Morning News: St. Mary's Is Having A Hawaiian Nightmare, Irish Lose Biedschied, Providence Loses Their Freshman Class

Welp

St. Mary's Is Having A Hawaiian Nightmare Yesterday, I talked about St. Mary's suffering a terrible loss to South Carolina, putting them in the consolation bracket at the Diamond Head Classic and putting the entire WCC at real risk of being a one-bid league. Well... 24 hours later they suffered another terrible loss, this time to Hawaii. On one hand, they fell on a jumper with 1.4 seconds left by Nebraska transfer Christian Standhardinger, but on the other hand they were legitimately outplayed. The Gaels actually shot 48% on threes and still lost. They committed 17 turnovers and allowed Hawaii to earn 29 free throws. They were just sloppy and slow.

The Gaels are 45th in Pomeroy and 40th in the Sagarin PREDICTOR, so they're good enough to earn an at-large bid, but their resume is a mess. As I said yesterday, wins over teams like Boise State (on the road) and Louisiana Tech will impress the computers a whole lot more than they'll impress the Selection Committee. To learn an at-large bid (even assuming that they beat George Mason in their final game in Hawaii) they're going to have to beat Gonzaga at least once and they're going to have to go at least 13-5 in conference play. And even that might not be enough.

As for Hawaii, they only went 10-8 in their first season in the Big West, but look to be much more of a contender in their second season in the league. UC Irvine is still the favorite, in my opinion, but you can make a case that UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara and Hawaii have been the three clear best teams in the league so far.

Notre Dame Loses Cam Biedschied To Transfer The decision by Cam Biedshied to redshirt this season was confusing originally (you can see my take on it at the time here), but it makes a lot more sense now. He is leaving the school to go play elsewhere. The timing is particularly brutal, as folks in the media had been discussing the possibility of the Irish pulling his redshirt to help take up some of the missing minutes of Jerian Grant, who is done for (at least) the season. Assuming that Grant leaves at the end of the season also, that makes two key players that the Notre Dame program will lose to transfer in two days. Throwing in the epic collapse to Ohio State on Saturday (where it turns out the Notre Dame players already knew it would be Jerian Grant's last game, which makes the loss even more painful) and it's been a brutal few days for the Notre Dame program.

Providence Loses Its Entire Freshman Class Highly rated recruits not panning out due to suspensions and/or injuries has become an epidemic at Providence under Ed Cooley. The latest problems are Brandon Austin and Rodney Bullock, their two scholarship freshman. Both had been suspended, and it's now official that they won't play this season. Providence is hanging around near the bubble, but there will be no relief to a roster that was made so thin after the Kris Dunn season-ending injury.