Welcome to the fourth edition of your one-stop shop for the upcoming week in college hoops. With January just around the corner, non-conference showdowns are about to give way to in-conference slugfests. The Murray States and Bucknells of the world are going to slip into relative obscurity for a few months while we determine whether that one team in each major conference (Arizona State, Charlotte, Iowa, Maryland, Ole Miss, Oklahoma State, Seton Hall, and Wyoming) is anywhere near as good as its inflated record. My mission is to make sure you don't lose track of the games being played this week that'll really matter in March. We'll be running this column at least every Friday until March 15 while adding in my annual elimination style bubble tracker in a few weeks. Stick with us for the next 2+ months and you'll be as prepared as you can possibly be to fill out your bracket.
Elsewhere, forgive me for trying to draw your attention
to Stony Brook for a second consecutive Friday, but remember that this is for
the sake of your bracket, and you might not get another chance to see them
against an RPI top 200 team all season. The Seawolves rebound much better than
your average one-and-done-conference school, and currently have the 8th
best free throw shooter in the country – neither of which are things you want
your favorite 2-seed to run into in the first round of the tournament. For the
record, I’m calling out this game not only to get one last look at Stony Brook,
but also to get one good look at Seton Hall before their conference gauntlet
begins. The Pirates are sitting at 10-2, but the 2 best teams they’ve beaten are
Wake Forest and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. You don’t even have to
follow college basketball to know that a win over NJIT probably isn’t going to
hold much water with the selection committee. This game might as well be part
of their conference schedule, because they’ll need to go at least 11-8 from
this point forward to sniff the tourney.
In the three other games of lesser intrigue on Friday, Temple
will look to build on last week’s win over Syracuse before next week’s showdown
with Kansas; Saint Joseph’s gets one last chance to prove they will eventually
bounce back from the beating they took against Creighton four weeks ago; and
some form of Baylor will show up in Spokane in its quest to become this year’s
middling seed that spends the entire season convincing us that they could just
as easily lose in the first round as win the entire tournament (assume Gonzaga
wins by double digits, but do not put any jelly beans on that game).
Saturday Afternoon: UNLV @ UNC (2:00 –
ESPN2), Virginia Tech @ BYU (2:00 – ESPNU), Valparaiso @ Murray State (3:00 –
ESPN3), Kentucky @ Louisville (4:00 – CBS), Air Force vs. Florida (4:30 – FSN)
If you can only watch one: I would rank Kentucky vs.
Louisville as my 2nd most favorite late December / early January
annual tradition, just behind Christmas and light years ahead of New Years’
Eve. Hey, here’s a fun For the Sake of Your Bracket fact: the last time the
loser of this game lasted longer in the NCAA tournament than the winner of this
game was in 2004-05, when Kentucky won amid last second controversy and got
bounced in the Elite Eight while Louisville lasted into the Final Four. You may
think it’s dumb now, but when you’re sweating whether or not to advance
Kentucky out of the Sweet Sixteen, you’ll think back to this game and know what
to do.
We live in a crazy, over-reactionary world in which
everyone bailed on freshman-heavy Kentucky after a rough November weekend
against a pair of power six conference teams that currently have 4 losses
between them. Since then, they’ve won 4 straight games by an average score of
83-51.5. The four freshmen have visibly improved since the beginning of the
season (with the exception of Poythress, who is still very good, but it’s understandably
hard to improve upon four straight 20 point games); but the difference maker
has been Ryan Harrow. The transfer sophomore has shown improvement in every
game since returning from an absence due to mono-like symptoms. No offense to
walk-ons, but having a healthy Harrow on the court for 30 minutes per game
makes Kentucky at least 30% better than they were with Jarrod Polson logging 20
minutes per game, and it’s about time the rest of the nation recognized that.
Maybe they won’t score the upset (though I’m predicting that they do, by a
score of 82-77), but I guarantee this won’t look like your typical “Fourth best
team in the nation playing at home against an unranked opponent” affair.
If you logged enough family time over the long Christmas
weekend and are afforded the luxury of two early afternoon games, the other one
to watch is absolutely UNLV @ UNC – especially if you enjoy the occasional
track meet. Despite the three losses that they looked positively awful during,
UNC is 3rd in nation in scoring, 3rd in rebounding, and 1st
in assists per game. UNLV isn’t too far behind at 21st, 13th,
and 8th, respectively. Let’s just say I’m not exactly expecting any
shot clock violations. I’ve got UNC winning with somewhat surprising ease
(92-78), as they’ve played quite well at home this season, UNLV has not played
well on the road, and I don’t like the fact that this game tips off at 11:00 AM
Rebel Standard Time.
Rounding out the early afternoon are three games
involving four teams who suffered resume-damaging losses just before Christmas
dinner: Florida gets a second chance to beat an 8-2 team that is 0-2 in the
only games on its schedule worth a damn; Murray State needs to beat Valparaiso if
they expect the selection committee to overlook any upcoming regular season
Ohio Valley Conference losses; and a desperate Virginia Tech visits an even
more desperate BYU, which has yet to get within 10 points of a key win this
season.
Saturday Night: Xavier @ Tennessee (6:00 –
ESPNU), George Mason @ South Florida (7:00 – ESPN3), Butler @ Vanderbilt (8:00
– ESPNU), South Dakota State @ North Dakota State (8:00)
Normally, this is the part where I recommend one game
from this grouping for you to watch, but I’m going to request that you don’t
actually watch any of them. Xavier and Tennessee have each played in some of
the least watchable nationally televised games to date, George Mason and South
Florida haven’t been worth watching in about six years, NHL labor negotiations
have been more successful than Vanderbilt’s attempts to play without its
recently departed seniors, and you couldn’t find SDSU @ NDSU on a television
unless you live in one of those Ds. However, you’ll want to check the box
scores afterwards, as four of these eight teams will end up in the tournament,
and Butler is the only one of the bunch currently with a better than 50% chance
of getting there.
Sunday: Illinois State @ Indiana State
(1:05), Canisius @ Detroit (3:00), Eastern Kentucky @ West Virginia (4:00 –
ESPN3), Northern Iowa @ Wichita State (6:00 – ESPN3)
The Missouri Valley could send as many as five teams to
the tournament this year – Creighton and Wichita State would really need to
play their way out at this point, and there’s no reason that Illinois State,
Indiana State, and Northern Iowa couldn’t play their way in. Odds are that 2 of
the 5 will knock each other out, and another will knock itself out by losing a
home game to Drake or Missouri State; but what if all five of them won at least
13 games in conference? By the looks of things, the CAA, the C-USA, and the WCC
could all end up as single-bid conferences, and those at-large bids need to
come from somewhere, right? Ultimately, I think they’ll send 3 teams, with a
chance at a 4th if the Pac-12 ends up being terrible again. At any
rate, by the end of the night on January 5th, we’ll have a better
feel for UNI and the ISUs, as they play a round robin against each other and
each have 1 game against Wichita State or Creighton between now and then. I
like Illinois State to go 2-0 in the round robin, and to at least give
Creighton a fight on Wednesday.
Monday: Cincinnati @ Pittsburgh (12:00 –
ESPN2), Michigan State @ Minnesota (2:00 – ESPN2), Indiana @ Iowa (4:00 –
ESPN2), Gonzaga @ Oklahoma State (6:00 – ESPN2), New Mexico @ Saint Louis
(7:30), Harvard @ Saint Mary’s (8:00 – ESPN2)
My “expert” opinion is that you should wake up on New
Years’ Eve, turn on ESPN2, and subsequently take the batteries out of your
remote control; but if you can only watch one game, it would have to be Gonzaga
@ Oklahoma State. Don’t get me wrong, the first game of the Big East season and
the first game of the Big Ten season are each quite worthy of watching, but
you’ll have at least a dozen other opportunities to see each of those teams in
games of equal intrigue. For Gonzaga, this is one of your two chances to see
them play a true road game against an opponent of possibly equal skill. For
Oklahoma State, this might be the first real test of their season; I would
argue that they caught NC State napping, and that Virginia Tech did the same to
them. Smart vs. Pangos and Nash vs. Harris are the individual battles to watch,
but the key to the game will be OSU’s freshman shooting guard Phil Forte. Forte
has hit 44% of his long range shots in Cowboy victories, but was just 1-for-10
in the loss to the Hokies. Only 1 of those 9 misses occurred in the final 8
minutes, so it’s not as if they were just feeding him for contested threes in
an attempted comeback; Forte was simply the weak link in Smart’s best
statistical game to date (18 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists, 2 steals, 0
turnovers).
Finishing up 2012, I like Pittsburgh to finally put a
blemish on Cincinnati’s perfect season; Minnesota to silence their doubters by
comfortably handing Michigan State its third loss of the year; Indiana to open
its Big Ten schedule with a 20 point road win over Iowa; Saint Louis to score a
minor upset over New Mexico behind the return of Kwamain Mitchell; and Saint
Mary’s to keep extremely slim tourney hopes alive by beating Harvard by an
extremely slim margin.
Tuesday: Connecticut @ Marquette (8:00 –
ESPNU)
Wednesday: Duke @ Davidson (7:00 – ESPN2),
Xavier @ Wake Forest (7:00 – ESPN3), Creighton @ Illinois State (8:00), Indiana
State @ Northern Iowa (8:00 – ESPN3), Illinois @ Purdue (8:30 – Big Ten)
Thursday: Colorado @ Arizona (8:00 – ESPNU),
Cal @ UCLA (11:00 – FSN)
If you can only watch one: sub-.500 Purdue should provide
more of a challenge to 1 loss Illinois than their records seem to indicate.
Since their win over Gonzaga, Illinois has struggled at home against Norfolk
State and Eastern Kentucky and also lost to Missouri, so until I find reason to
do otherwise, I will continue beating the “Don’t Buy the Illini” drum. Their
weakness has been and will continue to be teams who can rebound the ball, which
just so happens to be one of Purdue’s only strengths. Illinois should be able
to win the game, but it’ll be close enough to make them underdogs in their
upcoming games against Ohio State and Minnesota.
In the other mid-week games, I like all of the road teams
on Tuesday and Wednesday – Napier and Boatright will prove to be too much for
Marquette’s sub-par perimeter defense; Davidson isn’t currently playing well enough
to beat Duquesne, let alone Duke; Xavier will win an unwatchably sloppy game
against the Demon Deacons; Creighton will beat Illinois State, but quickly
realize that 14-4 in the Valley won’t be anywhere near as easy as it was last
year; and after losing to Illinois State on Sunday, Wednesday’s game will mean
more for Indiana State than Northern Iowa. Home court advantage returns with a
vengeance on Thursday when Arizona and UCLA open their Pac-12 seasons with
double digit point wins.
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