Morning News: Iowa State Escapes Iowa & Maryland Takes A Share Of The ACC Lead... For Now

Hit some free throws, guys!

Good morning, folks. As I said on twitter, yesterday got another pass on the Morning News post. And looking ahead at next week's schedule, this might have to happen once or twice more. There just aren't enough games worth talking about until New Year's Eve.

As promised on twitter, I will get to Thursday's Maryland/Boston College game. But first, the Battle For Iowa:

Iowa State Escapes Iowa At Hilton We knew this game would be uptempo and that the two defenses might be suspect, but the first half of this game was just awful. There were so many forced, brutal shots early in shot clocks despite the fact that either team willing to work the ball around for a few seconds would easily find a defensive breakdown. Both coaches made the halftime adjustments, and both offenses operated much more smoothly in the second half.

Iowa State actually came into this game with really a really good defensive efficiency - the 0.86 PPP they were allowing was 5th best in the nation - but it was clear that those stats were run up against soft competition. Their transition defense is a mess. 16.7% of initial shots allowed have been in the first ten seconds after a defensive rebound for the opponent, which is the worst number for any BCS conference team (Penn State is 2nd worst at 15.1%). Iowa torched them all night by fast breaking off of rebounds.

The Hawkeyes actually led almost the entire game, but they fell apart in the final two minutes. In their final six possessions they scored only one point, including wiping out on two consecutive trips to the free throw line. Coming against their in-state rivals, this is going to be a loss that is going to leave a really bad taste in Iowa's collective mouth.

The lack of any big non-conference wins (the win over Notre Dame might or might not end up an RPI Top 50 win) could have a small effect on Iowa's seed, but in my opinion they're still very much in the four-team battle to win the Big Ten. If they win a share of the Big Ten title, nobody's going to care about their non-conference resume.

With a fairly easy schedule coming up, Iowa State has a good chance of working their way into the Top 10 in the polls in the next week or two. But are they a legitimate contender to Kansas and Oklahoma State in the Big 12? In my opinion, they're still a step behind. Their resume is great so far (8-0 with wins over Iowa, Michigan and BYU), but they've also been lucky in close games. They'd have lost this game if Iowa hadn't gagged it away at the free throw line. The BYU win was by 2 points, and they needed overtime to get past Northern Iowa. So as well as they've played so far, the Cyclones need to play even better to have a chance to get past Kansas and Oklahoma State.

Maryland Takes A Share Of The ACC Lead... For Now Maryland and Virginia Tech are your ACC co-leaders! For three weeks! And yeah, it still isn't clear why Maryland, Virginia Tech, Boston College and Miami played an ACC conference game in early December. Obviously none of those four teams has a serious chance of being atop the league in March. Regardless, this was a win that Maryland had to have, coming off consecutive losses.

Maryland is going to enter ACC play looking up at the Field of 68, but with bad losses already to Oregon State and George Washington, they simply couldn't afford a third. Keep in mind that the Terps have several feisty opponents ahead (Tulsa, Boston University, NC Central), so it wouldn't be a shocker if they suffer another bad loss. Even if they avoid any more non-conference losses, Maryland will need at least a 9-9 ACC record to seriously contend for an at-large bid.

Boston College was supposed to be better this season (I certainly thought they'd be better) because they returned basically everybody from a team that was underrated last season. They could actually score fairly efficiency last year. And this year they're scoring even more. As badly as they've struggled, Pomeroy rates their offense 18th best in the country. But their defense has been an apocalypse (Pomeroy rates it 300th). Six of BC's ten opponents have scored at least 1.2 PPP, and only one has been held below 1 PPP (Sacred Heart).

There's reason to think Boston College will start playing better this season. The defense was better last season... it's not like they're physically incapable of playing smarter on defense. But Steve Donahue is running out of time to get things sorted out before the ACC regular season starts in earnest. They're going to allow some ugly, ugly scores if they still have the 300th best defense in the country when Duke and North Carolina show up.