Ole Miss Falls To South Carolina

South Carolina 63, Ole Miss 62
The season continues to fall apart for the Rebels. After a 6-0 start to SEC play, they have lost five of seven and are on a high speed route right out of the NCAA Tournament. Marshall Henderson had another bad game, hitting 4-for-17 from the field for only 11 points - no matter how cold he is, he keeps chucking up 25 foot fadeaways. Let's recall that writers from major publications were calling him a National Player of the Year candidate... basically just because of a single (albeit awesome) .gif. Still, Ole Miss had plenty of chances to win this game, but they failed to score a single point in the final five minutes. They missed three shots in the final 15 seconds alone.

Despite being ranked as high as 16th in the polls this year, the reality is that they got there because of a gaudy won/loss record (17-2 at one point), and not because of quality wins. Their non-conference schedule was a joke, and it could come back to haunt them. They have precisely one win all season over an RPI Top 60 team, and that one win was at home against Missouri - not exactly a massive scalp. Recall that the Selection Committee gives the edge to teams that have a some big wins over teams that ran up shiny won/loss records against poor schedules. So even though their Sagarin ELO_SCORE might still be in the Top 50 when the new numbers come out tomorrow, the odds are that Ole Miss would be NIT-bound if the season ended now. To make the Tournament, considering their soft remaining schedule, they really need to win at least four of their five remaining games to get to 12-6. And even then, they'll need to win at least one game in the SEC tournament. Up next is Auburn on Saturday.

This is the best result so far in what has been a pretty bleak season for South Carolina. They are now 3-10 in SEC play, and 13-13 overall. Their remaining schedule is soft, so they could still finish the season over .500. Their next game will be on Saturday, at Georgia.

Boston College 69, Maryland 58
Oh Maryland, my Maryland... following up their massive upset of Duke by falling to Boston College. Just a terrible result in every way. Alex Len finally had his first complete game of the season, dominating the Duke front line for 40 minutes, but he regressed to total invisibility here. Len fouled out with 4 points and 8 rebounds in 27 minutes. The fact that Maryland got creamed by Boston College despite a career night from Logan Aronhalt (7-for-12 behind the arc) off the bench tells you just how poorly the entire Maryland starting unit played. Boston College was led, as usual, by Oliver Hanland (26 points on 9-for-14 shooting).

This loss drops Maryland to 18-8 overall and 6-7 in ACC play, with wins over Duke and NC State, along with bad losses to Florida State (twice) and Boston College. They are now only 3-7 against the RPI Top 100, with an RPI that has fallen to 57th and a Sagarin ELO_SCORE that has fallen to 55th. If the season ended now, they'd probably be an NIT team, and they've got to go at least 3-2 in their final five games to have a good chance for an at-large bid heading into the ACC tournament. And realistically, they need to win four of those final five games to avoid entering the ACC tourney with a whole lot of work left to do. Clemson is up next, on Saturday. A key game ahead is a home game against North Carolina on March 6th - that's a game that is going to be close to a pick em in Vegas, and it's one that the Terps will really need to get.

Boston College moves to 4-9 in ACC play with this win, and pushes their Pomeroy rating up to 108th. They're quietly a halfway decent team - better than most people think they are. Considering how young the roster is (their top seven minute earners are all freshmen and sophomores), that's a really good sign for the future. Their next game will be at Duke, on Sunday.

#18 Ohio State 71, Minnesota 45
Coming off an embarrassing loss to Wisconsin, I expected Ohio State to come out in this game fired up. And they're better than Minnesota anyway, and playing at home, so it was reasonable to expect a Buckeyes win here. This game was a rout, though. Coming on the heels of a blowout at Iowa, Minnesota has now had their two worst performances of the season in consecutive games. And certainly they've played poorly in both games. But it's simply ridiculous to judge a team off of their worst game of the season, and Minnesota is overall a very underrated team. Even after this loss, they're likely going to remain in the Top 20 of the Pomeroy ratings.

The Gophers are now 6-8 in the Big Ten, but the Big Ten is brutally deep, and everybody is losing more games than they would in any other league. Overall, Minnesota is 12-8 against the RPI Top 100, which tells you how tough their schedule has been. Their RPI is still 15th, and I expect their Sagarin ELO_SCORE to remain near 20th when the new numbers come out tomorrow. So despite that poor conference record, I still don't understand where the Minnesota bubble talk is coming from. They're still a fairly safe NCAA Tournament team. They'll be favored in three of their final four games, and a 3-1 record will get them to 9-9 and (likely) an NCAA Tournament bid. The key game is coming up next, at home against Indiana on Tuesday. A win there would give them another nice scalp (to go with Wisconsin, Memphis and Iowa) and would probably put the bubble concerns to bed for good.

Ohio State moves to 9-5 in Big Ten play with this win, and stays in contention for a top four seed (and a bye) in the Big Ten tournament. They'll probably need to get to at least 12-6, which makes Sunday's game against Michigan State a must-win. The Buckeyes still have a road game at Indiana to come.