By Trot Nixon’s Hat
Well, the Duke-Florida State contest in Tallahassee just wrapped up, and I think what we’ve seen from Duke near the end of this one has provided the rest of the ACC with some very interesting information. I know how much everyone likes to see Duke lose, so let me shed some insight into this. Follow me after the jump, but only if you want the formula to beat Duke. Keep reading →
By Chilltown
Way back in the halcyon days of Storming the Court (okay, 3 months ago) I wrote a Big East preview looking at the coming season. While much of what I said was flat out wrong (see Louisville being the second best team and Pitt being a disappointment), the underlying premise has been borne out so far in conference play: the bloated Big East has a middle of 6-7 teams that appear to be exactly the same. Each has their strengths, and each has major flaws which makes for a wide open race for fourth in the league, and for a nailbiting Selection Sunday for quite a few teams. After the jump, I dissect the morass which is the middle of the Big East. Keep reading →
It appears that the mediocrity in college football this season has spread to everywhere but the top 10 teams in the land. Conference play has bared that fact to the college basketball fandom, and made it especially clear to me when I tried to resume rank teams 15-25. A quick reminder: resume ranking is solely based on a team’s body of work. In short, who have you beaten, who have you lost to. As SMQ, the grandaddy of resume ranking, likes to say: This is not a power poll.
I’m trying a new format for the justifications this week, please tell me if you like it.
Did you miss us? After a much-needed weeklong hiatus that probably halved our readership from 30 to 15, we are back and ready for the meat of conference play. Do you know what’s even better? Only 2 months to Selection Sunday! Buckle up, kids, it’s going to be a wild ride.
Last weekend was a very interesting one for many reasons. We saw two more undefeateds fall, as Washington State got manhandled at UCLA, and Vanderbilt lost a double overtime decision to Kentucky. Perhaps now we will stop getting hits for Kentucky fans searching firebillygillespie.com (On second thought? Naw, they’ll probably keep right on searching). Neither of these losses are particularly troubling, although the continued breakdown of Vanderbilt’s defense, even against an undermanned Kentucky team, is the kind of trait that leaves a team watching the Sweet Sixteen from home. Kevin Stallings will never be called a defensive genius, but this team needs to tighten up on the defensive end.
Join me after the jump as I look at a plethora of bonus basketball and your weekly SWAC update. Keep reading →
By Trot Nixon’s Hat
What’s that you say? You’ve been trying to figure out the Big Ten Rule? Well, fortunately, every now and again - well, let’s check that, and say most of the time a game occurs between a Big Ten team and a second Big Ten team - we have proof of this disgusting, horrid rule that I came up with. Unfortunately, this abortion of a description of one of collegiate athletics’ top conferences was once again prescient in today’s Iowa-Michigan State game which finished with No. 6 MSU (Seriously? 6? I still think they deserve a D-II asterisk for the rest of the year on any ranking) losing to the Hawkeyes 43-36. After 40 minutes. This doesn’t even approach the St. Louis debacle of earlier this week.
Keep reading →
By Chilltown
Sorry, folks, its been a very busy few days for me. Here my Week 9 Blogpoll ballot to tide you over until more real posts about the start of conference play come tomorrow. A quick note on the poll: there are certainly not 25 teams that deserved to be ranked in America. Once you get by Wisconsin, its a complete mess for resume rankers, as the teams with good wins have a lot of losses, and the teams with few losses have no good wins. Ugh.
By Chilltown
By now, almost all college basketball fans know about the six remaining undefeated teams in the land. However, it is much more interesting to inspect the other side of the coin: the defeateds. There are 8 teams left in Division I basketball that have not gotten their first win against a Division I opponent. Shockingly, 4 of them are in the Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC), whose winner is a perennial play-in game participant. While the SWAC is usually a terrible league, this year takes the cake. The best record in the SWAC is 2-7. The combined record of the SWAC so far against Division I teams is a shocking 8-84.
Regular readers will know that I often enjoy analyzing the misery of the dregs of college basketball, and this is no exception. Join me after the jump as I examine these beaten down teams in a schadenfreude-filled trip of terrible basketball. Keep reading →
By Chilltown
The consensus blogpoll for week:
Nothing shocking at the top of the poll; Memphis has been at the top spot since Week 2. It will be interesting to see if they can stay there as the schedule takes a turn for the worse in Conference USA play. What was interesting, however, was the gap between number 6 (Michigan State), who received an average rank of 6.25 and number 7, Tennessee, who had an average rank from the voters of 8.63. That 2-rank difference was the largest in the poll, and illustrates that there seems to be an upper tier of about 6 teams forming right now.
I’m a little surprised that Clemson is still ranked. Their only good win is at Mississippi State, who has been a big disappointment this year. Really that ranking just underscores that there is a scarcity of worthy teams for ranking from about 20 to 25.
I had a lot of fun doing the poll this week, and please be sure to check back in next week back at <a href=”march-to-madness.blogspot.com”> March to Madness </a> where the blogpoll will return to its rightful home.
While the full Blogpoll ballot will not be published until Wednesday, my Blogpoll ballot undergoes yet another major shakeup. This is to be expected with resume ranking early in the season, as teams have less of a body of work to fall back on after a loss; on the flipside, a team can leap-frog a lot of other teams with a quality win or two. Both of these extremes are evident this week, as Pittsburgh fell from 6 to 25 after losing to Dayton and also losing Levance Fields to injury. Tennessee, on the other hand, moved up 6 spots after beating Gonzaga (and Xavier last week).
A quick reminder: this poll is determined by the team’s resume, not perception, who is hot right now, or who will be in the Final Four in March. This poll reflects what each team has done so far in the season. Justifications after the jump. Without further ado, here is the poll:
Memphis
North Carolina
Kansas
Washington State
Michigan State
UCLA
Tennessee
Butler
Texas A&M
Vanderbilt
Indiana
Dayton
Duke
Marquette
Ole Miss
Rhode Island
Texas
Villanova
Oklahoma
St. Mary’s
Arizona
USC
Providence
Wisconsin
By Chilltown
While last weekend was probably the most hyped non-conference weekend of the season, this weekend had perhaps the best games. We had double overtime thrillers, upsets, buzzer beaters, and two more undefeateds biting the dust. Let’s start with the buzzer beaters.
The Southern Illinois-Butler game certainly lived up to its billing, as both teams played with tournament intensity, especially on the defensive end. The Salukis, as expected, held Butler’s three-point gunners to well below their season averages from beyond the arc, and contained AJ Graves most of the night. Southern Illinois would have easily won the game, but for free throws. While Butler went 21/30 from the free throw line, Southern Illinois made only 3 out of 12 free throws, unacceptable for a team that plays so many close ballgames. And, of course, it bit them in the end. After the Salukis missed yet another free throw, Graves drove down the court with 5 seconds left and hit a 35 foot 3-pointer as the horn sounded to give Butler the hard-fought victory. Southern Illinois has almost no room for error left after another tough loss against a quality opponent.
The second buzzer beater came in the Texas-Wisconsin game. Both teams came out looking sluggish, probably due to the 10 AM start in Austin to accommodate ESPN. Wisconsin’s number 1-ranked defense in the nation (according to Ken Pomeroy) was able to largely contain Texas’s high-scoring guards by forcing them into bad shooting nights. While Augustin and Abrams got their points, it took them quite a few more shots to do it. Inside, Connor Atchley was dominated offensively and defensively by Brian Butch, who had 21 points and 11 rebounds. On the final play of the game, Wisconsin set a high screen for Michael Flowers with Butch, and while Flowers’ defender hesitated for a split second to double Butch, Flowers drained the game-winning 3 from the top of the key. This Wisconsin team looks remarkably different from the team that was blown out by Duke just a month ago, and is probably going to finish second in a really bad Big Ten.
Join me after the jump for more upsets, and two undefeateds losing Keep reading →
