Sunday, March 21 (all CBS)
12:10pm - Syracuse vs. Gonzaga
2:20pm - Ohio State vs Georgia Tech
2:30pm - Maryland vs Michigan State
2:40pm - West Virginia vs Missouri
2:50pm - Wisconsin vs Cornell
4:50pm - Pittsburgh vs Xavier
5:00pm - Purdue vs Texas A&M
5:15pm - Duke vs California
We love this bracket science stuff, which is reminiscent of some of the work we did when this site was in its infancy nearly three years ago. It’s good to see Peter Tiernan continuing to do this every year, now for CBS Sportsline. Maybe the NCAA Selection Committee should bring him on board. Here’s a taste: best team against seed expectation in the last decade? Florida. Worst? Wake Forest. Sounds about right.
If you’re lucky enough to live in an area with a select movie theater chosen by the NCAA overlords, the Final Four will be shown in living, breathing 3-D. Because nothing says March Madness like seeing Sherron Collins barreling down the court at you at 100 miles an hour. We have no idea if this will be incredibly awesome or incredibly lame, but we’ll make sure to send someone out there to check it out.
Speaking of all three dimensions, here’s Seth Davis’ 2010 All-Glue team. The headliner is Ohio State’s David Lighty, but we also love the Willie Veasley (Butler) and Rick Jackson (Syracuse) picks.
More conference awards today. POY – ACC: Greivis Vasquez, Maryland; Big East: Wes Johnson, Syracuse; SEC: John Wall, Kentucky. COY – ACC: Gary Williams, Maryland; Big East: Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; SEC: Kevin Stallings, Vanderbilt. FrOY:ACC: Derrick Favors, Georgia Tech; Big East: Lance Stephenson, Cincinnati; SEC: DeMarcus Cousins, Kentucky. Some weird goings-on in the SEC there. First, how does John Wall win POY but not FrOY? Isn’t he a freshman, and isn’t he the best player in the league according to the voters? Second, how does Kevin Stallings win COY — DeMarcus Cousins was so shocked he didn’t even know who Stallings was!
The End of the Regular Season. Since there was so much going on this weekend, we’re going to separate today’s ATB into two separate posts. This post exclusively covers the major conference teams, none of whom have gotten to the postseason portion of their schedules yet. We’ll also have another ATB tonight that solely focuses on the mid-major conference tournaments — that post is here.
It’s Kyle Kuric’s World, We’re Just Living In It. Louisville 78, #1 Syracuse 68. Rick Pitino loves these games, as it takes him back to the early days of his coaching career as the underdog at Providence or his early probation-era Kentucky teams. With a possible NCAA bid on the line and the air filled with the pomp and circumstance of the closing of Freedom Hall, the Cards found the unlikeliest of heroes in the second half after guard Jerry Smith hurt his thumb and had to leave the game. A little-used sophomore by the name of Kyle Kuric who had logged eight scoreless games this season found a groove from seemingly everywhere on the court. Dunks, threes, rebounds, assists, you name it — Kuric did it. He scored all 22 of his points in the second half, including a stretch of four treys in five minutes that gave Louisville some breathing room as Syracuse kept going inside to their big men. It was an unbelievable performance that you have to figure will never be duplicated in that young man’s career. With the win, Louisville moved into the #6 seed in the Big East Tournament and will await the winner of Cincinnati and Rutgers on Wednesday. As for Syracuse, we’re not going to read much into this loss on the road where UL was playing for everything and Jim Boeheim’s team was playing for nothing, but it should be noted that the Cardinals defeated the Orange twice this year, and the Cuse only lost three times. The way that the Cardinal players attacked the SU zone in the two wins should be Cliff Notes material for every team that the Orange faces the rest of the way. You have to have athletes who understand good offensive spacing, and it doesn’t hurt to have a Kyle Kuric draining everything he throws up, but it can certainly be done.
Think Louisville's Next Opponent Might Scout Him? (C-J/S. Upshaw)
KU Hangover. Iowa State 85, Kansas State 82 (OT). This is why we’re not sold on K-State as a Final Four contender this year. Mere days after getting run out of the gym against rival Kansas in the Phog, we would expect a top five team to rebound at home on Senior Day to obliterate a vastly inferior team like Iowa State. Instead what we got was an uninspired performance by Frank Martin’s team that included poor shooting (34% FG and 3-23 from three) and even worse decision-making. Often the K-State players decided on a forced shot when there were better opportunities available, and it showed as Denis Clemente and Jacob Pullen combined for 11-38 from the field (3-21 from three). ISU led for most of the game, but when Kansas State finally tied it up in the last minute, you figured that the better team would eventually pull it out. Didn’t happen. There’s an element of undisciplined and scattered play that we’ve repeatedly noticed in the KSU attack this year, and while the Wildcats are definitely a dangerous team, Martin agrees that his team is not yet at a championship level of play. It will be interesting to see how a team that doesn’t have a lot of postseason success to hang its hat on will handle going into the Big 12 Tournament next week as the #2 seed.
Quincy Acy, Dunking Machine. We had to mention this because we’re not sure we’ve ever heard of such a thing. In Baylor’s win against Texas on Saturday, forward Quincy Acy had 24 points on 12-15 shooting, an amazing ten of which were on dunks. Acy is a very nice swing player, but it’s not like he’s Shaq or Dwight Howard standing in the paint all night. How a single player can throw down that many dunks, many of which were earth-shaking in force, is as indicative as anything that Texas’ defense has checked out for the season.
Acy is a Raging Dunkaholic (AP/M. Bancale)
Conference Recaps. As of tonight, there’s only one regular season game left (Penn-Princeton), and it’s meaningless to the national picture, although certainly important to fans of that rivalry. Let’s recap how the final weekend of the regular season shaped up in the major conferences.
Syracuse Poised to Move to #1. Remember the paucity of insanity we were lamenting in this space last weekend? No longer. Although the calendar still officially says February, March arrived in earnest on Saturday. In what was probably the single best weekend of the entire college hoops season (and hopefully portends a month of craziness), the top three teams in the media/coaches polls were vanquished. By 2:15 pm Saturday afternoon, #2 Kentucky had lost in Knoxville; four hours later, #1 Kansas had dropped its second game of the year in Stillwater; and by the same time on Sunday evening, #3 Purdue had joined the others with a loss. In an 0range-themed weekend with Tennessee and Oklahoma State doing damage, it is literally the Orange, as in #4 Syracuse, who stands to move to the top of the polls for just the second time during the regular season in its long and illustrious history (SU held the top spot for six weeks in 1989-90). And why not? The beatdown that Jim Boeheim’s team put on #8 Villanova on Saturday night was downright clinical in its division of labor and efficiency. Six of Boeheim’s seven “starters’ contributed double figure points; five of them grabbed seven or more rebounds; and, four offered three or more dimes for their efforts. If you focus on stopping Wesley Johnson, Arinze Onuaku (17/9/3 blks) burns you. If you take away Andy Rautins, Scoop Jardine (16/7 assts) picks him up. Rick Jackson? Kris Joseph (16/9/3 assts). Syracuse has an answer for every problem, and their zone, while perhaps not the best in college basketball history as Bob Knight said, is awfully good. The Orange have met every major challenge thrown at them this year, and when you take a look at their two losses (Pittsburgh and Louisville at home) you start to think that maybe they weren’t as mentally prepared for those games as they should have been, because in every one of their “big” games this year, they’ve been virtually flawless.
A Record On-Campus Crowd Saw SU Dominate Villanova (P-S/Lauren Long)
As For the Top Three… We’re not going to read too much into the losses that #1 Kansas and #2 Kentucky took on the road this weekend. Even great teams lose road games once in a while, and both Tennessee and Oklahoma State are good enough teams to do some damage in March (more discussion on both games in the conference recaps below). However, #3 Purdue isn’t getting off so easily. We already knew that Matt Painter’s team would continue to fight and claw in their inimitable style without the services of Robbie Hummel, but the Boilers got completely pushed around today (-28 rebounds) by the bigger, stronger Michigan State Spartans and their offense was a complete disaster without the versatile forward in the lineup (30% from the field; 22% from deep). How does the NCAA Selection Committee fairly evaluate this team? They’re likely to win their final two games against Indiana and Penn State, which would put them at 26-4 overall and 14-4 in the Big Ten with a 3-1 record sans Hummel. But Ohio State and Michigan State are likely to also finish at 14-4 in the Big Ten, which means that the winner of the Big Ten Tourney will have the inside track on a #1 seed, or at worst, a top #2 seed. But what if Purdue loses in the B10 quarters or semis? Are they a #2 seed or a #3 seed or lower? The resume is strong, but they’re just not the same team as they were with Hummel in the lineup. Honestly, we would wager that the Committee is secretly hoping that Purdue drops one or both of this week’s games to the bottom-feeders of the conference to make their decision to demote them more defensible.
It looks like today’s ridiculous schedule of college basketball games just got a little lighter as the SEC, Arkansas, and Mississippi decided to postpone this afternoon’s game until tomorrow due to inclement weather. The game, which was to be played at 4 PM EST today, has been pushed back to 7 PM EST tomorrow (the article listed CST times). Unfortunately due to the time change the game will not be televised.
Each week RTC will posit a That’s Debatable question or topic that is relevant to the world of college basketball. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes serious, we’ll post the thoughts from our core editing crew (in 200 words or less), but we’ll also be expanding to include our contributors and correspondents as appropriate throughout the season. We also invite you, the readers, to join us as we mull over some of the questions facing the game today. Feel free to send us your takes and/or leave them in the comments below.
This Week’s Topic: It was Upset Weekend in college basketball, as more than half the ranked teams took a loss. What was your favorite part of the weekend?
nvr1983 – editor/contributor
Without question the best part of the weekend was watching depleted Tennessee “shock the world” on Sunday afternoon against #1 Kansas while most of the country was focused in on the awful NFL wildcard games (ok, the Green Bay-Buzzsaw game was pretty entertaining). Although Tennessee has managed to continue to disgrace itself (first Lane Kiffin’s football players now Bruce Pearl’s carful of idiots) the university can take some pride in Bruce Pearl’s six scholarship players and the handful of walk-ons that did suit up and play. While the upset showed us some of Kansas’s weaknesses that most people saw in their narrow victory at home over Cornell, the game was more important for what it showed us about the Volunteers, which may be an appropriate name for a team using so many walk-ons. Right now there might not be a more difficult to read team in the nation. And isn’t that part of what we love about college sports?
john stevens – editor/contributor
Are you kidding me with this? My favorite part of the weekend? Did you not readabout how I met Ashley Judd while on my assignment in Lexington for Kentucky/Georgia? Please. The woman shook my hand, looked me straight in the eye and spoke to me. What, you expected me to write something about Tennessee/Kansas? Get over yourself. Fine, if you need more of a basketball answer, for me the best part of Upset Weekend was playing the waiting game. Weekends like the one we just had occur once or maybe twice in a season. One of the coolest things about it is wondering what the next upset’s going to be as you move through the day. After a couple of early ones, you start wondering if you might have a true Upset Weekend on your hands, and then it happens. Teams just start falling, one after the other, in exciting games that often have incredible finishes. The trend spreads across the country like a virus and, as the upsets get bigger, the phone calls and text messages and tweets from friends and fellow hoop-lovers really start cranking up. That’s why this version of Upset Weekend was special: it ended with the biggest surprise of them all, with everyone watching. Hmmm. I wonder if Ashley enjoyed Upset Weekend…
Upset Weekend. Let’s get one thing out of the way right away. It was a great weekend of college basketball, with over 175 games of juicy goodness, starting with Friday evening’s Sunshine State battle of A-Sun foes Jacksonville and Stetson, and ending with tonight’s Civil War game in Eugene between the Ducks and Beavers. If you didn’t get enough hoops over the last 54 hours, then you probably need your head checked (our appt. is Tuesday morning). But let’s not get too excited about this weekend just yet. By our count, there were ten upsets involving ranked teams, and a host of others barely survived. But this is something we all knew was coming. It’s called life on the road in conference play (note: we realize, of course, Kansas was on the road in non-conference play), and it’s what makes the next ten weeks so much more fun than the previous ten. No longer will teams be able to play Holy Names and Penn Central and St. Augustanus to pick up easy Ws. No, they now have to face conference foes — the family — and like your nutty Grandma at the holiday dinner table, the family can be harsh in its brutal honesty. If your team has a weakness, the family will find it and exploit it. If your team has multiple question marks, your days of skating by with superior athletes and a friendly home crowd are over. If your team has been using smoke and mirrors to get it done this year, well, the seven years of bad luck are about to begin. This phenomenon happens every single year, and every single year we all get all fluttery and hyperbolic talking about the early upsets, but the fact of the matter is that there are no dominant teams in the 1-and-done era and truthfully the real surprise would be if we didn’t have great weekends of parity like this one.
Hopson Crushed It on Aldrich (credit: Saul Young)
Now, About That Kansas Thing. #15 Tennessee 76, #1 Kansas 68. This was going to be one of the tougher games of the season for Kansas regardless of the Tennessee personnel issues, but you can almost imagine Bill Self fretting about his team’s focus when he found out that 40% of the Vol offense would not be available for this game. There’s no question that Kansas has elite talent, but they’re not robots, and it’s understandable that all the news about the UT players might have led to a bit of a letdown. Bill Self referred to his team’s lack of aggressiveness as manifested in the worrisome fact that KU’s all-american center Cole Aldrich (7/18/4 blks) only took five shots in 30 minutes despite a considerable size advantage inside. Repeated post-ups in the halfcourt offense resulted in few touches for Aldrich, as Sherron Collins and Tyshawn Taylor in particular were more interested in chucking threes and calling their own number throughout (20 and 11 shots, respectively). Tennessee, to its credit in using just six scholarship players and several walk-ons, kept hustling and scrapping for loose balls and hitting big shot after big shot every time it seemed that the superior KU talent was surging. Skylar McBee’s step-through three from the left side as the shot clock expired and UT up three very late was the stuff of legend (see below), and we doubt the walk-on marksman will be buying his own meals in Knoxville for many a year after he graduates.
In a game where the odds were repeatedly stacked against the Vols — the missing players, the foul trouble of Wayne Chism and JP Prince, the horrid FT shooting (15-29) — Pearl’s team was able to take to heart what has always made the colorful coach such an interesting guy. He sees himself as an underdog, but his teams only seem to take on that scrappy mentality when they are actually sitting behind the eight-ball. Tennessee always comes strong when they’re not expected to win — the game at Memphis in 2008, the wins over the national champion Gators in 2006 and 2007 — but it’s the games where they’re considered the heavy favorite that give Pearl’s teams trouble (last year’s two blowout Ls against struggling Kentucky come to mind). You could very reasonably argue that in the Vols’ two wins this week with six scholarship players (vs. Charlotte and the Jayhawks), they’ve looked better than they did when they went ten deep. The problem is that the underdog role can only be embraced and milked for so long, and there’s still an entire sixteen-game SEC slate ahead of them. Today was a tremendous, mood-lifting sort of win for the UT basketball program, but it won’t mean much if the Vols finish at 8-8 in the SEC East. Still, Bruce Pearl’s charges should be incredibly proud of themselves and by all means should stay away from rental cars and various weaponry after this big win (Pearl didn’t mention that, but he did mention complacency in his postgame speech below). Final thought: Scotty Hopson (17/4). Kid looked like a superstar today; his dunk over Aldrich was ridiculous. Keep it coming, young fella.
RTC Meets Ashley Judd. RTC editor John Stevens got to meet Kentucky Superfan Ashley Judd after Saturday’s Georgia game, and given that this may be a once-in-a-lifetime event, it deserves its own space. Here’s John:
I have to include the fact that I got to meet Kentucky alumna Ashley Judd at this game…and by “meet,” I mean shake her hand, stand beside her with my recorder (one of about 30 total) in her face, ask her a question, and smile dumbly at her like a mental patient who knows it’s almost pill time. Let me tell you something, folks. I don’t usually get star-struck (when you’ve sat behind Goodman, Bozich, DeCourcy, and Forde in a media room, hell, you’re ready for anything, heh), but when Ashley Judd looks you dead in the eye? Ballgame. Good night, everybody. Yes, she’s very attractive. But it’s not just that. She’s got that “star quality,” meaning that when she’s looking at you and talking, it’s morphine. You are tractor-beamed, and you’re very aware of it when your time is over. This is not something she’s trying to do, it’s something with which you’re born or you aren’t. They say politicians have this ability, too, though I doubt I’d feel the same effect if I were standing in front of, say, Strom Thurmond. As for my question, because she had been asked every possible hoops-related question by the 30 or so reporters around her, I asked her how that frenzy in the media room compared to the scene on a Hollywood red carpet. She replied like someone who, though she was glad her Wildcats escaped, was even happier to be home, even if temporarily. She smiled, thought for a second, and said with relish, “This is better! This is the blue carpet!”
Ashley is Happy to See RTC There
Moving On… Obviously, there were a bunch of other upsets this weekend beyond #1 Kansas going down, but we don’t have time to discuss them all so here are some of the key takeaways as we see them.
Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist plus author of the weekly Ten Tuesday Scribbles and Bubble Watch columns.
With college football crowning another faux-national champion Thursday night in Pasadena, the college sports scene can officially shift its axis to basketball. While a number of college basketball diehards such as yours truly were knee-deep in mid-major box scores and enthralling non-conference tournaments since the season tipped off in mid-November, it’s perfectly understandable for our college football-fan brethren out there to have been entranced in the gridiron scene during this time. For many folks out there, college basketball truly begins when a football champion is crowned and conference play heats up, when Rece and the gang show up on our TVs every Saturday morning at 11 AM and the bubble begins to take its early shape. For those people, you sure missed plenty of exciting hoops action. To get you caught up in what has gone down thus far on the hardwood, here’s a summary for your enjoyment, divvied up into the six major conferences and all the rest:
ACC
What we’ve learned: There was much back-and-forth debate entering this season whether Duke or North Carolina represented the class of this conference. After two solid months of play, it’s fairly evident Duke has separated themselves from their bitter rival as the class of the ACC. While the Tar Heels may top Duke skill-wise up front, Carolina simply does not boast the backcourt to even contend with the Dukies’ tandem of Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith. The primary knock on Duke heading into this season was point guard play with Elliot Williams transferring to Memphis. As a true sharp-shooting 2-guard who creates his shots coming off screens in Redick-like fashion, could Scheyer handle the responsibility of running the Duke offense? The answer has been resounding in the affirmative: 19.7 PPG, 46% FG, 92% FT, 43% 3pt and an otherworldly 4.8 A/TO ratio that currently leads the nation. Another key to Duke’s early season success has been Coach K’s willingness to adjust his defense to fit his roster. Rather than employing the normal Duke on-ball pressure attack, Krzyzewski is utilizing more of a sagging defense that plays into the frontcourt depth Duke enjoys with six players that receive time at 6’8 or taller.
Scheyer Has His Devils Looking Great This Season
What’s still to be determined: After Duke and Carolina (and let’s not go overboard following the Heels loss to Charleston, they’re still clearly the second best team in this conference), who will emerge as the third contender behind the top two dogs? An ever-shifting proposition, the current edge probably goes to Florida State despite their utter lack of point guard play. The Seminoles are one of the tallest teams in the nation and have a few capable long-range shooters that get open looks when defenses collapse on Solomon Alabi and Chris Singleton. Plus, they’re off to a head start with a December win at ACC foe Georgia Tech. Plenty of folks think Clemson could be that team behind powerful big man Trevor Booker, but they lack a second scoring option and I can’t stop thinking back to their collapse at home to an inexperienced Illinois squad. It would be unwise to count out Gary Williams, and the jury’s still out on Virginia Tech and Miami due to their soft schedules, so I’ll give the current edge to Wake Forest as that third team. The road win at Gonzaga’s on-campus arena stands out, Ish Smith has turned into a fine point guard and Al-Farouq Aminu has as much pure talent as anyone in this conference.
NCAA Locks: Duke, North Carolina.
Likely bids: Clemson, Florida State, Wake Forest.
Bubble teams: Georgia Tech, Maryland, Miami (FL), Virginia Tech.
Make other plans for March: Boston College, North Carolina State, Virginia.
Big East
What we’ve learned: The NCAA picture is shaping up quite similarly to last season when Louisville (regular season champion), Pittsburgh and Connecticut all received #1 seeds. There will be much back-and-forth debate about whether the top three teams this season — Syracuse, West Virginia and Villanova -- holds the edge in this conference, but does it really matter? Right now you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t think Kansas, Texas, Kentucky and Purdue are the likely #1 seeds (of course plenty could change, we have two months of games left), while those top contenders in the Big East are likely all on the second seed line. Even of greater importance though is the obvious revelation that Jamie Dixon can coach basketball. You wouldn’t be alone if you counted out Pittsburgh following a near-loss to Wofford, a 47-point output at home vs. New Hampshire and a second half butt-kicking at the hands of Indiana, but those losses came without their most athletic player, Gilbert Brown, and their best defender, Jermaine Dixon. Those two have returned to action with the most improved Big East player Ashton Gibbs (who recently broke the all-time Pitt record for consecutive free throws made) as a fearsome trio that has carried the Panthers to road wins over previously-undefeated Syracuse and fringe-top 25 Cincinnati. If Dixon is able to coax his Panthers into a NCAA Tournament team after losing such enormous production and leadership in Sam Young, DeJuan Blair and Levance Fields, there is little debate on his merits as National Coach of the Year.
William & Mary is on a Roll. The Tribe have won ten straight, a new school record, and won 48-47 at Hofstra on a Kendrix Brown three point play to continue their historic season. William & Mary is 2-0 in the CAA for the first time since 1997-98. The Tribe have not started this well since 1948-49 when they started 14-2. More impressively, the Tribe never gave up the lead at Maryland after the 4:44 mark in the first half in a convincing 83-77 win in College Park. After dropping their first two games to Connecticut by nine and Harvard in triple-overtime, the Tribe have racked up impressive statement wins over Richmond, Wake Forest and Maryland. According to Kenpom.com, their Offensive efficiency is tops in the nation (124.2).
Northern Iowa mowing down the Valley — Those that don’t consider Northern Iowa the class of the Valley need to have their head examined (including myself, before now). The Panthers are on an 11-game winning streak after following a tough road win against Creighton in Omaha with victories against Evansville and Missouri State to race out to a 3-0 conference record in the first week.
The big story in the SEC this week was the arrest and indefinite suspension of four Tennessee basketball players — Tyler Smith, Melvin Goins, Cameron Tatum and Brian Williams. The group was arrested on a myriad of drug and weapon charges. Some of the charges were felonies, and given the recent problems with UT’s football program, it is hard to imagine any scenario in which the players may step back on the court this season.
After splitting the top spot last week with rival UNC, the Blue Devils sit atop this week’s rankings all by themselves. No, it wasn’t the win over Long Beach State or the 59-point demolition of Penn. Duke pretty much dismantled highly regarded Clemson Sunday night, posting a 21-point win that was never even remotely that close. Jon Scheyer is scoring more than enough for Duke, and Kyle Singler and the Devils’ frontcourt proved it could handle a seasoned big man like Trevor Booker. An impressive win, to say the very least.
Big 10 Madness has begun – Conference play started this past week in the Big Ten, and they didn’t disappoint. Indiana loses Maurice Creek, their top scorer and player, and then they upset Michigan at home. Michigan, not to be outdone, gets revenge for what their football team couldn’t do against OSU. Wisconsin, not wanting to miss out, blows out both OSU and PSU. Surprisingly, only Michigan and Minnesota have at least a win and a loss. Everyone else either hasn’t lost, or hasn’t won.
Over the long holiday weekend, Syracuse and West Virginia fell from the ranks of the unbeaten, leaving only four teams — Kansas, Texas, Kentucky & Purdue — with a shot at the holy grail of a perfect season. None of the coaches will admit to it on the record, but they all hate losing, and each of them would welcome a chance to become the first team since Indiana in 1976 to win every game put in front of them. There’s only one problem. It’s collectively called the Big 12, SEC and Big Ten gauntlets schedules.
As you’re well aware, there have only been two schools in the last two decades who have run the regular season table — UNLV in 1991, and St. Joseph’s in 2004 — and of course the aforementioned Hoosiers a generation ago were the last to go unblemished throughout. There are many reasons for this, especially given that it’s difficult to win every single game with a growing target on your back, but the primary reason that Tark’s Rebels and Martelli’s Hawks were able to do it when so many other great teams were not was because they played in mid-major conferences (the Big West and Atlantic 10, respectively). This is not to say that those conferences are cakewalks, because they’re not. Every league has its share of rivalry games, other good programs and rattlesnake pits disguised as home gyms that make life difficult on favorites. But what those conferences provide that is often missing among the BCS conferences are the true bottom-feeders that give elite teams such as UNLV/St. Joe’s breaks on a given night. Have a tough shooting night at Vandy or Baylor? You’re going home with your first L. A tough shooting night at Fordham or Long Beach, though? You’re probably still ok.
With the clear knowledge in mind that all four of the remaining unbeatens are going to lose a regular season game (or several), let’s take a look at the remaining schedules to pinpoint exactly when and where that might happen. First, let’s see what Pomeroy has to say. He provides percentage odds on every future game, and if you extrapolate out over the rest of the year, you can start to pinpoint the true likelihood of when that first loss might occur.
This is a good starting point, as Purdue appears to be the most likely candidate to lose next (@ Wisconsin on Saturday), while Kansas seems to be the most likely team to run the table (10.2% isn’t exactly a lock, though). The statistical analysis Pomeroy provides only tells part of the story, though, so we’re going to break down each team’s likelihood of its next loss using another analytical tool – our brain.
When the Gators and Wolfpack got together last season, it was the third day in January and Nick Calathes scored 32 points to help Florida pull out a 68-66 win in Gainesville. Exactly one year later, the faces have changed, but many expect the 2010 version of Florida (10-3) v. North Carolina State (10-3) to be just as exciting: Ken Pomeroy predicts a 66-65 win for Billy Donovan’s team. For NC State to come out on top, star big man Tracy Smith (17.2 ppg & 9.1 rpg) needs to be a factor—his foul trouble relegated him to the bench in State’s loss to Wake Forest and his comments on said foul trouble garnered Smith a one-game suspension in the Wolfpack’s 2-point loss to Arizona in the following game. This being the Gators’ final game before SEC play begins, expect them to look to their standout freshman, Kenny Boynton (14.2 ppg) to step up and dominate the speedy yet mistake-prone Javier Gonzalez. This game should be a good one, so please stop by and join the chat!
Surprises at the top — A year ago, you would not have seen Missouri State and Wichita State at the top of the conference with Creighton and Bradley towards the bottom. But this is how the crazy Valley non-conference season has gone so far. The Valley is an impressive 80-32 (.714) in non-conference play with some nice wins against top level conferences that have been missing over the past few seasons.
Finally! College basketball is back in the SEC after a couple of weeks of finals (and the holidays) and it is back with a vengeance with two bitter in-state rivalries for both Kentucky and Tennessee. Aside from that, Baylor does a curious double dip in the SEC and most of the good action is actually televised this week.
I don’t know if you looked at the new AP top 25 poll, but if you have, you may have done a double take when you saw Northwestern at number 25. It’s for real, for the team that has never made the NCAA Tournament, they are well on their way. Now five Big Ten teams are in the top 25: #4 Purdue, #11 Michigan State, #13 Ohio State, #23 Wisconsin and #25 Northwestern.
What’s the deal with UNC-Greensboro? I understand that the poor Spartans have a short trip to almost every ACC school, and can fatten their athletic wallet with games in ACC gyms. But they’ve gotta grow tired of this, right? Greensboro plays 13 non-league games this season, and six of them come against ACC foes. The Spartans have already lost to Duke, Virginia Tech, Clemson and Wake Forest by a combined score of 319-235, and still have to face N.C. State and Maryland this week. To add to their misery, the Spartans have also been thumped by Richmond (26 points), Akron (24 points) and East Carolina (21 points). I’d love to hear that recruiting pitch…
Northwestern is the best basketball nerd school in the nation.Two great things about last weekend’s Stanford game for the Wildcats. First, they beat probably the only school that can compete with them on the hardwood and in the classroom. The second is that John Shurna is back. He had a 22/8 game against Stanford, so I hope I don’t jinx him. Stanford actually shot better from the field and from 3-pt territory, but the Wildcats dominated from the free throw line. Northwestern is going to have to find a bench though, as five points from the reserves isn’t going to cut it in the Big Ten. (…)
Missouri to the Big Ten? – PTI was talking about the potential move last week, and apparently Missouri wants to join the other midwestern BCS conference. The move makes sense geographically, and the Big Ten has been looking for a twelfth member for a few years. The likely scenario is that Missouri would move to the Big Ten, and then the Big 12 would pick up TCU to compensate. Obviously this is all speculation, but it would be quite interesting if the move went through. (…)
Kentucky set a new standard in college basketball as they became the first program to win 2,000 wins in an 88-44 romp over Drexel. John Calipari is more than exceeding expectations with a 12-0 record and a #3 ranking in both polls. UK appears to be gelling right now and are clearly setting the standard in the SEC. Unfortunately, the UK game was about the only highlight in the SEC this week as both Florida and Tennessee suffered head scratching losses. The two Mississippi schools are starting to rise and play very well and the SEC is turning into a five or six team race. (…)
The Debacle in Hinkle. #17 Butler 69, Xavier 68. The story over the weekend was the bizarre and (some say) unconscionable ending to the Butler-Xavier game on Saturday afternoon. If you somehow missed it, check out our post on the subject from last night. We pretty much agree that the referee crew followed the rules as they’re written, but that the rules as they’re written pretty much suck in a situation such as this. RTC Live was there, and as our correspondent wrote at the time:
That would be one ballsy crew to take a full second OFF the clock against a visitor down by 1 point. HUGE controversy WOW…. I have been doing bball for years and I cannot believe that they just did that?!?!?!?!?!”
Ballsy they were, but also correct by the letter of the law. Unfortunately for Xavier and Chris Mack, the Musketeers were left holding the bag when a timing error led them to believe they’d have a final shot to win the game. The NCAA needs to step up and immediately clarify this rule, including what kind of stopwatch can and cannot be used to estimate the time so that we’re not faced with an equally ridiculous ending on a much bigger stage later this year.
Jerry’s Joint. #2 Texas 103, #10 UNC 90. The featured game of the weekend at Jerry’s World known as the new-and-improved-to-a-ridiculous-degree Cowboys Stadium showed why many people are very high on Rick Barnes’ Texas team to cut down the nets in April. UT put four players in the 20+ points column, including huge dub-dubs from seniors Damion James (25/15) and Dexter Pittman (23/15) to go along with Avery Bradley’s 20/4 assts/3 stls and J’Covan Brown’s 21/5/3 assts. Showing the depth that Barnes now has at his disposal, much ballyhooed transfer Jai Lucas (recently eligible) only played six minutes and recorded zero points. He’d start for most of the teams in the Top 25 from day one. UNC’s Ed Davis was the only Carolina player who seemed comfortable with the waves of Texas players inside, as he blew up for 21/9/4 blks for one of his best performances of the year. Texas will get another test on Tuesday of this week as Michigan State visits Austin, while UNC will head back home for a few easier games prior to the start of the ACC in early January. We’re still worried about UNC’s point guard play, but we’d imagine that Texas is going to make a lot of pretty good teams look bad over the course of this season. That team is loaded!
The JumboTron Dwarfs the Court (AP/Tony Gutierrez)
Gonz-awfulness. #7 Duke 76, #15 Gonzaga 41. In a game all too reminiscent of other early-season blowouts that Duke has administered on overrated teams, the Devils completely overwhelmed the Zags defensively to, as Mark Few put it after the game, “woodshed” his team on Saturday afternoon at MSG. Duke’s defense held Gonzaga to a mere fifteen FGs for the game, 28% shooting, a single three-pointer and a quarter-century team low of 41 points. Despite all the hype for the Duke bigs coming into the season, it’s been the backcourt play of Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith, combining for 36 PPG, 7 RPG, and 10 APG that has truly driven this team to have the look as one of the best teams in America this year. Scheyer’s ridiculous A:TO ratio of 5.8 to 1 actually went down after two TOs in this one, but his 20/5/8 assts more than made up for the miscue. Smith added 24/3/3 assts, and we’re going to spare talking about the Gonzaga awfulness since not a single Zag got into double figures on the day.
Shot of the Weekend. Cornell 91, Davidson 88 (OT). Ryan Wittman’s 30-footer at the buzzer in overtime gave the Big Red its eighth win of the year and a shot at a Big East team (St. John’s) on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. Lost in the heroics and glee of Wittman’s shot was the fact that it wouldn’t have even been possible had Louis Dale not hit a driving layup with 0.7 seconds remaining in regulation. Cornell’s only two losses this year were against Big East teams (Seton Hall and Syracuse), so this will likely be the Ivy League favorite’s best chance to get a huge win this season (Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse is not realistic). We haven’t been able to locate a video of this shot yet, but if you see one, let us know.
SEC Sucktitude. A week ago, we were ready to start believing that the SEC is much-improved this year. Then the SEC East craps itself on Saturday and Sunday. We’re reserving judgment for now, which of course means we really think this league is terrible and deserves only one bid (ok, not really).
As we said in this post yesterday, we’re handling our conference check-ins a little differently now. We’ll be posting them on a daily schedule, as usual, but they won’t be posted in full on the main page. Rather, you’ll need to check the little box above to see what the latest conference check-ins are. To jog the memory, we’ll also be posting daily excerpts of the previous day’s check-ins, at least for a while to get everyone used to the change.
Yesterday, we had check-ins from the Big Ten and the SEC…
Was Butler a fluke or is Ohio State on the verge of dropping out of the top 25? Butler is definitely on the way back up, but I am questioning whether OSU has enough in its tank to make up the difference. William Buford, who is averaging 12/4 on the year, stepped up for 20/7 for the Buckeyes. David Lighty, who is 12/5 on the year, went for 16/7 against the bulldogs. OSU is averaging 85.4 points per game this season, and scored just 66 against Butler. That’s about the gap of one Evan Turner. (…)
It was a very slow week in the SEC as three teams did not see any action at all. Kentucky and Mississippi State represented the SEC well in the SEC/Big East Invitational while Florida and Georgia lost their matchups. Both Mississippi teams have been coming on strong and supplying some firepower to the West; Tennessee has only one setback and they should challenge UK all season. The big story for the rest of the year will be the race to 2000 wins between UK and North Carolina. Kentucky has pretty much assured themselves of being the first team to break the 2000-win plateau as they currently have 1998 wins to 1992 for UNC. (…)
Last weekend’s Villanova loss created the only substantive movement in the RTC Top 25 this week, but we weren’t rating the Wildcats as high as everyone else anyway, so the market on Jay Wright’s team appears to have been corrected. Analysis after the jump…
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Regular Features, morning 5 | Tagged: acc, big east, butler, cincinnati, conference awards, david lighty, demarcus cousins, derrick favors, final four, florida, gary williams, georgia tech, greg shaheen, greivis vasquez, jim boeheim, john wall, kentucky, kevin stallings, lance stephenson, maryland, ncaa tournament, ohio st, rick jackson, sec, seth davis, syracuse, vanderbilt, wake forest, wesley johnson, willie veasley | 
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