Even though ESPN likes to hype up its Bracketbuster day the fact is that the last few weeks of the season act like an elimination tournament with teams moving in and out of the NCAA Tournament while other teams move up and down on a daily basis. While each and every game could theoretically have an impact on the Bubble and NCAA seeding there are a few games that matter more than the others which we will feature over the next two weeks leading up to the conference tournaments. We will feature these in two posts per week. The first will be a post released on Sunday night for games from Monday through Thursday and the second will be a post released on Thursday/Friday night for games from Friday through Sunday.

Fifth
#21 Texas at #23 Texas A&M at 2 PM on ESPN on Saturday – These two teams are on edge of being anywhere from a #4 to a #8 seed so this is obviously a big game for both teams because when the Selection Committee is placing teams in the bracket they will look at how they did head-to-head. Texas has been disappointing this year, but they have a chance to salvage their season with a late rally. The big question is how they respond to the loss of Dogus Balbay.  Texas A&M is in essentially the same situation that the Longhorns are just with much less fanfare and volatility. The winner here has a shot at a 4 seed while the loser is going to be looking at a #7 seed at best barring a run in the Big 12 Conference Tournament, but perhaps the biggest prize for the winner will be moving up to try and avoid Kansas in the Conference Tournament for as long as possible.

Fourth
Illinois State at #22 Northern Iowa at 8:05 PM on ESPN2 on Saturday – I know after the media’s lovefest for the Panthers this year it might be shocking to hear that they might need to win this game to guarantee a spot in the NCAA Tournament, but after their shocking loss at Evansville they might need this one for an at-large bid if they slip up in Arch Madness. Jordan Eglseder is scheduled to return from his suspension today and the Panthers will need him against Illinois State. The Redbirds have no illusions of an at-large bid, but this game is significant for their automatic bid chances as it would give them a shot at the #2 seed in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament and help them avoid the Panthers until the finals, which is particularly important since there are only 3 solid teams in the MVC.

Third
#8 Villanova at #4 Syracuse at 9 PM on ESPN on Saturday – Yes. The biggest game ever (!) slides in as the #3 game of the weekend in our rankings. Obviously this is the marquee game of the weekend in terms of big names, but it holds a little less significance for the NCAA Tournament then some would think. A win here for Syracuse would give them clinch the Big East regular season title for the Orange, but they already have the coveted double-bye (an absolute joke) in the Big East Tournament. The bigger issue for Jim Boeheim‘s squad is their quest for a #1 seed. With Purdue basically being eliminated in the talk about the final two #1 seeds (see below), a Syracuse win would give them the inside track for one of those seeds. As for Villanova, they have an outside shot at a #1 seed, but they will need a lot of help thanks to their #50 SOS (yes, I double checked and yes I was shocked too). Their main concern should be trying to avoid slipping for a #3 or possibly even #4 seed with a difficult three-game stretch to end the season (at Syracuse, at Cincinnati, and home versus West Virginia).

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Boilers Continue to Ride JaJuan Johnson.  #4 Purdue 60, #12 Ohio State 57.  Something had to give tonight, as Matt Painter’s Purdue team came into their visit to central Ohio riding a seven-game winning streak, and Thad Matta’s OSU team was riding their own six-game run (nine if you include only conference games).  The game started out similar to the last one, with Purdue running out to a sizable lead, although this time Robbie Hummel didn’t have 29 points at the halftime break.  But in stark contrast to their previous encounter, Purdue was able to hang onto their lead after the half in large part due to the dominance of their center JaJuan Johnson and his 24/7/3 assts on 11-17 FGs.  It’s been said in this space before, but it needs to be noted again.  Since Painter called out his team’s toughness, and in particular that of his big man, JJJ has been the best center in the Big Ten, averaging 20/8/2 blks in his last eight games.  When he plays to his capabilities as he has in the last four weeks, Purdue is Final Four-good.  When he doesn’t, as was the case in the previous game against the Buckeyes (4/5 on 2-5 FGs), they’re a Sweet Sixteen-level team.  Robbie Hummel didn’t even need to score tonight (4/4), which shows how important JJJ is to his team’s offense.  The strategy to allow Buckeye star Evan Turner to get his (29/7/5 assts) generally worked, as nobody else for Matta’s team was able to produce (9-27 FGs for the rest of the team).  Still, this game wasn’t decided until the last few seconds when Purdue’s Chris Kramer seemingly swooped out of nowhere to block a fast-break attempt by William Buford, leading to a rushed three at the horn for Jon Diebler that bounced off.  The Boilermakers with this huge road win move to 10-3 in the Big Ten, a half-game behind Michigan State, while OSU drops to 10-4, a full game behind the Spartans.  Both teams will have games with MSU in the next two weeks.

Huge Win in C-bus for Purdue Tonight

Bubbly Games.

• Louisville 91, Notre Dame 89 (2OT).  This was the game of the night, both in play and relative importance, as both teams came into this one fighting for their bubble lives this evening.  The Cards can breathe a little easier after outlasting the plucky Irish behind the best game of sophomore Samardo Samuels’ career (36/6/2 blks in 45 minutes).  It was looking ugly for the home team in the first OT, however, as Notre Dame scored the first seven points of the period.  Reginald Delk’s huge three and-1 cut the lead back to three and gave UL enough energy to come back and force the second overtime.  In that period, ND’s Tim Abromaitis (who otherwise played a great 29/5 game) made a couple of important mistakes that essentially sealed the game for Louisville.  The Cards should be safely on the warm side of the bubble after this week, but with games against Georgetown, Marquette and Syracuse looming, you never know with this team.  Notre Dame has now lost five of seven, and will need a few upsets down the stretch to get back into the picture.
• Penn State 81, Northwestern 70.  Simply an incomprehensible loss for a team like Northwestern fighting for its NCAA Tournament life tonight.  Penn State came into this game 0-12 in the Big Ten, and left Evanston with its first win in league play (in relatively easy fashion!) against the Wildcats.  All five PSU starters scored in double figures and the team shot 56% from the field, but where Northwestern really got killed tonight was on the boards (-17).  The Wildcats are now at 6-8 in the Big Ten race, but with a road game coming up at Wisconsin, they’d probably need to win all three remaining conference games and have a good showing in the B10 Tourney to even put themselves back in the NCAA conversation.

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Statement Wins.  It was Super Tuesday tonight, and two teams came into this evening with a little something to prove to America on national television.  Or at least, that’s the way it looked from our perspective.  Two black-and-gold colored teams — Vanderbilt and Purdue — played with meaningful purpose, as if to overcome the perception (right or wrong) that they were the weaker sister in the games tonight.  Memo to those teams residing in Nashville and West Lafayette: message received, loud and clear.

Purdue With Statement Win in E. Lansing (Kevin Fowler)

• #6 Purdue 76, #10 Michigan State 64. We’re a little tired of harping on this because, frankly, it’s too easy.  But once again Purdue got a strong performance from their center JaJuan Johnson, and once again they won the game.  Since Matt Painter called out everyone on his team except Robbie Hummel and E’Twaun Moore three weeks ago, the Boilermakers (led by JJJ’s additional production) have reeled off six straight wins.  And while those six wins included a trio of B10 dogs, they also included a home game against Wisconsin and road games at Illinois and tonight at the Breslin Center — not exactly the easiest three teams from which to come out of a slump.  Robbie Hummel (15/5/5 assts) and E’Twaun Moore (25/3/6 assts) continue to hold up their end of the bargain for Purdue, but the addition of JJJ to the offensive repertoire instantly turns the Boilermakers from a top twenty team into a top five team.  Now it’s Michigan State who is slumping, and as Tom Izzo put it, the Spartans haven’t “checked in three games” and the fact that Purdue shot a scorching 57% for the game in East Lansing illustrates his point.  The last three games have been the three worst defensive performances for MSU all season long, and shooting in the low 30s (32% tonight) in two of those contests does not help matters.  Obviously, the loss of Kalin Lucas has a lot to do with this.  Even though Lucas played tonight (12 pts in 29 minutes), it was clear that he was still gimpy out there, and as the point man in Izzo’s tough-nosed M2M defense, his presence at full strength is a factor that cannot be measured just in numbers.  Still, after holding what seemed to be a commanding three-game lead in the Big Ten standings a mere week ago, the Spartans with this loss are now tied with Illinois at 9-3 and only a half-game ahead of Purdue and Ohio State (both 8-3), setting up a fun final three-plus weeks of the regular season for the conference crown.

Vandy Dominated the Vols Tonight (Jae S. Lee)

• #24 Vanderbilt 90, #12 Tennessee 71.  Mismatch.  Vandy stormed out of the gates to a lead of 19-4 en route to a seventeen-point halftime lead, soon to be outdone by a twenty-seven point difference in the mid-second half.  Jimmy Dykes said it early and often, but Vandy was simply the more poised team tonight.  They were quicker to move their feet, hungrier for loose balls, and generally played like the Vols were trying to steal something out of their pockets.  Vandy’s Jeffery Taylor exploded for a career-high 26/7/3 assts (including a perfect 12-12 from the line), and Jermaine Beal added 20/4 stls.  It’s probably coincidental that tonight’s game represented the most depth Bruce Pearl has had at his disposal since the New Year’s incident and yet the Vols played their worst game, but it’s worth noting that the same edge with which UT beat #1 Kansas and six SEC teams was sorely lacking tonight.  Tennessee leading scorer Scotty Hopson has a tendency to let his offensive game impact his entire performance, and that was once again the case tonight as his 4-14 shooting seemed to make him invisible everywhere else.  Vanderbilt moves to 7-2 in the SEC East, while Tennessee fell to 6-3, but it is the guys in orange who have the unenviable trip to Lexington on Saturday for Gameday against the second-ranked Wildcats.  For UT to have any chance whatsoever, Bruce Pearl will have to tap into that ‘behind-the-eight-ball’ reserve he found when #1 Kansas visited Knoxville five weeks ago.

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Thursday Night Doldrums.  There weren’t a lot of great games on paper tonight, and it turned out to be the case in reality as most of the marquee games were average at best.  We’ll break down the biggest two games, and just highlight the others.

Purdue Didn’t Choke, But Kelsey Barlow Did.  #7 Purdue 78, Indiana 75.  The one exception tonight was this game in Bloomington between the surging Boilermakers and the home Hoosiers.  These two teams went back and forth for thirty-eight minutes before a 5-0 run keyed by Robbie Hummel (21/7) and E’Twaun Moore (14/5/3 assts) put Matt Painter’s team in position to win at IU for the first time since the 90s.  Indiana had a shot to tie the game at the buzzer, but Verdell Jones III’s  (22/6/4 assts) shot from around 40 feet missed the mark, and Purdue won its fifth straight game prior to the big showdown with Michigan State next Tuesday.  JaJuan Johnson had a big night with 21/7, and as we’ve discussed in this space before, when the big man is putting in the work, Purdue is a much better team.  He’s gone for 18/8 a night during the Boilers’ five-game winning streak; in the previous three-game losing streak, he put up an average of 6/5.  Obviously Matt Painter and his guards want to keep Johnson happy.  As for Indiana, their second-consecutive loss on the final possession stings, but it’s further evidence that Tom Crean’s team isn’t all that far from competing in the Big Ten.  We’d suppose that one year from now IU will be winning these close games.  Final note: starter Kelsey Barlow will undoubtedly be suspended as soon as Matt Painter sees the below image (taken in the final moments of the game).  Brilliant move, that one.

When Will Kelsey Barlow's Suspension Begin?

Dud in Durham.  #9 Duke 86, #19 Georgia Tech 67. This was fairly close until three minutes left in the first half, at which point the Blue Devils turned up the defense a couple of clicks and began to separate themselves from the Yellow Jackets.  The one thing Tech couldn’t afford was to let Duke hit a three at the end of the half and make it a double-digit lead, so when Jon Scheyer found Kyle Singler in the corner for a trey as the buzzer sounded, you didn’t need a Magic 8-ball to predict the Jackets’ second half.  Georgia Tech got in early foul trouble and never came close to finding a rhythm against the Devils, who looked comfy at home as usual.  You would never have known that it was the Yellow Jackets who came in with the nation’s fourth-best defense (holding opponents to 37% shooting per game).  Duke shot holes through that with tremendous ease, and got big games they needed from Singler (30/5 on 9-17 shooting) and Scheyer (21/7 assts), not to mention a helpful 11 boards from Lance Thomas in a performance that was frankly better than their current #9 ranking.

The Rest of the ACC.

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RTC contributor and bracketologist Zach Hayes will deliver ten permeating thoughts every week as the season progresses.

This week’s Scribbles column will look ahead to a couple months down the road in Indianapolis, where 65 deserving teams will be whittled down to just four, and to that blissful Monday night in April when one lucky group will be dancing at mid-court to the tune of One Shining Moment. In my estimation, there are ten squads with a promising-to-slight chance of hoisting a 2010 National Champions banner during their home opener next season. I’m here to tell you those ten teams, why they have hopes of winning a national title, what’s holding them back, and the most realistic scenario as I see it come late March or beginning of April. These teams are ranked in reverse order from 10-1 with the #1 school holding the best cards in their deck.

10. Duke

Why they can win it all: Their floor leader and senior stalwart Jon Scheyer is the steadiest distributor in all of college basketball, evident from his incredibly stellar 3.28 A/T ratio and a 5.6 APG mark that ranks third in the ACC and 23d in the nation. Scheyer is also a deadly shooter coming off screens when he has time to square his body to the basket, nailing a career-high 39% from deep to go along with 44% from the floor overall. Duke is also a tremendous free-throw shooting team as a whole and Coach K has the ability to play a group of Scheyer-Kyle Singler-Nolan Smith-Mason Plumlee-Lance Thomas that doesn’t feature one player under 70% from the charity stripe. Duke also features a ton more size in the paint than during previous flameouts in the NCAA Tournament. When Singler plays small forward, Coach K can rotate Miles and Mason Plumlee, the glue guy Thomas, rebounding force Brian Zoubek and even Ryan Kelly at two positions with no player under 6’8. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more efficient backcourt in the nation than Scheyer and Smith. And it’s widely known that exceptional guard play is the ultimate key to winning in March.

What Makes Duke 2010 Different than Duke 2006-09?

Why they won’t win it all: Depth could certainly be an issue for the Blue Devils’ chances of raising their first banner since 2001. Andre Dawkins has fallen almost entirely out of the rotation and Coach K has started to limit Mason Plumlee’s minutes during important games. Also, Brian Zoubek’s tendency to immediately step into foul trouble limits his availability. It wouldn’t shock me to see Duke play Scheyer, Smith and Singler 40 minutes per game during their time in the NCAA Tournament. That could cause those key players, who rely primarily on their jump shot, to lose their legs and start throwing up bricks. Kyle Singler isn’t quite the superstar he was last season, either. Singler’s numbers are down across the board — scoring, rebounding, FG%, 3pt% — and he’s been dealing with a nagging wrist injury that may not improve in the weeks and months ahead. Duke also lacks the athleticism of teams like Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse and Texas. They could struggle with quicker guards like John Wall and athletic rebounders of the Damion James mold.

Likely scenario: I see Duke reaching the Sweet 16 as a #2 seed where they fall to a more athletic, quick group of guards that can explode to the rim and draw fouls. Duke may have height, but most of that height just isn’t a threat offensively by any stretch of the imagination. Eventually getting into a jump shooting contest could be the Blue Devils’ downfall if two of Smith, Scheyer and Singler go cold.

9. West Virginia

Why they can win it all: Da’Sean Butler is one of the best players in the nation when the chips are on the table. If the Mountaineers need a big shot to keep their season alive, Butler will demand the basketball and more than likely deliver. He’s downed Marquette and Louisville on game-deciding jumpers and led the second half charge against Ohio State. West Virginia is also supremely athletic and Bob Huggins’ teams always crash the boards with a tremendous ferocity. No contender can match the height across the board that West Virginia touts other than Kentucky. Huggins has experimented with lineups in which all of his players are 6’6 or taller, including 6’9 Devin Ebanks acting as a point-forward and 6’7 Da’Sean Butler capable of posting up smaller two-guards. Sophomore Kevin Jones is an incredible talent and a rebounding machine (7.7 RPG) that hits 55% of his shots from the floor and 44% from deep. West Virginia has the luxury of any of their forwards being able to step out and drain a mid-range jumper, from Ebanks to Jones to Wellington Smith to John Flowers every once in a full moon.

Ebanks is the X-factor for West Virginia

Why they won’t win it all: Let’s face it: Bob Huggins doesn’t have exactly the best track record when it comes to NCAA Tournament success. Huggins hasn’t reached the Elite 8 since 1995-96 with Cincinnati and only one Sweet 16 in the last ten years. In 2000 and 2002, his Bearcats lost just four games all season and yet didn’t reach the second weekend of March both times. Most also question whether the Mountaineers can hit outside shots on a consistent basis. They’ve struggled mightily in the first half of Big East games and can’t afford to fall behind against elite competition in March like they did against Dayton last season. Point guard play is a prudent question for West Virginia, as well. Joe Mazzulla is a quality perimeter defender and a capable distributor, but he’ll never be the offensive threat he was two seasons ago due to that shoulder injury. Darryl Bryant can certainly catch a hot streak shooting-wise, but in all honestly he’s more suited as an undersized two-guard. Bryant is averaging just 3.6 APG in 25+ MPG of action.

Likely scenario: I’m still fairly high on this team. I love Butler at the end of games and Ebanks can do anything for Huggins — from score to rebound to run the point — and Kevin Jones is one of the most underappreciated players in the Big East. In the end, I see a clankfest from outside ultimately costing West Virginia their season. And for all their rebounding history, the Mountaineers are in the mid-60s in the nation. The Elite Eight seems like a proper place for their season to conclude.

8. Texas

Why they can win it all: No team boasts better perimeter defenders than Texas. Anyone that watched Dogus Balbay completely shut down James Anderson in the second half Monday night knows he’s the best perimeter defender in the nation, even stronger than Purdue’s Chris Kramer. Avery Bradley came in with the reputation as an elite defender and he’s certainly lived up to that billing. Even J’Covan Brown off the bench is a capable defensive player and Justin Mason is a plus defender. When Dexter Pittman stays out of foul trouble, Texas boasts a legitimate shot-blocking presence that can negate quick guards on the rare occasion they slip past Balbay or Bradley. Texas is also the deepest team in the nation and Rick Barnes has the capability of playing 10 or 11 men on any night if he feels the need. The preserved minutes could pay dividends in the form of fresh players come March. Damion James should also be on a mission come March as a senior. He’s never reached a Final Four during his Longhorns career and came back for a fourth year in Austin to accomplish that very feat.

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Did you think we’d forgotten?  Oh, no, my friends.  This is the biggest weeknight of hoops this week, so here we are again with another mid-week edition of BGTD.  Last night brought us a LOT of upsets, and we’re sure some more are in store this evening.  We’ll start off by filling our screens with the likes of St. John’s vs Pittsburgh, and of course that huge Big Ten matchup in Wisconsin vs Purdue.  and there’s a darn good chance we’ll be enjoying a little Wake Forest vs Georgia Tech to begin, as well.  Let’s hear what you’re watching, or what you’re thinking in general in the comments section.  We know that refresh-button finger is nice and warmed up, so let’s get this thing going.  See you in a few minutes…

7:02 PM ET: Evening everyone…JStev with you for the first part of this, then I’ll hand it off to rtmsf in a bit.  But who cares about that right now…the guys on ESPN say that Jajuan Johnson showed up late and won’t start tonight.  We all know he’ll be in after a couple of minutes, so I doubt this deserves the emphasis they’re putting on it early.  God, look at this…there is NO team whose players move without the ball like Wisconsin.  Purdue’s defense is exemplary over the first couple of possessions, but no way they can sustain it for the whole game, or even the whole half.  Nobody ever does.

7:12: At the first TVTO at Purdue we can say that we’ve already seen a couple of perfect Wisconsin possessions, despite the tough Purdue defense, especially that three at the last moment before the shot clock expired by Jarred Berggren.  Early checks elsewhere:  Pitt/SJU tied at seven, Wake up 13-7 early, and we even have Seton Hall vs South Florida (SHU up by a few very early).  Lots of good stuff tonight.

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1. Some suspension news: Creighton’s P’Allen Stinnett was suspended indefinitely by Dana Altman for conduct unbecoming to the team, and Michigan’s Manny Harris has been reinstated to play tonight against Michigan State.  Harris’ 85-game streak of games played for the Wolverines ended on Saturday when he was held out of their game against Purdue.
2. Purdue’s Matt Painter and Lewis Jackson have a tough decision to make in the coming weeks over whether the talented point guard will play this season.  Jackson could help provide depth in the Boilermaker backcourt, but there’s a considerable dilemma over whether it’s worthwhile to play him for less than a third of the season.  Not that anyone cares, but we’d sit him out and let him get his legs and rhythm back in the offseason.
3. Seth Davis’ Hoop Thoughts this week discusses Josh Pastner at Memphis, Texas’ poor foul shooting, Duke’s depth, and some SDSU students that remind us of our Halloween costume from a few years back.
4. Did the UConn Huskies get their swagger back (and cred) by beating Texas on Saturday?  Jeff Goodman thinks so.
5. Did you hear that John Calipari’s Kentucky Wildcats moved to #1 in both the AP and Coach’s Polls yesterday?  Coach Cal was so jazzed by it that he and ESPN’s John Buccigross (both Pittsburgh natives) had a little good-natured fun calling each other “jagoffs.”

Message Received, Loud and Clear.  #15 Purdue 84, Illinois 78.  Matt Painter threw everyone on his team other than E’Twaun Moore and Robbie Hummel under the bus over the weekend in comments he made about the lack of hustle and energy from his players during the Boilermakers’ recent three-game losing streak.  It’s a tried-and-true coaching strategy, and it seemed to work tonight as his team used a strong second half run out of the game to take control of this game and make Painter look like a genius.  Examining the players that Painter referred to in his diatribe, he conspicuously omitted JaJuan Johnson from a preferred starting lineup (composed entirely of Moore and Hummel clones), and that slight resulted in a dominant 24/12/2 blks evening for the big man.  When JJJ plays up to his abilities on the offensive end, Purdue is nearly unbeatable, going 8-1 in the last two seasons when he breaks twenty points.  When he’s held under ten for the game, the Boilermaker record is 6-6 over the same period, including all three losses this season.  Additionally, usual starters Keaton Grant and Chris Kramer were relegated to bench duty tonight, but 7/9/3 assts between the two of them show that they were focused on defense and hustle stats.  Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was sophomore guard John Hart coming off the bench to contribute a career-high 14/2 in eighteen inspired minutes of action.  Believe it or not, tonight was Hart’s first minute of action in a Big 10 game — nice debut, young fella!  Illinois played well enough to win the game on the defensive end, but like so many other Illini games over the year, they simply couldn’t get enough production aside from Demetri McCamey (28/9) and Mike Davis (17/15).  Freshmen guard duo DJ Richardson (12/2) and Brandon Paul (5/3) shot 6-18 from the field, which was surprisingly their best combined output in three weeks, but Illini fans have to be wondering what happened to the pair that combined for 34 points in the big comeback at Clemson in early December.

Johnson Accepted Painter's Challenge Tonight (AP/Robin Scholz)

Watch Out, ACC. #18 Georgia Tech 66, #16 Clemson 64. The Ramblin’ Wreck moved to 3-2 in the ACC with its third win in eleven days over a ranked team (nevermind that pesky loss to UVa sandwiched in between).  And while the win is very nice and worth talking about on its own merits, what we really want to discuss is that the nation’s #2 incoming recruit, Derrick Favors, may have awakened from his season-long slumber to serve notice that the second half of the year may be a somewhat different story for his opponents.  His numbers weren’t Michael Beasley or Blake Griffin-esque (17/14/3 blks), but they do represent his best all-around performance of the season (career highs in pts and rebs), and had he made his FTs (1-5) he would have broken the 20-point barrier as well.  As Favors said after the game, he is ‘playing better,’ and if he is putting it all together just in time for the home stretch of the season, Georgia Tech suddenly becomes the most interesting team in the ACC.  Gani Lawal added 16/10 for Tech and Zachery Peacock (6/5) hit the game-winning FTs with 3.2 seconds remaining.

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Now that we’re starting to get into the meat of the college basketball conference we are starting to get quality games on a regular basis which means that we will be having the return of our regular feature. There isn’t a “blockbuster” game tonight like Texas-Kansas State, but there are 3 games that feature potential NCAA tournament teams matching up against each other that are worth keeping an eye on while you try to catch up on the last two hours of 24.

Northwestern at #25 Ohio State at 7 PM on Big Ten Network: This is clearly a big game for both teams. As has you may have heard (from basically every site covering college basketball) Northwestern has never made the NCAA tournament, but despite the loss of Kevin Coble the Wildcats are firmly on the bubble this year. A victory over Evan Turner and the Buckeyes in Columbus would be a big boost following their upset win at home over a Purdue team that is rapidly falling apart (more on this in a bit). To knock off the Buckeyes in Columbus (where they are undefeated this season), they will need big games from John Shurna (16.8 PPG and 7.1 RPG) and Michael Thompson (14.4 PPG and 4.4 APG with a 2.7 to 1 assist to TO ratio). The key for Thad Matta‘s squad will be Evan Turner being Evan Turner (my choice for national POY) and someone else (David Lighty, Jon Diebler, or William Buford–all averaging 13.3 PPG) helping him out so the Wildcats can’t throw double teams at Turner all night. As much as the Northwestern story intrigues us, we suspect that tonight will not help their case as The Villain and the Buckeyes should be able to hold on for the win, but given what happened this weekend a Big Ten upset wouldn’t shock us.

#16 Clemson at #18 Georgia Tech at 7 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN360.com: For the Duke haters out there, this game could be viewed as a match-up of the two teams most likely to challenge the Blue Devils in the ACC this season (we’re almost ready to give up on UNC this season). Paul Hewett”s Yellow Jackets have been maddeningly inconsistent alternating between wins against Duke and UNC and losses against Georgia and Virginia. Meanwhile, Oliver Purnell‘s Tigers have started off with their customary impressive early season record with their only losses coming against Duke, Texas A&M, and Illinois with a majority of their wins coming against a bunch of cupcakes in non-conference play (ok, the Xavier win was nice) and they just blew out UNC in Littlejohn Coliseum. The key to this game will be the match-up on the inside with Trevor Booker (15.4 PPG and 8.3 RPG) going up against Gani Lawal (15.2 PPG and 9.2 RPG) and Derrick Favors (11.5 PPG and 8.6 RPG). Despite the Yellow Jackets’ inconsistency lately, we’re going to go with the homecourt and the fact that we never trust Clemson in big games here.

#15 Purdue at Illinois at 9 PM on ESPN and ESPN360.com: The big question here is how the Boilermakers will respond to Matt Painter calling out the entire team except for Robbie Hummel and E’Twaun Moore after their three-game losing streak. The key for Illinois will be if they can get Demetri McCamey going against Chris Kramer. They will probably rely on their running him through a bunch of screen in their motion offense (ESPN Insider required) to get Kramer off of him. On the other side of the ball, Purdue needs JaJuan Johnson to start playing like the All-Big Ten player that he is and not the guy who scored 17 points combined in their last three games (all losses). If Purdue plays the way they did early in the season, they are clearly capable of pulling off the road win. Given the experience on the Boilermakers team, we’re going to go with them bouncing back on the road against Bruce Weber and the Illini.

1. Purdue’s Matt Painter is not pleased at all with his team’s effort over the last few games (three straight losses for the Boilers).  Great quote: “I’d like to start E’Twaun Moore, E’Twaun Moore, Robbie Hummel, Robbie Hummel and Robbie Hummel. No one else deserves to start…”  The defensive efficiency numbers bear him out, as their three worst performance of the year on that end have been in the last three contests.
2. Charlotte forward RaShad Coleman injured his knee on Sunday (fractured patella) and will miss the rest of the season.  He only averaged 4/3 in fourteen minutes per game, but with the corollary loss of guard Shamarr Bowden to transfer last week, Bobby Lutz will have to keep the rest of his wing rotation healthy if he expects to compete for the A10 title.
3. Seth Davis outlines the eight teams that helped themselves and eight teams that hurt themselves with their non-conference schedules.  Also some good insider information in the hoop thoughts section, as always.
4. Interesting that Gonzaga might get to play its first and second round NCAA games at the nearby (as in 1.6 miles) Spokane Arena if it becomes a home-protected seed (h/t S. Davis, above).  The arena is not their home venue, having played only one game there this season.  Here’s the bigger question, though: why does Spokane (pop: 200,000) have two basketball arenas (including the on-campus Kennel)?
5. Fear the Beard.  Over 1,000 fans received and wore fake beards to honor Jacob Pullen’s scruffy facial hair, and even Frank Martin got into the act last night as Kansas State knocked off the #1 Texas Longhorns in Manhattan.

A More Hirsute Frank Martin (AP/Charlie Riedel)