Game of the Night. Florida State 76, Auburn 72. You know we’re having a slow as molasses night when this is our top game.  No disrespect to FSU or Auburn but this isn’t a bowl game, and we know just how apathetic these programs generally are about basketball.  The ACC moved to 6-3 against its southeastern brethren tonight with this hard-fought victory over Jeff Lebo’s team behind Solomon Alabi’s (22/9/3 blks) second straight superb and fourth straight good game.  If this isn’t a fluke and the FSU big man is starting to really find his game — and the evidence supports that he is (20/8/3 in his last four games) — then the Seminoles are a completely different team than they were just a few short weeks ago.  Freshman stud guard Michael Snaer also had his his fourth straight good game, garnering 14 points in 24 minutes of action.  We know that Auburn is one of the bottom teams in the SEC, but thirteen threes (on 39 attempts!) is a peculiar strategy considering that the Tigers came into this game hitting only 30.4% from deep this year.

Alabi (right) Brought His Game Tonight (AP/Steve Cannon)

Some Close Calls.  Two BCS schools were forced to fight back from halftime deficits tonight to avoid disastrous losses at home, both teams winning by a mere three points on an otherwise very blase’ evening.

• NC State 79, Elon 76. Elon held a six-point lead at halftime of this one in Raleigh, and it took until the last five minutes of this one for the Wolfpack, behind Tracy Smith’s 21/8, got the lead and put this game away.  NCSU is hard to gauge this year, with an away win at Marquette and a home loss to Northwestern on its resume, but if the Wolfpack are going to endeavor to move out of the cellar of the ACC this season, they’ll need a much better showing than tonight on Sunday when they travel to Wake Forest for the first ACC game of the season.
• LSU 63, Nicholls State 60. Tasmin Mitchell hit a three with 36 seconds remaining to give LSU a three-point lead, which the Tigers used to get the win in the final seconds versus a Louisiana school for the 79th consecutive time.  Mitchell had 27/6/3 assts for the now 7-2 LSU team, who are completely reliant on he and Storm Warren (13/11) and Bo Spencer (12/4 assts) to lead this team.  Other than that, there is no depth for Trent Johnson’s team.

Other Games of National Interest.

• #23 UNLV 72, Weber State 63. UNLV pulled away from Weber State in the second half behind 16/3 from Matt Shaw and 15/5/4 blks from Chace Stanbeck tonight.  The Rebels look to head into Mountain West play on January 6th against BYU at 12-1 with two more easy wins in the next two weeks.
• Nevada 73, Eastern Washington 70. Luke Babbitt dropped 29/9 in another stellar performance for the big man from Reno tonight.  Babbitt is averaging 19/10 while shooting 50% from the field and 90% from the line.  Still, his team has struggled to a 5-4 record this year, although each of the four losses came in road games against top 100 opponents.  If Nevada wants to get back into the picture for an NCAA Tournament bid, though (as in 2004-07), they’ll need to figure out a way to shore up a leaky defense.  In tonight’s game Brandon Fields (17/8/3 assts) hit the game-winning three with 4.3 seconds remaining.

Upset of the Night. UAB 64, Cincinnati 47. Hangover, anyone? Three days after playing the game of the year in the Crosstown Shootout against Xavier, Cincinnati travels to Alabama, shoots miserably, and falls 12 points short of their previous season low. No disrespect to the Blazers, though; they were responsible for more than their share of the Bearcats’ lackluster showing. UAB was obviously the fresher team, coming off of a 12-day stretch with no games, a time they used to improve themselves on the defensive side of things. UAB coach Mike Davis said afterward, “We knew how important it was for us to come out and really play with a lot of intensity on defense. It was the best performance we’ve had all season on defense.” The combination of fatigue (both mental and physical) and UAB defense forced UC into a 31.7% shooting night, including an atrocious 3-22 (13.6%) from behind the three-point arc. The Blazers weren’t exactly lacking on offense, either. Elijah Millsap was formidable, stepping up with 22 points and 15 boards, and Howard Crawford added 14/5. Dion Dixon, the Bearcats’ only player in double-figures (13/3), minimized the possiblity of a post-Xavier hangover when asked about it after the game, saying, “That didn’t have anything to do with it. We’re a young team, we haven’t played many games on the road.” Really? It’s true, not all of them are major contributors, but eight of UC’s 14 players are juniors or seniors. And five of their nine games this year have been away from their home floor. The most damning evidence that the Bearcats’ minds and bodies weren’t totally into this one, though, is that Cincy came in as the 10th best rebounding team in the nation, averaging 40.2 a game. UAB ranks 179th (32.6 RPG). Tonight UAB owned the boards, 44 to 29. No doubt, Cincinnati will be back, but it was UAB, now 9-1, who served notice to the rest of the nation tonight.

UAB Drove Around Cincy All Night (AP/Butch Dill)

RTC Live.  Oklahoma State 71, Stanford 70. RTC Live visited Maples Pavilion for the first time this evening, and although the fans weren’t all that excitable throughout the game, we were treated with a near-miraculous finish as Stanford hung around just long enough to have a shot in the air to win this one.  It didn’t happen, as Andrew Zimmermann’s drive to the left and subsequent shot attempt went long and fell harmlessly off the glass into the hands of an OSU player, but for most of this game it appeared that the Cowboys were the far superior team, so the fact that Stanford was even in that position had to be a positive for Johnny Dawkins’ team.  The two stars for the respective teams both had big nights — OSU’s James Anderson dropped 28/6/3 assts, including several very difficult three-point plays the old-fashioned way and a few deep threes the modern way in the second half.  Stanford’s Landry Fields had 22/12/4 assts to keep the pace, and it was his playmaking down the stretch that led to open looks for Stanford to crawl back into the game.  Dawkins has to be kicking himself a little bit, though, as the Cardinal committed 11 fewer fouls than Oklahoma State, shot thirteen more FTs, yet only earned four more points from the stripe — that’s what 12-24 will do to you.  It was OSU’s second-half three-point shooting (6-12) that gave the Cowboys as much as a 15-pt lead, but Stanford’s Jeremy Green (19/7) stepped up with a few timely shots to keep his team within striking distance.  We came away not very impressed with either team tonight, but clearly Oklahoma State should feel good about itself in getting a road win, even one against a Pac-10 team with half the fans not in the building tonight.

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Samhan I Am. St. Mary’s 101, Portland State 80. Had St. Mary’s not lost to Vanderbilt by two points during Thanksgiving weekend, we’d probably be listing the Gaels as a ranked team and the name of Omar Samhan might be getting a little more publicity at this point.  With tonight’s 61% shooting evening leading to another blowout win, St. Mary’s is currently 8-1 with solid road wins at Utah State and Oregon, and even though fellow WCCers San Diego and Portland were getting the early-season hype, it might be SMC as the team most likely to challenge Gonzaga as tops in the league again this year.  The big reason is that Gonzaga has nobody like Omar Samhan, the 6’11 senior who dropped 31/17 tonight and is averaging 21/12/2 blks on 61% shooting for the year — his efficiency rating of 24.2 puts him in the neighborhood of some other players you may have heard of… namely Evan Turner, Luke Harangody, Aubrey Coleman, Quincy Pondexter and Manny Harris.  Freshman guard Matthew Dellavedova is another player to watch on this team, as he’s averaging 14/3/4 assts and has a healthy 2:1 A/TO ratio.  Don’t be alarmed with what we’re about to say, but those are actually better numbers than what Patty Mills put up as a rookie at St. Mary’s in 2008.  The Gaels are definitely a team to watch as we head into the WCC this year.

Best Player You Don't Know (photo: Tod Fiemer)

Floriani Live.  Rutgers 80, Rider 70 (OT). Ryan Thompson did not disappoint the nine or so NBA scouts in attendance. The Rider senior scored a game high 26 points while pulling down 8 rebounds. Rutgers adjusted and did a good job defending Thompson in the stretch and OT. “They (Rutgers) face guarded and denied him,” said Rider coach Tommy Dempsey. “Anytime he had the ball they had trouble staying in front of him.” Thompson shot 9 of 19 but forced only two of them and stayed within the framework of the offense.  Another significant note for Rutgers: Mike Rosario scored 18 but was 5-17 from the floor. James Beatty, a junior guard, stepped up leading Rutgers with 21 points. Beatty was 6 of 8 beyond the arc and played some nice defense on Thompson in the stretch. “We recruited Beatty as a point but we knew he had several games in junior college where he knocked down about five treys. Tonight he had the looks, buried them and needs to do that.” Especially when Big East play starts for Rutgers just after the New Year.

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Finals Week Crickets.  Yeah, this week is even worse than the last, as there’s no Jimmy V Classic nor SEC/Big East Invitational games to fill our schedule.  In fact, there’s not a single game involving two ranked teams until Saturday, so we’ll have to amuse ourselves in other ways this week.

Favors & the Ga Tech Freshman are Pretty Good (AP/Wade Payne)

Looking in at Georgia Tech’s Freshmen.  Georgia Tech 95, Chattanooga 64.  Not much of a game, but we thought since nothing else is going on tonight, this is a good opportunity to check in with the Ramblin’ Wreck’s talented corps of freshmen (A non-freshman, Gani Lawal had 29/7 to lead the Jackets in this game).  The jewel of the class, of course, was Derrick Favors, and he had a great night (14/10/3 assts/3 stls), right on par with his season averages of 14/8/2 blks on 68% shooting and an 18.0 efficiency rating.  Remember, Favors was considered to be right at the top of the Class of 2009 with John Wall, and is likely to be one of the top three picks in next year’s NBA Draft.  The surprise of Paul Hewitt’s class, however, has been Mfon Udofia, a 6’2 guard who has burst onto the scene his freshman year with 13/3/3 assts in a team-high 26 MPG — he contributed 10/2/3 assts tonight.  Two other new pieces at Tech’s disposal,  forward Brian Oliver and guard Glen Rice, Jr., are getting around twelve minutes per game and giving about 10/4 combined in their debut seasons.  This means that Hewitt is getting nearly half of the team’s production from his talented group of rooks.  Whether the young Jackets can keep it up throughout the rugged ACC is another question, but so far, so good, as GT is now 7-1 with its sole loss to an experienced Dayton team back in their second game of the year.  Tech fans must be excited about their future with this group.

In our first college football-free weekend of the season (except for Mark Ingram’s Heisman and ESPN’s phenomenal documentary on “The U”) we had quite a few interesting story lines from the weekend, but one stood out on Sunday — the pair of upset victories by Atlantic 10 teams over highly ranked Big East teams in crosstown rivalry games (Temple against Villanova and Xavier against Cincinnati). Not only does it give those individual programs some bragging rights and a much needed boost on the recruiting trail, but it also gives a huge lift to the national perception of the Atlantic 10 and might cause some consternation amongst the Big East fans who like to promote their conference as the best in the nation for college basketball.

A great night for Xavier and the A-10 (Credit: AP/David Kohl)

The A-10 Rising

• Xavier 78, #19 Cincinnati 75 (2 OT). This might not be as shocking to the rest of the nation, but it might go down as the game of the year so far. It had a little bit of everything you could ask for in a game at this point of the season. Bitter rivalry? Check. Physical play? Check. Biting fan chants? Check (Brian Kelly). Big comeback? Check. Buzzer beater? Check (later waved off). National TV audience? Not so much thanks to ESPNU’s sparse national penetration, but RTC Live was there. In the end it was Terrell Holloway‘s 26 points and Jason Love‘s 19 rebounds that were the difference as the Musketeers overcame 22 points from Lance Stephenson in a game where neither team led by more than 4 points during the last 19 minutes of the game and that was only after the Bearcats fouled Xavier in an attempt to get the ball back when Dion Dixon missed a 3-point attempt that could have tied the game with 21 seconds left in the second overtime.  To get a really good feel as to how intense this game was, definitely read our accounting from RTC Live above and check the highlight package below.

• Temple 75, #3 Villanova 65: The Owls used an 11-0 run to start the 2nd half to overcome a 6-point deficit at halftime to knock off the Wildcats. The story of the game was Juan Fernandez who scored 33 points including 7 of 9 from 3-point range to knock off the highest ranked Big East team coming into the weekend. While the casual basketball fan will consider this a huge upset, those of us who follow college basketball closely knew that this would be a tough game for Jay Wright‘s crew against a team that had only lost by one to Georgetown (still undefeated) and St. John’s (only one loss by nine against Duke). The Wildcats managed to keep it relatively close with 23 from Scottie Reynolds, 16 from Antonio Pena, and 14 from Corey Fisher, but in the end it wasn’t enough to overcome Fernandez, 20 points from Ryan Brooks, and 10 points and 17 rebounds from Lavoy Allen. The loss was just the 2nd loss for Villanova in their last 23 games against one of their Big 5 rivals. After the victory, the fans began chanting, “We want Kansas!” in reference to their upcoming game on January 2nd. We love what the Owls have done so far this season, but the student body might want to be careful what they wish for because they might just get it. One bright spot for Villanova fans: Reggie Redding (think he might have been helpful against Allen today?) will return to action against Fordham on Saturday in his first action since he was suspended ten games for his arrest for possession of marijuana and other drug paraphernalia.

In other action…

Saturday’s Games.

• #1 Kansas 90, La Salle 65: The Jayhawks were able to overcame an off-night from Sherron Collins (1/12 FG) thanks to a season-high 31 points from Xavier Henry (the last KU freshman to score 30 points in a game was some guy named Paul Pierce) and a 12-point, 12-rebound effort from Markieff Morris. Cole Aldrich added 19 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 blocks while Tyshawn Taylor had 10 points and 6 assists with no turnovers. The Jayhawks’ next two games should be a bit more competitive as they face a pair of teams—Michigan (12/19) and California (12/22)—that have failed to live up to preseason expectations, but both have a lot of talent.

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Upset of the Night. Western Kentucky 76, #24 Vanderbilt 69. Vandy dropped its second game in four days after becoming ranked this week, this time losing at the Sommet Center in Nashville (site of this year’s SEC Tournament) to Western Kentucky for the first time since World War II.  Granted, the two teams have only played ten times in the last sixty-four years, but ten in a row is still ten in a row.  WKU got 27/3 from their star AJ Slaughter and outrebounded the Commodores by five despite giving up considerable size on the interior.  Perhaps this game would have gone differently at Memorial Gymnasium across town, as the ‘Dores only shot 5-19 from three, and we know how they can heat up in their old building.  This is a very good win for the Hilltoppers, as Ken McDonald’s team lost their previous two games against SEC competition this year (LSU and South Carolina), and will need a couple of solid nonconference wins to ensure an at-large bid come March if they don’t win the Sun Belt Conference.

WKU Had a Lot to Celebrate Tonight (Joe Imel/BG Daily News)

Other Games of National Interest.

• #9 Tennessee 75, Middle Tennessee State 54. UT got a breakout game from JP Prince (17 pts) off the bench that helped to make up for a poor offensive game from Scotty Hopson, who had only one point in 24 minutes of action.  Bruce Pearl is getting five or more points per game from eight of his players so far this year.
• Dayton 58, Old Dominion 50. Dayton’s Chris Wright (16/12) turned it on tonight when needed, scoring ten straight points in the second half  to ensure the Flyers’ 24th straight victory at home, good for the third longest streak in the nation.
• Iowa State 81, Iowa 71. Iowa State got a huge game from its star Craig Brackins (28/8/4 blks) to win its fourth straight home game against its intrastate rival Iowa Hawkeyes.  Todd Lickliter was not back coaching in this game, but is expected to be back next week for the Hawkeyes, but he has some serious issues to deal with on this team.
• USC 59, Idaho State 53. Kevin O’Neill once again basically played six players, but he got a school-record thirteen blocks from this team in the hard-fought win.

Light Night. We’re more or less heading into Finals Week across the nation, and aside from a few interesting games here and there around the country, ATBs are going to be fairly light for a while.  There’s no exams at RTC, though, so we’ll continue to keep you updated even as you head to the eggnog bowl for the third time this evening… but we’re not counting.

Is Syracuse the Best Team in America? Syracuse 85, Florida 73. It’s a fair question.  Of the top 6-8 teams, all of whom are unbeaten so far this season, does any team have as impressive of a resume as double-digit wins over Cal, UNC and now Florida?  Doubtful.  And so long as the Cuse is getting unbelievable efficiency at the offensive end (#1 in eFG% and two-point FG%), it’s unlikely that they’re going to lose many games this year.  We talked about it back at the CvC, but there seems to be something about this Orange team — that little something extra — that makes them special, and maybe that’s why we continue to see Jim Boeheim smiling so much these days.  Tonight Syracuse had two players with dub-dubs in Rick Jackson (21/11) and Wesley Johnson (17/10) to withstand the Florida runs keyed by some deep three-point shooting in timely spots (12-30).  Kenny Boynton (20/7 assts) and Erving Walker (14/6 assts) had nice games for the Gators, but the starting UF frontcourt was virtually nonexistent on offense (18 pts) and downright bad on defense (outrebounded by twelve), which is something Billy Donovan’s team is going to face as a problem all season.  Syracuse moves on to another trio of easy home games, but a date at rising Seton Hall on 12/29 looms as another big test for Jim Boeheim’s team, who we believe may just be the best team in America right now.

SEC/Big East Invitational.  The Invitational ended at 2-2, with two good games and two terrible games over the two nights.  If this thing ever wants to be taken seriously, the organizers really need to sack up and get a 10-12 team event over two or three nights.  What’s the problem with that format?

• Mississippi State 76, DePaul 54. This was a terrible mismatching of teams, and we’re wondering what was going through the heads of the people who chose this game as a featured matchup between conferences, but MSU dominated DePaul from the opening tip tonight and never let up throughout.  The Blue Demons were held to 28% shooting by the staunch MSU defense, and in a weird coincidence, all three of DePaul’s losses have come at the hands of SEC teams so far this year (ed. note: there will be more).   Jarvis Varnado had 12/14, while four other Bulldogs reached double figures in the blowout win.

Other Games of National Interest.

• #14 Michigan State 88, Oakland 57. Here’s all you need to know about this game. MSU held Oakland’s Johnathan Jones to a mere two assists.  JJ was only the nation’s leading assist leader last season at 8.1 per game (and coming into tonight at 6.0 APG this year), and the MSU defense completely shut him down.  The Spartans got 19/12 from Draymond Green, and Kalin Lucas chipped in with 19/4 assts in an effort that Tom Izzo had to be pleased with tonight.  Oakland’s Keith Benson had 21/11 in the losing effort.
• #19 Cincinnati 63, Miami (OH) 59. Someone explain how Miami can take Kentucky and Cincy to the wire, yet lose to Towson and Louisiana Tech?  The interesting thing about this game is that UC’s Lance Stephenson had his best game of his young career with 17/8/3 assts/3 stls.  Stephenson is exhibiting a well-rounded game during his last couple, and that means nothing good for the rest of the Big East if he starts to take off.
• Colorado State 77, Colorado 62.  Cory Higgins had a miserable evening, shooting 1-10 and 0-4 from deep, finishing with 11 points, a full ten points under his average.  CSU got a key Mountain West victory over a Big 12 team for the first time this season, as Travis Franklin had 22/10 in the victory.

The Face of the 2009-10 Season.  #4 Kentucky 64, #12 Connecticut 61. Ladies and gentlemen, if there was any doubt whatsoever about who the face of college basketball was, is, or will be this season, consider it no more.  The buzz was already there.  There have been sketchy highlights of  Johnathan Hildred Wall  from Raleigh, NC, dressed in a Kentucky uniform and easily floating game-winners over Miami and Stanford; there have been a couple of filthy dunks and drives against North Carolina that had you out of your seat shaking your head when you saw them on SportsCenter; but there wasn’t this.  No, not this.  This being a nationally-televised game with no other competition on the tube where the too-young-to-know-how-good-he-is Mr. Wall emphatically and with reckless abandon introduced himself to the sports world beyond the hoops diehards, shouting from the top of New York’s Empire State Building to the rest of the world… “I am College Basketball.”  Dramatic?  Possibly.  Truthful?  Absolutely.

Sure - Why Not??

John Wall (25/2/6 stls) scored twelve of the last fifteen points of the game for his team, and as our RTC Live correspondent Ballin is a Habit put it at the game, “Garden security should kidnap Wall and throw a Nate Robinson jersey on him. Who will know?”  That’s the point.  Wall is probably nearly as good as anyone on the Knicks (or Nets) roster, and the star-studded NYC crowd was electric tonight as they knew this was but a first glimpse of WonderWall and that they would be seeing this kid play for a very long time  at the Garden.  When it came down to the last five minutes of the game tonight, the scoring went back and forth, but as you were watching the action you already knew where the ball was going when Kentucky got it.  You also knew what the result would be — several clutch jumpers followed by a strong and-one when Wall drove from the left side, absorbed contact, and still finished the play to put UK up two with a half-minute left.  After a Kemba Walker (12/8/6 assts) miss and  Ramon Harris FT for Kentucky, UConn took and missed a couple of threes to finish the game and push Calipari’s team to 9-0 and John Wall into hype overdrive.

We’re just as guilty as anyone of being awed by the guy, but the last time we saw a freshman player who was so spectacular (must-see tv) was when Kevin Durant was dominating everyone in his path at Texas.  You tuned in because you sensed that anything could happen when Durant had the ball, and people are starting to sense that about John Wall as well.  One key difference in their careers at this point – Wall has already won three games down the stretch by himself.  We’re not sure that even Durant did that before Christmas of his freshman season!  John Wall — the 2009-10 Face of College Basketball.

Upset of the Night.  Green Bay 88, #23 Wisconsin 84. Students RTC’d after the Fighting Phoenix of Green Bay upset the flagship university of the state in overtime tonight (send pics or vids!) in a classic trap game for Bo Ryan’s Badgers.  Bryquis Perine (22/3/3 stls) and Randy Berry (13/12) led the way for UWGB, who, despite having ten fewer boards than Wisconsin were able to force 18 turnovers from normally surehanded Badgers to grit out the win.  For the Phoenix, this was the first win in their last fifteen games against Wisconsin, and the Badgers will now face home games against Marquette and UW-Milwaukee in the next two weeks to try to regain state supremacy.

Another Upset.  Oral Roberts 60, Missouri 59. We had a feeling that this would have upset written all over it, and sure enough it did (complete with a mini-RTC at the end – see below video).  Missouri fans have to be beating themselves up over this one, though, as the Tigers had a ten-point lead on the road with just over five minutes remaining and they couldn’t close out the game.  Michael Craion’s layup with 0.9 seconds remaining (first video) capped a 15-4 closing run for ORU that gave the Golden Eagles their second win over a BCS team this season (although a considerably better one than Stanford).  ORU got 21/7/4 assts from Dominique Morrison and 10/13 from Kevin Ford, and it was just enough for Scott Sutton’s program to pull off the upset tonight.  One major concern for Mizzou has to be that they only attempted three FTs tonight (making one), which signals a lack of aggressiveness on the offensive end.

And a Third.  Harvard 74, Boston College 67. Is this an upset after how well Harvard has been playing and especially after last year’s Harvard win at BC?  Well, it is still Harvard, so we’ll say yes.  Jeremy Lin continues to impress, dropping 25/3/4 assts just a few nights after ripping the Connecticut defense up for thirty, and BC is at some point going to have to realize that winning a single ACC game doesn’t mean they can take the next night off (as they did last year as well).  The Crimson shot 50% from the field, held BC to 38%, and stood toe to toe with the bigger Eagles on the boards.  Furthermore, when crunch time came around, Harvard, especially Lin, calmly walked up to the line and sealed the win, which is something winning programs tend to do.  It’s been a foregone conclusion that Cornell would once again own the Ivy League this year, but could Harvard challenge the Big Red in the Ancient Eight?

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Jimmy V Classic.  As someone whose family and loved ones have been seriously impacted by cancer, this is always one of our favorite events of the season.  We vividly remember the night at the ESPYs in March 1993 when Jim Valvano gave his inspirational speech, and even sixteen years later, it continues to stand the test of time.  “Don’t Give Up, Don’t Ever Give Up” became a mantra for people of our generation, and the positive effects that the Jimmy V Foundation has produced over the years gives Valvano a lasting legacy that many of his fellow coaches, many of whom were more successful at coaching basketball, will never know.  As long as this site exists, we’ll do this every year, and we’ll do it for the Green Bay Packers, Coach!

And now, on to the games…  RTC Live was in the building.

• #13 Georgetown 72, #20 Butler 65.  Georgetown got 25 points and 14 rebounds from Greg Monroe as the Hoyas dominated Butler on the inside, outrebounding the Bulldogs 43-30. Perhaps Monroe’s biggest impact came on the defensive end, as he helped force Matt Howard into one of the worst games  of his career as he finished 1-9 from the floor while looking intimidated in the post before fouling out. Georgetown jumped out to a 52-35 second-half lead, which Butler couldn’t bounce back from. Austin Freeman was 4-5 from deep in adding 18 points for the Hoyas, who picked up a must-needed statement win. Butler, who got 24 and 8 boards from Gordon Hayward, is not the top 10 team that many predicted they would be during the preseason right now, but this is still an impressive win nonetheless. For Butler to be in position to earn an at-large bid should it come to that, they are now probably going to have to beat both Ohio State and Xavier in coming weeks.
• Indiana 74, Pittsburgh 64.  Indiana picked up their first relevant win over a BCS team (beating Iowa last year doesn’t count) in the Tom Crean era as they thoroughly outplayed Pitt in MSG tonight. Indiana go 20 from Verdell Jones and 18 from Christian Watford as they finally broke through for a good win after losing three heartbreakers this season. The Hoosiers are going to be a dangerous team, as they do have some talented youngsters (we didn’t even get a good feel for Maurice Creek tonight), but IU may still be a year away from really being able to compete and make a run at the NCAA Tournament. Pitt, on the other hand, didn’t look like Pitt. They struggled defensively, they were beat up inside, and they settled for tough, deep jumpers. If Ashton Gibbs hadn’t been hitting from three (he had 25 on 8-25 shooting, 5-15 from three), this one could have been ugly (although, uglier than being down 17 to Indiana in this stage of their rebuild is tough to do).

Not an Upset of the Night.  Illinois 79, #24 Vanderbilt 68. Yes, Vandy was the ranked team, but Illinois was ranked as recently as last week and these teams are roughly even in our eyes.  A very nice intersectional matchup nonetheless.  The Illini shot a lights-out 59% from the field and ran out to a 9-0 early lead that put Vandy behind the eight-ball from the beginning.  Illinois guard Demetri McCamey lit up the Commodore defense for 8-10 from the field and 23/5 assts, while DJ Richardson added 16/3/3 assts in the win.  The Illinois defense has been somewhat maligned thus far this season, but they did a good job tonight of limiting AJ Ogilvy’s (8/3) touches and forced Jermaine Beal into a 4-14 shooting night.

Some Mid-Major Revenge (Some Not).  There were a few good opportunities for mid-majors to take down BCS teams tonight, and the little guys got a split this evening among the four games up for grabs.

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Story of the Night Week.  The lack of good games this week will mean our nightly ATBs will run a little shorter than usual.  From Monday to Friday, there will only be three games between ranked teams, and here’s your complete list.

• Tuesday Dec. 8 – #13 Georgetown vs. #20 Butler (ESPN) – 7 pm (Jimmy V Classic)
• Wednesday Dec. 9 – #4 Kentucky vs. #12 Connecticut (ESPN) – 9:30 pm (SEC/Big East Invitational)
• Thursday Dec. 10 – #6 Syracuse vs. #11 Florida (ESPN) – 9 pm (SEC/Big East Invitational)

If you’re a regular here at RTC, you know that good games can come in all shapes and sizes, and there needn’t be two ranked teams to ensure our interest.  Still, this week offers a paucity of quality matchups on paper, but we’ll do our best to inform you as to the best games of each evening.

Game of the Night.  Auburn 68, Virginia 67.  We’re not sure why these two struggling teams from the SEC and ACC are even playing on a random Monday night before finals, but they did, and it was the War Eagles of Auburn that came out with the last-second tip-in to win.  We’d be remiss to say that this game is likely to impact either team’s postseason chances later this year (because neither team will be participating), but hey, the SEC will take a win over the ACC wherever it can get it.  After Virginia’s Sammy Zeglinski hit two FTs to put the Wahoos up by one with 7.7 seconds left, Auburn’s DeWayne Reed (18/5/7 assts) streaked upcourt to try to win the game.  When his layup attempt went awry, center Brendon Knox tipped it in with 1.4 remaining, giving Auburn the win (good thing… because Knox was 1-7 from the line).  Sylven Landesberg led UVa with 20/3 in the loss.

Floriani Live.  Seton Hall 86, Massachusetts 68. RTC Live wasn’t there but correspondent Ray Floriani was, and he sent in his report…

NEWARK, NJ – Sunday evening Herb Pope spent most of the night ill. He visited Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez Monday morning and informed him that he wasn’t sure he could play that night against UMass. Suffice it to say that Gonzalez probably didn’t feel too well at that point. A trip to the trainer for Pope and something to settle his stomach gave him enough strength to give it a shot. Gonzalez told Pope to ’raise your fist if you get tired and we will substitute.’ The fist was never raised. Pope logged 32 minutes with a game high 22 points and 16 rebounds in an 86-68 Seton Hall triumph over UMass at the Prudential Center.  Besides Pope’s outstanding work the story was defense. The first half numbers…

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