Game #142: We head back to one of the great venues of the game for a late-season SEC match-up.

You don’t think guys like Dee Bost, Renardo Sidney and Ravern Johnson would relish a win at Rupp Arena, to be responsible for ruination of the second-longest home winning streak in college basketball, and the chance to play a spoiler role in the late-season SEC shakedown? Then you haven’t been following this conference at all this season. Kentucky is back home, and the Big Blue Nation is thankful for it. The Wildcats are well aware how every game, whether it ends in a win or a loss, is magnified at this time of year and they want to show the nation they’re still a bunch who will have to be taken very seriously in March. We can’t wait to see how UK defends Sidney, especially if John Calipari puts Terrence Jones on him for a trip or two. This is going to be a blast, and we’ll kick it off just before 7 PM ET. See you there.

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David Ely is an RTC Contributor.

Introduction

What a weekend. We’re still reeling from the Saturday’s chaos in Madison. It’s always a bittersweet day when the final undefeated team in the nation suffers its first loss. Do you think the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers pop champagne and toast themselves every year once that game clock hits 0:00 and their legacy is preserved for one more year? Sure, they aren’t the ’72 Dolphins, but we easily could picture Bobby Knight smirking to himself and lighting a cigar after Ohio State’s loss at Wisconsin. 

What We Learned

Taylor May Be the Most Talk-About Player In America Right Now

Ohio State wasn’t an invincible juggernaut and we already knew that. OSU endured close calls earlier the season against Minnesota, Michigan, Penn State, Illinois and Northwestern. It wasn’t a matter of if Ohio State would suffer its first loss, it was a matter of when some team would rise up and topple the Buckeyes. Cue the Wisconsin Badgers. Jordan Taylor exploded in the second half scoring 21 of his 27 points to lead Wisconsin to a come from behind win and an all-time RTC. But here at TWTW, we’re not as interested in single game scenarios; we focus on the big picture. So in their win, did the Badgers show the nation a blueprint for beating the Buckeyes? The main quality a team needs in order to emulate what the Badgers did against OSU is offensive efficiency. Ohio State is the #12 team in the nation at forcing turnovers, causing them on 25% of opponents’ possessions. Wisconsin values the ball more than any other team in the NCAA, turning it over on just 13.6% of its possessions, and on Saturday the Badgers had just eight turnovers. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to point out that fewer turnovers increases your win probability. But what’s harder to duplicate is the Badgers’ enigmatic guard. Taylor pretty much single-handedly propelled Wisconsin to the upset. Few clubs have a guard capable of putting up that many points that quickly. So while opposing coaches can point to Saturday’s outcome merely as proof that OSU is beatable, it’s difficult to emulate the Badgers’ winning formula. Here’s the best recipe for beating a highly ranked Ohio State squad: schedule the game in Madison. Neither the OSU football nor basketball teams are invulnerable to the powers of Bucky Badger.

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If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

Top 25 Games

• #11 Wisconsin 71, #1 Ohio State 67: “After opening the 2nd half with a 19-6 spurt to take what seemed like a commanding 47-32 lead with 13:16 to play, Ohio State folded like a 9/2 off suit yielding a 30-8 Badger blitz over the next nine minutes to fall behind 62-55 before eventually losing 71-67 this afternoon in the Kohl Center.” (Eleven Warriors)  “Two days after Wisconsin’s mammoth victory over previously unbeaten Ohio State, I still think that might have been the best college basketball game I have seen in person. The immovable object (Wisconsin at home) met the irresistible force (the No. 1 Buckeyes’ unblemished record, balanced attack) and held its ground.”  (Bucky’s 5th Quarter)
• #2 Texas 69, Baylor 60: “Two streaks came to an end on Saturday afternoon at the Frank Erwin Center. For the first time this season, Texas failed to defeat a Big 12 opponent by double digits, as the Longhorns held off the Baylor Bears, 69-60. That streak really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the win broke a ridiculous four game losing streak to Baylor.” (Burnt Orange Nation)
• #3 Kansas 89, Iowa State 66: “A shorthanded Kansas Jayhawk squad jumped out early on Saturday to take control of the second matchup of the season against Iowa State. In a game where the Jayhawks played without Josh Selby and Thomas Robinson, Kansas seemed to heed the call from their head coach for better defense, at least early. At one point, just under the five minute mark in the first half, Kansas was up by 23 points and had held the Cyclones to just 14 points. While the Cyclones never pushed the game back within reach, Iowa State did start knocking down shots from beyond the arc.” (Rock Chalk Talk: Part 1 or Part 2)
• #19 Louisville 73, #12 Syracuse 69: “The Cards used torrid three point shooting from Preston and Kuric and some great interior defense to build a 20-point lead, and then let Syracuse back into it by seemingly trying to just run out the clock.  I think we had the ball for 1:48 of the last 2:00 of the game, and a very lucky foul called against Syracuse with the shot clock running down and a risky pass to Kuric at the free throw line gave us some breathing room.  It was also the first time I can remember Pitino making a halftime adjustment when UP 10, and we ran a high pick against their zone that let Siva get into the lane and create scoring opportunities.  A few key shots and this thing stays a double digit win.” (Card Chronicle)

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***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor.

So many games, so little time to talk about them. Here are the biggest games of the weekend and why you should pay attention to them. Fair warning: it’s a long list. All rankings from RTC and all times Eastern.

#12 Syracuse @ #19 Louisville – 12 pm Saturday on ESPN (****)

The Cards Need Knowles To Catch Fire Over the Angry Syracuse Zone

With Rakeem Buckles and Gorgui Dieng practicing again for Louisville, the Cardinals are starting to get some of their depth back. Their status for this game is unknown but there’s a chance at least one of them will play. The Cardinals beat Syracuse twice last season and they’ll look to do it again in what is an important separation game for both teams. Only one game in the loss column separates third and eleventh place in the Big East with both of these teams in the thick of that jumbled mess.

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If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

Top 25 Games

• St. John’s 89, #10 UConn 72: “The Connecticut Huskies were beaten, beasted, basted, knocked around behind a team defensive effort on Kemba Walker (15 points on 16 shots, 7 assists) who looked human once again, even sloppy. The Huskies’ offense wasn’t the real culprit in this loss, though they shot 35% inside the arc. It was the defense that led the Huskies into the wilderness. The Red Storm rebounded and ran on them over and over again, picking up at least 24 fast-break points behind the tenacious outlet passing of D.J. Kennedy (20 points, 11 total rebounds, 5 assists), along with the steady driving and shooting of Dwight Hardy (career-high 33 points, 3 assists). In a 71 possession game, the Storm dropped 89 points, putting up 54 in the second half.” (Rumble in the Garden)
• #23 Vanderbilt 81, Alabama 77: “Few could have predicted a shootout with the Crimson Tide visiting Memorial Gym, but Thursday night’s game turned into a horse race. In the end, the Commodores won by a nose. Vanderbilt snuck past a very tough Alabama team 81-77 behind a solid team effort that saw four ‘Dores in double figures on the night. ‘Bama abused the home team in the paint, but Vandy got the stops they needed late in the second half after the team switched from zone to man defense. Though Anthony Grant’s strategy of running Brad Tinsley through six or seven screens per possession was successful in creating space for his guards, the Tide couldn’t find their range late, leading to Vanderbilt’s fifth SEC win.” (Anchor of Gold)
• Illinois 71, #25 Minnesota 62: “In a game where both teams desperately needed a victory to snap out of their respective funks, Illinois capitalized on Minnesota mistakes and failed opportunities to take home a 71-62 victory in sloppy, grinding contest.” (From the Barn)

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While we love to celebrate teamwork in college basketball, the truth is that the individual is much more fun. Balanced scoring is fine and tactically sound, but what we really love in college basketball is the virtuoso offensive performance, or as it is called in 2011, the Jimmer. And while the three-headed Devil from Durham may have won last season, perhaps this season, the one man show is back in style.  It’s Michael Jordan’s fault, really. His competitive nature and unbelievable personal narcissism motivated him to incredible heights and made him largely unbearable to most of his contemporaries. His success provided a model for greatness that was easy to recognize and hard to argue with. There are lots of different names for the Jordan model, but Bill Simmons’ version is probably the best known: The Alpha Dog.

Yeah, It's Safe to Call MJ an Alpha Dog

Simmons didn’t invent the concept or the term: lots of analysts, sportswriters, announcers and coaches have described the alpha dog model in one way or another over the years. The gist of it is this: A team needs an undisputed leader. The alpha dog is the go-to-guy on offense and is the guy who takes the game-winning shots. To win championships, you need an alpha dog. Jordan was an alpha dog (at least for the Bulls if not for North Carolina), and he is the primary reason his team won championships. Despite being a team game, you need an alpha dog to win, to demand the right to take the last shot. Guys who pass up the last shot aren’t alpha dogs: they are losers. At least, that’s the catechism. However, in the grand world of Simmon-isms, there may be another theory at play.

Specifically, I’m talking about the Ewing Theory, which in short, postulates that sometimes a team will play better without its star player, that the team will transcend the individual. Does this contradict the Alpha Dog theory? Well then it contradicts the Alpha Dog theory. Simmons, like Walt Whitman, contains multitudes. In any case, the Sports Guy has lots of examples, and anecdotally, lots of folks have seen this with their own eyes and believe it. It’s not too hard to imagine a scenario where this makes sense. The star is a volume scorer and fairly inefficient, and when the star is out of the game, the other players get more shots and more efficient shots. This is fairly intuitive and you can see the principle in action every Kentucky game. Terrence Jones is a sensational basketball player and undoubtedly incredibly skilled. That said, he is the fifth most efficient scorer on the team, but takes 30.5% of the shots. If he took fewer shots and his teammates took more, the team’s offensive efficiency would go up.

At Ohio State, Jared Sullinger uses, by far, the most possessions in each game, and for the most part, that’s fine. Sullinger is an incredibly efficient scorer with an offensive rating of 123.6 (points per hundred possessions). That said, Sullinger’s teammate Jon Diebler has an insane offensive rating of 139.1 and yet uses only 12.5% of Ohio State’s possessions. If I were to pretend you were naive here, you would then ask why Ohio State isn’t constantly feeding Jon Diebler. Fortunately, you aren’t naive and you understand that efficency is fleeting. Or if not exactly fleeting, curved.

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If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

Top 25 Games

• #13 Georgetown 64, #12 Syracuse 56: “Georgetown fans have been conditioned to believe that when the going gets tough, we’d falter.  Instead, we did the exact opposite, finishing the game with an 8-1 run to win 64-56 in the most satisfying victory of the season.  John Thompson III earned his first victory in the Carrier Dome as the coach of Georgetown.” (Casual Hoya)

Other Games of Interest

• Michigan 75, Northwestern 66: “On Michigan’s first offensive possession of the game, Jordan Morgan went up soft for an easy layup, missed it, and went crumbling to the floor. It was eerily similar to Morgan’s soft early layups at Ohio State except this time it was Mike Cappocci defending the rim rather than Jared Sullinger. I’m not sure what happened but, after that dismal attempt, the switch flipped. Morgan dominated the next 39 minutes in a way that we haven’t seen this year. He missed just one more shot and finished with 27 points on 13 field goal attempts. That’s not to say Morgan didn’t get any help from his teammates. Tim Hardaway Jr. was phenomenal yet again and Morris, Douglass, Novak, and Smotrycz were all solid in supporting roles.” (UM Hoops: Recap, Post-Game Chat, John Beilein Post-Game Interview, and Player Post-Game Interviews)
• Maryland 106, Longwood 52: “Ah, the joys of cupcakes. Sean Mosley scored 20 points, Dino Gregory had his second double-double of the season, six Terrapins finished in double-digits in points, and Maryland cruised to an easy victory over Longwood, more than doubling up the Lancers with a 106-52 final score. The win was Gary Williams’ 665th, and Maryland fans held up “665” signs in the final minutes commerating the victory.” (Testudo Times)

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If you are interested in participating in our ATB2 feature, send in your submissions to rushthecourt@gmail.com. We will add to this post throughout the day as the submissions come in so keep on sending them.

Top 25 Games

• #14 Purdue 67, Indiana 53: “Tonight’s performance reminded us a bit of the Hoosiers of old. Missed shots — 22-of-62 from the field for 35.5 percent, 2-of-13 from three for 15.4 percent. Blocked shots — eight swats for Purdue with JaJuan Johnson notching four of those. Credit is due to Matt Painter’s kids, who entered the game at fourth in the Big Ten in allowing 1.05 points per possession to their opponents. Purdue’s defense — which held the Hoosiers to a season low 24 first-half points and a season low points total in a loss  – was perhaps the best these Hoosiers have seen all season. They were physical. They took away the three-point shot. They protected the paint and the rim. They got after an Indiana team that hadn’t played a road contest in over a week, that had been bolstered by a home crowd of late and that is without Christian Watford and Maurice Creek.” (Inside the Hall: Recap and Tom Crean Quotes; Boiled Sports: Recap)
• #18 Kentucky 73, Tennessee 61: “Ladies and gentlemen of the Big Blue Nation, this was a team that I recognized. I didn’t recognize every player (more on that later), but this was the kind of defense, ball movement and toughness that I remember from the Louisville game, and many other times in the early season. What we saw tonight was Kentucky Wildcats Basketball. The Tennessee Volunteers did not make it easy, and made several runs of the sort that Kentucky has responded poorly to on the road.  Tennessee played physical, tough basketball. But in the comfy confines of Rupp Arena, the Wildcats did not succumb to the never-say-die effort of the Vols, and the very large first half lead proved too much for Tennessee, who is somewhat scoring challenged. The Volunteers deserve credit for a good try, but ultimately it wasn’t nearly good enough.” (A Sea of Blue or Rocky Top Talk)

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The Lede.  The second night of Rivalry Week continued, but frankly those games were rather boring.  The juiciest matchups occur on Wednesday night when a few old, bitter rivals re-acquaint themselves with each other.  We thought that this gave us a chance to explore some of the lesser-known teams who played on Tuesday and are having excellent second halves this year.

Another Mason Miracle in Store in 2011?

Your Watercooler Moment.  Celebrating Surprise Teams in the Mid-Major World: George Mason, Princeton and Xavier.  Tonight gave us a good opportunity to discuss three teams that people didn’t necessarily expect to be playing so well at this point in this season, but each continues to win games.  First, how about Jim Larranaga’s George Mason Patriots?  Could it be Mason Madness all over again?  With a win tonight at UNC-Wilmington, 78-63, GMU won its tenth CAA game in a row and has started the whispering around Fairfax about another big-time March run for the small school in northern Virginia.  Their remaining big CAA game is a week from tonight at 11-2 VCU.  A little up the coast in New Jersey, the Princeton Tigers defeated their rival Penn tonight, 62-59, in overtime, the Ivy League school’s seventh win in a row and fifth in the conference.  The Tigers’ key win, of course, was last Friday over expected Ivy champion Harvard, but with that win and the Penn victory, Sydney Johnson’s team is off to a 5-0 start for the second consecutive year.  The caveat is that all five of their Ivy wins have come at home, but with no Cornell juggernaut to compete with, Princeton is well-positioned to make a run at the Ivy title for the first time since 2004.  The last name, Xavier, may surprise you.  After all, the Musketeers are always good, right?  But having lost stars Jordan Crawford and Jason Love from last year’s Sweet Sixteen team and a rough non-conference slate, not many folks expected XU to once again rise to the top of the Atlantic 10.  Yet here they are, sitting at 8-1 in league play and going into a hostile environment tonight in Athens, Georgia, and coming out with a big-time win over a power conference team.  Tu Holloway has been outstanding, and his 18-point second half ensured that the Musketeers of two months ago who lost to every good team they played is no longer wearing the same uniform.  These three teams may not get a lot of press the final month of the season, but they’re definitely worth keeping an eye on the rest of the way.

Tonight’s Quick Hits…

• Clemson as the Fourth ACC Team.  The Tigers have gotten virtually no attention this season at all, but Brad Brownell has done a tremendous job in his first season in South Carolina and Clemson could be well-positioned to finish behind Duke, UNC and possibly Florida State as the fourth NCAA team from the conference.  The Tigers have been outstanding at home this season, going 5-0 in conference play and appearing a different team in the friendly confines of Littlejohn Coliseum.  The key has been offensive balance, as Brownell is getting between 8.0 and 13.7 PPG from six players, led by seniors Demontez Stitt and Jerai Wright (12.8).
• Kentucky at Home.  The Wildcats are simply a different team than they are on the road this season, and it’s in large part due to how the Wildcats’ role players play much more comfortably in Rupp Arena.  The crystal-clear case in point is DeAndre Liggins, a guard who averages 11/4/4 APG and shoots 46% at home and contributes 5/3 and shoots 26% on the road.  Tonight he was arguably John Calipari’s most effective Cat, going for 19/5/3 assts/5 stls in a complete floor game where he missed only a single field goal and free throw on the evening.  In SEC play, UK is 4-0 with an average margin of victory of 20.0 points, but on the road they are only 1-4 with a margin of -0.8 points.  If the Cats can get just a little better production from the likes of Liggins and company, they would be a much better team.

… and Misses.

• MVC Leaders.  Does anyone want to win this conference this year?  After Missouri State ran out to a 9-1 record, the Bears lost two games last week; meanwhile, UNI won eight games in a row to get to 9-3 before dropping a game over the weekend to Drake and tonight against Evansville.  Wichita State moved to the forefront with an 11-2 record only to get dropped by a weak Southern Illinois team tonight.  With five games left, Wichita and Missouri State appear to be in the best position to win the league, and the two teams will play each other on the last day of the regular season three weeks from now.

Tweet of the Night.  It was a light night on Twitter, but Wolken brings up a good point that will much discussed in the early offseason not that long from now about the NBA lockout and its (possible) impact on students leaving school early.

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***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor.

An intriguing non-conference game, Bruce Pearl’s return and an ACC bubble battle headline tonight’s schedule. All rankings from RTC and all times Eastern.

Xavier @ Georgia – 7 pm on ESPNU (***)

Mack Is Still An Underrated Coach, In Our Opinion

These teams last met in the first round of the 2008 NCAA Tournament, the year Dennis Felton’s Georgia team made an incredible run through the SEC Tournament to steal the automatic bid. Xavier has won eight of nine games coming into tonight’s matchup while Georgia has won two straight after starting 3-4 in SEC play.

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