Thursday, December 16, 2010

Oakland Completes An Upset: Tennessee

Oakland 89, #7 Tennessee 82
Oakland is a quality team that has consistently come up just short against elite opponents. They actually came into this game off of two consecutive close losses against quality teams (Michigan State and Illinois). It was interesting watching the expressions of the Oakland players after the final whistle in this one - they didn't even seem particularly excited, they just looked like they had gotten a big frustration over with. They were relieved more than they were happy. Oakland's strength all season has been on offense: both shooting the ball and grabbing offensive rebounds when they miss, and they did that here. They shot 54% from the field, and fought to a near draw on the boards against a big and athletic Tennessee team (33% offensive rebounding percentage for Oakland vs 35% for Tennessee). Upsets do happen, but if there's one worry for Tennessee from this game it's perimeter defense. They were torched repeatedly by Oakland's guards. Of course, this Tennessee team also lost to D-II Indianapolis in the preseason and it didn't stop them from beating Pitt and Villanova over the past few weeks, and this loss to Oakland is their first regular season loss of the year. I don't think this is a reason to panic. For Oakland, this is a very nice win, but they're only 6-5 overall with a mediocre loss to Wright State - needless to say, I don't see an at-large bid in their future. But assuming that they win the Summit League's auto bid this win could be the difference between a 12 and a 13 seed. They will certainly be a potential Cinderella team.

Southern Miss 80, California 78
Jorge Gutierrez had a chance to win this game for California, but his last chance three-pointer bounced out. The star for Southern Miss was Gary Flowers, who scored the final 12 points for Southern Miss and finished with 28 points on 10-for-16 shooting. Flowers wasn't the only frontcourt player to do well for Southern Miss - Josimar Ayarza and Ahyaro Phillips combined to score 21 points on 7-for-16 shooting. Cal has had problems with interior play all season long, and they will face better frontcourts in the Pac-10 than Southern Miss. This loss drops Cal to 5-4, but this may end up not being a bad loss, and Cal does have wins over Temple and New Mexico. So they still would be right on the bubble if the season ended now (their Sagarin ELO_CHESS is 46th). They have a December 22nd game against Kansas, and then begin Pac-10 play on January 2nd at Stanford. If they don't upset Kansas they will probably have to go at least 11-7 in Pac-10 play to go Dancing. As for Southern Miss, they move to 7-1, but it's a soft 7-1. This is probably their best win (they also have a road win at South Florida), and their loss came at Ole Miss. Their next chance for a decent win will be at the Cancun Governor's Cup, where they'll open with East Tennessee State, then they'll play Northeastern or Saint Louis in their second game, and could potentially play Ole Miss again in their third game. After that, their remaining quality games will all happen in Conference USA play.

Coastal Carolina 78, LSU 69, OT
The SEC West teams have seemingly been on crusades to see which can put together more embarrassing losses this season, but LSU actually had been off to an alright start. They were 6-2 coming into this one, although one of those losses was to Nicholls State. This won't be a good loss either. Their best win was probably the nine-pointer at home over Houston a couple of weeks ago. They still have a home game against Wichita State along with road games at Rice and Virginia before beginning SEC play. As for Coastal Carolina, they might be even better than last year's squad, which won 28 games and went to the NIT. They're 8-2 with losses only against Georgetown and on the road at College of Charleston. The Big South Conference will not get an at-large bid, but Coastal Carolina is making a bid for a seed as high as a 14 should they win the auto bid. In my opinion, Winthrop is still the narrow favorite to win the conference, but Coastal Carolina deserves to be in the discussion, as does Charleston Southern, and perhaps also UNC-Asheville.

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