Morning News: Michigan St Wins In Iowa City, Kentucky Falls To LSU, USF Upsets SMU, And Baylor. Sigh.

Dougie McBuckets sends Creighton fans home happy.

Michigan State Wins A Crazy Game In Iowa City This game was fun and tight the entire way. Iowa certainly had plenty of chances to win, including two shots at the rim in the crazy final moments of regulation. In overtime, it was Russell Byrd who seemed to hit the dagger for Michigan State, putting them up by 6 with around 30 seconds left. Iowa did still have a chance at the end, but Mike Gesell couldn't hit it, and Michigan State got the really nice bounce back road victory.

Obviously there's a lot of luck in close games like this, but it's awfully impressive for Michigan State to even fight to a draw on the road at Iowa with Adreian Payne and Branden Dawson still out injured. They're managing to tread water in the Big Ten title race despite being so shorthanded. They still have road games remaining against Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio State, as well as Iowa's return game in East Lansing, so they'll get their chance to win the Big Ten title if they can play well enough.

Iowa probably will end up with the toughest Big Ten schedule. They have a full home-and-home with Michigan State, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio State. If they end up winning the Big Ten title, there's no question that they'll have earned it. More realistically, though, their margin of error has gotten awfully small. They'll play at Illinois on Saturday, and then come home to face Ohio State and Michigan the following week. So a week and a half from now Iowa could be right back in the Big Ten title race, or they could be effectively eliminated.

Kentucky Falls To LSU LSU was in control for this entire game. They jumped out to an early 22-6 lead and led by double digits for most of the rest of the way. Kentucky managed to close the final score late with four made three-pointers in the final 70 seconds, though they inexplicably chose to stop trying by foul despite only being down by five points with 15 seconds left.

The story for Kentucky, as it's been for much of the season, has been defensive effort. LSU had 1.15 PPP here, and Kentucky opponents are now 4-0 when breaking 1.1 PPP. The 56.4 eFG% that LSU had here was the best shooting that any team has had all season against the Wildcats. I don't think there's a reason to really panic about Kentucky here. People in the media are starting to drop them out of their Top 25s primarily to rile up Kentucky fans and drive web traffic. This is still a very talented, very good team. But at this point, they don't look like the best team in the SEC and they don't look like a serious Final Four contender.

If LSU gets into the NCAA Tournament, this might be the win that gets them in. They are 4-3 in SEC play and have wins over Kentucky and Missouri, along with a bad loss to Rhode Island. They're 4-5 against the RPI Top 100 with an RPI that is 58th and a Sagarin PURE_ELO that is 57th. That's a very bubbly bubble resume, though at this point they'd be more likely to be one of the first teams out of the Tournament than one of the last teams in. To have a good chance at an at-large bid, they need to get to 11-7 in SEC play.

South Florida Upsets SMU This is quietly one of the worst losses by any potential Tournament team in the last few weeks. SMU hadn't gotten into the Top 25 yet, but they were close. They had actually pulled themselves up to 24th in the Pomeroy ratings. And this South Florida team is bad - even after this win they're still being outscored in AAC play by 0.19 PPP this season. What happened? SMU's defense fell apart. South Florida was shooting only 45% on two-pointers in AAC play, but they shot 59% here. They did that because 28 of their 49 shots from the field were dunks or layups.

The problem for SMU is that as well as they'd been playing, it hasn't really translated in their resume. A very soft schedule is the big problem here. They have only one quality win this season (UConn), and now have this bad loss. Their RPI is 49th and their Sagarin PURE_ELO is 53rd. The key for them will be remaining home games against Memphis, Cincinnati and Louisville. The Memphis game is up next, on Saturday, and you have to wonder if they were looking ahead of this USF game a bit.

Baylor. Sigh. Baylor's woes continued here, dropping to 1-6 in Big 12 play. It was obvious to me that this Baylor team was wildly overrated in December, with pollsters and the media refusing to pay attention to their bad results against the likes of Northwestern State and Charleston Southern. But their level of play has dipped even further the last two weeks, and this season has spiraled out of control faster than anybody could have predicted.

Now 1-6 in Big 12 play, Baylor has to rapidly start winning games. Their next three games are at Oklahoma State, vs Kansas and at Oklahoma? Oh. That's not good. At this point, Baylor has to be treated as out of the NCAA Tournament until further notice. They'll have to pull some upsets between now and Selection Sunday to get back into the Field of 68.

This is West Virginia's best win of the season, but they're 4-4 in Big 12 play and have some huge opportunities coming up in the next two weeks with home games against Kansas State, Oklahoma and Iowa State. They're not a Tournament team at the moment, but they can definitely put themselves on the bubble if they can get to 10-8 or better in conference play.