Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Greg Monroe Leads Georgetown Over Butler

We're snowed in here in Wisconsin, 15-20 inches of snow everywhere. So that means I've got time to finally catch up on game recaps:

#13 Georgetown 72, #20 Butler 65
It's a bit surprising to me that nobody is talking about Greg Monroe when talking about the best players in the country - do people not remember how good he was in high school and last year as a freshman? Matt Howard has struggled this season for Butler, and he was completely dominated by Monroe, who went for 24 points and 15 rebounds. Monroe held Howard to 1-for-9 shooting from the field before fouling him out. Georgetown's big men also fouled out Avery Jukes, leaving Butler with the choice of either Gordon Hayward playing center, or going with unproven young players. Needless to say, Georgetown dominated the boards (40-to-26) and blocks (9-to-3). But even with that said, Butler has really great guard play, and small forward play (if we count Hayward as a small forward, which is what he really is physically). Hayward is a potential All-America candidate, and he matched Monroe's 24 points. But in the end, the difference in this game was actually outside shooting, and Butler's lack of it. They couldn't hit their shots, and struggled to score despite a lot of easy attempts off of Georgetown turnovers. Butler now is 6-3, but their only two decent wins are over Northwestern and UCLA. Their final chance at a Top 25 win might be Saturday afternoon against a vulnerable Ohio State team (Evan Turner obviously will not play, as he will not be back any earlier than mid January). It's going to be very hard for them to do any better than a 5 or 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament if they can't collect a Top 25 victory. Matt Howard is going to have to stay on the floor and play well against Dallas Lauderdale. As for Georgetown, it seems pretty clear that they're in serious contention to win the Big East. Their guard play has to improve to match Monroe's play inside, but at this point it looks like they're in the mix at the top of the Big East, with West Virginia, Villanova, and perhaps also Syracuse and UConn.

#3 Villanova 95, Maryland 86
I find games like this pretty unpleasant to watch, actually. It was basically a three-point contest. Villanova actually shot 39 three-pointers, compared to only 36 two-pointers. I don't have a problem with a team that shoots three-pointers well, as Villanova does, taking a disproportionate amount of threes, but as Bobby Knight always teaches: never take a three-pointer in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, because that shot will always be there in the final 10 seconds. Try to get the ball inside, and if nothing develops then you can take that three as the clock is running down. So often I saw players dribble down the floor, make one pass to a player who fired a three without even dribbling, and with 27-30 seconds still on the shot clock. That's not what basketball is supposed to be. But as I've said before, it seems pretty clear that Villanova is content to live by the three and die by the three. And as long as they're hitting those threes, they're pretty unbeatable. If those shots don't fall, they're very beatable, but that doesn't seem to happen much. They were the team I picked to win the Big East, and I'm sticking by that projection. For Maryland, this is another missed opportunity, to come this close to a huge win when their two senior stars (Greivis Vasquez and Landon Milbourne) had bad nights. Jordan Williams looks like the best freshman that Gary Williams has had in several years, and will be a key to Maryland's ability to deal with the good frontcourts in the ACC. Maryland is now 5-3 with no bad losses (all were to likely RPI Top 50 teams), but their only decent win came over Indiana. So for the time being their resume stinks, although they're clearly better than that resume: Sagarin's ELO_CHESS has them 71st, and his PREDICTOR has them 29th. They now have a few creampuffs (although don't sleep on William & Mary as a potential upset) before ACC play begins. The lack of good wins out-of-conference means that Maryland is probably going to need to go 9-7 in the ACC to make the NCAA Tournament, althought 8-8 will be possible if they pull a win or two against teams like UNC or Duke, and if they can then play well in the ACC tournament.

Texas Tech 80, TCU 70
You never want to hype up a team too much in early December, but I'm starting to think that we've got to re-evaluate Pat Knight as a coach. We've seen quite a few cases of older coaches leaving a team for their children, and most of them haven't worked out. I assumed like most people that Pat Knight would be another Sean Sutton, and that the school would let him stay in charge for a few years before moving on to a more established coach. And this would be the type of game that you'd expect Texas Tech to lose - they'd just gotten ranked in the AP Top 25 for the first time in about four or five years, and they had a very soft 8-0 record against an easy schedule, they were heading into a true road game against a quality opponent from a mid-major conference that is easy to underestimate. This is a game Texas Tech is supposed to lose. But Pat Knight got his kids motivated enough to win almost every aspect of this game, from shooting to rebounding to defense. They will now continue with three more tough games (at Wichita State, vs Stanford, at New Mexico) before getting ready for Big 12 play. You have to consider them a legitimate at-large contender right now. For TCU, this is another disappointing result in a disappointing start to the season. All of the computer rankings have them outside the Top 100, and they're looking clearly like the 6th best team in the Mountain West. The Mountain West is really good this season, and could potentially get four Tournament teams, but it won't get six.

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