Notre Dame Upsets Louisville

Notre Dame 67, #10 Louisville 65, OT
This was a heck of a game, and won because of a break-out performance by Eric Atkins. Atkins played well in flashes as a freshman, though he never got to see too much of the ball. That's changed this season. His raw stats don't look too impressive in this game (15 points on 4-for-18 from the field), but in the key moments of this game he was the player with the ball in his hands making every play. His three-pointer late in regulation sent this game into overtime. In overtime he got to the basket with three seconds to go, drew the foul, and hit one of two at the line to send this game into a second overtime. And in the second overtime he scored the final five Notre Dame points. Defensively, the Irish did a good job of getting the ball out of the hands of Peyton Siva and Russ Smith (a combined 5-for-16 shooting, 5 assists and 7 turnovers) and forcing the Louisville front line to try to win the game.

Louisville got off to a strong start to this season, winning their first 12 games including victories over Vanderbilt, Memphis and Long Beach State. They got up as high as 4th in the human polls. But things have turned wrong the past few weeks. After very narrow victories over Charleston and Western Kentucky they have lost three of their last four games. This is by far the worst of those three losses (the other two were to Kentucky and Georgetown), but it's a startling run for a team that looked for a while to be Syracuse's top rival. They'll play at Providence on Tuesday and then at home against DePaul before their next real tough game, on the road at Marquette on January 16th.

Notre Dame has gone on the opposite path from Louisville. Their season looked to be almost over in November after they lost star Tim Abromaitis for the season and lost games to Georgia and Maryland. But now they're off to a 2-1 start in the Big East with wins over Louisville and Pittsburgh, and only a road loss at Cincinnati. They're a long way off from getting back to the Tournament (they'll have to win at least 10 Big East games to have a real shot at an at-large bid) but they're trending in the right direction. They'll play USF on Tuesday and then get UConn next Saturday.

Clemson 79, Florida State 59
Honestly, it's not that surprising that Florida State only scored 59 points in this game. They shot poorly, but they tend to struggle to score against quality defenses, which is what Clemson has. They've scored less than 1 PPP in three of their last four games. What was surprising was that a Clemson team with a bad offense (less than 1 PPP for the season as a whole) torched Florida State for 1.15 PPP. In fact, that was the greatest offensive efficiency that Clemson has had all season against any opponent, and they did it against a Florida State team that has probably been the best defensive team in the nation the past three or four seasons. And on top of that, it wasn't like Clemson got hot on threes - in fact, they hit only 3-for-14. No, they took the ball right at the gigantic Florida State front line and hit 60% of their two-point attempts and got to the line for 33 free throw attempts (they hit 28 of them). I don't see how anybody could have seen a performance like this coming.

Not only is Florida State now looking like a bubble team, the reality is that they'd probably be left out of the NCAA Tournament if the season ended now. They're 9-6 with no big wins and a bad loss to Princeton. They're also now 0-1 in ACC play heading into a big game on the road at Virginia Tech to play a Hokies team coming off a bad loss of their own. And after that they play North Carolina. They'll have to get to at least 9-7 in ACC play to earn an at-large bid, so they would do well to avoid an 0-3 start.

This is Clemson's best win of the season and they have bad losses to Hawaii, Coastal Carolina, UTEP, Charleston and South Carolina. Even after this win, their RPI is 169th and their Sagarin ELO_CHESS will be close to 150th. They're better than that, and it's not inconceivable that they could get hot in ACC play, but one win over Florida State isn't nearly enough to make up for those bad losses. They have to avoid a letdown on Thursday at Boston College and then come home for a huge game against Duke a week from tomorrow.

Dayton 87, Temple 77
I warned multiple times about this game. Just a classic letdown game for Temple, sandwiched between that huge win over Duke and a looming road game at Saint Louis. Dayton has been playing a lot better the past few weeks, and they knew that a win here would catapult them into the Atlantic Ten title discussion. They scored a remarkable 56 points in the second half, running a decent Temple defense right off the floor. Khalif Wyatt had another big game for Temple (28 points, including 5-for-10 on threes), but Dayton had a balanced attack with six different players scoring 9 or more points.

Temple is now 0-1 in Atlantic Ten play, but I wouldn't worry too much about a loss in a game like this. They're still my pick to win the conference, and they have a solid resume with wins over Duke, Wichita State and Villanova, and only one bad loss (Bowling Green). That game Wednesday on the road at Saint Louis will give them a great opportunity to grab back control of the A-10 title race. After that their schedule will be fairly easy for the rest of the month. Due to a scheduling quirk, Temple only gets one regular season game against their three chief rivals: Xavier, Saint Louis and Dayton. They need to make those games count.

Dayton had bad early season losses to Miami (OH) and Buffalo, but they've now got back-to-back wins over Saint Louis and Temple (in addition to non-conference wins over Alabama and Minnesota) and are suddenly a real contender to win the Atlantic Ten. They have to beware their own letdown game Wednesday on the road at a decent St. Bonaventure team. But they also didn't get the same scheduling breaks that Temple did. They still have to play a home-and-home with Xavier, and also have to head to Saint Louis.