Thursday, December 29, 2011

Georgetown Wins On The Road At Louisville

#12 Georgetown 71, #4 Louisville 68
Georgetown looked to have this game under control late, leading by 11 with a little more than four minutes remaining. But that's when Rick Pitino's Louisville team turned on that patented frenetic full court press, and things began to fall apart. Georgetown's next four possessions ended on a trio of turnovers and a bad rushed shot from Hollis Thompson trying to break the press. Louisville went on an 11-0 run over that stretch, tying the game. But the Hoyas are experienced and poised and they hung in there, and eventually Louisville self-destructed on offense. Peyton Siva is a great player, particularly in the clutch, but sometimes he forces some awful shots when he feels like his team needs him. He needs to have more faith in his teammates.

This game is huge for the Big East pecking order. Syracuse was, and remains, the Big East favorite, but Louisville was considered by many to be the second best team. After two awful narrow wins over Charleston and Western Kentucky, Louisville now falls at home to Georgetown and in no way looks like the second best team in the conference. I do think Louisville will eventually turn things around, but a home loss to Georgetown is going to be a huge hurdle to try to overcome.

Louisville will try to stop their slide on Saturday at arch-rival Kentucky. After that game they'll get a breather, beginning with a home game against St. John's on January 3rd. Georgetown will play Providence on Saturday, and then gets ready for a big home game against Marquette on January 4th. Marquette is one of the teams that might end up the second best in the Big East, and Georgetown can't throw away a big road win by falling at home to Marquette.

#17 Michigan State 80, #15 Indiana 65
I thought that this would be a "reality check" game for Indiana, but it ended up just being a bizarre game all around. The most jarring stat is the fact that Indiana went on a 25-2 run at one point... and still lost by 15. A big reason was a 20-0 run for Michigan State that put the game out of hand, sparked by 9 points from Adreian Payne and a bogged-down Indiana offense. The IU offense bogged down because after Cody Zeller got into foul trouble the team became very perimeter oriented and went cold from the field.

Derrick Nix did some good work for Michigan State inside (14 points and 5 rebounds), though the Spartans star here was definitely Keith Appling (25 points, 6 rebounds, 7 assists). Appling's outside shooting in particular opened up the paint for players like Nix and Payne.

Michigan State isn't getting any hype as a potential Big Ten contender, but their resume is getting hard to ignore. They lost their opening two games to North Carolina and Duke, but have won 12 straight since then, including victories over Florida State, Gonzaga and Indiana. They have to avoid a letdown on Saturday at Nebraska, and then will have a huge opportunity on Tuesday at Wisconsin. A win at the Kohl Center would make the Spartans a contender to win the entire conference.

This loss is no reason to worry for Indiana. The Hoosiers played well, and in no way looked like one of those fraudulent teams that beats up on soft competition out-of-conference and then gets exposed once they show up for conference play. They acquitted themselves well here at the Breslin Center, and will try to carry that momentum into a huge home game on Saturday against Ohio State. Their next game after that will be January 5th against Michigan.

West Virginia 83, Villanova 69
There was a scary moment in the second half here, when West Virginia star Kevin Jones took a hit to the head and fell to the ground. It looked like it could have been a concussion or worse, but after some time in the locker room he got stitched up and got back into the game. The star for the Mountaineers in this game was actually Truck Bryant (34 points, 3 assists and only 2 turnovers). As a team, West Virginia committed only seven turnovers all game long.

Villanova, as has been the case all season long, got weak play from their perimeter players. They hit only 3-for-14 behind the arc (they're at 31% for the season), and committed more turnovers (15) than assists (12).

Villanova is now only 7-6 overall with a road game at Marquette coming up next, on Sunday. A loss there, besides dropping them to .500 overall, would also drop them to 0-2 in Big East play, knowing that they probably need to get to 10-8 in Big East play to have a shot on Selection Sunday. Their schedule does ease up after that with home games against USF and DePaul.

West Virginia has wins over Kansas State, Missouri State and Miami (Fl) to go with this one, and only one potentially bad loss (Kent State). They don't look like they have a shot to finish in the top four or five in the Big East, but at least they look clearly like a Tournament team (which is more than can be said about Villanova). They'll play at Seton Hall on Friday and then on the road at Rutgers on January 4th. Their schedule gets really brutal in February, so it will behoove them to rack up wins against softer opponents in December and January.

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