Saturday, February 23, 2013

Georgetown Leaves The Carrier Dome Victorious

#11 Georgetown 57, #8 Syracuse 46
This could be the last time Georgetown plays at the Carrier Dome for a long time, and they left the building with a very nice victory based on a simple formula: Defense + Otto Porter. Louisville has the best defense in the Big East, but Georgetown is closing fast. They are now allowing only 0.90 PPP in Big East play. The Hoyas lead the Big East in eFG% against (42.0%), and held Syracuse to a 38.0 eFG% here. Brandon Triche and Michael Carter-Williams were both completely bottled up.

Of course, offense has been a problem for Georgetown this season. That's how they ended up with a 37-36 game against Tennessee, a 49-48 game against Marquette and a 46-40 game against Towson. And Georgetown players not named Otto Porter shot 7-for-35 in this game (a 22.9 eFG%). But Otto Porter? He had 33 points on 12-for-19 shooting. It was arguably the best performance by any player in the nation this entire week. And on national television against a premier opponent, this is the type of performance that can vault a player into serious Big East Player of the Year discussion. At this point I'd still give that award to Russ Smith, but Porter has to at least be in the conversation with the way Georgetown is overperforming.

Georgetown now moves into sole possession of first place in the Big East. With an 11-3 record against the RPI Top 100 and a Sagarin ELO_SCORE that was 8th even before this win, Georgetown would be a 2 seed if the season ended now. And if they can hang onto that Big East title and sweep the Big East tournament, they'll probably end up with a 1 seed. It's been a pretty remarkable improvement for JTIII's squad. Their next game will be on Wednesday, at UConn.

The odds for a Syacuse 1 seed are getting pretty long, and if the season ended now they'd actually probably be a 3 seed. They are 10-4 in Big East play, with only a 4-4 record against the RPI Top 50. They don't have time to catch their breath before a tough road game at Marquette on Monday, followed by a big home game against Louisville next Saturday. They need to win at least one of those two games to stay alive for a share of the Big East regular season title.

Nebraska 64, Iowa 60
This was a terrible collapse and a terrible loss for Iowa. A total debacle. Iowa led 41-22 early in this game, and was outscored 42-19 the rest of the way. After Nebraska finally fought back to tie the game, Dylan Talley nailed a cold-blooded three with 9.2 seconds to go. Mike Gesell rushed back down the floor and attempted his own three, but missed. Ray Gallegos then hit a free throw to effectively end the game.

The big question for Iowa is just how much the Selection Committee is really going to pay attention to the RPI. Because their RPI stinks (it drops to 89th after this loss), but it mostly stinks because five of their non-conference opponents turned out to be 300+ RPI teams, which is RPI poison. If you look at every other metric, even after this loss, you can make a case for Iowa as an at-large team. They are 6-8 in the best conference in the country, with quality wins (Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa State) that more than balance out a few bad losses (Virginia Tech, Nebraska and Purdue). Their Sagarin ELO_SCORE is still likely to be very close to 40th when the new numbers come out tomorrow.

I do think that Iowa needs to get to 9-9 in conference play. A sub-.500 conference record and a bad RPI will be tough to overcome. But that means that even if they fall at Indiana next weekend, they can still make the Tournament if they win their other three games, all of which they'll be favored for. If they can get to 9-9 and then win a game in the Big Ten tournament, then they should be in pretty good shape. Their next game will be on Wednesday, against Purdue.

Nebraska continues to improve under Tim Miles, even if their level of talent has to dramatically improve for them to seriously contend in the top half of the Big Ten. They can win ugly games like this where they slow games down, prevent transition offense, and try to grind things out against a midlevel Big Ten team, but they can't yet go toe-to-toe with the big boys. This is their best win of the season, though. Their next game is a brutal one, at Wisconsin on Tuesday.

LSU 97, Alabama 94, 3OT
The amount of mediocre SEC basketball today was like some kind of cosmic joke. Three games went to overtime, with this one going three overtimes and the Tennessee/Texas A&M game going four overtimes. And let's be honest, none of the basketball was good. As I joked on twitter, I wasn't watching SEC basketball so much as I was rubbernecking SEC basketball. To put this basketball in perspective, let me describe to you what LSU did in the third overtime here. They had four turnovers, including one where Shavon Coleman had the ball all by himself with his team up four with under 30 seconds to go and he was going for the exclamation drunk... but dribbled it off his leg out of bounds without a defender within 25 feet. They also had a lane violation on a free throw and, with the game seemingly in hand, committed a foul on a made layup by Trevor Releford. And remember, they did all that in five minutes and outscored Alabama by three points over that stretch. All you can do is shake your head.

Poor Trevor Releford actually had a good game - he scored 36 points on 14-for-18 shooting. But naturally, most of the important shots in the game were instead taken by Rodney Cooper (18 points on 7-for-22 shooting) instead. LSU was led by Johnny O'Bryant, who had 24 points (on 9-for-15 shooting) and 10 rebounds. In a game this close, both teams had any number of chances to win the game, so I won't say that Alabama got outplayed. But I can't say that they played well enough to deserve a win either.

Even after this loss, Alabama is still 10-4 in SEC play. They're almost certainly not going to win at Florida, but a 13-5 finish is still realistic. But even at 13-5, there's still a decent chance that Alabama will not go Dancing. First of all, the SEC stinks. Their best wins have come over Kentucky and Villanova, which are more than balanced out by bad losses to Mercer, Tulane, Auburn, LSU and Dayton. They are 0-3 against the RPI Top 50, with five RPI 100+ losses. The Tide can expect their Sagarin ELO_SCORE to be near 60th when the new numbers come out tomorrow. So they'd definitely be an NIT team if the season ended now. If they can go 13-5 and then win a game in the SEC tournament then that will at least put them in serious consideration for an at-large bid. At that point they'll be at the mercy of the bubble, unless they can really go on a run in the SEC tournament. Their next game will be on Tuesday, against Auburn.

LSU is quietly 16-9 overall and 7-7 in the SEC, but they are only 7-7 against the RPI Top 200 with an RPI 200+ loss, so don't start worrying about their at-large chances yet. They'd have to win their final four regular season games and then make some noise in the SEC tournament to warrant serious at-large attention. Their next game will be on Wednesday, against Arkansas.

2 comments:

Mike said...

In that Nebraska-Iowa game. Miles did not make one sub in the second half, same five guys from halftime on. Im probably ignorant here but I had never seen that before. interesting to say the least.

Anonymous said...

Well that happens when your bench has almost 0 'big 10 bench level' reserves