Rob Dauster of Ballin is a Habit is the RTC correspondent for the Big East Conference. 

There are a lot of people out there that will call themselves college basketball experts, myself included (although I may be the only one to think that way). And these so-called experts keep telling you how good the Big East is this year. Once again, myself included.

If the Big East is so good, then where are all the marquee wins?

The Big East only has three really good wins – Notre Dame beating Texas in Maui, Syracuse beating Kansas in a de facto home game, and Georgetown beating Memphis at home. Even in those three, Georgetown won at home and Kansas is, well, not all that good right now.

It isn’t like they aren’t getting the chances either. West Virginia and Villanova lost to Davidson and Texas in the Jimmy V Classic. Marquette lost to Tennessee. So did Georgetown. Seton Hall lost to Memphis. Cincinnati lost to Xavier. Notre Dame lost to Ohio State and UNC.

As far as I’m concerned there are two schools of thought on this. One is that the Big East is actually even better than we expected. As a result, they are beating good teams, which in turn knocks those teams down in the rankings. Case in point, Wisconsin. The Badgers have two losses on the season (UConn and Marquette) which is part of the reason they aren’t ranked. Along those same lines, when lesser teams actually do get an upset of the Big East teams, they end up getting ranked too high.

The other is that the Big East is just a really big conference chock full of pretty good, but not great, teams. Look at the facts – UConn and Pitt are undefeated, but Pitt hasn’t played anyone and UConn has been so inconsistent; Villanova, Louisville, Georgetown, Notre Dame, West Virginia and Marquette all have fatal flaws as a team; Syracuse has been playing well, but struggles to keep their focus at times and will most likely be losing Eric Devendorf for the season.

So what does this mean? Are the ACC and the Big XII creeping up? No, not just yet. Let me ask you this question – if a healthy West Virginia team (Alex Ruoff and Joe Mazzula sat) beat Davidson and a healthy Luke Harangody helped knock off UNC and/or OSU, who we even be having this conversation?

Probably not. Now that is done, let’s get on to the good stuff.

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Ryan Kish of George Mason Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the CAA.

Power rankings:

1. Virginia Commonwealth (6-3)
2. George Mason (6-2)
3. Hofstra (8-1)
4. Northeastern (5-4)
5. Old Dominion (4-3)
6. Georgia State (3-6)
7. James Madison (4-4)
8. Towson (5-5)
9. Delaware (4-6)
10. Drexel (2-3)
11. UNC-W (3-7)
12. William & Mary (3-6)

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Michael Chin is the RTC correspondent for the West Coast Conference.

So to update the conference, the fact is nothing has really changed:

Saint Mary’s took care of business with a win against San Diego State (SDSU). SDSU is a good team in a mediocre mid-major conference. Saint Mary’s front court played very well, but Patty Mills turned in another subpar performance, going 6-18. He needs to become a true point guard and let the game come to him. Their game against Oregon is now a must-win after San Diego edged by the Ducks this weekend.

San Diego is really an anomaly this year. They lose to New Mexico and San Jose State and the pull off a win against Oregon. This really speaks to the coaching of Bill Grier.  Looking at the big picture, if Oregon doesn’t offer Mark Few the job, Bill Grier may also be on their short list.

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Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Big 12 and Missouri Valley Conferences.

Current Records and my standings (Last Week)

1. Oklahoma (10-0) (1)
2. Texas (8-1) (3)
3. Baylor (8-1) (2)
4. Missouri (8-1)  (5)
5. Texas A&M (7-1) (7)
6. Kansas (7-2) (4)
7. Texas Tech (7-2) (6)
8. Kansas St. (7-3) (9)
9. Nebraska (6-2) (8)
10. Iowa St. (6-3) (10)
11. Oklahoma St. (6-3) (11)
12. Colorado (4-3) (12)

This has been a slow week for the Big 12.  Finals are upon us, so just a few games and updates this week.

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Allen R of Houston Basketball Junkies is the RTC correspondent for Conference USA.

The week of final examinations usually equates to a slow basketball week and Conference USA is no exception to the rule.

In fact Houston, Memphis, Tulane, Rice, ECU, UAB, UTEP, Marshall and SMU all refrained from scheduling games during the week.

However there were a few games and storylines worth talking about in this rather uneventful week: Read the rest of this entry »

Patrick Marshall of Bluejay Basketball is the RTC correspondent for the Missouri Valley and Big 12 Conferences.

Current Records and my standings (Last Week Rank)

1. Illinois St. (9-0) (1)
2. Creighton (7-2) (2)
3. Evansville (7-1) (3)
4. Drake (8-3) (6)
5. Missouri St. (5-3) (5)
6. Bradley (5-4) (7)
7. Northern Iowa (5-5) (4)
8. Southern Illinois (3-5) (9)
9. Wichita St. (4-5)  (8)
10. Indiana St. (1-8) (10)

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Evansville (2-0 this week)—I could easily put Creighton in this position after the big win against previously unbeaten Dayton, but Evansville has earned the recognition for  what some would consider a surprising start this season.    Their only loss is to Butler and they just destroyed Western Kentucky on Saturday night.  Shy Ely and Jason Holsinger are leading this senior laden team.   Evansville also gets to fight the big fish this week as they head to Chapel Hill to take on the Tarheels on Thursday night.  So even if they are not the team of the week the rest of the season, it is deserved heading into this week.

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Corey Johns is the RTC correspondent for the America East Conference.

Two weeks ago when I last posted, Marquis Blakely tore it up in the paint, Boston U had played great all around, and Hartford had been the disappointment.  Well not much has changed except although Boston U is still atop the conference, they had a down two weeks.

Standings

1. Boston U    5-3
2. UMBC    5-3
3. Vermont    4-3
4. Binghamton    4-3
5. Albany    5-4
6. Stony Brook    5-4
7. Maine    5-5
8. New Hampshire    3-4
9. Hartford    3-7

The Contenders:

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Marty Leon is the RTC correspondent for the Patriot League.

Patriot League Struggles Out Of Conference

Navy Sole Survivor of Titanic Two Weeks. The past two weeks have been brutal on the majority of teams in the Patriot League. Army had an unthinkable loss to Presbyterian. Holy Cross lost to midwest power(?) Loyola of Chicago. Lafayette went down to Fordham, Central Connecticut and Hartford, while a young Colgate team struggling to score, lost at home to Kennesaw State. Bucknell took it on the chin against Wagner. had a twenty point loss to Stonybrook, and preseason conference  favorite American bowed to Mount St. Mary’s.

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Mark Bryant, the Coordinator of New Media for the Big South Conference and writer for Big South SHOUT, is an RTC correspondent.

A Conference Upside-Down?

Here we are approaching the middle of December, each Big South team with one or two conference games under its belt, and already the plot has taken unexpected twists that could signal a changing of the guard..  The top three teams in the standings have yet to take a loss in conference play, even though none of those squads was forecast to finish in the upper half this year: VMI (2-0), Presbyterian (2-0), and Charleston Southern (1-0).  At the same time, three teams with largely higher expectations have not scratched out a conference win so far: Coastal Carolina (0-1), High Point (0-2), and Winthrop (0-2).

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Ray Floriani of College Chalktalk is the RTC correspondent for the NEC and MAAC Conferences.

Decided to take a tempo free look at the Northeast Conference. The win-loss record includes all games, though everyone has a couple conference games in the total. The plus-minus is the difference between offensive and defensive points per possession. Naturally a figure on the plus side is good, while a minus figure suggests defense (most likely)  should be addressed. The far right column is the average possessions per game. In the sixties is slow to moderate. Low seventies is still moderate while high seventies on up is ‘metal to the pedal’ range. A thank you to Basketball State for expedient availability of the data.   The average possessions for NEC teams is 68, more on the moderate to slow variety.

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