Saturday, November 09, 2013

Morning News: Oregon Impresses, Miami Stinks, Florida Gets An Asterisk

Most Impressive Performance: Oregon It was startling how well Oregon played in pulling the 82-75 upset of Georgetown. No Dominic Artis, no problem. Where they really stepped up was on the glass, as Mike Moser helped to fill in for Arsalan Kazemi (Oregon had a 47.1 OR%). That said, let's not overreact too much here. Georgetown was 1-for-15 behind the arc, and a quick whistle put all sorts of people in foul trouble. Oregon ended up taking 44 free throws. Throw in the fact that we tend to see a lot of weird results in these early season games outside the contiguous 48 states, and there's a chance this performance will end up looking like a fluke in March. But this is still a great performance.

Worst Performance: Miami (Fl) The Hurricanes fell to St. Francis (NY) 66-62 in overtime.  They lost basically everybody from last year's team, and we expected them to stink this season. Basically, they are who we thought they were.

Worst Performance (With An Asterisk): Florida This was a wildly unimpressive performance from the Gators. They were outrebounded and brutal defensively. They were bailed out by some poor North Florida shooting (including 8-for-15 at the line). Patric Young, in particular, was invisible (2 points and 2 rebounds in 20 minutes).

But as I said, this game gets an asterisk. The Gators were playing with only eight scholarship players, and two of them were still finding their legs after recovering from serious injuries (Will Yeguette and Eli Carter). Scottie Wilbekin, Dorian Finney-Smith and Damontre Harris were all suspended. And the good news was that Casey Prather was awesome (28 points on 10-for-15 shooting). With the three suspended players likely to still be suspended for the big game against Wisconsin on Tuesday, the Gators might have an uphill battle in Madison.

Best Bubble Battle: Providence 82, Boston College 78, OT Maybe "best" isn't the right word here. This was an ugly, ugly game.  55 fouls were called, and each team had three different players foul out. So I'm not sure how much we can conclude from this one. This is a nice win for Providence, though. Bryce Cotton (28 points) was the star for the Friars.

Not Sure What To Make Of This Result: Northern Colorado 60, Kansas State 58 There are some things that were clear on opening night. Iowa looked good. Miami looked bad. You can fill in a lot of the rest. But no game was more confusing than this one. Kansas State is a team I expected to be a bubble team, but at the same time, Northern Colorado is a sleeper team that I said could slip into the Top 100 this season.

Northern Colorado has been on an upward trend for several years, and it's not inconceivable that they could be a pretty good team. Maybe this isn't as terrible of a loss as most people think this is for Kansas State. But... it's impossible to tell after one game. We need more information about both of these teams.

Almost A Disaster: UConn The Huskies nearly blew a 17 point second half lead to Maryland. The Terps finished the game on a 15-5 run, but came up 1 point short. They had several chances in the final minute to take the lead but just couldn't get over the hump.

Dumbest Quote: John Calipari Every quote here from John Calipari is terrible. Basically, he's saying that it's not fair that his team has to play elite teams early in the season when they're so young and have so far to go. First of all, you scheduled the games. Second of all, it's not fair that your team has 7 potential future first round NBA draft picks. Suck it up.

Injury News: Josh Oglesby The Iowa guard is out 4-6 weeks with a foot injury. Obviously you never want to have injuries, but I don't think there's reason for Iowa to panic. First of all, Oglesby isn't a star (he is likely to be the first or second guy off the bench). And second of all, I don't think Iowa is going to be at serious risk of missing the NCAA Tournament. Their season will be about finishing high in the Big Ten standings and then trying to win a couple of games in the NCAA Tournament. In other words, Oglesby will be back for the games that matter.

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