Michigan State With A Bizarre, Controversial Win Over Wisconsin

#11 Michigan State 63, #19 Wisconsin 60, OT
I've watched a lot of basketball games in my life, and I've never seen what happened at the end of this game. Wisconsin's Ryan Evans hit what looked like the game-tying three pointer, and the refs called it good on the floor. As they went to review it, the tv broadcast showed an angle where you could see him shooting with the tv clock, and it clearly showed the shot got off in time. Then when switching to another angle to see if Evans had his feet behind his line, one of the announcers noted that the clock on the scoreboard behind the basket had a different time on it than the television clock. You can see a picture of that here. I'd never seen that happen and didn't know the rule, and neither did the announcers. Apparently, the rule is that the clock on the scoreboard is the one that matters, and so the shot was ruled no good and Michigan State was given the win. It's particularly bizarre when you remember that with 20 seconds to go in overtime the refs had stopped to review what time was on the clock and set the clock at 20.1 seconds, even though photos clearly showed that the whistle was blown at 20.3 seconds. Bob Wischusen, who was doing play-by-play for the game actually cracked a joke about how those 0.2 seconds taken off the clock couldn't possibly matter anyway. Pretty funny in retrospect.

For Wisconsin, this home loss to Michigan State comes right after that crazy home loss to Iowa. As I talked about in my recap of that game, Wisconsin lost because of historically awful shooting (only last season's 36-33 Big Ten tournament game against Penn State was worse among Wisconsin games from the past five years). Shooting wasn't quite so historically awful in this game, but it was still brutal (5-for-22 on threes, and a 37.9 eFG%).

One of the most important themes I try to stress on this blog is the difference between resumes/results and team performance/quality. On Selection Sunday, resumes are what matter. Who did you beat? Who did you lose to? And these back-to-back home losses for Wisconsin affect their resume. Certainly it eliminates any realistic path to a Big Ten regular season title, and it will drop their NCAA Tournament seed. But as for projecting the future, I don't think Wisconsin fans should panic. Sports analysts have a bad habit of confusing bad/good shooting with bad/good offense. Wisconsin's offense is still fine - they've just had two straight games with horrid shooting. Michigan State didn't even contest too many of their threes in this game - the Badgers shooters just couldn't hit the proverbial broad side of a barn. At the end of the season they'll hit between 35 and 40% on their threes, just like they do every season, and they'll be one of the better teams in the Big Ten. While I don't agree with the Pomeroy and Sagarin ratings that still have them as the #2 team in the country, I do think they're one of the 15 best teams in the country. They'll win some big games and still end up with 11 or more Big Ten wins this season. Of course, with a road game at Michigan coming up on Sunday followed by a road game at Purdue, Wisconsin is at serious risk of falling to 1-4 in Big Ten play. If they're going to finish in the top three or four in the Big Ten standings, they've really got to take one of those two games.

Michigan State got a lucky that Wisconsin shot so poorly on a game where they had all sorts of foul trouble, a down game from Draymond Green and an invisible night from Brandon Wood. The bright spot was Keith Appling, who was the best player on the floor for Michigan State, and who went toe-to-toe with Jordan Taylor and held his own. This win, however it happened, is huge for Michigan State's Big Ten title hopes. They're now 3-0 and in first place in the standings, with head-to-head wins over two of their top rivals (Indiana being the other). Their two match-ups with Ohio State won't tip off for more than a month, so it will be a long time before this conference race is settled, but the Spartans are off to the early lead. They head into a relatively soft part of their schedule now, starting with a game on Tuesday against Iowa followed by a road game at Northwestern.

Seton Hall 75, #8 UConn 63
I watched a lot of this game, and UConn was just lifeless. Seton Hall grabbed a double-digit lead late in the first half, and basically led by around 10-15 points the rest of the way, and UConn just seemed resigned to that outcome. Seton Hall won every 50-50 ball, while the Huskies appeared happy to just sit and launch jump shots. Their FTA/FGA ratio was 29.8 - this season they are 10-0 when their FTA/FGA ratio is higher than 30. Seton Hall was clicking - besides their tremendous rebounding (a 39.4 OR%) they hit 50% of threes and had assists on 63% of their made baskets.

Considering that this big win comes right on the heels of a 19 point destruction of West Virginia, Seton Hall's at-large hopes have to be talked about. I had already moved Seton Hall into the Field of 68 before this win, and these two wins are tremendous, but it's only a sample size of 80 minutes. Prior to these two wins, Seton Hall's only quality wins all season were over Dayton and St. Joe's, and they had a loss to Northwestern. It's a solid resume, but I don't think we should go overboard. It's hard to see Seton Hall finishing higher than around sixth place in the Big East. They have a potential letdown game on Saturday at Providence, though they won't play another ranked team until January 28th (Louisville), so these next few weeks will be an opportunity for the Pirates to fatten their Big East record.

I think UConn fans should be disappointed in every player on the roster for this game. Even Jeremy Lamb, who was the only real offense UConn had (19 points on 7-for-14 shooting), was too passive. He entered the season as a Big East Player of the Year candidate - a Big East Player of the Year needs to step up and carry his team in a situation like this. That said, I'm not sure even Lamb playing his best could have delivered a win here. Shabazz Napier was an ice cold 2-for-12 from the field, and Andre Drummond was invisible (4 points, 5 rebounds).

Connecticut is now 2-1 in Big East play, though they won't get a ton of credit for beating USF and St. John's. They'll play at Rutgers on Saturday, but then their schedule gets tougher in a hurry, beginning with a Monday night game against West Virginia.

Cincinnati 71, Notre Dame 55
It's gotten more and more apparent that while the big brawl spooked the Xavier players, it led the Cincinnati players to rally around their coach and their teammates. They've won seven straight since the brawl, including wins over Pittsburgh, Oklahoma and now Notre Dame. They now have all of their suspended players back and, at full strength, are on a heck of a roll. What's changed more than anything has been defensive effort. They had allowed 1.14 PPP in their three losses, to Presbyterian, Xavier and Marshall. Since the brawl they've given up more than 1 PPP only once in seven games, including just 0.89 PPP in this three game winning streak over Pitt, Oklahoma and Notre Dame. You can often see a team's confidence and overall mentality by the way their defensive efficiency changes throughout the season, and even without watching Cincy play you could tell that they've upped the defensive intensity.

This strong streak of play has brought Cincinnati up to the bubble, which is a lot better off than anyone thought they'd be right after that brawl, but we've still got a long way to go to Selection Sunday. Is this play just a temporary run motivated by that fight, or will they really keep up this level of play the rest of the season? Given the talent on the Cincinnati roster, and the tendency of these players to be inconsistent, I'm leaning toward the former rather than the latter. But we'll see. They will try to move to 3-0 against St. John's on Saturday, and then up the level of difficulty on Monday night at Georgetown.

Notre Dame isn't a bad team, and they did upset Pittsburgh last week, but they're clearly a step behind bubble quality. They'll fight hard each game in the Big East, but I'll be surprised if they finish better than 8-10, and they'll need to finish at least 10-8 to have a shot at an at-large bid. They'll play at Louisville on Saturday and then get USF at home on Tuesday.