, and this year is no different. In roughly descending order of interest/excitement:

Main Event — St. Mary’s at Murray State (2/18, 6 PM, ESPN or ESPN2) — I was hoping we would get a double main event with St. Mary’s at Creighton and Wichita State at Murray State. Perhaps the Bracketbuster selection committee didn’t rate Wichita State that highly or was intent on giving the undefeated Racers a ranked opponent against whom they could prove their quality. So they sent top 20, 21-2 St. Mary’s to Murray, Kentucky, to set up the undisputed headliner of this year’s Bracketbuster event. Murray State will have a clear advantage from playing at home, but apart from that, this looks like a very close matchup. Offensively, both teams rely heavily on the two lines — the three-point line and the free throw line. Defensively, both teams are pretty good at not giving up many attempts from either of those lines, with the notable exception of Murray State’s tendency to foul too much. Both teams are also somewhat turnover prone, but only the Racers play the kind of defense that is likely to exploit such a weakness. Finally, the Gaels may look to get easy points off of the offensive glass, as defensive rebounding is a liability for Murray State. Which, if any, of these games within the game will determine the outcome? Only one way to find out:  tune in at 6 PM on February 18.

Can St. Mary's End Murray State's Undefeated Season?

Battle of the Supporting Casts — Long Beach State at Creighton (2/18, 10 PM, ESPN2) — Most eyeballs will be trained to watch Casper Ware and Doug McDermott, two of mid-major hoops’ most recognizable players. But I hope that fans will also tune in to get a glimpse of the extent to which these conference-leading teams depends on their supporting casts. LBSU has three other players who average in double figures — Larry Anderson (who also stuffs the stat sheet with 5.0 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game, while shooting 44% from three-point range), T.J. Robinson (who adds 10.2 rebounds a game), and James Ennis. Creighton, meanwhile, has discovered that they can be just as potent, maybe even moreso, when McDermott scores less than 20 a game. Antoine Young’s dribble penetration, Greg Echinique’s inside banging, and the marksmanship of Grant Gibbs and Jahenns Manigat make the Bluejays a much more multi-dimensional team than they’re often portrayed to be. It’s worth noting, too, that each of these teams will be trying to bolster their at-large bona fides in the event that they don’t win their conference tournaments — an especially distinct possibility for Creighton, who will have to get through three games in the always tough MVC to cinch an auto bid.

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The Other 26: Week Nine

Posted by IRenko on January 28th, 2012

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.

The now-annual Bracket Buster weekend is a great late-season non-conference bounty, especially for mid-major hoops fans.  This year’s matchups will be announced on Monday, and today we take a look at the top five games we hope to see scheduled.  That, plus a look back and a look forward, after the updated top 15.

Top Five Potential Bracketbuster Matchups

This year, there are 22 Bracketbuster squads in the RPI top 100, with 13 slated to play home games and nine set to hit the road. This creates a slight discrepancy between the strength of the home teams and the road teams, which is magnified when you consider that the breakdown is 12 to six among teams in the top 85.  Nonetheless, there are some great potential matchups.

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Four Thoughts on Duke vs. Maryland

Posted by IRenko on January 27th, 2012

I. Renko is a DC-based correspondent for Rush the Court.  You can follow him on twitter @IRenkoHoops.

Leave it to Duke to add a little bitterness to an otherwise sweet night for Maryland basketball.  During the pre-game ceremony presenting the newly-christened “Gary Williams Court,” the legendary coach acknowledged the students and fans in the building who “helped us win a lot of games,” before reminding them that they had  “a great chance to do that again tonight.”  And for three-quarters of the game, they nearly did just that.  But an 11-1 run midway through the second half propelled Duke to victory.  RTC was in the building, and here’s what we saw as the keys to the game:

Plumlee Was the Difference in College Park Wednesday Night (US Presswire/M. Stringer)

  • Maryland’s Decision to Stay Home — Not literally, of course, as the College Park crowd gave the Terps a nice boost.  Although it’s obvious from the box score that Mason Plumlee’s season-high 23 points led Duke to victory, what is less obvious from the raw stats is that Maryland essentially invited Duke to beat them this way.  Mark Turgeon acknowledged that the game plan was to defend the post one-on-one rather than double off of the perimeter:  “Yeah, we could’ve doubled them and let ‘em shoot threes.  But that was what we went with.”  That was a reasonable approach given Duke’s 40% three-point shooting percentage.  There’s not a single starter who you can comfortably leave to double MP2 — each of the other four shoots at least 37% from three-point range.  But as the game went on, and Plumlee, along with  his older brother and frontcourt mate Ryan Kelly, continued to dominate inside, a tactical change was probably warranted.  Duke’s guards had a miserable shooting night, and it wasn’t only because Maryland wasn’t sagging off the perimeter.  They were missing quality looks as well.  Under those circumstances, it was certainly worth trying to harass Plumlee inside with multiple bodies.
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The Other 26: Week Eight

Posted by IRenko on January 20th, 2012

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.

TO26 is back after a one-week hiatus, and do we have a doozy of a column for you.  Today we take a look at the race for the top in every single non-power conference.  We categorize each conference based on the number of contenders who have emerged after the first 2-3 weeks of conference play.  Which conference looks like a fight between five legitimate contenders?  Which conferences seem to be just one team’s to lose?

In our breakdown, we focus not just on the top of the W-L standings, but dig into the team’s non-conference performances, their specific results and their remaining schedules to get to a true picture of which teams are likeliest to take home a regular season crown.   (Note that for our purposes, we have ignored the two-division setup in some conferences.)

But first, the updated Top 15.

Now on to our conference reviews …

Five Team Battle Royale

CAA — After a brutal 2-4 start to their season, preseason favorite Drexel (5-2) has turned things around, winning 11 of their last 12.  That includes a home sweep of perennial contenders and recent Cinderellas George Mason (6-1) and VCU (5-2).  Georgia State (5-2) is the conference’s biggest surprise.  After being picked to finish 11th in the preseason poll and starting the year 0-3, the Panthers reeled off 11 straight, including wins over Drexel and VCU, before losing narrowly at George Mason.  After a loss at Northeastern on Wednesday, skeptics may wonder whether they might start to fade, but for now, they should be taken seriously.  Old Dominion (6-1) rounds out the top 5 here, as the Monarchs are tied for first at the moment, but they’ve faced a lighter schedule than the other teams in this group.

Four Team Scrambles

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CAA First Place Showdown: Everybody’s a Winner

Posted by IRenko on January 9th, 2012

I. Renko is an RTC correspondent.

On Saturday night, the only two undefeated teams in the CAA faced off in a battle for first place, as Georgia State visited George Mason.  Only one team could, and did, emerge victorious, as Mason held off the Panthers for a 61-58 win.  But given the gulf that separated these two teams coming into the season, the result was a meaningful “win” for the coaches of both teams, each of whom has had something to prove during the early part of the CAA season.

At the start of this season, George Mason and Georgia State had little in common.  Mason won 27 games last year, won the CAA regular season championship, and earned a #8 seed in the NCAA Tournament.  Georgia State went 12-19, finished in the bottom half of the CAA, and had its season promptly ended in the CAA Tournament — by George Mason.  Mason has been a perennial CAA contender over the last several years and pulled off a miracle run to the Final Four in 2006.  Georgia State has been a perennial also-ran since joining the CAA in 2005 and hasn’t played a single national postseason game of any kind.  Mason, returning three starters from last year’s squad, was picked to finish second in the conference this year.  Georgia State was picked to finish second to last.

Mike Morrison and George Mason Edged Georgia State for First Place, but the Panthers are "Gonna Be Around to Stay for a While"

About the only thing the Patriots and the Panthers shared was an offseason coaching change.  But the circumstances of the two coaching changes were considerably different, one resulting from success, the other from futility.  Jim Larranaga, who built the Mason program and led the Patriots on their improbable Final Four run in 2006, left for the higher profile of the ACC, landing a coaching job at Miami.  Mason, in turn, landed a coach with a high profile ACC pedigree and his own Final Four experience to replace him:  Paul Hewitt, who took Georgia Tech to the Final Four in 2003.  Georgia State’s coaching change was the result of four subpar seasons turned in by Rod Barnes.  To replace him, the Panthers went deep into the Summit League, where they found Ron Hunter, who had been coaching at IUPUI since well before it was a Division I program.

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The Other 26 – Week Seven

Posted by IRenko on January 6th, 2012

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.

Did Khalif Wyatt and Temple Emerge From Wednesday Night as A-10 Favorites?

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.

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