Butler Beats FSU, Continues To Build Their Resume

Butler 67, Florida State 64
Butler got off to an awful start to this season, and it's tough for a team in a conference like the Horizon to recover from that. There just won't be any quality wins available in conference play. But they're playing better now, and are trying to rebuild their resume. This is a quality win, and they'll get a chance for another quality win on Christmas against Washington State. They probably will need that one, plus a near-undefeated record in conference play to earn an at-large bid should they get upset in the Horizon League tournament. A bright spot for them this game was Chase Stigall, who had his first career double-digit scoring game with 3-for-5 shooting behind the arc. He is beginning to provide a nice scoring spark off of the bench. For Florida State, the biggest worry from this game isn't the loss, but the injury to Xavier Gibson. At this point I have no idea how long he'll be out (if he'll miss any time at all), but it looked to me like a potentially bad knee injury. His length and athleticism is a big part of FSU's defense, which I think is the best in the nation. Their offense isn't good enough for them to be able to afford to lose him for any significant length of time. There isn't much time for recovery, with a game against Baylor on Saturday, followed by road games at Auburn and Virginia Tech, and then a game against Duke on January 12th.

Northern Iowa 66, New Mexico 60
With so many key players missing from last season, Northern Iowa needed some new young players to step up this season. They got that here, particularly from sophomore Anthony James, who led all players with 23 points. The team as a whole was raining threes, which helped them overcome New Mexico's advantage in the paint. Northern Iowa has those questionable losses against UW-Milwaukee and Iowa earlier this season, but they sure have looked good the past couple of weeks, and they could still get themselves on the bubble if they can finish 14-4 or better in Missouri Valley play. This is only New Mexico's second loss of the season, but they've still been disappointing - they've played a soft schedule and have struggled more than expected with it. They still have to play at Texas Tech and at Dayton before beginning Mountain West play, and I wouldn't be surprised to see them lose one of those games. The Mountain West still has a Big Four at the top that is likely to all make the NCAA Tournament, but in my opinion New Mexico is the clear worst of those four teams so far. I see the conference title coming down to BYU, UNLV and San Diego State.

Colorado State 68, Mississippi 61
When a team plays as dumb as Ole Miss did in this game, they deserve to lose. The physical and athletic advantage they had in the paint was tremendous, so naturally they chose to sit back and launch three-pointers, even as they missed a remarkable 16 in a row at one point. They took 68 shots in this game, and 25 of those came behind the arc, and they only earned 11 free throw attempts. Chris Warren in particular should know better - he's been around long enough to know that he can't shoot 1-for-11 behind the arc in a game. He was air-balling his threes and it didn't stop him from launching more. Ole Miss continues the trend of bad losses for SEC West teams. They fall to a decent 8-3, but their only win against a likely RPI Top 100 team was against Southern Miss, and this will likely be an RPI 100+ loss. They have two cupcakes and then will play at SMU before beginning SEC play at Florida on January 8th. It continues to look more and more like the SEC West will again fail to produce an NCAA Tournament teams. Colorado State moves to 7-3, but this is by far their best win, and they have bad losses to Sam Houston State and Colorado. They might be the fifth best team in the Mountain West, but are nowhere near the Big Four atop the conference.