Let’s do a quick rundown of some of the key games that occurred this week.

Monday Night:

• Connecticut 69, Louisville 67. Both of these Big East teams appear to be coming on strong of late. Is either poised for a big run?
• Oklahoma 64, Oklahoma St. 61. OSU is in freefall (5 Ls in a row) after losing the Bedlam game – is Sean Sutton on the hot seat?
• Santa Clara 66, San Francisco 48. How funny would it be if Eddie didn’t get his 800th win at USF (he’s only won once in a month; he needs one more win).

Tuesday Night:

• Wake Forest 70, Miami (FL) 68. Wake with Dino Gaudio is the feel-good story of the season so far.
• George Mason 63, VCU 51. The battle to get likely one spot from the CAA this year is going to be brutal.
• #6 Tennessee 93, Alabama 86. Solid win for a Vols team that almost always loses in Tuscaloosa.

Wednesday Night:

• Maryland 85, Virginia 75. UVa is now officially in freefall mode themselves, having lost six of seven in 2008.
• #21 Pittsburgh 69, Villanova 57. There’s a school of thought that says Villanova is completely and totally overrated.
• Cincinnati 62, West Virginia 39. How’d Huggs take that one? Is there a more schizo team than Cincy?
• #19 Ole Miss 74, #22 Vanderbilt 58. Vandy better get back together or they’re starting to look like an NIT team.
• #1 Memphis 89, Houston 77. The lone unbeaten passes one of its toughest remaining tests easily.
• Arkansas 78, Mississippi St. 58. MSU isn’t quite ready for prime time yet, are they?
• Texas A&M 80, #10 Texas 63. We really didn’t see this whipping coming.

Thursday Night:

• #3 Duke 92, NC State 72. It was the green shirts!!! Duke outscored the Pack by 30 in the second half.
• #13 Wisconsin 62, #11 Indiana 49. If you didn’t have the under (127) on this game, then you know nothing about basketball.
• #16 Stanford 65, Washington 51. Gotta admit, we didn’t see the Cardinal being quite this good.
• California 69, #8 Washington St. 64. This was a must-win for Cal to keep hope alive for the NCAAs.
• #5 UCLA 84, Arizona St. 51. Wow.
• Arizona 80, USC 69. The Wildcats are showing some signs that they’re going to be tough come March.

Kansas Goes Down.  For the first time in 25 years, KU went into Manhattan, KS, and came away with a loss.  Freshman stars Bill Walker and Michael Beasley, prescient cocky in their predictions of a win, blew up for 47/11 combined, putting to rest the notion that KU has superior talent vis-a-vis everyone else in the country.  So how’d they get it done?  We caught the second half, and then spent the next two hours trying to splice some video together off our Tivo before giving up and settling (see below), and here were a few observations. 

• By the numbers, both teams played evenly – FG%, rebounding, turnovers, fouls, and the efficiency stats were roughly the same.  With one exception – threes.  This game-changing stat was heavily in KSU’s favor (12-26 v. 6-17 for KU). 
• This coincides with what we actually saw in that second half.  Every time it seemed that KU was just this close to making a run to get back into the game, Beasley (4-4) or Walker (3-10) would drop one from long range.  We counted four times where KU was within one possession and one of those two would knocked down a three to create some cushion.  Clutch.
• By the way, how sick is Beasley (preaching to the choir…)?  A quick snapshot of his numbers this year – 25/12 in only 30mpg, shooting 56% from the field (and 44% from 3).  There will be Oden/Durant debate this year.  Michael Beasley is the #1 pick. 

• Kansas, to their credit, never panicked; they just simply couldn’t get enough stops in the second half to put together a run.  From the ten-minute mark, KU never got closer than two possessions.  We’re not willing to draw any negative conclusions from this game about the Jayhawks – they didn’t play that poorly; it’s just that KSU, fueled by a frenzied home crowd, simply played better.  If anything, it also gets the unbeaten monkey off of their neck, and they can regroup and get about the business of winning the Big 12. 
• This is a huge win for KSU, however.  Frank Martin’s team has come a long way from the listless squad we watched lose to Oregon and Notre Dame earlier this season.  It’s doubtful anyone is getting a win out of Manhattan the rest of this season, so something like 13-3 in the conference is not out of the question for the Wildcats.  That kind of a record and finish would propel KSU into a top four protected seed in the NCAAs, and their computer profile is already solid (#6 in Pomeroy; #18 in Sagarin). 

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Photo Credits:  Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle

Still Unbeaten. #1 Memphis and #2 Kansas remained unbeaten through the weekend, and until both lose a game, this will be the top storyline for the last six weeks of the regular season. This is the latest point in a season that two teams have been undefeated since 2005 (Illinois and Boston College), and there are no signs that either team is slowing down soon. Kansas, the top defensive efficiency team in America, knocked the stuffing out of Nebraska 84-49, but we figure the Big 12 (#2 conf in both KenPom and Sagarin) is too tough as a conference for the Jayhawks to go 16-0 this year (est. KenPom chances of running the table = 38.5%). The real intrigue is whether Memphis (#2 defensive efficiency) will run the table until March, and given that they handled Gonzaga 81-73 in a workmanlike manner on Saturday, we’re feeling like Calipari’s team has a great shot at getting into the postseason unblemished (est. KenPom = 58.3%). He’s no stranger to this kind of pressure, either; remember, in 1996, UMass was 26-0 and #1 deep into February before finally losing a late A10 game to GW. That year also happens to represent Calipari’s sole trip to the F4, before Marcus Camby’s “homemade” bling ultimately led to its vacation by the NCAA. Both teams face somewhat tough opponents on the road Wednesday, however (Memphis @ Houston; Kansas @ Kansas St.), but if they survive those tests we might have a situation similar to 2004 when both Stanford and St. Joseph’s made it to the first week of March unbeaten. It must be noted, though, that neither of those teams made it to the F4.

The Truth About Duke. We were absolutely sure that Duke was going to lose at Maryland yesterday. After watching the first half, where James Gist and Bambale Osby seemingly scored inside at will, we were beyond absolutely convinced that the Terps were on track to beat their second top five opponent in eight days. So what happened? Duke 93, Maryland 84. We’re not going to pile on Gary Williams and his squad for their typical carelessness with the ball, etc., here – that’s what they do, and they were still able to beat UNC in Chapel Hill last weekend. No, we’re going to give all the credit to Duke for their hustle, resilience and clutch play down the stretch last night. It was funny, once Duke got the lead with 12 minutes remaining, we knew in our gut that the game was over. Sure enough, Duke methodically pulled away by getting after the loose balls, battling on the boards despite being undersized, and forcing some of those poor Maryland turnovers. We generally try to avoid the stereotypical “Duke is smarter” BS that you hear the Dick Vitale and Mike Patricks of the world prattle on about, but this year we have to give it to them. Duke plays with a very high basketball IQ, they absolutely get after you defensively, and they simply don’t beat themselves. They just don’t have enough of an inside attack to win another national championship this year, but Duke haters everywhere should prepare themselves for another depressing February and a #1 seed for the Devils in March.

Conference Muddling. The middle of the six BCS conferences are about as wide open as we can remember. In the ACC, after Duke (5-0) and Carolina (4-1), who is the third best team? There are nine other teams with either three or two wins. The Big East is even worse – after Georgetown (6-1) and Louisville (5-2), there are eleven teams with four or three wins, including an absurd six teams with identical 4-3 records. The Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC are a little better, but it’s the Big 10 that is the only league exhibiting true have/have-not behavior. Five teams have five-plus wins, five teams have two or fewer wins, and poor Iowa sits in the middle at 3-5.

Saturday Games. Here are the games that caught our attention on Saturday.

• Notre Dame 90, #23 Villanova 80. As soon as we think we’ve got ND figured out, they do something like this.
• Connecticut 68, #8 Indiana 63. We watched this game and still can’t figure this one out.
• Texas-Pan American 54, NJIT 42. 0-21 now… Circle the home date v. 4-19 Longwood on 2/4 as the breakthrough win.
• NC State 69, Florida St. 66. This was pretty much a must-win for the Pack.
• #19 Texas A&M 59, Oklahoma St. 56. OSU continues to struggle in the Big 12 (1-4).
• Arizona 84, Washington 69. Arizona is starting to look like the third best team in the Pac-10.
• Louisville 67, St. John’s 57. Terrence Williams with triple 8s (8/8/8 assts).
• UNLV 72, San Diego St. 69. A key road win in the Mtn West for Vegas.
• Virginia Tech 81, Boston College 73 (OT). Would the real BC please stand up?
• Oklahoma 77, Baylor 71. BU’s first B12 loss is at the hands of the surging Sooners (Blake Griffin with 17/15).
• Purdue 60, #11 Wisconsin 56. Very nice home win for the young Boilers (6-1 in the B10).
• Mississippi St. 88, #15 Ole Miss 68. MSU is starting to look a little like that team SEC:TGTBTD predicted back in September.
• Rutgers 77, #17 Pittsburgh 64. Nice egg-laying by Pitt in this one.
• Kansas St. 82, Iowa St. 57. KSU continues to surge (Beastley 33/15).
• #18 Drake 58, Northern Iowa 54. The class of the MVC continues to roll…
• #6 Washington St. 56, #25 Arizona St. Heartbreaking home loss for the Sun Devils.
• #22 Stanford 82, California 77. Once again, it appears as if Cal is the odd man out in the Pac-10.
• Richmond 80, #14 Dayton 63. Two straight blowout losses for the Flyers – what happened?
• #10 Georgetown 58, West Virginia 57. GTown just keeps sneaking by…
• #3 Tennessee 85, Georgia 69. Lofton came out of his shooting slump with 7 threes.
• #12 Texas 73, Texas Tech 47. DJ Augustin with 19 as Bob Knight continues to teach mediocrity.
• #21 Marquette 79, Depaul 71. MU’s backcourt combined for 44 pts.
• Arkansas 68, LSU 52. The John Brady firing watch continues…
• USC 95, Oregon 86 (OT). Forget what we said last week about Oregon always winning at home – tough weekend for the Ducks.
• #7 UCLA 85, Oregon St. 62. What’s laughable is that OSU thought they were in this game at halftime (43-39).

Sunday Games. A few more…

• #20 Xavier (OH) 77, Massachusetts 65. UMass has really fallen off, but Xavier continues to look fantastic.
• Florida 86, #16 Vanderbilt 64. Let’s remove Vandy and Ole Miss in favor of Florida and Miss St. in this week’s blogpoll, shall we?
• #9 Michigan St. 77, Michigan 62. We just can’t get a sense as to how good this MSU team really is (6-1 in the B10, but that one loss was so hideous!).
• Miami (FL) 75, Clemson 72. Miami really needed this win to avoid a freefall in the conference race.
• Syracuse 71, Providence 64. Both teams needed this one, Cuse got it.
• Georgia Tech 92, Virginia 82 (OT). Tremendous ending in regulation in this one, but Virginia has now earned itself last place in the ACC.

Tonight’s Games. Kinda lame night, but here are the quick hits:

• #6 Duke 81, Virginia Tech 64.  We couldn’t get into watching this game this year.
• #11 Butler 63, Loyola (IL) 50.  Butler continues to pace the Horizon (1/2 game behind Cleveland St.).
• Davidson 87, Citadel 70.  Davidson is halfway to undefeated in the SoCon this year (10-0).
• #18 Xavier 69, #14 Dayton 43.  Wow, XU absolutely slaughtered the Flyers in Cincy tonight.
• Arizona 76, #7 Washington St. 64.  We know one blogger who’s feeling rather smug right now.
• USC 68, Oregon St. 44.  Maybe OSU should just go ahead and join the WCC.
• Washington 72, #22 Arizona St. 61.  How quickly a week can change things for Herb Sendek.
• #10 Michigan St. 78, Northwestern 62.  Let’s send Northwestern to the WCC while we’re at it.
• Pacific 71, UCSB 58.  Big road win in the Big West for Pacific (5-1).
• #4 UCLA 80, Oregon 75.  Kevin Love gave some love back to his home state in the form of 26/18 and the Ducks’ first home loss of the year.

Game of the Night Year? Baylor 116, Texas A&M 110 (5 OT). For the second straight season, possibly probably the game of the year comes to us from the heart of Big 12 country. Let’s get straight to the stats, which are simply astonishing for a college game: 65 minutes of basketball, 191 FG attempts, 106 FT attempts, 69 fouls (!!), 8 player DQs, 120 rebounds, and 216 total points. We’re wondering how anyone had enough energy reserves to finish off this one. More importantly, this was a HUGE road win for the Baylor program, now 16-2 and tied atop the Big 12 standings with Kansas at 4-0. Who could have believed that this program, so maligned after the Dave Bliss/Patrick Dennehy fiasco, could have risen from the ashes to this point so quickly? We could understand a major power rebuilding after such a disaster, but Baylor, one of the annual Big 12 doormats? Major props to head coach Scott Drew for making the Bears one of the feel-good stories of the season thus far. On the flip side, what has happened to Texas A&M? They appear to be imploding, but maybe they were being overvalued (ourselves included) based on that dominant victory over Ohio St. (70-47) back in the Preseason NIT in November. Their next best win was over Oral Roberts (also in Nov) and they’ve only gone 2-4 against the kenpom top 100.

OJ Mayo’s Tickets. So the other big news coming out of yesterday was the possibility that OJ Mayo will be penalized by the NCAA for taking and using a guest ticket provided by Carmelo Anthony for the Lakers-Nuggets game on Mon. night. Tim Floyd, godluvhim, is doing his best to become the fall guy here, knowing full well that at 11-6 (1-3 Pac-10), he needs OJ out there every night to try to secure an NCAA bid in his only year on campus. We’re not sure how Floyd giving Mayo permission to take the ticket somehow exonerates Mayo, but we love his attempt at cover. Nevertheless, we predict a 1-2 game suspension over this violation for Mayo.

Last Night’s Games. There were several interesting results last night:

• St. Joseph’s 81, Massachusetts 77. The A10 is going to be wild this year, with six teams in the RPI top 52.
• Florida St. 69, Virginia 67. Can anyone definitively tell us who the third best team in the ACC is?
• Georgia Tech 77, NC State 74. At 1-3 in the ACC, the Wolfpack really have their work cut out for them.
• Rutgers 80, Villanova 68. A really poor loss for Nova.
• Purdue 64, Penn St. 42. Don’t look but Purdue is now 5-1 in the Big 10.
• #2 Kansas 83, Iowa St. 59. Next week’s game to Manhattan, KS, is looking like the best possibility for a KU loss.
• #17 Pittsburgh 81, St. John’s 57. A once-proud program such as St. John’s should be ashamed of itself.
• Connecticut 84, Cincinnati 83. We thought Cincy had this one, but this was a necessary with for the Huskies.
• William & Mary 73, Drexel 72 (OT). The surprising Tribe are moving up the ranks of the CAA (6-2).
• BYU 59, San Diego St. 56. SDSU has gotten less hype than BYU and UNLV, but they’re the top team in the Mtn West right now (4-1, #55 RPI).
• West Virginia 66, Marshall 64. Marshall always makes this a hellacious game for WVU.
• #1 Memphis 56, Tulsa 41. Line of the night – 2/19/2 blks for Dorsey.
• Florida 73, South Carolina 71. The Dave Odom farewell tour continues with another home L.
• Texas Tech 92, Missouri 84. Missouri is faltering again in the Big 12 (1-3).
• #8 Indiana 65, Iowa 43. The undervalued Hoosiers (17-1, 6-0 Big 10) keep cruising.
• #4 UNC 98, Miami (FL) 82. Carolina recovers from its shocking loss to Maryland.

Recap. Interesting weekend of games. We went into the weekend with five unbeatens, and we came out of it with only three as Vandy lost at Kentucky and Wazzu lost at UCLA. That leaves #1 Memphis, #2 UNC, and #3 Kansas as the only remaining unblemished teams. #4 UCLA at 16-1 is undoubtedly the best team of the one-loss group, which brings us to a midseason conclusion that these four teams have laid stakes as the top tier of college basketball this year. After these four teams, there is a fairly significant dropoff in talent, experience and depth. Which, of course, isn’t to say that these four are locks to make the F4 – teams sometimes stop improving, get lethargic and/or simply lose focus by March Madness. But out of the above group, we’d be absolutely and positively shocked if one of them doesn’t cut the nets down on April 7.

Where is GameDay? One other note from Saturday night. Kansas at Nebraska was the featured ESPN Gameday matchup, but for the second consecutive weekend, we noticed that the crew was offsite. Does this mean that ESPN is no longer doing live broadcasts from the schools? If so, that really sucks and is stupid and we hate ESPN and hope it dies. Seriously, though, last year, some of those sites were utterly insane before the games, and that was half of the fun. What’s the problem? (note: if they’re onsite beginning this week, we’ll issue an apology)

Saturday’s Games. Saturday was absolutely packed with games, and for the first time all season, we felt like playtime was over, and it was time for teams to get down to some real business of winning a conference. Here were some highlighted games, and our take:

• Florida 72, Auburn 56. We don’t think the Baby Gators are all that good yet, but we have to give credit to Billy D. for scheduling soft this year and giving his young guys some momentum going into conference play. 8-8 might get this team to the NCAAs, and they’re already 2-0 in the SEC.
• #2 UNC 93, NC State 62. 43-13 at the half? And NC State was supposed to compete for an ACC title this year??? Pfshaw…
• Depaul 60, St. John’s 54. The Blue Demons are now 3-1 in the Big East and appear to be clicking.
• Kentucky 79, #17 Vanderbilt 73 (2OT). This was a must-win for UK, but Vandy has to be kicking itself for dropping another winnable one at Rupp.
• Missouri 97, #16 Texas 84. Mizzou is going to be tough at home. Damion James with 27/16 in a losing effort.
• #10 Georgetown 72, Connecticut 69. Everyone has seen the Roy Hibbert game-winning 3 by now, but how smooth was that shot?
• Minnesota 76, Penn St. 73. The UK message boards continue to implode.
• Virginia Tech 67, Maryland 66. The Terps (0-2) are digging themselves a huge hole.
• #14 Marquette 92, Notre Dame 66. Um, forget what we were saying about ND the other day… carry on… nothing to see here…
• Columbia 64, NJIT 52. 0-18 now for the NJITers. 11 games to infamy.
• #4 UCLA 81, #4 Washington St. 74. We’re not sure which was more impressive – the UCLA clobbering in the first half, or Wazzu’s comeback in the late second half.
• Boston College 112, Wake Forest 73. Where did this come from???
• Purdue 75, Ohio St. 68. This one surprised us a little, considering how well OSU has been playing.
• Kansas St. 84, Oklahoma 82. A solid road win for KSU – Beastley with 32/11.
• USC 66, Washington 51. The battle between teams with great talent but not much in the way of coaching.
• Clemson 97, Florida St. 85 (2OT). Clemson was just this close to losing another home game… perhaps the collapse has been averted (for now)?
• Indiana St. 64, S. Illinois 62 (2OT). What has happened to the Salukis (7-9) this year?
• #14 Dayton 68, St. Louis 57 (OT). SLU took Dayton to OT, but only scored 2 pts in that extra period.
• #1 Memphis 68, Marshall 45. The only question is how complacent will the Tigers get?
• #7 Tennessee 80, South Carolina 56. Vols roll on…
• Drake 65, Missouri St. 54. The Drake (14-1) is a new name to watch in the MVC.
• Iowa 43, #6 Michigan St. 36. How does a top 10 team lose like this? 36 pts is pathetic with all their talent.
• #3 Kansas 79, Nebraska 58. Methodical and effective. Why wasn’t the GameDay crew in Lincoln again?

Sunday’s Games.

• Louisville 64, Rutgers 49. UL continues to get back on track…
• #18 Rhode Island 80, Duquesne 78. URI’s Will Daniels with 28/11.
• West Virginia 81, Syracuse 61. The Big East is gonna be tough to figure this year.
• #8 Indiana 62, Illinois 58. Does anyone get less press than DJ White (15/10)?
• Oregon 71, Stanford 66. The Ducks just don’t lose at home.
• #8 Duke 87, Virginia 65. UVa looked like it couldn’t even dribble the ball most of this game.

Update: turns out the GameDay show will begin on-site this coming weekend – boy, that Creighton-SIU matchup sure looks the stinker now, doesn’t it? Why doesn’t college hoops make weekly decisions on where to go, like football does???

January 19 Kentucky at Florida
January 26 Creighton at Southern Illinois
February 2 Arizona at UCLA
February 9 Georgetown at Louisville
February 16 Michigan State at Indiana
February 23 Tennessee at Memphis
March 1 Kansas State at Kansas
March 8 North Carolina at Duke

Recap. The most important thing that happened last night was centered in the City of Angels. On one side of town, #4 UCLA handily took care of business against Washington 69-55, while across town #4 Wazzu kept its unbeaten season alive against USC with little problem 73-58. This sets up the first big matchup of the conference season – UCLA v. Washington St. tomorrow at 2:30pm EDT at Pauley Pavilion. In a normal year, this could have been a #1/#2 matchup, but as we talked about earlier this week, the upsets among the elite have been sparse. Looking at the conference representations in the blogpoll, however, this game and its counterpart in February may be our only chance at top five matchups for the remainder of the season, so let’s enjoy it. Given the enormity of this game, we’ve put together a separate preview which will be posted later today.

Other Games Last Night.

• Louisville 63, West Virginia 54. The Cards appear to be getting healthy, and that’s not good news for the rest of the Big East. Earl Clark 11/12 off the bench.
• George Washington 49, St. Louis 20. See post here.
• Oregon 79, California 70. Just bank it – pick Oregon at home every time, and pick against Cal on the road every time.
• Arkansas 76, Auburn 70. Our boy Frank Tolbert had 17/9 in the loss.
• Stanford 66, Oregon St. 46. Lopez boys with 20/13 combined.
• #19 Wisconsin 70, Illinois 60. Illinois fans have said this year was coming due to Weber’s recruiting (8-8, 0-3 B10).
• #12 Butler 74, Wisconsin-Green Bay 65. BU’s Matt Howard with 22/9/2 blks.
• San Jose St. 62, Nevada 60. Mark Fox’s team is running out of time to get it together (8-6, 0-1 WAC).

Friday Night. Nothing much going on. Let’s move on to Saturday…

Real quick ATB today…

Kenny George. Yeah, UNC won the game 93-81, Asheville kept it reasonable, and all the other stuff (Psycho-T: 23/9; Lawson: 17/5/7 assts)…

But all we really want to talk about is the sheer enormity that is Kenny George. This was the first time we’d actually seen him standing near other players, and to say that he dwarfed the rest of them is to insult the word itself. George absolutely miniaturized them. It was like some gentle giant had been released from his cave to mortify and terrorize the citizens of Far Far Away or Whoville. Look, for the college game, Tyler Hansbrough is a beast of a guy – 6’9, 250 lbs and cut like a Rodin sculpture – but he looked like a little snot-nosed kid when standing next to George (which isn’t to say that George could handle the Psychotic One – taking advantage of his superior quickness (a hint right there that George is um, rather, lumbering), Hansbrough had a nasty cram below right in George’s mug).

George is listed at 7’6, 360 lbs on the UNCA roster, but we’d like to take a look at the calibration of that scale. He looks more like four bills to us. The thing is, unlike some supersize-me players we’ve seen in the past (Shagari Alleyne and Escalade, er, Troy Jackson come to mind), this guy may actually have a little game. He’s contributing 13/9/5 in just over 22 mins per game (14/11 against Carolina), which is more than double his output from last year. Who knows – with a little more conditioning… he might just redefine the damn sport.

Other interesting games.

• Tennessee 85, Ole Miss 83. Looks like Ole Miss is better than we thought. The Rebs were very close to winning this game, and UT has become a difficult place for opponents to win games. Does Cincy regret letting Andy Kennedy get away yet?
• Charlotte 82, Clemson 72. Here we go! The annual Clemson collapse is now under way…
• Arizona St. 64, Arizona 59 (OT). Hmm… ASU is now quietly 13-2 while Arizona is 10-5. Maybe Herb Sendek can coach a little bit after all?
• Dayton 92, Rhode Island 83. The Flyers draw first blood in what will be an exciting and competitive A10 this year.
• Mississippi St. 61, LSU 39. Clearly John Brady’s charges were partying all week with the football team. This was in Baton Rouge too.

Vandy & Memphis also remained unbeaten last night, so there are five remaining (+UNC, Kansas and Wazzu).

Recap. Only one game of note tonight (aside from OSU’s usual title game loss on the gridiron):

Kansas St. 85, Savannah St. 25. Yes, that’s the correct score. KSU outscored Savannah St. 48-4 in the second half, who managed to set a new record for futility in both shooting percentage (4.1%) and points scored in a half during the shot-clock era (since 1986). Wow. We think we experienced a game like that once back in grade school. From the WWL:

Savannah State (8-13) missed its first 15 shots of the second half, falling behind 72-22 as Kansas State opened with a 35-1 run. Joseph Flegler finally ended the drought with 5:48 left, hitting a 3-pointer from the wing, and the Tigers figured to at least get a couple more baskets.

Nothing else fell.

The previous records were set just last week, when Pennsylvania went 1-for-17 (5.9 percent) and scored six points in the first half of a 60-30 loss to Florida Gulf Coast. Savannah State shot 15.5 percent overall, making just nine field goals — four from 3-point range.Savannah State coach Horace Broadnax, a guard for Georgetown’s 1984 national championship team, has seen his share of defensive dominance. But even he had to just throw his hands up after this one.”It was good — I was hoping that we’d set a record,” Broadnax said sarcastically. “Hey, what can I do? The guys were playing hard, they weren’t making shots. I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning, if I’m fortunate, and I’m going to move on. And I expect them to move on. “

We love this scoring chart – straight line = bad:

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#13 Butler also won tonight (Butler 66, Loyola (Md) 55) and BC lost to someone named Bob Morris at home (Robert Morris 57, Boston College 51).

01.04.08

Recap. There weren’t any games worth a damn tonight, typical for a Friday, so we’re just going to give a preview for tomorrow.  There are a handful of good games, but we wouldn’t say it’s going to be a sick Saturday.  So here goes…  

On Tap Today (all times EST).

• #3 Kansas (-11) v. Boston College (ESPN) 12pm – on paper, this looks like it could be upset city, but we’re just not seeing it (KU by 20).
• Syracuse (-8.5) v. South Florida (ESPN FC) 12pm – here’s USF’s (10-4) first shot at legitimacy.
• Charlotte (-1) v. Maryland (ESPNU) 12pm – another shot for the A10 to pick up a BCS victory.
  
• #24 Arizona (-6) v. Oregon (FSN) 2pm – lose this one, and Oregon is officially in trouble.
• Georgetown (-16.5) v. Rutgers (ESPN FC) 2pm – GTown looks like they can lose every game, but they rarely do.
  
• #13 Butler (-11) v. Valparaiso 2pm – solid early Horizon matchup.
• Michigan v. Purdue (-12.5) (ESPN) 2pm – this game being on the WWL tomorrow offends our sensibilities.
• Louisville (-2) v. Kentucky (CBS) 4pm – didn’t this game used to mean something?
• #16 Vanderbilt (-7.5) v. UMass (ESPN FC) 4pm – Game of the day – can UMass win at Memorial (after winning at Cuse and BC)?
• #5 UCLA (-5) v. California (FSN) 6pm – possible coming-out party for Cal?
• #15 Texas (-9.5) v. #25 St. Mary’s (FSSW) 6pm – second-best game of the day, but how will SMC react to a hostile environment?
• Penn (NL) v. NJIT 7pm – not even the hapless Quakers can give up a win to NJIT (0-16 and counting…).
• Stanford (-6) v. #23 USC 8pm – both teams very much need this game, as the loser ends up 0-2 in the Pac-10.
• #12 Texas A&M (-15) v. LSU (ESPNU) 8pm – these teams seem to play a lot.
• Gonzaga (-12) v. Georgia 8pm – an odd cross-continental matchup.
  
• Baylor (pick) v. Arkansas (ESPN FC) 8:30pm – this game could make all the difference for one of these teams come Selection Sunday.
• Notre Dame (-5.5) v. Connecticut (ESPN) 9pm – pretty nice Big East matchup in South Bend.
• #4 Washington St. (-2.5) v. Washington 10pm – Wazzu goes for its sixth in a row v. the Huskies.