Morning News: Freshmen Star At Champions Classic, VCU Beats Virginia

The above photo of Duke Coach Mick Krizilonski comes from the 1969 West Point yearbook and made its way around the web Tuesday. It's just fantastic. And that brings us to:

A Fabulous Champions Classic: It's something I talk about all the time, but what makes college basketball better than college football is that our sport rewards good schedules while college football punishes it. We get to see four of the five top ranked teams in the country take the floor in Chicago, while the top programs from different conferences basically never play each other in college football.

It's not that college football coaches are cowards - they're just not idiots. For all the talk about the BCS, in the end the pollsters determine the BCS title game and they will always rank every 12-0 BCS conference team ahead of every 11-1 BCS conference team. You move up the polls when you win and move down when you lose. It basically doesn't matter who you play. So what coach would be dumb enough to give his team extra chances to lose when there's no benefit to beating a quality opponent? But in college basketball? We reward SOS, so we get these games.

The results? #2 Michigan State beat #1 Kentucky 78-74 while #5 Kansas beat #4 Duke 94-83. Both games, while fun, were an exercise in media overreaction. It was farcical seeing everybody talk about Michigan State's experience destroying Kentucky's freshmen totally unready to play at this level... they apparently had enough experience by halftime, because they clearly outplayed the Spartans while outscoring them 42-34 in the second half. The story of the game was the Adreian Payne match-up with Julius Randle inside. Payne has done a nice job of developing a more complete game and looked great. Randle is very raw and has to develop a more varied offensive game, but he's an incredible physical talent. You didn't need to read any mock drafts to see that he has the highest ceiling of any of the players in that game. He'll only get better.

The Kansas/Duke game was billed as a Jabari Parker/Andrew Wiggins showdown, and both freshmen were certainly fantastic, but the difference in the game was the support Wiggins got vs the support Parker got. The story for me was Perry Ellis, the McDonald's All-American who struggled to get on the floor last season because he just wasn't ready as a true freshman, but who was superb last night. He has tremendous athleticism for a 6'8" guy (particularly a 6'8" guy who appears to be 45 years old). He led Kansas with both 24 points and 9 rebounds.

In all, I think we can come up with three conclusions from the Champions Classic. First of all, all of the three hyped super-freshmen lived up to the billing. A bunch of annoying people in the media spent the night telling us who was their new #1 and #2 and #3 draft pick and then re-evaluating every 5 minutes. I really don't care about that right now. Let's talk about the NBA Draft in June, okay? The second conclusion is that all four of these teams are really good and deserve their preseason spot as conference favorites. And the third conclusion is that this basketball season is going to fun, even with all the foul calls. Those games were great. Let's do this again.

Best Game: #14 VCU 59, #25 Virginia 56 The best game of the night got lost at the same time as the Champions Classic, but this was just a fantastic game between two teams that are similar and so different at the same time. Obviously #havoc is the polar opposite of Virginia's slow, grinding Tony Bennett style. But these two teams both put on a defensive clinic, and are so well coached. Virginia lost this game at the free throw line, though. They were only 19-for-33 for the game, including 1-for-4 during VCU's 10-3 run in the final four minutes of the game.

Not Sure What To Make Of: #20 Wisconsin 59, #11 Florida 53 Depending on where you looked, Wisconsin was either a 6 or 6.5 point favorite. So this game basically held to form, and I had thought that spread was too low with Florida missing three suspended players. That said, this game was only close at the end because Florida jumped out to a quick 12 point lead due to white hot shooting from Michael Frazier (who finished 5-for-7 behind the arc). Otherwise, Wisconsin did a nice job limiting Casey Prather, while Patric Young was very underwhelming. The Badgers, meanwhile, were uncharacteristically sloppy. Traevon Jackson and Sam Dekker combined for 9 turnovers. So like I said, I just don't know what to make of this game.

Worst Performance: TCU Nobody expected TCU to be good this season, but a home loss to Longwood is horribly embarrassing. Longwood hasn't beaten a team with an RPI higher than 180 since 2008, and they have never beaten an RPI Top 125 team in approximately a decade in Division I. There's a good chance that TCU won't be the first.

Somehow This Wasn't The Worst Performance Of The Night: UNLV The Runnin' Rebs were absolutely run off the floor, at home, by UC-Santa Barbara. This game was never competitive. The Gauchos led by 16 points at halftime and pushed their lead up to 26 before cruising to a 21 point victory. UCSB shot out of their minds (a 64.4 eFG%), but there's no excuse for a loss this bad. If UNLV does end up on the bubble in March, don't be surprised if we're still hearing about the margin of this defeat. Meanwhile, in a season where the Big West doesn't have a clear best team, UCSB has put the entire league on notice. They have to be considered a contender.

Good Win You Didn't Hear About: Xavier over Tennessee Both of these teams have a real potential to end up on the bubble in March, and Xavier escaped after a furious finish. Jordan McRae was probably the best player on the floor for either team, and he nearly dragged the Vols to a nice comeback victory, but Xavier dominated the paint and Tennessee wasted too many opportunities at the free throw line (37%).

Surprisingly Ineffective: Ohio State And Indiana While Michigan State and Wisconsin impressed for the Big Ten, Ohio State and Indiana both squeaked by inferior opponents. Indiana beat LIU by 1 while Ohio State escaped Ohio by only 10 despite taking 30 more free throws and despite fouling out four separate Bobcats players. For Indiana, they have a clear shooting problem. Last year they had four regulars that hit 44% or better behind the arc, without a single other regular cracking 35%. All four of those sharpshooters are gone, either to graduation, transfer or the NBA Draft. LIU was able to pack the paint and goad Indiana into jump shots. You can bet that Indiana will see a lot of zones and packed paints during Big Ten play until they prove that they can hit outside shots.

I'm not quite as ready to panic about Ohio State. The Buckeyes just happened to shoot really poorly (5-for-18 behind the arc) and seemed to be rusty more than anything. They have too much talent on the floor to not be a pretty good team. It's very premature to argue that they were overrated preseason. They'll get a great test on Saturday at Marquette.