Saturday, November 12, 2011

UCLA Is First Top 25 Team To Go Down

Loyola-Marymount 69, #20 UCLA 58
It's amazing how long the UCLA doldrums have lasted. The crowd was invisible in this game, and nobody seems too surprised that UCLA opened up with a loss here to a vastly inferior opponent. They've done it the past few years, after all. Wasn't this year supposed to be different? And to be fair, UCLA was the better team in this game, in my opinion. The difference in this game was the fact that Loyola-Marymount was a red hot 10-for-15 behind the arc, while UCLA was an ice cold 2-for-16. Josh Smith doesn't look like he's improved his physical condition enough, but UCLA has plenty of other weapons, including the Wear twins and Lazeric Jones, who simply couldn't hit a shot (1-for-10 from the field).

I'm not convinced that we should give up on UCLA because of one bad result. They have a lot of new pieces that need to get comfortable with each other, and they probably won't shoot this poorly again all season. The good news for them is that there is an immediate chance to atone, at the Maui Invitational. They get stuck with Chaminade in their opening game, but should have two other quality opponents. Their second game, for example, will be against either Kansas or Georgetown. Loyola-Marymount only has to wait a week to prove that this result wasn't a fluke. Next Saturday they'll play Harvard, a team that I believe is among the 50 best in the nation.

#7 Vanderbilt 78, Oregon 64
Oregon acquitted themselves fairly well here, leading most of the first half. The biggest issue in this game was Vanderbilt being forced to spend too much time on the perimeter. The Commodores chucked up 28 three-pointers, hitting only nine of them. They'll have to do a better job of getting the ball into the paint. Of course, the biggest question for Vanderbilt was how they were going to cover for Festus Ezeli inside while he recovers physically, and nobody has stepped up yet. Not including Lance Goulbourne, three different front court players were on the floor for a combined 53 minutes, scoring 11 points on 3-for-10 shooting, and collecting 15 rebounds and 8 fouls. Rod Odom was perhaps the best performing.

The two biggest positives for Oregon were newcomers Tony Woods (a transfer) and Brett Kingma (a 2011 recruit). Woods led all Oregon scorers with 12 points, which was surprising when you consider that he was a defensive-stopper/rebounder at Wake Forest, and was not much of a scorer. And Kingma burst for 10 points in only 14 minutes off the bench. He might be in line for more minutes. The Ducks next play Eastern Washington on Thurday. Their next quality opponent will be November 23rd at Nebraska. Vanderbilt doesn't have as long of a wait. They play Cleveland State tomorrow and Bucknell Tuesday, followed by NC State next Saturday.

Missouri State 68, Nevada 46
A nightmare start to the season for a Nevada team I thought would really be improved this season. What happened here? A lid over the rim. Nevada had a 31.0 eFG% (they shot 48.3% last season). When previewing this game last week, I highlighted Dario Hunt, Olek Czyz and Deonte Burton as the three key returners. Those three combined to shoot 1-for-18 from the field in this game. That's remarkable. This game was blown open early in the second half. Missouri State started the second half with a seven point lead. At 10:25 to go, just before Nevada hit their second field goal of the half, the lead had ballooned to 23.

The big question for Missouri State is whether this defensive peformance is a fluke for a trend. They were poor defensively last season, and finished 212th in the nation in eFG% against. They lost most of their offense from last season, which is why I thought this would be a rebuilding season for them. If they've suddenly found a cure to their defensive woes this could be a better season than expected. We won't find out for a few weeks, though. Their next quality opponent is Tulsa, on November 26th. Their schedule kicks up a notch on December 3rd, when they head to New Mexico as part of the Mountain West/Missouri Valley Challenge. Nevada doesn't have a lot of time to lick their wounds - they head to UNLV for a game Monday night. They play Pacific on Thursday, and then the following week head to Chicago where they'll play BYU, and then either Wisconsin or Bradley.

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