Game of the Day #1

#12 Georgetown at #2 Duke on CBS at 1:30 PM

John Thompson III might want to think about asking the AD at Georgetown for a new schedule maker. I can understand wanting to get your team ready for the tournament, but this is ridiculous. Coming off a brutal start to their Big East schedule (Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Notre Dame, and Syracuse), the Hoyas get a respite by heading out of conference with a leisurely trip to Cameron Indoor Stadium where the Blue Devils have a 67-game home non-conference winning streak. Normally a trip to Cameron would be a major focus of any team’s season, but with the Hoyas’ recent schedule it will be interesting to see if they have anything left in the tank.

This has the potential to be an entertaining game with great matchups all over the floor. The most interesting matchup will be Greg Monroe against Kyle Singler. While Monroe has more potential and will be a higher NBA Draft pick, Singler is quite talented too and plays at a high level more consistently. I’m not sure how Duke will open up because I don’t think Brian Zoubek has a chance against Monroe, but with Monroe’s tendency to coast it might not be such a big issue for stretches of the game. The matchup will be made more interesting by the fact that Duke was the front-runner for Monroe (the #1 high school recruit at times last year) for most of the recruiting season before committing to Georgetown. If Monroe had joined Singler in the middle, Coach K could have had a legitimate title contender.

If Coach K decides to put Zoubek on Monroe, Singler will end up playing against DaJuan Summers who has really stepped up his game this year (15.1 PPG on 53.8% FG and 44.4% 3FG). Either way, it should be an interesting match-up on the inside. Singler probably has the most complete game of any of the 4 bigs in the starting lineup, but Zoubek is still the weakest link of the Duke starting lineup despite his tremendous improvement since he has been at Duke.  Singler’s ability to shoot from outside brings up another intriguing aspect of this game about whether Monroe can come out and defend Singler if necessary. The Hoyas might be best served to put Summers on Singler to keep Monroe out of foul trouble because they will need Monroe to play 30+ minutes if they hope to pull off the upset in Cameron. In the end, it might be the battle on the inside and who controls the boards that will determine outcome of the game despite the talented guards on both sides.

The backcourts also provide some interesting match-ups: Nolan Smith vs. Chris Wright, Jon Scheyer vs. Jessie Sapp, and Gerald Henderson vs. Austin Freeman. All of these are intriguing match-ups with solid players who are capable of taking over a game at any time. Keep an eye on Henderson in this one since he’s the one world-class athlete on the Duke team and he has stepped it up recently including taking over the 2nd half of the game against FSU last Saturday.

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As we mentioned in our BGTD Early Edition today, we’re still tinkering around with a workable format for this feature.  So with the West Coast Office taking over as you easterners hunker down for the night, we’re going to try it a little differently this evening.  Let us know in the comments if you have any feedback, constructive, destructive or otherwise.

Sidenote:  is there a better value than the Fox College Sports package on your cable or dish system?  Seriously, for $5/month, you get access to dozens more college games, and at least on ours, the Big 10 Network and the CBS College Sports Network.  Great deal, and this comes from we who typically despise our cable company.

Comments Heading into the Darkness.

• The only significant upset so far today has been spastic UMass (5-8 ) spanking Dayton (14-1) in Springfield, 75-62.
• Staying in the A10, that St. Joe’s – Rhodie triple-OT thriller (92-86 St. Joe’s) at the Palestra must have been something.

3pm/4pm/5pm Games.

• There was a mild upset in Lincoln as Nebraska ran out to a big first half lead and held off Mizzou down the stretch.  From what we saw, Missouri didn’t look all that interested.
• Life on the road in the Big 10 is not going to be pleasant for the Hoosiers this year.  The Illini were only up 45-20 at the half.

6pm/7pm/8pm Games.

• We caught a good bit of the UConn-Cincy game and continue to wonder when (if?) the Huskies will reach their lofty potential.  They seemed to do just enough to make sure that they won the game – nothing more, nothing less.  As an example, nine-footer Hasheem Thabeet had three rebounds in 29 minutes.
• UCF might just have the ugliest home court in America.  Memphis probably isn’t going 18-0 in CUSA this year.
• It’s amazing how much harder Cal is playing on the defensive end this year vs. last year.  The Bears pulled off the mild upset in Washington and now stand at 4-0 in the Pac-10.  The two starting backcourts combined for 120 pts in this triple-OT game.
• We caught a bit of the Florida-Ole Miss game and the Gators looked tough (for a half).  Still don’t think the SEC has much to show this year.
• Also caught some of the Miami-BC game, and well, let’s just say that we have no idea how BC managed to beat Carolina last weekend.
• Ugh.  Also noticed Illinois St. lost its second in a row (after a 14-0) start to Indiana St. tonight, a 4-12 team.

9pm and Later Games.

• Um, Arkansas can beat top 10 teams at home, but not Mississippi St.  Nice.
• Stanford blew a lead at Wazzu, but neither of these teams look very impressive.  NIT for both.

What We Learned Today. Not a lot, actually, other than to not assume Arkansas will roll through its home schedule.  Today’s slate of games was rather uninspiring, and it doesn’t get terribly better tomorrow until 8pm, when Wake-Carolina tips off.  We love the way the Deacs have been playing lately, and they are at home, so that one could be very interesting.  ESPN should have started Gameday this weekend and made that game the focal point instead of the worthless Miami (FL) at UNC game next weekend.

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

• Darren Collison has hit a UCLA school-record 40 consecutive free-throws.  The previous record was 36 straight by Henry Bibby in 1972
• Washington is bringing a nine-game winning streak into the game of the week against California, who is riding an eight-game winning streak. One streak will come to an end.
• Cal is still first in three-point percentage shooting 98-for-194 as a team for a 50.5 % clip.  The next closest team is Miami Ohio shooting 42.9 %
• This could be the first time Arizona fails to start 2-2 through the first four games in Pac-10 play since 1983-84
• The Pac-10 Men’s Basketball Hall of Honor just announced the new inductees.  Led by Detlef Schrempf and Lute Olson, there are ten new inductees.

Player of the week- Patrick Christopher. Christopher put up three 20 point games this week.  He had 23 against Arizona, 20 against Arizona State, and 22 at Washington State.  The Golden Bears went 3-0 in the games.

Honorable Mention: Darren Collison averaged 18 points and 6.5 assists in the Bruins two wins this past week.  He shot 13-for-19 from the field and a perfect 9-for-9 from the charity stripe.  Jeff Pendergraph averaged 18 points and 7.3 rebounds a game in the three games this week.  The Sun Devils went 2-1 and Pendergraph fought through injuries in the last two games.

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From the “Is This Really Necessary?” Department.

Tebow Wants to Meet a John in Stall 316? (photo credit: AP/J.Pat Carter)

Game of the Night. Washington 84, Stanford 83. This was an entertaining game that was decided when Stanford’s Landry Fields made one dribble after catching a perfect three-quarter court pass with 2.2 seconds left.  The problem was that the dribble was in traffic and the ball landed on someone’s foot and skirted out of bounds.  Replays showed that it likely hit a UW player’s foot, which would have given Stanford one last shot at the win, but home court ruled.  We watched a good deal of this game, and while both Stanford and Washington appear to be top-half Pac-10 teams, we didn’t see anything that would lead us to believe either of these teams would play more than one game in the NCAAs.  Anthony Goods provided 19 pts for the losing team, while Jon Brockman contributed a stellar 19/18.  Freshman Isaiah Thomas dropped 18 himself.

Other Scores on a Tim Tebow Kinda Night.

• Arizona St. 69, Oregon St. 38.  Actually, we hope you didn’t tune in for this abomination.  ASU shot 16-18 for the second half and a scorching 65% for the game.
• Butler 64, Wright St. 48. Butler really stuck it to the visiting Raiders in a game that Brad Brownell’s WSU squad legitimately thought they had a chance to win.  Matt Howard and Gordon Hayward combined for 26/14.
• Minnesota 52, Iowa 49. Where’d this ‘typical’ Big 10 score come from?  Doesn’t everyone know that the Big 10 is an offensive conference this year?  Iowa had a 13-pt lead in the first half, but Minny fought back to win in Iowa City for the first time in its last five tries.
• Xavier 70, St. Louis 44. Xavier’s Derrick Brown had a perfect night (6-6, 3-3 from three, and 5-5 from the line) for 20 pts in the blowout win, and we can’t help but wonder… isn’t SLU’s Rick Majerus a better coach than this?
• Arizona 67, Oregon 52. In an ignoble stat, no Duck reached double figures in this game.  Arizona’s Chase Budinger hit for 20 pts and Jordan Hill had 9/12.
• California 57, Washington St. 50. It’s simply astonishing to us that Cal lost two players to the NBA from a ninth place team, but is now 3-0 in the Pac-10 with three solid wins under its belt.  Right now, the Bears are arguably the third best team in that league.

On Tap Friday (all times EST):  there’s one game worth watching after your fifth gin-and-tonic tomorrow night.

• St. Mary’s @ Santa Clara (ESPNU) – 11pm.  SC’s John Bryant is the story of the year nobody is talking about, averaging 18/12 after getting stabbed in Australia during the offseason.  Patty Mills has got SMC rolling , with ten Ws in a row.

This’ll be  quick one today because our usual writer is busy inviting a bunch of dudes over to his pad for some game involving another collegiate sport tonight.  A sport that tends to have trouble deciding who the most worthy teams are for its championship just about every year.   Our opinion of that faux-championship game is below. 

When Does Utah Play in the Finals?

As for the rest of your evening, while you’re not watching Oklahoma and Florida throw balls all over the field en route to a 65-63 finish, enjoy a warm post-coital buffet of some college hoops.   There’s a surprisingly tasty slate on tap for tonight, with four games involving Top 25 teams.  

7pm

– Wright St. @ Butler on ???.  Wright St. appears to be coming out of the fog that enveloped its team during the first two months of the season, as they’ve won 8 of 9 games with the only loss coming at #4 Wake Forest.  Butler, on the other hand, continues to roll along, but the Bulldogs have had trouble with WSU, losing seven of their last ten against the Raiders including their last two when ranked.  The big question is whether this game’s total will outscore the BCS game’s. 

– Minnesota @ Iowa on ESPN2.  Iowa hasn’t gotten much publicity this season, but the Hawkeyes are 9-0 in their home arena, a place where Minnesota has lost seven of their last eight visits.  Minny’s only other true road test was a one-point win over Colorado St., so we’re a little skeptical about the validity of Tubby’s 13-1 record (best start since 1996-97).  Still, if Minnesota can get a road win in a place they traditionally don’t play well, it would go a long way toward establishing itself as one of the upper elite of Big Ten teams this year.

8:30pm

– Oregon @ Arizona on FSN Regional.   This is a battle between teams who were swept in their first Pac-10 tilts last weekend.  The difference is that at least Arizona was on the road in the Bay Area when they went 0-2.  Oregon plays defense like most teams enjoy suicide sprints; in other words, not at all.  Arizona should have a field day of open looks and easy layups for Chase Budinger, Jordan Hill and others to take advantage of.  They just need to make sure that Jamelle Horne is nowhere near the floor at the end of the game. 

10:30pm

– Oregon St. @ Arizona St. on FSN.  Arizona St. may be without the services of forward Jeff Pendergraph tonight, but that shouldn’t stop you from checking in on Herb Sendek’s team for a quick glance at possibly the most complete guard in America, James Harden (23/6/5 on 55%/44% shooting).  OSU is coming off of its first Pac-10 win in nearly two years vs. USC, but that was at home.  Still, OSU has been much more competitive this year. 

– Stanford @ Washington on FSN Regional.  UW is a team that hasn’t been talked about much this year, and why would we?  They’re 10-3, but they’ve lost to nearly every good team they’ve played (Portland, Kansas, Florida).  Stanford got its comeuppence last weekend when Arizona St. dominated them in Maples.  But the Cardinal did recover to beat Arizona, and UW had a nice win over its in-state rival Wazzu, so this could make for an interesting contest.  Both teams have low-grade NCAA aspirations, so they need to win these types of games. 

11pm

– Cal St. Fullerton @ Cal Poly on ESPNU.  The BCS game should be ending around 12:30am due to all the passing and timeouts, so turn this one on for the last five minutes to see CSF’s Josh Akognon play for the first time in your life.  His Titans (6-8 ) aren’t very good, so it’s unlikely you’ll see him in March – this might be your last opportunity to see this fantastic collegian while still in school. 

Since the ATB writers have been in a self-induced coma as a result of last week’s NYE festivities (hey, it’s hard living in your mom’s basement), rather than rehashing a bunch of stale games from Wed-Sun, we thought it’d make more sense to just hit some highlights and trends of things we’re watching as the haze continues to wear off from our vision and the strange burning sensations subside.

Some News & Notes.

• Is Tubby Smith on the short list of coaches looking at Arizona?  Maybe the Tubbster realized that, yes, those icicles on your c#&k really do stay there for six months of the year, and as such, Tucson is looking pretty tasty.
• Former Hoosier and UAB carpetbagger Armon Bassett ended up transferring to Ohio U.  He will be eligible after next fall’s quarter.
• Kyle Whelliston is awesome.  Seriously.  The Mid-Majority founder and resident subversive in the college hoops world discovered a clear trend showing that the BCS teams are playing each other more often during the out-of-conference slate, and the mid-majors less.  He thinks this is good for the mids, but we’re not so sure.  The mids really need those opportunities to shine that beating S. Florida and Oregon St. UCLA and Duke provide.
• The Dagger had a great year-in-review wrapup article over at Yahoo Sports, as well as a look at what college hoops might look like if the BCS was running things over here.

The Big East is insane this year. In just the last three weeks, we’ve seen UConn look like the most likely hurdle for North Carolina through its clutch win in Seattle vs. Gonzaga.  Then we jumped on the Georgetown bandwagon after the Hoyas proceeded to go up to Storrs and thump those Huskies behind a balanced offensive attack and its standard sticky defense.  Only for our mis/pre-conceptions to be challenged again when Pittsburgh chose to use this weekend’s matchup in DC at Georgetown to manhandle (manhandle?  try superman-handle…  the Panthers had more o-rebs – 18 – than the Hoyas had total – 17) the same team that looked so fantastic against UConn five days prior.  We really don’t know what to make of this league with these performances.  Given the way things have gone so far, Pitt should now be in position to get its bell rung by UConn in Western Pa.  We just don’t know.  One thing we think we can say without too much hedging is that UConn, Georgetown, Pitt, and possibly Notre Dame, Syracuse and Louisville (if those three ever get it completely going), are the best top six to a conference we’ve ever seen.  It’s likely that all six of those teams would win the SEC and compete with UCLA for the Pac-10 crown.  In 1995, the ACC had a really strong top four, but nothing like this group.  As for Georgetown,  we noted after the UConn game that their lack of strong bench production could end up biting them in the arse down the stretch, and it was absolutely exhibited here (2 pts).  This will ultimately be the Hoyas’ downfall, as their 29-game homecourt winning streak was snapped when Pitt went on a 17-4 run to blow open a 40-40 tie game.  As much as we love Greg Monroe, he was schooled by the savvier Dejuan Blair, who dropped 20/17 on the bigger player.

Monday update:  Notre Dame 73, Georgetown 67. Notre Dame defeated Georgetown at home tonight, keeping their 44-game homecourt (and 19-game conference) winning streak alive.  This occurred a mere two days after the Irish laid a leprechaun egg against St. John’s in NYC.  Just like that, Georgetown is now 1-2 in the conference, when one week ago tonight they looked like the team to beat.  Wow.

Is the SEC surging? It’s probably too little, too late, for the SEC to save its sinking sunk RPI in time to matter much come Selection Sunday, but the last few days of games showed that the league may have some fight left in it, following up on Arkansas’ upset of Oklahoma and pulling off a few key wins in games that its teams would have lost in November or early December.  Consider the following scores:

• South Carolina 85, Baylor 84. SC is one of the definite surprise teams of this season, proving once again that Dave Odom has been the luckiest man alive to have bilked multiple schools of millions of dollars by passing himself off as a legitimate head coach.  Getting a win over a ranked team in a true road game is something the SEC hadn’t done all year.  Until Friday night.  Shooting 54% and putting all five starters in double-figures helps.
• Florida 68, NC State 66. We probably shouldn’t be giving too much love to a team that allowed its marginal ACC opponent to shoot 59% on its home floor, but hey, an intersectional win is a win!  Nick Calathes saved the day with 24 of his 34, including the go-ahead jumper with 11 seconds left, coming in the second half.
• Alabama 88, Georgia Tech 77. Bama will be as good as Ronald Steele is and he was excellent on this night (23/10), echoing memories of his healthy first two years in Tuscaloosa.  Ga Tech appears to once again be going nowhere fast.
• Mississippi St. 82, Houston 65. MSU simply took control of this game, holding an 8-2 Houston team to 28% shooting in the process.
• Vanderbilt 78, Massachusetts 48. Wow, a complete obliteration of UMass in Amherst by a team that had really shown next-to-nothing so far this year.  Derek Kellogg has lost that team.
• Louisville 74, Kentucky 71. Yeah, it’s an L for the SEC, but Kentucky has been playing better ball lately and took Louisville to the brink before Pitino whipping boy Edgar Sosa dropped a 25-foot three to win the game with 2.6 seconds remaining.  There may not be a better inside/outside duo than UK’s Jodie Meeks and Patrick Patterson (50/18 in this game).

Most Impressive Win of the Weekend. Wake Forest 94, BYU 87. It was televised to all of six people in America on The Mountain network, but Wake going into the viper’s pit known as the Marriott Center in Provo where the Cougars had won their last 53 games against all comers was very impressive.  This was especially so given that Wake was teetering in the mid-second half before their assassin Jeff Teague (30/4/4) and muscle man James Johnson (22/15) took over the game, as the tired BYU players starting coming up short on their shots.  What’s the difference between this Wake team and some others (most notably, the Chris Paul teams) in the recent past?  This Deacon squad plays defense.  Whether it’s by design or simply the absurd athleticism that three potential lottery picks in the starting lineup (Teague/Johnson/Aminu) provide, their length and size bothers teams, and as a result, the Deacs are currently the fifth most efficient defensive team in America.   The UNC-Wake game next Sunday in Winston-Salem looms large to see just how good this Deacon team can be.

What Has Happened to the Zags? Utah 66, Gonzaga 65. It’s almost as if that loss to UConn two weeks ago took all the wind out of the sails of the Zags.  Since that game, they’ve lost at home to Portland St. and now away at Utah in a game they had multiple chances to win.  Next they’re at Tennessee on Wednesday before WCC play starts.  Meanwhile, conference foe St. Mary’s is cruising along at 14-1, although against admittedly lesser competition.  As for the Zags, there is top ten talent on this team, and they need to stop feeling sorry for themselves because they lost a heartbreaking game.  Jeremy Pargo in particular needs to get his team’s attention and back on the right track, and Austin Daye needs to improve his shot selection (a 6’11 guy shouldn’t be shooting 44% from the field); otherwise, America’s favorite “underdog” from the Pacific Northwest will once again disappoint in March.

USC is the Most Confounding Team in America. USC 83, Oregon 62 & Oregon St. 62, USC 58 (OT).  USC once again has several future NBA Draft picks on its roster, but as has been a trend in recent years for the Trojans, they are just as likely to shock you with an efficient evisceration of an opponent as they are to simply not show up for the engagement at all.  Case in point was the Oregon two-fer last weekend.  On Friday night, the Trojans went into Oregon’s Macarthur Court (one of the tougher venues in the Pac-10, even in a year when Oregon is clearly down) and completely humiliated the Ducks with a +21-pt second half (probably its best half of the year).  Then, riding that wave of success, USC visited Oregon St. on Sunday – remember, the Beavers went 0-18 in the Pac-10 last season – and managed to hand OSU its first conference victory in 683 days.   If anyone can explain this team, let us know.

Some Other Scores That Caught Our Eye.

• UNLV 56, Louisville 55. Of course, this was prior to the victory over their nemesis on Sunday, but the Louisville bugaboo of poor shooting (29.6%), weak guard play and a seeming lack of focus allowed UNLV (w/o Wink Adams) to come east and steal a victory.  After this game, Edgar Sosa reportedly was asked to transfer by Coach Pitino – he responded with his best game in two years against Kentucky (18 pts).
• Marquette 79, Villanova 72. Someone send us an email when you can figure out just how good either of these teams actually are.  Both are two-loss guard-oriented teams that have similar RPI profiles (#29 and #30), capable of a major upset at any time, but not quite strong enough to reach the top tier of the Big East.
• Arizona St. 90, Stanford 60. Has a BCS team ever defeated another BCS team by 45 points at home, only to lose by 30 points in the next week to another BCS team at home?  That’s a 75-pt difference for you mathemagicians out there.  Stanford followed up this blasting with another home win against Arizona on Sunday, so maybe the Cardinal just had a bad game against Herb Sendek’s team.
• Xavier 84, Virginia 70. XU really needed to win this road game against an ACC team (even a likely bottom-dweller) to convince folks that their rough two game stretch against Duke and Butler last month is behind them.
• Illinois St. 86, Creighton 64. ISU stamped itself as the team to beat in the MVC with this big home win on Saturday.  Now 14-0, the Redbirds used a huge second half to blow the game open led by Osiris Eldridge’s 20/9.
• Michigan 74, Illinois 64. This was a big win for John Beilein’s UM squad, because the Illini have been playing extremely well of late.  Amazingly, after only two games, only Wisconsin and Michigan St. are unbeaten (2-0) in the Big Ten race.
• Duke 69, Virginia Tech 44. A 13-point second half will not get it done in Cameron.  Although Duke is #2 now, we still don’t believe in them in the long term.  Only five points came off of their bench in this game.
• California 81, Arizona St. 71. If this keeps up, Mike Montgomery will have to be in the conversation for NCOY.  Two days after demolishing Stanford, Arizona St. got outhustled and outplayed in the second half (Cal shot 68% behind Jerome Randle’s 26/10 assts).  This was two nights after putting away Arizona, 69-55.  Monty has this program competing way ahead of schedule.

On Tap Tuesday. check our now-daily Set Your Tivos feature for the games to watch tomorrow.

Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

Conference Notes.

• Last week’s player of the week, UCLA’s Michael Roll, was back in a reserve roll and scored five points in 26 minutes.
• Early on in the Pac-10 schedule will dictate if the Arizona St. Sun Devils are for real, as , their first two games are at Stanford and Cal.  Four of Arizona State’s wins have come against teams with two wins or fewer,  including winless Mississippi Valley State.
• In Arizona’s win Chase Budinger played 40 minutes for already the fifth time this season, In all of last year he only played 40 minutes or more four times.
• Cal is shooting a nation best 50.6 percent from three-point range.  Theo Robertson leads the country at 61.5 percent and Jerome Randle is in fifth at 56.1 percent.
• Stanford is one of only six teams still undefeated in Division I competition.

Player of the week- Calvin Haynes – Calvin Haynes of Oregon State scored 24 of the Beaver’s 59 points in the victory over Seattle.  He shot 6-for-9 from the field and went 10-for-12 from the stripe.

Honorable Mention: Jrue Holiday of UCLA who scored 12 points, had 10 rebounds, and had 5 assists in the Bruin’s win.  James Harden of Arizona State who scored 24 points this week for the Sun Devils.

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Michael Hurley is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

Conference Notes.

• Stanford is the only team left undefeated in the Pac-10 at 8-0.  First year coach Johnny Dawkins has the Cardinal off to their best start since 2003-04 when they ran off 26 straight.
• USC finally beat a BCS opponent by trouncing Georgia Tech.  The Trojans are still way too inconsistent though, the game before they barely could handle North Dakota State.
• Arizona freshman stud Jeff Withey must have seen something about Kansas he liked because Withey declared he is transferring there as of next semester.
• The Naismith Trophy Early Season Watch List has been released and it contains five Pac-10 players, senior forward Jon Brockman of Washington, junior forward Chase Budinger of Arizona, senior guard Darren Collison of UCLA, junior forward Taj Gibson of USC, and sophomore guard James Harden of Arizona State. Harden continues to make a strong case for player of the year with his fourth 30-point game this year.  He stands the best chance for it from the Pac-10, with Collison next.
• The Pac-10 has their defining win with Arizona’s victory over Gonzaga, but still had a weak out of conference showing.  The only teams that are lock for the tournament right now are UCLA and Arizona State, after that Arizona surprisingly looks to be the next best bet, with an ever improving USC closing in.  If Cal or Stanford can keep rolling through once conference play starts they will have a chance.  Washington State needs to win at LSU to stand any chance.

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist.   He’ll be regularly out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the next three months.

Happy Holidays, everyone. My name is Zach Hayes and you might know me as a college hoops writer for the blog Northwestern Wins. Due to the unfortunate folding of that site, the head honchos here at Rush the Court graciously invited me on board as their Senior Bracketologist from now until Selection Sunday. Just think of me as Joe Lunardi but seven inches taller and without a hairpiece. Every Monday morning for the next six weeks or so a new bracket will be revealed until February heats up and multiple brackets per week will be released. I hope you guys enjoy this new RTC feature. For me, it’s just a ton of fun.

Quick disclaimers: The obvious one- it’s probably too early for bracketology (blasphemy! It’s never too early for this, how dare you! You know what I mean). RPI is still rounding into form at this point, and many key numbers I use from ESPN (Wins vs. Top 50, etc.) have yet to be released. I didn’t use much for this first bracket: record, conference strength, SOS, perused the individual schedules for quality wins/bad losses, and took RPI with a grain of salt. On the bracket you’ll notice I also made predictions for the entire tournament based on my matchups.  Syracuse as the monumental upset should surprise no one that follows college basketball.

These seedings are based purely on performance thus far. If I was projecting future performance, I’d probably have Louisville in the tournament because they have to improve, right? Other than some of the mid-major/small conference auto-bids (i.e., I’m predicting Creighton takes the Missouri Valley even though you’d go with Illinois State by default), these are all based on the small amount of games played thus far. As you know, this entire operation will improve once teams complete more of their resumes.

RTC Bracket 12.22.08

Some explanations about the first edition (click brackets or right-click/view image to see a larger version):

• The 1 seeds were pretty clear to me even before I began gathering info: North Carolina, Connecticut, Oklahoma and Pittsburgh. In fact, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma are 1-2 in RPI, respectively. Butler is #4 and Northwestern is #9, so take it for what it’s worth.
• #2 seed Tennessee and #3 seed Michigan State are probably over-seeded for their performance this season. But I had to take into account that I have both teams pegged to win their conference tournaments, meaning three extra wins before Selection Sunday that will certainly boost their seed.
• My bracket came down to 12 teams for 8 positions: California, Maryland, Florida State, Stanford, Miami, Boston College, Louisville, Kentucky, Dayton, Cincinnati, Illinois State and Arizona. As much as I wanted to deny Illinois State and Stanford because of their lack of any semblance of a quality win, they’re undefeated and I had to slip them in the field. Maryland has the wins over Michigan and Michigan State and Arizona has the win over Gonzaga, with two of their three losses by the narrowest of margins. Dayton is 10-1 and has the Marquette win, with their only loss at Creighton. Florida State has nice computer numbers and beat California, Cincinnati and Florida, meaning if they’re in, Cal has to be. Painfully, the final seed came down to Louisville (only average win: depleted Mississippi) and Boston College (only average wins: UAB, Providence, @Massachusetts). I went with BC.

Conference Winners: Vermont, Xavier, North Carolina, Stetson, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Portland State, VMI, Michigan State, Cal State Fullerton, VCU, Memphis, Butler, Cornell, Siena, Miami (OH), Hampton, Creighton, BYU, Quinnipiac, Murray State, UCLA, Navy, Tennessee, Davidson, Lamar, Alabama State, North Dakota State, Western Kentucky, Gonzaga, Utah State

Multiple bids per conference: Big East (8), ACC (7), Big 10 (7), Big 12 (6), Pac 10 (5), SEC (3), MVC (2), WCC (2), Atlantic 10 (2), MWC (2).

Last Four In: Boston College, Stanford, Florida State, California
Last Four Out: Louisville, Cincinnati, Miami (FL), Kentucky

Any questions please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to respond.

Michael Hurley of The Bleacher Report is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.

The Pac-10 still is searching for the first defining win of the year.  The out of conference schedules have not helped any teams come tournament time. Sure Stanford is 4-0, but the toughest team they have played is a 4-3 Colorado team who lost to Montana State.  Arizona State is 7-1, but their best win is over a 6-1 Nebraska team, who had yet to play a team from a big conference when they came into Tempe.  One thing is for sure, the Pac-10 does not want to go back into Texas where Arizona lost 67-66 at Texas A&M and UCLA lost 68-64 at Texas .  In fact, the only win against a Texas team this week was Washington’s victory over winless Texas Southern University.  The Pac-10/Big 12 Hardwood Series is not what Tom Hansen envisioned, as the Pac-10 is 3-6 so far.  Worth noting, Arizona is two baskets away from being 8-0. 

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