And Then There Was One

#9 Kansas State 71, #1 Texas 62
There are a number of college basketball coaches that I love watching on television for a variety of reasons. I love watching Jim Boeheim look like a blood vessel in his head is about to pop. I love watching Tom Izzo jump three feet in air when a bad call happens. I love watching Bo Ryan's "I can't believe that just happened" face. And I love watching Frank Martin yell at his players during timeouts. Sometimes television producers will skip commercials and just linger on a camera showing Martin yelling at some Kansas State player and I'm always just spellbound. He has a great combination of facial intensity and intimidation. In all seriousness, by knocking Texas from the land of the unbeatens (where only Kentucky now lies), Kansas State immediately puts themselves in the "are they for real?" conversation. Every computer ranking currently has them in the Top Ten, and by no means has their resume so far been out of whack with their performance (their Pomeroy Luck rating is 160th, and the Sagarin ELO_CHESS and POMEROY ratings are identical: 8th), so they have definitely been one of the ten best teams thus far. The question is: how will they deal with the pressure now that they have expectations? The only time they have had expectations in the past 20 years or so has been the Michael Beasley year, and in my opinion that year turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Their upcoming schedule is full of potential upsets (vs Oklahoma State, at Baylor, at Nebraska and at Iowa State), with a home game against Kansas on the 30th of January. Over the next two weeks we'll learn a lot about how this team is going to deal with the pressure. For Texas, this isn't really that bad of a loss. They weren't going to go undefeated for the full season, and they still are in the driver's seat for the Big 12 title since their one game against Kansas will be at home. They next play at a reeling UConn team before a relatively easy Big 12 stretch leading up to that big game against Kansas, on February 8th.

#7 Duke 90, Wake Forest 70
This was an impressive win for Duke that came on the back of the Plumlee brothers. Coach K has sent Brian Zoubek way down on the bench, and it was the Plumlee brothers that combined for 30 points (on 10-for-15 shooting from the field) and 21 rebounds. Wake Forest is a team that relies on its backcourt, and is not a good rebounding team in general, but it was impressive that Duke dominated the boards 46-to-38. Pomeroy actually ranks Duke's offensive rebounding efficiency 13th in the nation, which is pretty surprising when you consider that they're not a very large team at all. Other than Zoubek (who plays short minutes), the Plumlee brothers are statistically the best rebounders, both offensively and defensively, so their play has been the key to this Duke season, even more than Andre Dawkins. I'm still doubtful that they can keep up that play against a huge frontcourt like North Carolina brings to the floor in an ACC tournament setting, but Duke is obviously the favorite for the ACC regular season title right now. As for Wake Forest, their inside defense and rebounding has to learn from this game. Their perimeter defense is outstanding, but you can't give up 90 points if you expect to win games consistently. They're 2-2 and now head to North Carolina (tip off in a about two hours as I type this post), and also have a road game at Georgia Tech next Thursday, but otherwise have a relatively winnable ACC schedule over the next few weeks. I think this is a team that will have their Tournament bid sewn up by the beginning of March.

#5 Syracuse 84, Notre Dame 71
The final score here was deceptively large. Syracuse led almost the entire way and was always in control, but the game was within a few points the entire way until the final few minutes. For Syracuse, they are firmly in what continues to be a wide open Big East title race. There are still four, or maybe even five teams (if we count Georgetown) right now that have a realistic path to that championship. Syracuse has a chance to pretty much knock Georgetown out of the race at the Carrier Dome on Monday night. They also benefit from getting Villanova (the team I believe is the best team in the Big East) at home in their only match-up. As for Notre Dame, the silver lining to this loss was the game by Tim Abromaitis, who continues to get better and better. He forms a great duo with Luke Harangody because both players can score in the paint and also have good outside shots, which makes them difficult to gameplan against. Abromaitis was 5-for-11 behind the arc in this game (and is 49% for the season), including huge back-to-back threes with about four minutes left in the game that took the deficit down to five points and really made this one a game. The Irish are now 3-3 in the Big East knowing that they probably need to get to 9-9 to earn an at-large bid. Their upcoming schedule is pretty easy (other than a road game at Villanova), but their final five games are really brutal, so they need to put together a little winning streak over the next few weeks.