Florida State Ends Duke's 45-Game Home Winning Streak

Florida State 76, #4 Duke 73
Florida State's offense has been streaky all season long. They scored above 1.05 PPP for the first four games of the year, causing a lot of people (including me) to wonder if their offense had turned the corner. That seemed to be a silly thought for much of the past six or seven weeks, however, as they've had some truly atrocious performances. They had a combined 0.80 PPP in games against Harvard and Princeton. Just two weeks ago they had a 39.5 eFG% and 0.87 PPP in a blowout loss to Clemson. But in the past week? They've knocked off North Carolina and Duke, scoring 1.15 PPP in those two games. I'm fairly sure that no team has ever played that badly in losses to a pair of Ivy League teams while playing that well in a pair of wins over North Carolina and Duke in the same season.

As well as FSU played, Duke doesn't go away easily at home, and it looked like they sent the game to overtime after Austin Rivers attacked the basket and scored with 4.9 seconds to go. But Luke Loucks did a great job of pushing the ball down the floor and hitting Michael Snaer for the game winning three, which left his hand only a couple of tenths of a second before the clock ran out.

This game was particularly important for Duke because of the fact that North Carolina found out yesterday that Dexter Strickland had torn his ACL and will be out for the rest of the season. A strong performance by Duke would have allowed them to make a really good case that they should be the new favorite in the ACC. But at this point? I'm keeping UNC as the #1 until they prove otherwise. Duke could have forced my hand and they didn't. I want to see what the Tar Heels look like without Strickland. Duke will play next on Wednesday at Maryland.

For a while, Florida State was looking like they might be heading for the NIT (though I never dropped them below a 10 seed in my bracket). That has obviously turned around over the past seven days. They now have wins over North Carolina and Duke to go with their win over Virginia Tech and bad losses to Princeton and Clemson. They are 4-1 in ACC play and have an RPI that is up to 26th, and I expect their Sagarin ELO_CHESS to be up around 50th. These two big wins will go a long way on Selection Sunday. I think that a 9-7 ACC finish plus a win in the ACC tournament will have them in a good position for an at-large bid. They'll try to avoid a letdown game on Wednesday at Wake Forest.

Tennessee 60, #11 UConn 57
These two teams are heading in opposite directions. UConn has been struggling ever since Ryan Boatright has been unable to play due to academic issues. Tennessee, meanwhile, has gotten a huge boost from the newly-eligible Jarnell Stokes, who played in his third collegiate game here. This was the first career start for Stokes, and he responded by leading the Vols in both points (16) and rebounds (12). For UConn, their issue is that without Ryan Boatright they struggle to create offense. Shabazz Napier is a decent point guard, but he's inconsistent. And as good of a scorer as Jeremy Lamb is, he's not good at setting up his teammates for points. They only had 8 assists as a team in this game, with Napier getting half of them.

UConn is now 14-5 overall and 4-3 in Big East play, but they've lost four of six and have a Sagarin ELO_CHESS that is probably going to fall out of the Top 40. They have enough good wins (Florida State, West Virginia and Harvard) that they wouldn't be on the bubble if the season ended now, but they're only a loss or two away. The good news is that they have eight days now to get ready for a relatively winnable home game against Notre Dame. The bad news is that their next four games after that will be at Georgetown, vs Seton Hall, at Louisville and at Syracuse. If they even win two of those four games I'll be surprised.

This win pushes Tennessee to 9-10 overall. They have wins over Florida and UConn to go with bad losses to Austin Peay, Oakland, Charleston and Georgia. They're also only 1-3 in SEC play. In other words, this is a nice win, but let's not pretend that Tennessee is anywhere near the Tournament bubble. Their next game will be Tuesday at Vanderbilt.

Wyoming 70, Colorado State 51
I hate doing this rant on so many Mountain West posts, but seriously, whoever in that conference is responsible for having most of their games on The Mtn, with most of the rest on Versus/NBC Sports or CBS College Sports should be fired. There are so many great games in this league, and almost nobody knows about it. I'm one of the few people that gets CBS College Sports and Versus/NBC Sports, but I don't get The Mtn, and having to grab some fuzzy illegal internet feed is a disincentive to watch. Neither of these teams would be in the NCAA Tournament if the season ended now, of course, but both have a serious shot to make a run at a fourth NCAA Tournament bid out of the Mountain West.

The difference in this game was, without question, rebounding. Wyoming came into this game in last place in the Mountain West with a 17.0 OR% in conference play. Here? A 37.5 OR% (12 offensive boards). Leonard Washington dominated with 5 offensive rebounds to go with 32 points on 12-for-16 shooting. Colorado State couldn't shoot the ball either. They came into this game rated 4th and 8th in the nation in 3P% (43.7%) and eFG% (53.9%), respectively. They shot 5-for-17 on threes here with a 46.4 eFG%.

The good news for Colorado State is that this was a road game. They'll get a chance to take revenge against Wyoming in Fort Collins on February 18th. They're still without any big wins this season, but they don't have any bad losses either. If they can get to 8-6 or better in conference play and can win at least two games against New Mexico, San Diego State and/or UNLV, then they'll enter the Mountain West tournament with plausible at-large hopes. The first of their games against the Mountain West's Big Three will be on Wednesday at New Mexico. Next Saturday they'll play at home against San Diego State, which will be a very winnable game (they'll probably only be a 2-3 point underdog).

Wyoming quietly moves to 16-3 overall with this win. This is their best win of the season, and they have two iffy losses (Wisconsin-Green Bay and Denver), but 16-3 is still 16-3. The Selection Committee can be wowed by overwhelming won-loss records. Let's say Wyoming goes 8-6 in conference play and wins a pair of games over the conference's Big Three, and then wins a game in the Mountain West tournament - they'd be 23-9 overall out of what is likely to be the 6th rated conference. That will be hard to ignore. At the very least it would put them in the debate on Selection Sunday. Their next game will be Tuesday against a San Diego State team that is overdue for a letdown game off of two massive wins. Expect a Wyoming "upset", and then the at-large hype really starting to heat up.