Football season is now completely in the rear view mirror and the casual fan is welcomed to a weekend of college basketball highlighted by the #1 vs. #2 Duke/Virginia rematch along with numerous other heavyweight contests. Here are 10 questions I have for this weekend’s loaded slate of action.

1. Which elite team’s defense improves upon a lackluster performance in the first match-up? (Duke @ Virginia, Saturday 6 PM EST, ESPN) In Duke’s 72-70 win over Virginia last month, the two teams combined to shoot 67.1 percent from inside the arc. R.J. Barrett and Zion Williamson, in particular, made 20 of their 28 two-point attempts that night. If interior defenses improve in round two, which team wins the three-point contest after the two teams combined for 5-of-31 shooting? This is without question the game of the weekend, and quite possibly the entire regular season.
2. Can LSU protect its home court against a surging Auburn team? (Auburn @ LSU, Saturday 2 PM EST, ESPN2) Since losing three straight games in mid-January, Auburn has rallied back with three consecutive double-figure wins. In SEC play, no team has gotten to the free throw line at a better rate than LSU, while no team has put the opponent at the line at a worse rate than Auburn. Which matters more?
3. Will Mississippi State’s offense show up against Kentucky? (Kentucky @ Mississippi State, Saturday 1 PM EST, CBS) The last match-up between these two teams was very one-sided as Kentucky held the Bulldogs to a season low 0.79 points per possession. Mississippi State could not buy much success either inside the arc (16-of-41) or outside it (3-of-20).
4. Which Steven Enoch does Louisville get against Florida State? (Louisville @ Florida State, Saturday 4 PM, ESPN2) Since an early January decision to bring Steven Enoch off its bench, Louisville has gone 7-2. The big man transfer has scored 10 or more points in six of those games. On the season, Enoch averages 10.5 points per game in Cardinal wins and just 5.8 points per game in Louisville’s six defeats.
5. Can Marquette make the Big East title race interesting? (Villanova @ Marquette, Saturday 2:30 PM EST, Fox) Marquette sits two games behind Villanova in the Big East standings heading into Saturday’s match-up. The Golden Eagles are undefeated (14-0) when holding opponents to an offensive efficiency of 100.0 or worse, but just 5-4 when opponents pass that threshold. Last season, Villanova torched the nets against Marquette, posting offensive efficiency totals of 122.2, 132.2, and 142.7 in three games.
6. Will Ethan Happ be a dominant force against Michigan again? (Wisconsin @ Michigan, Saturday Noon, Fox) Ethan Happ scored 26 points on 12-of-22 shooting, dished out seven assists and grabbed 10 rebounds in Wisconsin’s first win over Michigan. Going back to his sophomore season, Happ is averaging 20.5 points per game on 45-of-87 shooting against the Wolverines.
7. As bad as the Pac-12 might be, is it time to start taking Washington seriously? (Washington @ Arizona State, Saturday 10 PM EST, ESPN) After starting the season 7-4, Washington has now reeled off 11 straight victories, eight of which have been by 10 or more points. Three of the Huskies’ early season losses were at the hands of top-15 KenPom teams. If the Huskies can get through their desert trip unscathed, it might be time to consider them a dangerous, if not legitimate, Pac-12 team.
8. What can be made of Nebraska moving forward? (Nebraska @ Purdue, 8:30 PM EST, Big Ten Network) Just a few weeks back Nebraska sat at 13-4 overall and 3-3 in conference play. Since then, the Huskers have dropped six straight games, four of which came at home. Tim Miles’ squad still sits in the top 40 in both NET and KenPom, so a win at Purdue would go a long way toward saving Nebraska’s free-falling NCAA Tournament chances.
9. Can Houston take advantage of Cincinnati’s lackluster three-point defense? (Cincinnati @ Houston, Sunday 4 PM EST, ESPN) On the season, Mick Cronin’s Bearcats are ranked among the bottom 100 nationally in three-point defense. Their lack of success guarding the line has continued as American opponents are shooting 40.4 percent from distance against them. Houston’s Corey Davis and Armoni Brooks are both shooting better than 37 percent from downtown in conference play.
10. Can Princeton stay in control of the Ivy League regular season race? (Princeton @ Yale, Friday 7 PM EST, ESPN+) While Yale has the Ivy League’s best NET Ranking, it is Princeton that is currently the only unbeaten team in conference play. Over its last six games, Princeton’s opponents have shot just 20.5 percent from beyond the three-point line.

After a lackluster opening weekend, things were much crazier around the ACC this weekend. In the headline match-up in Tallahassee on Saturday, Duke survived Florida State, 80-78, on Cam Reddish’s last second three. Reddish (23 points) and fellow freshman RJ Barrett (32 points) picked up the slack when Zion Williamson missed the entire second half with an eye injury. The long Seminoles caused problems for the Blue Devils in the paint, blocking seven Blue Devils’ shots, winning the battle of the boards (+5) and out-dunking Duke by a 10-to-1 margin. League co-leader Virginia grabbed another impressive road win too, as the Cavaliers manhandled Clemson, 63-43. Two road underdogs also won with surprising ease as Louisville dominated North Carolina at the Smith Center, 83-62, and Georgia Tech pulled off a stunner at Syracuse, 73-59. Here are the highlights from the weekend around the ACC.

• Best Win: Few gave Louisville a realistic chance to win in Chapel Hill on Saturday, much less blow the Tar Heels off their own floor. After all, the Cardinals had just lost to Pittsburgh while North Carolina was coming off an impressive road win over a ranked and fired-up NC State squad. However, Chris Mack’s unit came out smoking (seven first half 3-pointers) and North Carolina never put up much of a fight in the 21-point defeat. The most lopsided home loss of the Roy Williams era was also a huge boost to Louisville’s growing postseason resume. A major key to the victory was the Cardinals’ dominance in the paint. Connecticut transfer Steven Enoch finished with career highs in points (17) and rebounds (11), outplaying UNC star Luke Maye, who finished with just nine points on a cold (3-for-14) shooting day.
• Worst Loss: Georgia Tech gave Syracuse a taste of its own medicine Saturday night in the Carrier Dome. Josh Pastner used a zone defense to befuddle the Orange’s offense and pull off a surprisingly easy upset. Syracuse was unable to penetrate the Yellow Jackets’ interior and struggled to make shots from deep (7-for-33), but Georgia Tech only launched 12 threes (hitting six) and shot 63.3 percent (19-of-30) on two-pointers. Jim Boeheim’s team now has three home defeats and is currently projected by KenPom to finish 9-9 in the league, well below its preseason expectations.

1. Card Chronicle: As this article at Card Chronicle points out, Louisville fans may need to show some patience this year despite obvious excitement about the beginning of the Chris Mack era. Success in 2018-19 should be measured by progress on establishing standards for the kind of toughness that Mack’s teams exhibited at Xavier more than the Cardinals’ win-loss record and/or postseason status. To that end, expected starter Jordan Nwora came off the bench in Louisville’s opening tilt against Nicholls State because of poor practice performances leading up to the game. Transfer center Steven Enoch was impressive in his debut, however, posting 15 points, grabbing eight boards and going perfect from the foul line (9-of-9 FT).
2. Miami Herald: Just prior to Friday’s opener against Lehigh, Miami announced that junior big man Dewan Hernandez was being held out because of eligibility concerns. It is possible — perhaps even probable — that Miami’s decision on Hernandez is related to last week’s announcement that the NCAA has been given the go-ahead from the federal government to start its own investigations into recruiting wrongdoing using FBI evidence. Hernandez’s name came up in the recent FBI trial as someone who convicted former Adidas runners wanted to bribe with cash payments. In Friday’s game, Chris Lykes showed he may be ready to take on a much larger role for the Hurricanes as a sophomore, notching a career-high 22 points in their 83-62 victory.
3. News & Observer: Duke experienced a minor letdown in its trickier-than-expected 94-72 home win over Army on Sunday afternoon. After the game, head coach Mike Krzyzewski said his players let “significant noise” creep into their heads following last week’s blowout win over Kentucky, which affected the Blue Devils’ preparation. We also found it interesting that ESPN chose to broadcast this game on its primary network directly opposite the early afternoon NFL games. Doing so speaks to the interest and impact of Duke’s star-studded freshman class, especially social media superstar Zion Williamson. For anyone who thinks reversing the NBA’s one-and-done rule would be good for college basketball, would ESPN put Duke-Army on its flagship channel against the mighty NFL if Marques Bolden was the most heralded player on the floor?
4. Tigernet.com: We knew Clemson would be led by its three returning senior starters this season — Marcquise Reed, Shelton Mitchell and Elijah Thomas — but the Tigers’ remaining supporting cast was unproven offensively. So far, however, Brad Brownell is getting excellent production from his other two starters, David Skara and Aamir Simms. A defensive specialist last year, Skara scored in double figures in each of the Tigers’ two easy wins last week, while Simms is making our colleague Mick McDonald look very smart for picking him to be an ACC breakout player this year. The sophomore forward is averaging 15.0 points per game while shooting 75.0 percent from the floor. Furthermore, after making only 14 threes last season, Simms has already sunk 5-of-6 attempts from distance so far this year.
5. News & Observer: It appears that we may have our first in-season roster casualty in the ACC as freshman big man Ian Steere could be leaving NC State after playing in the Wolfpack’s opener. Kevin Keatts is known for playing only one big man on the floor and it must have become obvious to Steere that his minutes would be limited behind incoming transfers Wyatt Walker and D.J. Funderburk. Even looking ahead to next year, the Wolfpack will also welcome former Kentucky forward Sacha Killeya-Jones to its roster. On the court, however, it looks like Keatts is having no problems blending his newcomers into a dangerous unit, blowing out NC State’s first two opponents by an average of 48 points.

With all the player turnover these days in college basketball, coaches can no longer rely on incoming freshmen to fill their open roster spots. Correspondingly, ACC coaches hit the transfer market very hard every offseason to plug the holes resulting from their teams’ various spring defections. In order to get familiar with the transfers entering the ACC this season, the tables below break out all the non-freshmen newcomers into three groupings (1) graduate/other immediately eligible transfers; 2) traditional transfers that sat out last year; 3) those sitting out this year). Players within each category are ordered according to the anticipated impact that they will have this season.

The ACC will welcome 15 immediately eligible transfers this season. Four of that group will be suiting up for Kevin Keatts’ NC State squad, as the second-year head coach has basically flipped his Wolfpack roster in just two years. Junior college transfer Derek Funderburke will battle graduate transfer Wyatt Walker for post minutes, while Eric Lockett (FIU) and Blake Harris (Missouri) will join a loaded perimeter in Raleigh. Next, several ACC staffs signed graduate transfers from the mid-major ranks to fill glaring backcourt holes. Louisville‘s Chris Mack reacted quickly to his depleted roster by grabbing Christen Cunningham and Khwan Fore from Samford and Richmond, respectively, a pair of proven guards. Zach Johnson (Florida Gulf Coast) joins Miami as the transfer on this list most likely to have a major impact. Given the departures of Bruce Brown, Lonnie Walker and Ja’Quan Newton from last year’s Hurricanes’ squad, Johnson should be Jim Larranaga’s primary perimeter scorer this season. Florida State and Wake Forest both prematurely lost a guard in the spring, causing those programs to respond with graduate transfer replacements. David Nichols (Albany) may actually be an upgrade for the departed C.J. Walker in Tallahassee, while Torry Johnson (Northern Arizona) somewhat eases the loss of Bryant Crawford from Danny Manning’s Demon Deacons. Another impact graduate transfer, Javan White (Oral Roberts),should provide solid rebounding support for Clemson’s returning starting center Elijah Thomas.

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With all the player turnover these days in college basketball, coaches can no longer rely solely on just the freshmen they recruited to fill their open roster spots. Correspondingly, ACC coaches hit the transfer market every offseason to plug the holes resulting from various spring defections. In order to get familiar with the transfers entering the ACC this season, the table below shows all the non-freshmen newcomers to the league broken into four groupings (graduate transfers; traditional transfers; JuCo transfers; sitting out this year). Players within each category are ordered according to the anticipated impact that they will have for their teams this season.

Over the past few seasons a number of ACC schools have taken advantage of the NCAA rule that allows graduate transfers to play immediately at their new schools. But for the most part, only a few such transfers have made a major impact. This year’s crop of incoming graduate transfers may be the deepest we have seen in the ACC, however, with all 10 projected as rotation players and at least half as immediate starters. Last year, Jim Boeheim got great perimeter play from graduate transfers Andrew White and John Gillon — his team expects similar production from Geno Thorpe, a rangy guard from South Florida who should be well-suited for the Syracuse system. Boston College picked up a much needed frontcourt player in Deontae Hawkins, a key cog on a good Illinois State team last year.

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As Connecticut prepared to wrap up non-conference play this week, the Huskies suffered a key loss as center and defensive stalwart Amida Brimah broke his finger in practice. Brimah’s injury will require surgery and cause the junior to be sidelined for six to eight weeks. As one of the best rim protectors in college basketball, his loss will be tough to overcome. The hope for Kevin Ollie is that his team’s depth will find a way to pick up the slack heading into next week’s game at Texas followed by the start of conference play.

UConn will try to figure out how to handle the loss of center Amida Brimah. (Photo Credit: Getty Images)

So where does UConn go from here? Standing at 8-3 with a couple quality wins over Michigan and Ohio State but not much else to show for this season, the Huskies will need to put together a strong performance in the American if they want to get back to the NCAA Tournament. Here are two areas where Ollie must focus on improvement.

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Finals week is always one of the slower times of the college basketball season, but there was still a decent amount of action that took place in the American last week. With the events of the last week in mind, here’s an AAC Report Card.  

A: SMU. This was a great week for SMU. Not only did the Mustangs roll over Nicholls State and Hampton to stay undefeated, but head coach Larry Brown also returned from his nine-game suspension for rules violations. What has made this SMU team so potent? Based on the most recent KenPom ratings, SMU owns the eighth most efficient offense in college basketball and the 55th most efficient defense. That offense, with potential AAC Player of the Year Nic Moore leading the way, has carried SMU through its relatively soft non-conference schedule, but there is hardly a Mustang who hasn’t joined the party: seven of SMU’s eight rotation players have offensive ratings among the 115 best in the country. The lone exception, Keith Frazier, is still 371st nationally with an offensive rating of 116.9. There will be no postseason in Dallas, but this is a fun team that really knows how to run an offense.  

A: UConn. Following close losses to Maryland, Gonzaga and Syracuse, UConn was looking for another quality win to go along with its late November victory over Michigan. The Huskies found it in a 20-point demolition of Ohio State, a team that has struggled but managed to beat Kentucky last weekend. Kevin Ollie tightened up his rotation against the Buckeyes, reserving major minutes for only seven players. This meant no playing time for Sam Cassell Jr. and Phil Nolan and only a minute of mop-up action for freshman big man Steven Enoch. UConn will look to build on this win as they play one-win Central Connecticut on Wednesday before heading to Austin to face a rising Texas team in its final non-conference game.

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Coming off last year’s disappointing season that resulted in a trip to the NIT, Kevin Ollie‘s UConn Huskies have retooled and should be looking to make a statement in this week’s Battle 4 Atlantis. To accomplish that mission, here are three things UConn will be looking to do — besides eat a little Thanksgiving turkey — this Feast Week.

If UConn Meets Syracuse On Thursday, Daniel Hamilton Will Be Key In Picking Apart The Vaunted ‘Cuse Zone. (NBC Connecticut)

Win the opening game: This may seem obvious, but UConn’s Battle 4 Atlantis opener is crucial. Given the way the bracket sets up, beating Michigan must happen for the Huskies to have real chances at resume-building wins. It’s not that dissimilar a situation to the 2010 Maui Invitational that UConn won. Those Kemba Walker-led Huskies opened with a victory over Wichita State, a win that enabled them to post marquee wins over Michigan State and Kentucky. A UConn loss to Michigan would most likely result in a matchup with a Charlotte (KenPom #275). Win, and a matchup with old Big East foe Syracuse is a good bet to happen. Out of conference scheduling has been a focus of UConn since conference realignment left them with fewer in-conference opportunities for big victories, and needless to say, the Huskies didn’t travel to Atlantis to take on Charlotte. Michigan comes into this game after a home loss to Xavier in the Gavitt Games, so they will also arrive in Nassau desperate for a solid early win. Read the rest of this entry »