St. Mary's, Vandy & Memphis Upset

Portland 85, #24 Saint Mary's 70
It wasn't completely shocking for Saint Mary's to come off of their victory over Gonzaga with a loss here. It had to be emotional for everybody involved in the Saint Mary's program to finally come out of Spokane with a win, and to finally appear to lock up a WCC regular season title. And of course, Portland is the clear third best team in the conference, so a road game at Portland was always going to be the toughest game on the Saint Mary's schedule other than the game at Gonzaga. But what made this game shocking was the way Portland destroyed Saint Mary's without even any production from Luke Sikma. Portland actually led by 27 points midway through the second half. And Sikma, who is leading Portland in points and rebounds, had only 2 points and 8 rebounds. The star for Portland was actually a freshman, Tim Douglas, who had 26 points on 10-for-16 shooting.

For Saint Mary's this actually isn't a dramatic loss. They are still a full two games ahead of the only teams in the conference they are worried about, Portland and Gonzaga, with home games against both still to go (second place in the conference is actually currently held by Santa Clara and San Francisco, and both are only one game back, but both of those teams will obviously fade). And Saint Mary's remains safely in the Tournament for now. Their only RPI Top 50 win was over St. John's, but they also have only four losses, and all were against the RPI Top 60. Their Sagarin ELO_CHESS should still be inside the Top 30 when the new numbers come out tomorrow. Saint Mary's can easily afford at least one more regular season loss without falling back to the bubble. As for Portland, this is a nice win, but their second best win came against Montana. They also have losses to Santa Clara and San Francisco, and they are barely among the Top 100 teams in the nation according to Sagarin and Pomeroy. They probably will need to go undefeated for the rest of the regular season to get to the bubble.

Arkansas 89, #22 Vanderbilt 78
Say hello to Rotnei Clark, who had 36 points on 12-for-16 shooting (including 6-for-8 behind the arc). Arkansas was on fire with a 63.8 eFG% and only 7 turnovers. They are a feisty team, though, and have given several good teams trouble. They've already beaten Tennessee, Seton Hall and Alabama this season. This win actually moves them to second place in the SEC West at 4-3. But that said, the odds are that the SEC West will not get an NCAA Tournament team, and the Razorbacks are still likely to be outside the Top 80 in the Sagarin ELO_CHESS after this win. They'll need to pull a few more upsets to get close to the bubble.

Vanderbilt now falls to 3-3 in SEC play and has a big road game coming up Tuesday night at Florida. Vandy is 7-4 against the RPI Top 100 with wins over North Carolina, Marquette, Georgia and Saint Mary's, and only one RPI 100+ loss to South Carolina. Their RPI is 25th, and their Sagarin ELO_CHESS will likely be close to 30th. If the season ended now they'd likely be a 5-7 seed in the Tournament, although they probably can't push up too much higher because there just aren't a lot of good wins to be had in the SEC.

Marshall 85, Memphis 70
Conference USA is becoming a jumbled mess. Seven of the conference's 12 teams are now within one game of first place. This was a disappointing result for Memphis coming off of their best four game stretch of the season: wins over Marshall, Southern Miss, UAB and UCF - RPI Top 100 teams all. Even after this loss Memphis is 36th in RPI, although their Sagarin ELO_CHESS is likely going to fall out of the Top 40. More importantly, their Sagarin PREDICTOR and Pomeroy rating are close to 90th, so the computers don't have a lot of faith that Memphis will stay on the bubble. Marshall, meanwhile, now has their RPI up to 60th. But they are 7-7 against the RPI Top 200, and their Sagarin ELO_CHESS is going to be closer to 85th. At 2-4 in CUSA play they would have to finish 11-5 or better to have a realistic shot at an at-large bid.