Sunday, November 22, 2009

Oklahoma, Siena Stumble

VCU 82, #17 Oklahoma 69
It's amazing to me how VCU keeps hiring young coaches, keeps losing those young coaches to bigger schools, keeps hiring new young coaches, and yet continues to roll. They have another new coach this year, and he handed a rude "welcome back" to one of the previous young VCU coaches, Oklahoma coach Jeff Capel (VCU head coach from 2002-through-2006). To be clear, this will probably not be a really bad loss for Oklahoma. The Sooners are not going to be in competition for a 1 or a 2 seed (they're unlikely to finish higher than 3rd in the Big 12), so they can afford a loss to what will very possibly be an RPI Top 50 team in November without too many bad repercussions. Willie Warren is still struggling to establish his role as leader of the team, and he had an awful performance in this one (8 points scored, including 0-for-8 from behind the arc, 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 6 turnovers). They will be better as the year goes along. As for VCU, this is a great bounce back after a disappointing loss to Western Michigan. They can probably only afford only one more of those bad losses if they're going to have a good chance at an at-large bid. There are not a lot of chances for good wins in the Colonial, so despite how good VCU is, they might still be dependent on the automatic bid at the end of the year.

Temple 73, Siena 69
This shouldn't be the surprise that some people think it is. I've argued that while I think Siena is better than they were last year, they were so overrated last season that I believe they'll underperform this season relative to last season, and expectations. A Top 25 team should have taken care of business against Temple, but Siena is not a Top 25 team. They are still the heavy favorites in the MAAC, but I'll be pretty surprised if they earn an at-large bid at the end of the year. For Temple, this win follows a tough one point loss to Georgetown, a signal that this is a team to reckon with in the Atlantic 10. It's looking like the conference is wide open after Dayton, and that Temple has to be in the mix, with the likes of Duquesne, Xavier, St. Joe's, Rhode Island and others. It's too early in the season for me, or anybody else, to really differentiate between these teams. But Temple has announced with this win that at the very least they deserve to be in the discussion.

Portland 88, Oregon 81
Portland is going to sneak up on some people this season. There's a reason why I picked them to finish second in the WCC, ahead of the likes of Saint Mary's and San Diego. They were actually a near-bubble team last season (their RPI, Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings were all inside the Top 100 late in the season before ending up just outside the Top 100), and had zero seniors on the roster. I'd be shocked if they're not an RPI Top 100 team this year, and wouldn't be surprised at all for them to be a serious bubble team. This win now gives them a great opportunity to make a splash this coming week at the 76 Classic in Anaheim, where they open up against a very vulnerable UCLA team (which may or may not be without Nikola Dragovic). Don't be surprised to see them take out the Bruins and then cause college basketball fans everywhere to scramble, trying to find out who this Portland team is. As for Oregon, this will likely not go down as too bad of a loss. It seems likely that Oregon will be a bubble team most of the season, so one game will not make or break anything. We'll know a lot more about this team in December, after they play the only other good teams on their out-of-conference resume (Saint Mary's and Missouri). Although I would add that Oregon is putting themselves behind the eight ball by fighting for an at-large bid without scheduling a single BCS conference team out-of-conference (they did not "schedule" Missouri, it was assigned as part of the Big 12/Pac 10 Challenge).

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