Thursday, January 13, 2011

Florida State Takes Down Duke

Florida State 66, #1 Duke 61
Florida State is still without Xavier Gibson, who is probably their best interior defender. But even without Gibson they are still tremendous defensively down low. Combine that with Duke's weakness offensively in the paint and FSU is probably the ACC team best positioned to beat Duke (other than perhaps Maryland). They held the Plumlee Brothers and Ryan Kelly here to a combined 6 points on 2-for-8 shooting, 19 rebounds and 10 fouls. Meanwhile, Chris Singleton was excellent, scoring 18 points on 4-for-9 shooting all while doing a heck of a job guarding Kyle Singler. Singler did get 20 points, but it took him 16 shots from the field and he scored a bunch of those while Singleton was resting on the bench. Derwin Kitchen also was spectacular for FSU, leading all players with 22 points on 9-for-13 shooting. But that all said, we shouldn't make too much out of this loss for Duke. They were due to lose eventually, and I doubt they'll lose more than one more time before the end of the regular season. They next play Virginia at home on Saturday, but probably won't be too tested again until they head to Maryland on February 2nd. As for Florida State, it's always great to beat a #1 ranked team, but this win will also do a ton for their at-large hopes. They're now 12-5 overall with wins over Baylor and Duke along with a bad loss to Auburn. But their weak schedule means that their RPI is only 68th, and their Sagarin ELO_CHESS won't be too different when the new numbers come out in the morning. Their next game is Saturday afternoon against NC State.

Colorado 74, #20 Kansas State 66
Obviously Kansas State didn't deserve to be ranked, particularly with Curtis Kelly completing his suspension, but this is still a very impressive road victory for Colorado. And coming off a home victory over Missouri, they actually did this without a good game from star Alex Burks (4-for-15 shooting). The star was actually Levi Knutson, who hit 6-for-8 three-pointers off the bench. But does this stretch of two games mean that Colorado is a legitimately dangerous team in the Big 12? The reality is that before these two games their best wins were over Colorado State and Indiana, and they have losses to San Francisco and Harvard. They're still only 4-4 against the RPI Top 200 and their RPI is 84th. Their Sagarin ELO_CHESS is slightly higher, but they're still one of the four worst teams in the Big 12 until they prove more. Their next game will be Saturday afternoon against Oklahoma State. Kansas State will have Curtis Kelly back for their next game, and they still have wins over Virginia Tech, Gonzaga and Washington State, but they're 0-2 in the Big 12, and after a home game at Texas Tech they will head on the road to play Texas A&M and Missouri. They still have road games against Kansas and Texas ahead as well.

SMU 64, Memphis 58
I've said many times that fans overrate how easy it is to win with a bunch of freshmen, even highly-touted bluechippers, because of how much success John Calipari has had with them. But it's actually really hard to win with such inexperienced players, and Josh Pastner is learning that first hand. We know that Pastner can recruit, but I'm still not convinced he's a particularly good in-game coach. Memphis has a bunch of very good freshmen (Joe Jackson, Tarik Black, Will Barton and Antonio Barton) that will make Memphis a very good team if they stay for four years, but right now the team is really struggling. Their best win on the season is still against the University of Miami, and they've got this loss along with a loss to Tennessee that suddenly isn't looking like a good loss anymore. Memphis has seen their RPI fall to 93rd, and both Sagarin and Pomeroy have them as closer to the 100th best team in the nation. Obviously they remain dangerous because they have the most raw talent of any Conference USA team, but it's looking more and more like that they'll need the C-USA's auto bid to make the Tournament. As for SMU, this is a nice win, but it's by far their best win of the season and they have losses to UC-Riverside, Tulane and Louisiana Tech. They're outside the Top 200 in every computer rating. This win will be the highlight of their season.

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