Sunday, November 15, 2015

Morning News: Rashun Davis Buries Georgetown, EC Matthews Done, Butler Scores All Of The Points, And More

Rashun Davis stunned Georgetown

New Bracket Projection The first bracket projection of the regular season had three changes to the Field of 68: Oklahoma State, Tulsa, and Princeton move in, replacing Rhode Island, Illinois State, and Harvard. Overall, there weren't too many teams moving more than a seed line or two. You just don't want to overreact to single game sample sizes.

Rashun Davis Buries Georgetown Radford/Georgetown was close the entire way, with the two teams within a possession or two almost the entire way. Both had multiple chances to win the game, including a wide open Isaac Copeland jumper for the Hoyas at the end of the first overtime period. In the end, however, it was Radford's Rashun Davis dribbling the ball up in the final seconds of the second overtime and drilling the game-winning three, which you can see below:
The biggest worry for Georgetown here was defensively, particularly on the defensive glass (Radford had a 14-6 offensive rebounding advantage). The 1.01 PPP that Georgetown allowed don't seem like a lot, but Radford is not a good scoring team - the Hoyas defense was just consistently flat-flooted and mistake-prone. And for the Hoyas, they have a real risk of an ugly win/loss record to start this season, as Maryland, Wisconsin, and then either Duke or VCU make up their next three games.

EC Matthews Done For The Season This was the fear after his injury Friday night, and it's a crushing loss for a Rhode Island team that had an at-large quality roster. Dan Hurley still has a lot of talent to work with (including the new transfer Four McGlynn), so don't count them out of the at-large race quite yet, but it's going to be much more difficult without last season's leading scorer.

Butler Scores All Of The Points Citadel is a bad team that plays at a high tempo, so they're built to allow a lot of points, but this was ridiculous. The 144 points that Butler scored were not just a school record, but were the most by a Division I team since VMI scored scored 151 points against Central Penn on November 29, 2010, and the most by a Division I team against a Division I opponent since TCU scored 153 points against UT-Pan American on November 29, 1997. In the end this result doesn't really mean anything other than it was just crazy and bizarre.

NC State Loses Terry Henderson Things have gone from bad to worse for NC State. After losing their opener Friday night to William & Mary, they now lose Terry Henderson for 6-8 weeks, too. Henderson averaged 11.7 points per game two seasons ago with West Virginia, and he is a huge part of this Wolfpack team. The silver lining is that if NC State plays great in the ACC then their non-conference struggles won't really matter, but at this point I'd say that non-conference struggles look significantly more likely than playing great in the ACC.

Colorado State Defeats Northern Iowa Northern Iowa was a team I thought would be in the mix for an at-large bid. They certainly have the offensive talent, but their defense was utterly torched by Colorado State here. Colorado State's 1.18 PPP doesn't blow you away, but they did it despite not shooting the ball well. They hit just 30% behind the arc, and scored 18 of their 21 made two-pointers inside the paint. It was a team-wide effort, with five players scoring in double-digits but none with more than 16. Northern Iowa doesn't have much time now to prepare for an angry Stephen F. Austin team on Tuesday.

Providence Tops Harvard Most college basketball analysts sold their Harvard stock after Siyani Chambers was lost to a season-ending injury, and Harvard did nothing to assuage those concerns in their first game of the season against a Division I opponent. One player to keep an eye on for the future is Tommy McCarthy, their top 2015 recruit, who was active but couldn't get anything to work out (2-for-13 shooting, a game-high 7 assists, but with 4 turnovers).

Providence is going to be the Kris Dunn Show all season long. He took 26 of Providence's 68 shots while also finishing with 5 assists, 6 rebounds, and 8 steals. He's not always the most efficient player, but he'll definitely fill up a box score. Just how good Providence actually is will probably stay a mystery for a few more weeks, as their November schedule is fairly soft.

Virginia Tech Drops Their Opener Buzz Williams has upgraded the level of talent at Virginia Tech, but they're still a long way off from seriously contending in the ACC, and this loss to Alabama State is embarrassing. That said, this is a very young team, and they did get good production from a highly touted freshman class. Chris Clarke in particular (10 points on 3-for-4 shooting) looked nice off the bench. The Hokies will probably steal a few games in ACC play, but as deep as that league is this season it's going to be a real grind. As for Alabama State, by mere virtue of beating any Power 5 team they are in the mix in the always-terrible SWAC, but it will take more than this win to suggest that they'd be anything more than a 16 seed if they win the SWAC tournament.

1 comment:

Chris said...

Can't express how depressing the EC Matthews injury is to Rhody fans. Big test tomorrow morning to see how the team does against a good opponent. Thought this was going to be the year they finally would make it back to the dance. Now I am on the fence. Ugggh