Important Mid-Major Battles

TCU 80, UNLV 73
While many of the glamour games have gotten some national attention today despite the NFL playoffs, most casual fans have absolutely no idea that important battles like this one are occurring in mid-major conferences. In fact, it's almost insulting to call the Mountain West a mid-major conference since they have a higher RPI than the SEC (although both Sagarin and Pomeroy still put the SEC slightly ahead). But with five very good teams (these two, along with BYU, Utah and San Diego State) vying for what is most likely two or three Tournament bids, there are so many good games going on in this conference. This game in particular represents a huge win for a TCU team looking for national respect. I didn't watch any of this game, so I don't know whether the high shooting percentages (57% from the field for TCU, 50% for UNLV) were an artifact of a lot of layups or just good overall shooting, but by the lack of steals I would guess that it's at least partly due to a lot of hot shooting. Either way, TCU is now 11-5 with a couple of nice wins (UNLV, Texas Tech, Colorado), but with just as many bad losses (Charleston, Indiana, Louisiana Tech). Even with the win here, I don't really like TCU's at-large chances, but you have to consider them in the picture as long as they can keep winning games over the Mountain West's best teams. UNLV, meanwhile, slips to 13-3, but all three losses have been against quality opponents. And they have wins over Louisville, Arizona and others. The RPI drops to 55th with this loss, but I think this UNLV team is slightly under-performing. I think they will play better as the season progresses, and I still like their at-large chances.

Memphis 73, Central Florida 66
In another mid-major battle, Memphis overcame a fierce fight from Central Florida to regain some momentum after some out-of-conference struggles. One thing I've noticed in this season is that John Calipari seems to prefer to let his young players get their act together on the court. If he viewed these games as must-wins he would be cutting the minutes for players like Tyreke Evans. But Calipari has figured out that Memphis has no chance at a top seed this season. But at the same time, they can struggle a bit and still should get an at-large bid (assuming they actually lose the Conference USA tournament, something which hasn't happened since the Big East looted the conference). He knows that if they're going to make a Tournament run, they're going to need Tyreke Evans to be a star, and I would argue that this is the best that Evans has played against a tough opponent this season. He shot 6-for-10 from the field for 15 points, and had five assists. It's good to see him passing more and waiting for his shot to come. Memphis moves to 12-3, including 2-0 in Conference USA, but they can't earn anything better than a 5 seed or so by running through their conference. Their only chance at something like a 3 seed will be winning their two big road out-of-conference games remaining: Tennessee and Gonzaga. It's hard to see them getting higher than a 3 seed even if they win both of those games because of their struggles earlier this season.

Florida 78, Mississippi 68
To get a good Tournament seed out of the SEC, it's essential to win all of these games against lesser opponents, and so it's nice to see this young Florida team take care of business at home. The Gators are still too dependent on the three-point shot, but their pressure defense forced 12 steals and that, along with atrocious Ole Miss free throw shooting (52% for the game) was the difference here. Florida now moves to 14-2, with zero bad losses. But they also lack signature wins, with this being only their third win over the RPI Top 100. If the season ended now they'd be in the Tournament just on the basis of overwhelming solid numbers, but they're going to need a memorable win unless they expect to really dominate the SEC. Of course, they could dominate the SEC, since nobody seems to want to win it. There's no reason why they can't go 13-3 and win the SEC, although I see it more likely for them to go 11-5 and end up with a Tournament seed in the 4-8 range. For Ole Miss, they now fall to 9-6 with an 0-4 record against the RPI Top 100. They need a minimum of a 10-6 SEC record to earn an at-large bid, and even a nice SEC West schedule probably won't do that for them.