Saturday, January 28, 2012

Dayton Falls At Home To Rhode Island

Rhode Island 86, Dayton 81
This has been a bad day for a lot of bubble teams, and Dayton might have had the worst loss of all. Rhode Island hadn't won a single conference game all season long. I was watching an internet stream of a local Dayton broadcast, and I can't recall the last time I heard announcers so depressed after a game. Billy Baron, the Coach's son, scored 25 points on 7-for-12 shooting. Jonathan Holton was all over the floor with 16 points, 11 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals. Overall, Rhode Island scored 1.21 PPP, the sixth straight game where Dayton has allowed more than 1 PPP. That's just not good enough to win consistently.

Dayton has a whole bunch of nice wins this season (St. Louis, Temple, Minnesota and Alabama), but this loss drops them to 4-3 in Atlantic Ten play with bad losses to Buffalo, St. Bonaventure, Miami (OH) and now Rhode Island. Their Sagarin ELO_CHESS should fall out of the Top 60. If the season ended now they'd be NIT-bound. At this point, it's hard to see Dayton earning an at-large bid unless they finish at least 11-5 in conference play, which would mean at least a 7-2 record in their final nine games. They'll begin on Wednesday at home against Duquesne before heading on the road to play St. Louis on Saturday.

This win will likely be the highlight of the Rhode Island season. For the most part, the only good thing about this season for Rhode Island is that they're young and they're playing hard, and so they should be better next season. Their next game will be on Wednesday, against UMass.

#21 Virginia 61, NC State 60
NC State trailed by a few points for nearly the entire night. They were 2-for-15 on threes, and just could not get a big shot to fall. Lorenzo Brown had a chance to get a winner on the final possession of the game, but ended up having to take a deep contested jumper that he missed. This is a tough loss for NC State to swallow for a couple of reasons. First of all, they dominated the boards (16 offensive rebounds vs 4 for Virginia) against a Cavaliers team that actually came into this game leading the nation in defensive rebounding percentage (77.1%), and matched them with 11 turnovers. Second of all, on a day where nearly every bubble team seemed to lose, this was a wonderful chance for NC State to thrust themselves into the Tournament bracket.

A win here would have actually pushed NC State to 5-2 in ACC play. Instead they're 4-3 with only that one big win over Texas, along with a bad loss to Georgia Tech. Their RPI is 59th, and their Sagarin ELO_CHESS will be close to that as well. So they're a borderline bubble team, but if the season ended now they'd definitely be left out of the Field of 68. I think they need to get to 10-6 in ACC play to have a good chance at an at-large bid. Their next game will be Wednesday at Boston College.

Virginia moves to 17-3 overall and 4-2 in conference play with this win. They are now 6-2 against the RPI Top 100 and have pushed their Sagarin ELO_CHESS into the Top 25. At this point, even a .500 finish the rest of the year (which would mean a 9-7 regular season record and a win in the ACC tournament) should be sufficient to put them in the NCAA Tournament. Considering their remaining schedule, I think they're more likely to win 10+ games than to win 9, so there's a good chance that by the time March rolls around that Cavaliers fans will only be worried about which seed they'll be earning in the NCAA Tournament. It's quite a turnaround for this team. In my view, it's hard to argue against Tony Bennett as the ACC Coach of the Year. Virginia's next game will be Tuesday against Clemson.

#25 Louisville 60, Seton Hall 51
This was a game between two teams that have been sliding the past couple of weeks... and somebody had to win. It turned out that Louisville won this game fairly easily, leading by double-digits most of the way. This was an underwhelming game from Louisville, though. Their offense was still dreadfully inefficient (23 turnovers), and still being killed by Peyton Siva trying to do too much (4 assists, 7 turnovers). Seton Hall just couldn't handle the Louisville pressure defense at all, finishing with a 30.2 eFG% and 0.71 PPP, their worst offensive performance of the season.

Louisville is still overrated and should not be ranked, but at least they seem to have steadied the ship a bit. They've won three straight now to move to 5-4 in Big East play with wins over Vanderbilt, Memphis, Long Beach State and Seton Hall, along with a bad loss to Providence. I don't think they're out of the woods yet, but it does look like they should make it to March without falling onto the bubble. Their next game will be next Saturday against Rutgers.

Seton Hall has now lost their fourth straight game to fall to 4-5 in Big East play. They have wins over UConn, West Virginia and Dayton, along with a bad loss to USF. Their RPI is still 31st but their Sagarin ELO_CHESS will likely be around 40th. If the season ended now they'd be in the NCAA Tournament, but only barely. They need to turn this slump around soon, and unfortunately they head on the road now to play Marquette (Tuesday) and UConn (Saturday). Their schedule down the stretch is pretty easy, but they don't want to have to dig themselves out of a 4-7 hole.

No comments: