Dayton Seems Deserving

#22 Dayton 90, Creighton 80
Dayton has been a bit hyped to start this season, as the #22 ranking suggests. But this impressive win over a quality Creighton team on day one suggests that they might just live up to the hype. They are just an impressively deep team as far as Atlantic Ten teams go, and remind me a bit of Sean Miller's recent Xavier teams. Obviously a win over Creighton may or may not even be much of an asset when Selection Sunday comes, in case Dayton doesn't get the A-10 automatic bid, but it's a solid start. As for Creighton, this has to go down as a missed opportunity. The Missouri Valley doesn't have the reputation it had a few years ago, and could potentially be a one-bid league yet again. Creighton is going to have to collect a couple of impressive scalps out-of-conference, because it's gotten clear that the Selection Committee is just not too impressed with any conference wins in the Valley.

Cornell 71, Alabama 67
The Ivy League is off to a good start, and this game is one of the reasons why. The Ivy League has been really down the last few years, so much so that the Ivy League champion has seemingly just turned into a glorified first round patsy. Many people forget how much Ivy League champions used to torture opponents in the NCAA Tournament. It seems pretty clear that the league will be much improved this season, and whoever gets the Tournament bid, be it Cornell, Princeton, Harvard or Penn, will be a tough beat in March. Don't be surprised to see the Ivy champion getting a 13 seed, or even possibly a 12. As for Alabama, this is just another horrible game to start the season for SEC West teams. The SEC is far improved this season, but all of that improvement seems to be in the SEC East. The SEC West still stinks.