Quick Lessons Learned

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.

Studies in Mediocrity: The Middle of the Big East

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.

Blogpoll Week 10: Can We Just Rank the Top 10?

    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.

1.     Memphis- More quality wins that UNC and no losses means that they are number 1.
2.     UNC-Can pass Memphis with more quality wins in the ACC, which are harder to come by this year.
3.     Kansas-Same as UNC.
4.     UCLA-The clear 4th right now. With the strength of the Pac-10, they may have the best shot at passing Memphis.
5.     Tennessee-After early season struggles, Tennessee has roared back with good wins over Ole Miss and Xavier.
6.     Butler-Holding steady now, but will be passed as teams get better wins than are available in the Horizon.
7.     Texas A&M-Same as Butler, could fall even with wins as their schedule doesn’t get interesting until Jan. 30.
8.     Washington State-Ran into the one type of team that it cannot play against in UCLA. Should rebound,  however.
9.     Michigan State-Still the best in the Big 10 despite an embarrassing loss to Iowa.
10.     Dayton-The Flyers added another impressive win over Rhode Island last week. The Pitt win looks better, too.
11.     Indiana-The toughest team to rank: lots of good wins, but no marquee top-50 wins yet. Expect them to rise.
12.     Duke-The Bluedevils have only played 11 games, and only own good wins over Marquette and Wisconsin.
13.     Marquette-Linked with Duke since the beginning of the season, lost head to head and lost spot.
14.     Xavier-The first 3-loss team in the poll, but their wins (and losses) are solid.
15.     Vanderbilt-Not so much a penalty for the loss to Kentucky, but for the relative lack of quality wins so far.
16.     Texas-Another enigma of a team. Great wins, but is falling rapidly.
17.     St Mary’s-The Gaels own lots of good wins, and in as muddled a bottom half, that is good enough for 17th.
18.     Wisconsin-Another “eh” team that just happens to have “good” losses and a few quality wins.
19.     Ole Miss-Much like Vandy, Mississippi moves down because of a lack of good wins more than their loss last week.
20.     Rhode Island-Should not be penalized because of losing to Dayton at home. They could easily move back up.
21.     Pittsburgh-Win over Georgetown keeps Pitt in the poll this week.
22.     West Virginia-Yet another flawed Big East team who has good wins over Marquette and Syracuse.
23.     Notre Dame-See previous two.
24.     Oregon-Looking to be back on track after wins over Arizona and Stanford.
25.     Drake-No good wins, but 5-0 in the MVC gets you a spot in this flawed period in college basketball.

Weekend Review: We’re Baaaack

    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.

Big Ten Rule? Check.

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.

Blogpoll Ballot Week 9

   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.

1. Memphis
2. North Carolina
3. Kansas
4. UCLA
5. Washington State
6. Michigan State
7. Tennessee
8. Butler
9. Texas A&M
10. Vanderbilt
11. Indiana
12. Dayton
13. Duke
14. Marquette
15.  Ole Miss
16. Rhode Island
17. Texas
18. Xavier
19. Oklahoma
20. Wisconsin
21. St. Mary’s
22. Villanova
23. Providence
24. West Virginia
25. Drake

SWAC Basketball: Tetnus Shots Required

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.

The Official Blogpoll: Week Eight

   By Chilltown
The consensus blogpoll for week:

1.     Memphis
2. North Carolina
3. Kansas
4. Washington State
5. UCLA
6. Michigan State
7. Tennessee
8. Duke
9. Georgetown
10. Marquette
11. Indiana
12. Texas A&M
13. Butler
14. Dayton
15. Texas
16. Vanderbilt
17. Mississippi
18. Villanova
19. Rhode Island
20. Pittsburgh
21. Wisconsin
22. Clemson
23. USC
24. Arizona
25. St. Mary’s

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.

Blogpoll Ballot: Week 8

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:

1. Memphis

2. North Carolina

3. Kansas

4. Washington State

5. Michigan State

6. UCLA

7. Tennessee

8. Butler

9. Texas A&M

10. Vanderbilt

11. Indiana

12. Dayton

13. Duke

14. Marquette

15. Ole Miss

16. Rhode Island

17. Texas

18. Villanova

19. Oklahoma

20. St. Mary’s

21. Arizona

22. USC

23. Providence

24. Wisconsin

25. Pittsburgh

Weekend in Review: Great Games Galore

       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