The week is here, long at last. Going into the season, BYU and San Diego State were projected to be strong, but this strong? Just to give you an idea of where these two juggernauts stood before the season, the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll had San Diego State receiving 73 votes and BYU 55 votes in the top 25 poll. In Zach Hayes’ Bracketology—a bracket that, in my mind, is very accurate for his latest edition—he had SDSU as a six seed and BYU a seven. Clearly, each team has exceeded many of the critics and so called experts expectations. Who would have thought that the teams would combine to have a 38-1 record at this stage of the season? Not even Steve Fisher or Dave Rose would have thought that.
In the grand scheme of things, the tilt in Provo, Utah, next week will not have an impact on whether or not either team will make the NCAA Tournament—it is a foregone conclusion that both are in—but this may be San Diego State’s biggest roadblock between them having an undefeated regular season or not. Can the magic carpet ride that San Diego State has been flying on continue, or will Jimmer Fredette and Co. take the air right out from under them? It will all go down on Wednesday evening in Provo.
As of Wednesday, January 19, we are down to three unbeaten teams in college basketball — #1 Ohio State, #2 Kansas and #5 San Diego State. Previously undefeated Duke lost last week at Florida State and Syracuse lost Monday at Pittsburgh, proving once again that conference play is a completely different animal than the non-conference slate. With only a little over six weeks left in the regular season (which seems rather impossible), it is at least feasible that one of these three schools could run the regular season table and join 1991 UNLV and 2004 St. Joseph’s as the only two teams to have done so since Bob Knight’s dominant Indiana Hoosiers way back in 1976.
If you look at the above teams and hoped to draw a conclusion from it, you might note that UNLV and St. Joe’s played in high mid-major conferences when they ran the regular season table. Although there were a few decent opponents who could challenge the Rebels and Hawks in those leagues, they generally enjoyed more ‘nights off’ where they didn’t have to bring their best stuff to win the game. Does this give Steve Fisher’s Aztecs an inherent advantage over OSU and Kansas by virtue of its Mountain West affiliation? You might initially believe so, but not according to Pomeroy’s projections.
We talked about how difficult it is for any team to run the table in the regular season back in December when Duke was gettting some buzz in that respect prior to Kyrie Irving’s toe injury. There are any number of factors that can cause an off night, but the biggest confounding factor is how the schedule lays out in front of them. According to the Pomeroy data, SDSU will be favored in all but two remaining games, Ohio State all but one, and Kansas will be the favorite in each of its final thirteen games. But that’s just the math — it doesn’t account for the increasing attention and pressure that builds on a team as it approaches March with a zero in the right-hand column, nor does it consider all the other issues (injuries, team chemistry, tiring out, etc.) that teams face as the season wears on. That’s what we’re here for, the analysis.
Let’s take a look at the three unbeaten teams and make an educated prediction as to when each will finally lose. It’s going to happen; the only question is the when and where. Last year we went 3-1 in this exercise, and if we can do so well as to keep our head above .500 again this year, we’ll be pleased.
The Lede. It was billed as a blockbuster night of college hoops, and as happens more often than not in this sport, there was no letdown. It culminated in this great photo snapped immediately after the game’s finish… is there any better view on a cold January night?
Completely Justified and Encouraged RTC at FSU Tonight
Your Watercooler Moment. The Nation’s #1 Team Goes Down. Not only was it the consensus #1 team… not only was it one of the few remaining unbeaten teams… not only was it DUKE… but the Blue Devils lost to a team in Florida State that had recently gotten thumped by Auburn, quite possibly the nation’s worst power conference team (apologies to Wake Forest and DePaul). Set your transitive property flowcharts to ridiculous mode. Video of the final few seconds of the game and the RTC afterward is below (fantastic coverage of the court, FSU fans — quick and complete!), but for a more detailed analysis of tonight’s upset victory, click over to our post that went up a little while after the game.
Tonight’s Quick Hits…
The Other Unbeatens. Ohio State, Kansas, Syracuse and San Diego State were all in action tonight, and all of them pulled through to keep their streaks alive. All except for Syracuse were challenged tonight, which once again shows why we’ll be lucky to get to February with a single team still standing with an unblemished record. We plan on doing an analysis later this week to dissect that very thing, so stay tuned for that.
Jeremy Hazell’s Return. What can you say about this kid? He wasn’t expected to be ready for another week or two, but tonight in his first game back after breaking his wrist AND getting shot in a robbery on Christmas night, he went for 23/2 on 10-17 shooting coming off the bench. His arrival back in the rotation can’t come at a better time for the Hall, as the Pirates have already lost three games and really need to stay in the lower mid-pack to make a run at the postseason again.
Clemson Pitches a Perfect Game. Well, nearly. This won’t sound that great until you think about it , but tonight Clemson missed only sixteen shots for its entire game against Georgia Tech, including FG and FT attempts. The Tigers went 27-39 from the field (69%), including a scorching 11-14 from three (79%) and 22-26 from the line (85%). The Tigers’ effective FG% of 83.3% tonight ties Virginia (vs. Howard) for the best performance of the entire season in over 5,400 games played this year. Brad Brownell is doing a great job with this team in his first year.
With all the ranked teams losing over the weekend, there was quite a bit of movement after the top six teams in this week’s poll. QnD analysis after the jump…
(ed. note: we revised the original Top 25 after a data entry error surfaced)
Things calmed down in the evening session, but that doesn’t stop us from giving you our observations…
Was It Really Upset Saturday? There’s a longstanding sentiment in our minds that conference losses on the road are rarely, by definition, upsets. Yet today’s string of Ls by Top 25 teams — from #7 Missouri to #24 Central Florida — suggests that this is going to be a wild and wacky conference season this year. None of the “upsets” were earth-shattering; teams like Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma State have talent and the biggest Vegas spread was eight points (UCF favored over Houston). But today’s results illustrate that outside of a select few teams in the top five, the margins between teams ranked in the top 10 versus the top 50 is exceptionally thin. Does this portend week after week of craziness in college basketball? One can always hope, and if today’s results are any indication, then some of this season’s conference races could be ridiculously competitive.
Arizona-Stanford Game Postponed. This game was postponed tonight as a result of the horrific shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and several others in her entourage, and it is absolutely the right call. We get pissed as much as the next person from time to time, but to have the kind of mental imbalance to harbor such unbelievable hatred for someone whom you’ve likely never even met is incomprehensible to us. Tucson needs time to mourn and heal, and although the game is only delayed by 24 hours, tonight was not the night for a community to come together and cheer for its team.
Notre Dame Continues to Impress at Home. The Irish did what so far nobody else in the Big East has been able to do tonight — beat St. John’s. And they did so rather convincingly behind a big 26-point night by Ben Hansbrough. The Irish have beaten three good teams in the Joyce Center — Georgetown, UConn and now the Johnnies. They’ll go on the road next week at Marquette and back against the Johnnies next Sunday. If we were to rank the Big East into tiers as of what we’ve seen through two weeks of action, it would go something like this. 1) Syracuse and Pitt at the top; 2) Villanova, St. John’s and Notre Dame on the next tier; 3) Georgetown, WVU, Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette and UConn on the next tier; and 4) everybody else. The fact that both ND and SJU are on that second tier at this point in the season is surprising, isn’t it?
Gonzaga Will Not Win the WCC This Year. You heard it here first. We caught part of both of these WCC games tonight, and St. Mary’s again looked more impressive in going to Pepperdine and thoroughly thumping the Waves by 25 points than Gonzaga did at home in beating Portland (by 13). Of course, it helps when you have a senior like Mickey McConnell dropping fifteen dimes (three more than the entire PU team) and one of the nation’s best three-point attacks (41%). The Zags are playing better than they were, but as we saw tonight, they have a bit of a tendency to struggle offensively, going through long scoring droughts when Elias Harris (7 points) isn’t able to get it going.
Thank You, Mark Fox! We heard the “overrated” chant from Georgia students near the end of the Kentucky game, but didn’t know about Mark Fox’s retort until Jeff Goodman reported it later. Apparently Fox chastised the students to cut it out, stating that UK is a “damn good team” and that maybe Georgia was in fact “underrated.” This chant has been going on at schools forever, but it’s a major pet peeve of ours because it essentially minimizes the accomplishment that the winning team just achieved (i.e., if the team you beat is in fact overrated, then your win isn’t as impressive). So thank you, Mark Fox, and hopefully his admonishment is just one small step to a point where we can eventually stamp out a truly annoying student chant.
Auburn Reaches an Even New Level of Futility. Really, Auburn? Six points in the first half of your home loss to LSU tonight? We’re not sure whether to be more impressed by the fact that the War Eagles put up a six-point stinker or if it’s that they worked back into it and actually had a chance to win the game. How’d they do it? Try a one (Kenny Gabriel), a two (Scott Chubb) and a three (Gabriel, again), as Auburn bricked its way to an 8% shooting half to cause Auburn fans to boo them heading into the locker room. With the football team playing for the national championship on Monday night, and Tony Barbee’s team finding new ways to look terrible, is there a greater disparity between football and basketball at any other major-conference school in America? We don’t think so.
Down to Six Unbeatens. It was bound to end sooner or later, but Central Florida’s perfect record went kaput this evening in Houston. We can’t say we’re completely surprised. It’s much easier to get jacked up for games against intrastate big-time schools like Florida and Miami than it is to play an 8-6 Houston team in front of a light crowd. But that’s the problem with putting a target on your back, especially if you’re not used to being in that position. This leaves us with six unbeatens. Syracuse and San Diego State both had tough battles on the road but survived today, while Duke, Ohio State, Kansas and Cincinnati all play Sunday.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the college basketball season is nearly half over. It is not all bad though, with conference play beginning we are just another step closer to Championship Week, Selection Sunday, and, of course, the NCAA Tournament. During this time of the year, the Other 26 and BCS largely go their separate ways, only to be reunited just two months later on the biggest stage of them all. As it is every year, the non-conference is nothing more than a tease of what is to come later. What are five major things that we learned during the first half of the year?
The top three teams in the Mountain West (SDSU, UNLV, BYU) will all be a force in the NCAA Tournament.
Gonzaga and Butler are not as dominant as they have been in past years, but both seem poised to perform well in their conference play as they drastically improved in the latter half of the non-conference schedule.
Temple and Richmond can go toe-to-toe with the big boys. In one week, the Owls defeated Maryland and then Georgetown, and then just weeks later they were points away from beating Villanova. As for the Spiders, they have beaten four of five BCS teams they played against.
Don’t sleep on Conference USA. Although the league probably will receive only two bids—maybe three—Central Florida, Memphis, Southern Mississippi, UAB and UTEP are pretty darn good.
The Mountain West and Atlantic 10 will combine to have more teams in the NCAA Tournament than the ACC and SEC. Okay that is a bit of a reach, but don’t be surprised if this is close to happening. Right now, the only lock in the ACC is Duke, obviously. As for the SEC, it is only Vanderbilt and Kentucky. The MWC will almost certainly have SDSU, BYU, and UNLV, and the Atlantic 10 is a bit of a crapshoot at the top. Over the last three years, however, the A10 has sent three years to the Dance in each year—food for thought.
For about a four hour stretch on Tuesday evening, I was glued to my TV. Watching college basketball on the ESPN family of networks is a beautiful distraction during finals week. Somehow, watching Oakland shock Tennessee and then Drexel hand Louisville its first loss of the season was more appealing than writing a paper. To the average hoops fans, both of these games would be of little interest. I mean, the Summit League vs. the SEC and the CAA vs. the Big East? Call me crazy, but I greatly anticipated both of these matchups. Teams coming from obscurity that are comprised of players who were a mere afterthought when recruited excites me. When further investigating both Oakland and Drexel, it wasn’t inconceivable that an upset could happen. Oakland had just lost to Michigan State by a point, and Drexel had won six of seven games. The point being, there are many teams from the Other 26 conferences that when they catch a talented BCS team on an off night, can knock them off. This is, after all, the allure of the NCAA Tournament—watching the little guy win. Seeing the likes of Oakland and Drexel defeat the big kids on Tuesday night could be a preview of what is to come during March.
Tidbits from the Rankings:
Steady at the Top: Although UNLV lost to drop them in the rankings, San Diego State and BYU maintained their positions at one and two. A lot can happen this coming week though as both teams play three games each.
The Mountain West and Atlantic 10 lead the way in the rankings: #1 and #2 are from the MWC and #3 and #4 from the A-10.
There was not a whole lot of upward movement in the rankings, but two teams did have significant falls. UNLV, after losing two games, dropped five spots to number eight, and Virginia Commonwealth moved from #10 to #19 after Richmond beat them handily.
Cleveland State, at 12-0, is still outside of the top ten, but will have an opportunity to potentially crack it with a victory against West Virginia.
Two come and two go, again: Drexel and Southern Mississippi entered the top 20, while Dayton and Missouri State departed.
The Lede. What a ho-hum evening of basketball. There were 19 games on the slate, but only a couple of them were even mildly interesting. Get used to it. There is a smattering of games throughout the week, but things don’t really heat up again until Saturday when most schools are finished with exams and heading into the holiday break.
Your Watercooler Moment. The SEC West should consider seceding from the rest of the conference and joining the Southland. After yet another embarrassing home loss to a low-major team tonight when LSU lost in overtime to Coastal Carolina, 78-69, the SEC’s redheaded stepchild of a division seemingly cannot get any worse. Consider that in the first six weeks of this season, the six division members have lost to the following laundry list of national powers: Campbell, Jacksonville, ETSU, UNC-Asheville, Nicholls State, Samford, St. Peter’s and Florida Atlantic. They have a combined eighteen losses already, which is more than the top twelve teams in the Big East and makes you wonder if Cam Newton has mesmerized everyone from Birmingham to Baton Rouge down there. According to Pomeroy, the top team (Ole Miss) is the 60th best team in America, and the bottom (Auburn) is 210th, which puts this division roughly on par with the Missouri Valley Conference. Yet if we put together a hypothetical SEC West/MVC Challenge, we’re pretty confident in asserting that the one-bid Valley would roast this sad-sack collection of southern teams. Well, the good news is that four of the SEC West division teams rank in the bottom 75 schedules in the country so far, proving that even when you try to cook the books by loading up on easy wins in the non-conference season, the basketball gods may have something else in mind.
Maybe Football-Only is the Way to Go...
Five Games in Five Days. If it feels like Mississippi State has been playing an awful lot lately, it’s because they have been. Tonight they beat Nicholls State 67-58 behind Ravern Johnson’s 23/4, but you’ll forgive the Bulldogs if they’re running out of steam. You see, on Saturday they played and lost to ETSU 63-62; yesterday the Bulldogs defeated NC A&T 74-58; and tomorrow, they’ll play Alabama State in Starkville. Want more? Well, on Wednesday, MSU will play its fifth game in five days, this time an exhibition against Belhaven College. Honestly, we’ve never heard of anything quite like this where a school purposefully scheduled this sort of gauntlet, but there is a rhyme to the reason behind it. Dee Bost’s nine-game suspension handed down by the NCAA didn’t take place until after the end of the fall semester, which was officially on Saturday. So the school put together this schedule (along with upcoming games against Virginia Tech, St. Mary’s and three games at the Diamond Head Classic) so that Bost would be able to play in their SEC opener against Alabama on January 8. We’re not sure if this is pure insanity or utter brilliance, but it’s certainly unique.
Tonight’s Quick Hits...
SDSU Minus Kawhi Leonard & Chase Tapley. Down two starters due to illness, the rest of the Aztecs gutted through one of those games that ends in a big-time upset if you allow it to. Sure, it was exceptionally ugly — a 16-15 halftime score is all you really need to prove that — but Malcolm Thomas went for 18/15 and the SDSU defense held Cal Poly to only 29% from the field in order to secure the win and move to 11-0 on the season.
Northwestern Still Unbeaten. They’ve been very quietly going about their business so far this season, but Northwestern’s win over LIU, 81-65, moved the Wildcats to 6-0, its best start in seventeen years. With three more cupcakes between now and their Big Ten opener against Purdue on New Year’s Eve, the Wildcats are in good position to start 9-0. This record will not help the RPI all that much because of the weak schedule, but more importantly, it may help the confidence of a team (and fanbase) who is still looking for its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance.
Well, It Is Called the Badger State. With Wisconsin’s well-balanced win tonight over Green Bay, Bo Ryan’s team took the crown as the top team in the Badger State for the 2010-11 season. In consecutive games over the last six days, Wisconsin beat Milwaukee, Marquette and GB, the first time since the 2006-07 season that the Badgers have turned the in-state hat trick.
…and Misses.
Literally, 0-18. Not many teams will be without two of its best players and shoot 0-18 from three and still win, but San Diego State is one of those teams. Guard DJ Gay brought in a 48% stroke from distance this season, and left with a 42% one after an 0-7 outing. Just one of those nights, but SDSU was lucky to get this win.
Tweet of the Night. With the news that Rick Pitino will take over the coaching reins for the Puerto Rican national team, the jokes kept coming. Here’s the best:
Kevin Doyle is an RTC contributor. For an introduction to this series, please click here.
Introduction
As every week of the college basketball season evaporates right before our eyes—like a double-digit lead is whittled down to a single possession in a matter of minutes—more and more stories subsequently develop. To draw a comparison to mathematics for you brainiacs out there, this is the classic inverse relationship. As “X”—the number of weeks in the season—decreases, “Y”—the amount of stories—increases. Think about it, when are there the most stories surrounding college basketball? At the end of the year during the NCAA Tournament, of course. From the moment Selection Sunday rolls around all the way to that final, depressing buzzer in the NCAA Championship game rings signaling an end to another season, it seems as if college hoops are being discussed 24/7. Just this past week, there were several major developments in the world of the Other 26:
The top three teams in the Mountain West—SDSU, BYU, and UNLV—are a combined 27-0.
Butler and Gonzaga have identical, albeit very mediocre, records: 4-4.
Temple defeated Maryland and Georgetown, and in the process Fran Dunphy picked up his 400th win.
Cleveland State has the most victories in the country with 11.
One of the biggest recruits in the nation—Adjehi Baru—signed with the College of Charleston over a couple of ACC schools. Bobby Cremins really has something brewing down there in South Carolina. Could Charleston be the next Davidson? Both schools, after all, hail from the Southern Conference.
Illinois and Oakland were getting in touch with their feminine side by using a women’s basketball for the first seven minutes of the first half of their game.
The inverse relationship will not fail as the season progresses. I promise.
The Lede. A Leader Who Happens To Coach Basketball. If you can’t stand Duke and/or Coach K you might want to stay off the Internet for a while because you are going to be hearing about them a lot over the next few months. While the Blue Devils picked up their 19th straight win and 27th in 28 games, this game will be remembered (particularly by those in The Bluegrass State) as the game where Coach K surpassed Adolph Rupp on the all-time Division I wins list. In Duke’s first game without Kyrie Irving, who could be out indefinitely with a toe injury, the Blue Devils relied on their superior athleticism, depth, and execution to crush a respectable Bradley team, 83-48. The Braves’ four losses this season coming in were by a combined 22 points, but they weren’t that fortunate tonight as the Blue Devils blew them out by 35 points. Playing in place of Irving, Andre Dawkins was more than adequate as he scored 28 points including 8 of 14 from beyond the arc. Duke may not be the same dynamic team without Irving, but they are still really, really good. As for Coach K, now that he has passed Rupp for third he only has two more coaches ahead of him (Dean Smith at 879 and Bobby Knight at 902). We don’t think we need to tell you about the type of hysteria that you will see when he approaches those two living legends in the coming weeks and months.
Coach K has his sights set on The General
Your Watercooler Moment. Playing with a women’s ball in Illinois. Coach K might have dominated the mainstream college basketball media’s attention tonight, but the Twitter-verse was dominated by the strange situation in Illinois where the Fighting Illini and Oakland Golden Grizzlies played the first seven minutes of their game with a women’s basketball before Mike Tisdale noticed that something felt wrong and pointed it out to the official who switched the ball. Having dealt with that the Fighting Illini rallied from down nine early to defeat a tough Golden Grizzlies team by a score of 74-63. Although we would like to be able to attribute the Golden Grizzlies early success to playing with a women’s ball (they outscored Illinois 15-6 while playing with the women’s ball and were outscored 68-48 with the men’s basketball) that would be selling their effort short as they led the #16 team in the country until there were 15 minutes left in the game. Demetri McCamey scored nine points in 62 seconds to give Bruce Weber’s squad a quick seven-point lead, which they never relinquished after that point.
Tonight’s Quick Hits...
Steve Fisher’s Quips. His team is now 9-0 after defeating California tonight, but the longtime coach of the San Diego State Aztecs thinks that his home folks might be going a little overboard with their support and faith of the team. As he put it, “they think we can play the Celtics… and if Kevin Garnett didn’t play, they think we’d have a chance.” In this clip, he also talks about how big of a deal it is for his squad to defeat a Pac-10 opponent on their own floor, as it hasn’t happened for a very long time (the answer: SDSU last did it in 1982 vs. Oregon in Eugene, well before Fisher could even spell Fab Five).
Glens Falls, New York. Seemingly an entire town came out to watch its prodigal son, Jimmer Fredette, return to play basketball. The star guard scored 26 points in variety of ways to thrill the beyond-capacity home crowd at the Glens Falls Civic Center tonight. Take a read through Tae Andrews’ RTC Live at the arena tonight — people were sitting or standing in every available space in this building. We love to see support like that — more teams should do this sort of thing for the local HS heroes that move on.
