Happy New Year Everyone

I hope everybody had a good time with their friends and family last night. We're into a new year, a new decade, and a new season of NCAA basketball conference games. While I want to look ahead to that, I still have a few more game recaps to get to from 2009. Here are three of them:

Wisconsin 65, #15 Ohio State 43
Anybody who watched this game saw how much Ohio State misses Evan Turner, who was looking like the best player in the nation before his spinal injury, which will likely keep him out about one more month. Wisconsin was fearless about pressing on the perimeter, which they never would have done if Ohio State had a player like Turner to drive into the lane. Not only do the Buckeyes lose Turner's scoring, but Jon Diebler also really suffers. Diebler has scored over 17 points per game this season in games that Turner played in, and less than 9 points per game in games that Turner has been absent. I believe that Ohio State is one of the three best teams in the Big Ten when Turner is healthy, but they are probably of the quality of a bubble team without him. And the Big Ten schedule makers didn't do them any favors by making four of their first five games on the road, against Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Purdue. If they can survive those first five games with a record of 2-3 I think they have to take it and run. They have an easy run of Big Ten games in late January into early February, so if they can get Turner back before the end of the month then I think a good Tournament seed is still in their future. As for Wisconsin, I once again caution people not to get too tied to the Wisconsin bandwagon until they prove that they can win on the road. They're always nearly impossible to beat at home, and so you had to figure coming into the season that they'd go something like 8-1 in home Big Ten games. Going into this week I viewed Sunday's road game at Penn State as more of a test for Wisconsin than the home game against a Turner-less Ohio State team. If they really are one of the three best teams in the Big Ten, as many have argued, then they've got to win convincingly on Sunday.

#14 Tennessee 66, Memphis 59
This was a very fun game to watch, if you aren't a basketball purist. Tennessee's outside shooting has been atrocious all season long, and Memphis ground their offense to a halt midway through the second half by switching to a zone and forcing them to hit shots. You have to wonder as the season goes along if Bruce Pearl will figure out how to get his team to score points against the zone before more of their opponents copy Memphis. As for Memphis, they were never even very efficient offensively during the peak of the John Calipari teams, and they're even worse this season now that the player quality isn't as good, nor the coaching quality. With seven minutes left in the game they had only hit 10 shots from the field. Considering that they hit five in the first seven minutes of the game, that made up a 26 minute stretch of the game where Memphis hit five shots from the field, and almost all of those came on fast breaks, broken plays or offensive rebounds. Their half court offense is atrocious. Their depth also played a factor, as they have a seven man rotation, and only eight total healthy scholarship players (their ninth scholarship player, Angel Garcia, is gone for the season with an injury). When Wesley Witherspoon fouled out with 34 seconds left and a four points deficit, Josh Pastner was forced to put a walk-on (Drew Barnham) on the floor, who promptly turned the ball over the first time he touched it. For Tennessee, this is a good win as far as proving their legitimacy. Their previous best win was possibly that win over DePaul, and they are less than two weeks removed from that embarrassing 22 point loss to USC. I still think Tennessee is the second best team in the SEC, but they're going to have to figure out how to score against the zone if they're going to be any competition for Kentucky. As for Memphis, they again fail to collect a quality win (the best team they've beaten is probably Oakland), and they might not even be a Tournament team this season. It's important to keep in mind that the Conference USA tournament has moved from Memphis to Tulsa this season, and that Tulsa was the runner up the last two season at the tournament in Memphis and is probably their top competition this season as well. Memphis has an RPI right now of 111th, but they're not quite that bad. Sagarin and Pomeroy put them near 25th, although that might be a bit of a stretch because they were able to run up the score against their easy schedule, and will need to prove that they can score in the half court against a quality opponent before we should even consider them a potential Top 25 team. They get another chance for a big win at Syracuse on January 6th, but even with a loss there they will not be in too deep of a hole because Conference USA is better this year than it's probably been in any season since the exodus of Louisville/Marquette/etc to the Big East. They can still not only make the Tournament but actually get a decent seed if they can run through the conference like they have the last few years.

Illinois 89, Northwestern 83
This was a really tough loss for a Northwestern team that has played admirably well since the injuries to Kevin Coble and Jeff Ryan. They led by double digits in the second half, and a reeling Illinois team is the type of game that you want to take care of if you're going to earn an at-large bid, even on the road. You have to wonder whether they are going to have endurance problems, because they have only a 6.5 man rotation (I call it 6.5 because the 7th man of the rotation, Kyle Rowley, has never been able to play more than about 15 minutes a game because of his size and physical condition). The Wildcats did go 10-1 out-of-conference (with one game left to go against UT-PA next week) with wins over Notre Dame, Stanford and Iowa State, and only a three point loss to Butler, so they can potentially make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history with only a 9-9 Big Ten record, although they'll probably need to go 10-8 or better unless they collect some wins over ranked teams. As for Illinois, they had a very disappointing out-of-conference performance, likely collecting two or three losses to teams that will finish outside the RPI Top 100, and an 8-4 record overall (they still get a chance to improve things tomorrow afternoon against Gonzaga). But this was a game they absolutely had to have to start their Big Ten slate, as it doesn't get much easier in the Big Ten than Northwestern at home. After Gonzaga they continue the easy start to their Big Ten schedule with games vs Iowa, at Indiana, and vs Penn State. Illinois could easily be 4-0 in the Big Ten heading into the Breslin Center to play Michigan State on January 16th.