Morning News: Alex Williams & Noah Vonleh, Florida State By 18 Over VCU, Northeastern Upsets Georgetown

Alex Williams sends the New Mexico/UAB into overtime with this spectacular buzzer beater

Best Game: #19 New Mexico 97, UAB 94, 2OT No question here. This game had a spectacular finish to both regulation and overtime. The shot of the night was Kendall Williams at the end of the regulation, nailing a three to send the game to the first overtime. Alex Kirk's three wasn't quite as spectacular, but it sent the game to a second overtime. And it wasn't just those two shots, as Williams and Kirk were basically playing a two-man game in key possessions late. As fun as this game was, though, it doesn't mean much in the long run. New Mexico avoided a pretty terrible upset. They will be immediately looking forward to their quality opponent later today: UMass.

Strangest Score: Florida State 85, #10 VCU 67 I have a feeling that this score will look as odd in March as it does now. VCU actually forced a turnover on 29.4% of possessions (they averaged 28.5% last season), but that probably wasn't enough. Florida State has ball handling problems, and VCU should have eaten them alive more than they did.

The dirty secret of #HAVOC is that if you don't turn the ball over against VCU, you're probably going to score. The nature of their press means that they're in terrible position for half court defense and they always allow opponents to shoot well from the field. What made this game a particular blowout was that VCU was horrific on offense. Despite 14 steals, VCU only had a 32.7 eFG%, which was their second worst shooting performance of the century (a 32.2 eFG% against Georgia State on January 4th, 2012 was their only shooting performance worse than this one since 1999).

In other words, don't totally panic about this result. VCU's defense wasn't good, and their offense was as bad as it will be all season. This was a fluke result. But you knew that already. Still, this is a great win for a Florida State team that moves to 4-0 and has a chance to really make waves if they can knock off Michigan later today.

Biggest Upset: Northeastern 63, Georgetown 56 Florida State over VCU was a pretty big upset, and the scoring margin was a bigger surprise than Northeastern by 7, but in terms of pure wins and losses I think this was the biggest upset of the night. And this result kind of snuck up on everybody. Georgetown led by 14 points in the second half, but their offense just shut down and they stopped hitting shots. In the final four minutes they had eight possessions and scored precisely two points.

Certainly this is going to give the Hoyas Vietnam-style flashbacks to some of those horrible offensive performances last season. JTIII will have to rally the troops for the Kansas State game. If they get past that one they'll probably get VCU, and a chance to salvage something out of the Puerto Rico Tip-Off.

That Other Freshman: Noah Vonleh He's not going to get the press that Parker, Wiggins, Randle and Gordon are going to get, mostly because his teammates aren't as good, but Noah Vonleh has been spectacular in the early going so far. He basically fouled out Washington's entire front line (and the Huskies have a thin rotation to begin with), finishing with 18 points and 9 rebounds en route to a 102-84 win. And as far as Indiana goes, this was also a coming out game for Troy Williams, who led the Hoosiers with 22 points and looked super athletic.

While the freshmen looked good, I think this win is a little overrated for Indiana. Washington looks like a good team when you watch them on the floor - they have a good name and the uniforms of a good team. But they're not a good team. Stony Brook is better than Washington. What Indiana fears is a team with a deep, good front court that can limit opportunities in the paint and turn the Hoosiers into a jump shooting team. As we saw in the LIU game, Indiana just lacks outside shooters, and their offense will grind to a halt if they're not getting layups. I'll be curious to see what they do later today against UConn, and how they handle DeAndre Daniels and the Huskies front court.

The Best 1-4 Team In The Country: Boston College After a 72-70 loss to UConn, Boston College falls to a disappointing 1-4 start. And certainly they haven't played as well as I thought they would. But at the same time, Boston College is really not that bad of a team. The loss to Toledo is bad, but their other three losses have been away from home against teams that are either Tournament teams or bubble teams (UConn, UMass and Providence), and they've been an unfortunate 1-3 in games decided by 3 points or less or in overtime.

Considering their strength of schedule, it's going to be tough for BC to get a good enough won-loss record to make a run at an at-large bid, but don't be surprised if they take down a few big scalps this season. Meanwhile, UConn escapes to set up a big match-up with Indiana tonight. You might want to tune in.