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| The shortest and tallest players in Division I basketball met on Saturday. That's 5'4" Charles Webb next to 7'6" Mamadou Ndiaye |
New Bracket Projection It's Sunday, so a new bracket is posted. There aren't too many changes this week, besides teams moving up or down a line. The one change to the Field of 68 is Stony Brook replacing Vermont as the favorite in the America East.
Kansas Routs Georgetown This dominant performance should quiet down the media that panicked over Kansas suffering three losses (all to tourney teams, all away from home, and all competitive in the final minute, as I pointed out a few days ago). Joel Embiid had another big game for the Jayhawks, though the story was probably Naadir Thorpe having his best game at point guard this season (4-for-6 from the field, 4 assists, 0 turnovers). Point guard play and outside shooting were their two biggest flaws, and one of those two appears to be healing. Kansas remains, in my opinion, the Big 12 favorite.
Georgetown is going to enter Big East play with a fairly putrid resume. They probably wouldn't be an at-large bid if the season ended now, honestly. They have a loss to Northeastern and their only quality win came over VCU. But this is a team much better than their resume. This was a poor performance (as was that clunker against Northeastern), but they're better than they have played thus far. They have some really nice low post scorers (Josh Smith's production so far has been very underrated - he's actually shooting 70% from the field).
The biggest problem for Georgetown has been Markel Starks struggling to score. He's the leading shot-taker on the team, yet his eFG% has dropped from 55.0% last season to 46.4% this year. There's no reason after two very efficient offensive seasons for his shot to completely disappear like this. Either he needs to figure out his shot or he needs to distribute the ball more to the big men.
More Bad News For The WCC As Gonzaga Loses To Kansas State A conference like the WCC needs a bunch of quality wins in non-conference play in order to be able to send three teams to the NCAA Tournament. But BYU, St. Mary's and Gonzaga set themselves up with relatively weak schedules and have often not been able to take advantage of their few quality opponents anyway. The conference might struggle to even get two bids in March. Throw in BYU's crushing loss to Oregon (the Ducks led 2-0, and then didn't have another lead until the final minute of overtime... but won), and this was just a horrible Saturday for the WCC.
Gonzaga, in particular, does not have the quality wins that we're used to them having at this point in the season. They have beaten Arkansas and West Virginia, but there's a good chance that neither will be in the RPI Top 50. Without a win over Memphis in February, we actually might have to start talking about Gonzaga as a bubble team. They will certainly need to hope that the injury Sam Dower sustained is not serious.
Kansas State has been slowly pulling things together after the terrible first three weeks to their season. This win was a Bruce Weber special (only 4 turnovers as a team), and if they can knock off George Washington on New Year's Eve then we might actually be able to start talking about them as an at-large contender again. They're going to need more than a win over Gonzaga to make up for losses to Northern Colorado and Charlotte, though.
Illinois Stuns Missouri These Illinois/Missouri games are always fun, and the finish to this one was fantastic. Earnest Ross, Jon Ekey and Jabari Brown traded clutch three-pointers before Tracy Abrams somehow made lemonade out of the lemons of a broken play and got to the line with 4.6 seconds left. His two free throws gave Illinois their final one point margin. This ended Missouri's undefeated season, dropping the number of national undefeateds to only ten by the end of the day.
Despite the 10-0 start to the season, Missouri's resume is soft. The victory over UCLA is their only over a likely RPI Top 50 opponent (West Virginia also has a chance to sneak into the Top 50). If they fall on the road to NC State next weekend, their non-conference slate will turn from impressive to mediocre in two games. Only getting one game apiece against Kentucky and Florida (with the Florida game on the road) is a problem as well - it means Mizzou has a reasonable chance of hitting the SEC tournament without a single premier scalp.
Unless they are upset by Illinois-Chicago, Illinois will end non-conference play 11-2, with this win to go with a loss to Georgia Tech. Considering the strength of the Big Ten, a 9-9 (or even 8-10) conference record for Illinois will get them in the bubble discussion.
Markel Brown Leads Oklahoma State Over Colorado Oklahoma State has consistently struggled with rebounding the past few seasons, and that nearly cost them a loss to Colorado here. The Buffaloes had a 42.9 OR%, compared to a 20.7% for Oklahoma State. Josh Scott led the way with 5 offensive rebounds. The key for the Cowboys was Markel Brown, who led all scorers with 23 points and 11 rebounds. Marcus Smart was quiet, in part because he was #autobenched for the final 7 minutes of the half with 2 fouls (a futile coaching decision, as he didn't commit a single foul in the second half).
It's pretty clear that Kansas and Oklahoma State are the class of the Big 12. Rebounding will probably be the primary concern for Oklahoma State in those games, while perimeter offensive play against the aggressive OSU defense will probably be the primary concern for Kansas. The big question at this point has to be which team is expected to improve more by March. As I've made clear, I think that team is Kansas. But Oklahoma State could fail to win the Big 12 and still earn a 2 or 3 seed in March.
This was a missed opportunity for Colorado, but after the Kansas victory it doesn't matter as much. They could potentially earn an at-large bid by only going 9-9 in Pac-12 play, though a 10-8 record will put them in a much better position.
UMass Struggles Mightily Against Florida State One reason why 40-0 is basically impossible nowadays? Because even if you're the better team in every game, there are going to be some days where everything goes wrong. And that was basically what ended UMass's undefeated season yesterday. They were 1-for-14 behind the arc, 58% at the line and committed 17 turnovers. Even Chaz Williams was a mess (4-for-14 from the field, 3 assists, 4 turnovers). My recommendation after games like this is just to remind people not to judge a team on a game like this. UMass stunk yesterday, but that's not who they'll be the rest of the season. They're still a very good team off to a great start to this season.
After three straight losses against quality opponents (all tight games), Florida State really needed this win to settle down their at-large resume. Barring an upset against Charleston Southern, they should be in good shape for an at-large bid with a 10-8 ACC record. If they finish 9-9, they'll probably need a win or two in the ACC tournament to lock up that bid.
Cameron Bairstow And New Mexico Pull Away From Marquette Late Alex Kirk is the best known New Mexico big man, and he had carried the team at times this season, but was ineffective and saddled with foul trouble against Marquette. It was Cameron Bairstow who led the way for New Mexico with 20 points and 10 rebounds. Bairstow and Kirk also combined to control Marquette's bigs, and to force Marquette's perimeter players to try to generate all of the offense. Marquette is not a good jump shooting team, and they took far too many jump shots in this game.
Marquette has very quietly put together a fairly poor resume. They don't have any bad losses, but they don't have any good wins either. If they go 9-9 in Big East play they'll probably need to win a couple of wins in the Big East tournament just to avoid the NIT. They'll need to reach 10-8 or even 11-7 in Big East play to be safe.
With the Mountain West down this season, New Mexico has two important wins out of conference (Marquette and Cincinnati), that will give them some breathing room in conference play. Though with the level of the league this season, they might need to get to 12 conference wins before they can stop worrying about the bubble.
Notre Dame Suffers A Soul Crushing Loss To Ohio State On a busy day of basketball like this, I generally wouldn't bother to bring up Ohio State beating Notre Dame. They were supposed to win this game, after all. But the Irish seemed to have this game in hand late. They actually led by 8 points with just under a minute to go, but had just lost Eric Atkins to a foul out. And after Atkins went out, the Irish did not have a ball handler who could handle the Ohio State press/trap, and they melted down. They committed four turnovers in the final minute, and it was Aaron Craft who had the fabulous drive and assist to pull the Buckeyes into the lead, and then forced the turnover on the other end of the court to nearly ice the game.
The Irish are really not a bad team at all. The panic about them is unwarranted, and they're clearly bubble quality. But these tough losses are adding up, and the Irish are going to need to get to at least 9-9 in ACC play to earn an at-large bid. They might even need to get to 10-8.
Michigan Bounces Back, Stanford Can't Get Off The Bubble The media told us that Johnny Dawkins had saved his job after the UConn win, though it's not clear if he's lost it again after the Michigan loss. They look like a classic bubble team and, as I've said repeatedly since the Aaron Bright injury, I just don't think that they have the depth to win consistently enough to earn that at-large bid. As for Michigan, after two straight close losses against quality opponents, they bounced back and grabbed a quality victory here. With this and the win over Florida State balancing out the loss to Charlotte, they probably don't have to worry about the bubble for now. But they still seem a step behind the four teams atop the Big Ten. At this point, it's hard to see them finishing better than fifth in the conference.
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