Morning News: New Bracket, LJ Peak, Tashawn Thomas, USC Loses, And Duke Rolls

LJ Peak's 23 points were the most a Georgetown freshman has had in a debut during JTIII's tenure

New Bracket Projection We're 17 weeks from Selection Sunday, so it's time for a new bracket projection. For obvious reasons, there were no significant changes from my last projection. The only change to the Field of 68 is Iona replacing Siena as the MAAC favorite. These will continue to be posted weekly, after the conclusion of the Saturday set of games. When we get to around February or so I'll start doing midweek bracket projections as well.

LJ Peak's Impressive Debut In yesterday's Morning News post there were so many games to talk about that I didn't have time to discuss individual players whose teams dominated cupcakes. There was no time for Kentucky, Wisconsin, Duke, Arizona or others. But yesterday was a much lighter college basketball schedule. So let's talk about LJ Peak. John Thompson III rarely ever has true freshmen start, so you knew he thought highly of Peak to put him in the starting lineup. But he put on a show, going 9-for-9 from the field and leading all scorers with 23 points.

Despite Peak's play, Georgetown can't really feel too good about this result. Josh Smith looks thinner, but he was not particularly effective. And in particular, the Hoyas felt Smith's deficiencies on the glass, where they were badly outworked by St. Francis. St. Francis had 22 offensive rebounds, finishing with a 41.5 OR% compared to Georgetown's 28.1 OR%. Georgetown's defense is going to struggle badly in Big East play if this doesn't get fixed.

Tashawn Thomas Cleared For Oklahoma Thomas scored 15.4 points per game for Houston last season, and was a significant transfer addition for Oklahoma. His size will help ease the pressure on Oklahoma's 2014 recruiting class, which was focused on bigs. The front line was clearly Oklahoma's biggest offseason need. Kansas is the favorite in the Big 12, and Texas is considered the top challenger, but Oklahoma has to at least be in that conversation now.

USC Loses To Portland State Andy Enfield's second season at USC is starting on a sour note, just like his first season did. It's not a particular surprise that their go-to playmaker is star 2014 recruit Jordan McLaughlin (19 points and 6 assists). This is a roster with a lot of new pieces, as was needed after four of the top six minute earners left from a team that went 2-16 in Pac-12 play. The biggest concern for the Trojans in this first game is probably not a huge surprise for a team heavy with young players: turnovers (their top seven minute earners were freshmen or sophomores). They had 23 turnovers here, good for an ugly 32.3% turnover rate. Enfield keeps landing strong recruiting classes, but at some point it has to translate into at least decent performance on the court. This looks like a Pac-12 bottom feeder again.

Duke Rolls Over Another Cupcake Nobody expected Presbyterian or Fairfield to provide any resistance to Duke, and they didn't, but these two games did give a chance for America to check out this very young and very talented Duke roster. Jahlil Okafor (scoring 18 ppg) has done nothing to dissuade the preseason hype he earned, while Amile Jefferson has shown a lot of aggressiveness on the glass (9.5 rpg so far, compared to 6.9 last season). One player who was surprisingly aggressive was Justise Winslow. The true freshman has taken 22 shots in 41 minutes of playing time so far this season.

One thing that stands out for Duke so far as a team is that their shooting has been very sharp - 47.2% behind the arc and 73.1% at the line. How sustainable is that? It's too early to tell. Duke's first opponent with a pulse will be Michigan State, on Tuesday.