Wisconsin Topples Purdue

#20 Wisconsin 73, #4 Purdue 66
Even though Wisconsin is always very tough to beat at home, no team has had more success there in recent years than Matt Painter's Purdue squads. What makes this win even more impressive for Wisconsin is that it came with almost no production from their two stars. Trevon Hughes barely played in the first half because of foul trouble, and only finished with 14 points and one assist. Jon Leuer was even worse, with four points scored on 2-for-15 shooting (most of the credit for that has to go to JaJuan Johnson, who absolutely ate Leuer up in the post). Instead, it was Jordan Taylor and Jason Bohannon stepping up, each finishing with over 20 points, as well as quality hustle minutes from bench players Ryan Evans, Rob Wilson and Mike Bruesewitz. Purdue's bench, on the other hand, had almost no production, despite coming into this game in higher regard nationally than Wisconsin's bench. All five of Purdue's starters played very well, but they got into a bit of foul trouble and the bench couldn't keep things close enough. But all around this was a really well played game, and Purdue doesn't have to get too down about a loss like this. In my opinion, Purdue is still the very heavy favorite to win the Big Ten, and are still on pace for a 1 seed in the Tournament. But with this win, Wisconsin has to at least be in the discussion for the Big Ten title, along with Michigan State.

#17 Georgia Tech 71, #5 Duke 67
I thought that the way the Georgia Tech fans reacted to this game was symbolic of how this season has gone for the Yellow Jackets. As the final second ticked away there was a half-hearted rushing of the court, with a few dozen students running on the court, a bunch more thinking "Are we doing this? Alright, I guess I'll head down there" and the rest staying in their seats. It was the saddest rushing the court I can remember seeing. But that tells you what you need to know about Georgia Tech: how good are they? Are they good enough that they shouldn't be rushing the court just because they beat a Top 5 team at home? There's no question that this Georgia Tech team has great talent, with several good complementary pieces around Gani Lawal, who is one of the most skilled and underrated big men in the country. They have five or six players who all have the potential to break out in every single game, making it hard to game plan against them. But at the same time, this is a team that just lost to Georgia and whose best win before this game was probably a December 2nd victory over Siena. Believe it or not, we'll learn a lot about this team Wednesday evening at Virginia. Sandwiched between a huge win over Duke and a huge road game at Chapel Hill, this is the type of game that Georgia Tech's teams in recent season have lost. If they are a legitimate contender for third place in the ACC then they've got to take care of business against Virginia. As for Duke, I know that almost all non-Duke fans hate Coach K, but I always love watching how well his teams play at the end of games. They put on an absolutely clinic over the final 60 seconds of this game working their way back - they never make the dumb mistakes that you see almost every other NCAA team make at the end of games. This Duke team is very thin, and probably less talented than any other team in the Top Ten, but boy do you they make you work hard to beat them. North Carolina doesn't look like they're going to run away with the ACC, so a single loss isn't going to do too much damage to Duke's chances of winning the conference.

Mississippi State 80, #16 Mississippi 76
It seems like Mississippi State is finally coming to peace with the idea that Renardo Sidney won't play for them this season, and they're finding their own identity. Kodi Augustus in particular has stepped up to be the frontcourt partner for Jarvis Varnado that Mississippi State fans had hoped Sidney would be. The difference in this game was guard Dee Bost, who had 25 points on only 13 shots from the field, along with six assists. Varnado also has to get some credit here for taking advantage of a small Ole Miss team, which was made even smaller when DeAundre Cranston fouled out with only eight total minutes played. Varnado and Augustus nearly had more rebounds themselves (24) than Mississippi's entire team had (33). This game obviously has big implications for the SEC West, which will likely come down to these two teams, and where we will potentially see only one NCAA Tournament at-large bid for the taking. This was the conference opener for both teams, and either of these teams will be very likely Tournament bound if they can win the SEC West.