Dont look now but Clemson is #11 and you come to Littlejohn Saturday...

What was it three days ago, Boston College goes into Chapel Hill and beats pretty much everyones' odds-on favorite to win it all (UNC) in very impressive fashion.

Tonight, with under 4 minutes to play in Chestnut Hill, Harvard (yes mighty Harvard) leads BC by 10.

Duke is the best team in the country. They play the best, most consistent defense.

Karl, cool thing is we'll actually get to find that out for real in this particular D-I NCAA Sport.

Harvard up 11 with under a minute left btw. Wow.

Yeah, but you're Clemson for chrissake. You do this every year before you slide during ACC play. ;) And no matter what, I'm counting on you taking your first loss by the 21st at the latest anyway.... :D

Thats 16-0 good sir

Arkansas hosting Mississippi State to open conference play tonight. Hope to build on momentum of upsetting 2 top 10 teams within a week. I just had to order an extra dish network package to watch the game even though it's supposed to be broadcast to our local Fox Sports channel. For some reason, when they try to do that, it gets on FSN South, but most people in Arkansas get FSN Southwest.

Grrr.

It's a bizzaro world when the announcers are singing the praises of Sanchez.

Well, to be fair, the results of his post play have been:

1) travel
2) missed shot
3) got fouled, made one free throw

That's pretty good for him.

True. Jiri's annoying me by taking too damned many shots and Rotnei's stroke seems to be off some so far. But man, do I -love- watching Washington play.

We could stand to be less sloppy with our ballhandling too.

Lid on the basket. Awful first half. Down 2. Playing like that is the recipe to get beaten by an average Mississippi State team.

STOP FUCKING SHOOTING, JIRI! :mad: :mad: :mad:

It might be worthwhile to reverse the trend of missing every shot and them making every shot.

We're also acting like defense is something foreign. Ugh.

Uh okay, I'm a moron. I've been calling Stefan Welsh, Jiri Welsh all night. *facepalms*

I was wondering who you were talking about.

Yeah, I don't know how that happened.

Man, we're just falling apart on both ends of the floor right now.

Well there's your difference in this game. Three point shooting. Jesus Christ.

MSU: 11/25
Ark: 2/17

And the announcer just said, and I agree, that Arkansas's shots from three have been overall better looks. It's just that MSU is making everything they throw up and Arkansas is not.

Great. All that fanfare, and we get to start 0-1 in the SEC. Sigh.

Mizzou was the same way yesterday. Had a great non-conference season and then promptly laid an egg on the road at Nebraska in our first conference game. Frustrating.

Memphis won its first road game yesterday at UCF. I think the team showed maturity as they were down 8 at one point in a rocking environment at UCF. Tyreke Evans is playing the PG position and doing a pretty good job. He still makes freshman mistakes, but not nearly as much as he did in the losses against Syracuse, Xavier, and Gerogetown.

If Memphis runs the table in CUSA again this year, it will be impressive. CUSA is as strong as it has been since the split and Memphis is not as good. The one thing we can do though, is throw an almost endless supply of bodies at our opponents. We rotate ten guys. I think our depth and pace won the game yesterday at UCF.

VERY.... frustrating..

G.E., how are ya?

Good win for Memphis yesterday in Orlando. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it down, but it was a madhouse. UCF broke the attendance record at the New Arena (9,800+, with capacity listed at 9,500), man what a difference a few years make. I can remember going to games and being able to sit right behind the bench with attendance numbering maybe 1K on a good night.

Hopefully this game gives the Knights confidence and the team is able to make a run at postseason play. With one of the youngest teams in the nation, we shall see though.

Jermaine Taylor proved that the CUSA Player of the Year hype is deserved, with 24 against against the Tigers.

The depth was the difference. The press itself didn't cause a ton of turnovers but it did slowly wear down the Knights. That was a heckuva run by the Tigers (18-3, I believe) down the stretch that completely flipped the game.

Now that the game with the UofM is over, I hope to see the Tigers continue to win the rest of the season and represent the League well once again.

UNC is now 0-2 in ACC play.

Wake Forest 92, North Carolina 89

That Teague kid for Wake was incredible. Wake is definitely for real. This loss for UNC isn't a huge surprise, but coming after the loss to boston college it is disturbing to be 0-2 in the conference.

Carolina will be fine. A few losses early on could bring them closer together in the long run.

Or, they could be struggling a bit with the weighty expectations that have been placed on them. I'm not sure I've seen a team in recent memory be placed on so high a pedestal as this Carolina team has (probably have to go back to the 1984 UNC team that had Jordan in his junior year). I'm sure they'll finally get things back into gear, but they've gone from being discussed as an all-time team that had potential to run the table for the first time since Indiana in 1976 to now facing a prospect of not only not being the top seed in the ACC tournament, but also perhaps scrambling a bit to make sure they aren't playing in the first round on Thursday (shouldn't be an issue, but it's at least on the table now where it didn't seem fathomable before last Sunday).

Given how lousy all my teams were yesterday, Wake's win was a small salvation to the weekend, at least. :D

Yeah, well, I didn't necessarily say you'd start sliding against us, did I? :p :D

I do agree with Wolfpack in that there were a lot of things said about the potential of this Carolina team prior to the season, in terms of this possibly being among the all-time best teams in College Basketball.

This team still is the odds-on favorite to cut down the nets in early April, but if a shield of invincibility (primarily via the media of course) existed prior to and early on this season, it's now gone.

For what it's worth, the best team that I've seen play in my lifetime was a team that didn't win it all, the 1990-'91 UNLV Runnin' Rebles, which went 34-0 before losing to Duke in the Final Four. They still will be the best in my humble opinion after this season as well.

And sealed this as one of my worst sports weekend's in awhile ;)

You and Karlifornia are both right of course. Also, damn this crappy 12 team conference for messing up basketball scheduling. UNC only plays Wake once, and only plays Clemson once this year. If I could change anything about sports I'd almost certainly take the selfish route and send BC, Miami and Va Tech back to the Big East where they belong :P

That Clemson game's in Chapel Hill, though, right? How conve-e-e-e-nient!

Besides, I'd kill to have my team suffer anywhere near the "problems" your team is having right now (you mean they aren't the greatest team in history? Horrors!). I'm just damn sick at this point of watching the SOS from the NC State basketball program. I mean, if Wake-f'ing-Forest can go from outhouse to penthouse in basically two years, what in the hell have we been doing over the past two decades?

UCLA beats USC tonight. USC hung tough with UCLA for most of the night. I love Hackett's game. You knew he probably deserved getting his jaw broken by Mayo last year, but the kid is college basketballs version of Stockton. Dirty as hell but knows how to do it and you'd love him on your team

Nice win for Minnesota today, shooting 62% and 9-9 from 3 and holding Penn State to 36% from the field. Good to see that the junior college transfers are starting to contribute, Devron Bostick had 19 points in 14 minutes and Paul Carter had 14 in 20 minutes in the 20 point win.

They have had a fairly week schedule up to this point, but at 15-1 right now and with the way they've played it's amazing how much Tubby has turned them around already.

Yup, that was a tough one tonight. Even though I expected it to be tough, I still thought the Bruins should have done better than they did in some aspects of the game. That stretch in the middle of the second half where UCLA let the Trojans go on a 10-0 run was ugly, just no offensive continuity. I am glad they got it back together before the end.

Trojans are like the Oregon State football team of PAC-10 basketball...they always seem to start off slowly, but come out of nowhere towards the end of the season.

Fuck Georgetown.

Nice to see Tubby has the Gophers continuing to win the games they should, taking the record to 16-1. Needing to have a great showing in the Big Ten with thier non conference schedule it would have really hurt to drop a conference game to a worse team in Wisconsin.

Wonder what the Kentucky folks in charge are thinking about Tubby Smith now. Good for him. Nobody classier in the College Game.

St. Mary's with 13 wins in a row now and just one loss - to UTEP. We've been getting a lot of their games on TV over here (and their Pepperdine game is on our ESPN this weekend) which has been great. I finally feel like I have a team to root for in college hoops now. ;)

Hopefully this is the year someone knocks Gonzaga off the mantle atop the WCC. St. Mary's looks to be the team to do it.

UTEP was the only loss for the Gaels. That W may be huge come selection Sunday for the Miners.

GO CUSA!!

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like everytime there is a Pac-10 Game on Fox Sports Net there is at least one UCLA'er among the announcing crew?

By the way, any thoughts on what happens with Arizona Basketball at the end of the season? This guy coaching is listed as the Interim correct?

What's wrong with that? :D


It's too soon to say if the current guy can take the reins, or if they will have the national coaching search, but I don't think there's any doubt that what Lute built up calls for a replacement on the level to keep what he did in place. The Pac 10 is better when Arizona is one of the top programs. There are some terrific coaches at the other programs (Bennett, Montgomery, Floyd, Sendek, Kent, Romar and of course Howland), and UA needs to step up and fill that spot big time.

It has long been suggested that UA is the job Mark Few would leave Gonzaga for, but we'll see. That would be a great hire.

Minnesota came back to win that game last night? Wow. Tubby is doing a great job so far.

Just as a note, the fact that Tubby may be doing well in Minnesota doesn't change the fact that he was not getting the job done at Kentucky, which is why he was let go. He may be capable of doing a great job, but he wasn't. His recruiting especially was far below where it had been.

Definitely worth watching.

Funny stuff.

Looks like there are a lot of good games tomorrow. I'm bummed that Wake/Clemson is on at the same time as Illinois/Michigan State.

So after getting to watch most of the Syracuse/ND game, and a good chunk of the G'Town/Duke game, I was settling in for the big game of the day: Wake/Clemson.

Only ABC here is instead showing Kansas @ Colorado. Ugh.

Dola: just found Arizona St @ UCLA on CBS, which makes for a pretty nice consolation prize. Very deep pool of quality games today.

+1 , especially since I had no idea what it was going to be. Even my son liked that one.

The Paul Hewitt era continues right on track, losing at home in OT to NC State.

Yeah, I noticed all these good games were going on at once. And my local programming gets Wake-Clemson, too.

Of course, I am also watching the UCLA-ASU game.

I only saw the final 3 minutes of regulation + OT, but UCLA has looked absolutely terrible.

Yes, they did, and you can put that at the feet of the coach who, IIRC, is supposed to be above criticism because he took the team to three Final Fours in a row. It was probably the worst 13 minutes in UCLA basketball history, or damn near it.

And the whole reason for it is because said coach, for all his amazing ability in coaching defense and teams and preparing and recruiting, just can't coach an offense to save his life. Anyone who thinks the 30-second-dribble-and-pass-along-the-perimeter-and-then-rush-an-awful-hurried-shot-against-the-clock offense is some thing that just popped up today, then that person hasn't been watching UCLA basketball. Howland has needed someone who actually knows offense to run that part of the team since the day he got into coaching, and he's too stubborn and arrogant to recognize it, which, IMO, is a major fault for any coach to have.

I don't think ASU fans would even say they had a great game. They just had a good game, and UCLA out-undered them.

That was....


awful? I would have rather seen us lose Lavin style then how we lost in that game. By far the worse loss in Howland's UCLA tenure.

UNC looks terrible for 15 1/2 minutes vs Miami and trails 32-23. They get it together in the final 4 1/2, closing out the 1st half with a 13-0 run to lead 36-32. UNC is committing way too many unforced turnovers. Jack McClinton looks like an NBA scorer for Miami, creating his own shot at will and making everything. Hansbrough has 20 points in the first half.

Wayne Ellington is on fire. He was scoreless in the first half. He's 7 for 8 from 3 point range in the 2nd half and has scored 23 points in 13 minutes.

edit: he's been a bit off all season, his season high was 17 coming into tonight and he hadn't really distinguished himself as a scoring threat this season yet. Maybe this will get him going.

One thing I've noticed about GT is they play a very sloppy game and their defensive pressure seems to force the other team into doing the same. Maybe it's just that Maryland and NC State aren't that good, but they games were full of turnovers, bad shots, and missed free throws.

Also, they're talent level is a bit low. Lawal is a good player, Miller and Shumpert look like solid guards, but the rest seems to be a mixed bag, although I did like the play of Sheehan today and when I saw them a couple of months ago.

If they can take care of the ball and pound into the post more, they could be a solid squad down the stretch with their interior defense.

Haven't updated much on Arkansas lately. They've crashed badly after beating Texas and Oklahoma. Lost 3 straight, mostly, I'd say, due to the disappearing act of the perimeter shooting game. Mostly Welsh and Clarke. Three consecutive absolutely horrid perimeter shooting games.

12-4 and 0-3 in conference play.

Blarg. Ugly game for Minnesota to drop one to Northwestern on the road. :(

Va Tech up 4 on Wake, in Winston Salem, with just under a minute left.

I hate Seth Greenburg.

Northwestern (Northwestern?) wins in East Lansing over #7 Michigan State 70-63.

Wake was only down 4 with 1:30 to go, what #1 team at home starts fouling that early? No matter how bad the other team is from the line. But worse than that is that they have no poise at all on offense. Their last 3 or 4 offensive possessions have been just ridiculously bad.

Despite the potential upset, I'm only half-watching...and that confused the hell out of me.

Grats to Va Tech but I am baffled at Wake Forest's play down the stretch.


on to UNC/Clemson, my favorite streak in all of sports, as Clemson hasn't won in Chapel Hill in 53 years. As Clemson has improved in recent years I get more and more nervous for this game.

Radii, Navy finally beat Notre Dame a couple of seasons back on the gridiron. Look out for CU.

High energy first half in Chapel Hill, a lot of fun to watch for both sides I would assume. Both teams have been a little sloppy at times. UNC ends the half on a nice run, Clemson killer Wayne Ellington has 16 at the half, and UNC leads 45-40. Should be an outstanding second half if its played at the same intensity.

Clemson can't hit a damn thing to start the second half, 10-2 run and its 55-42 UNC with about 17:30 to go.

And now Clemson has never won in Chapel Hill in 54 tries. UNC dominates the second half, winning 94-70. After being mostly non-existant this season, Wayne Ellington has now had two great games in a row, scoring 25 with (I think) 7 assists tonight.

Clemson should have a copyright on fading in big games.

Well, it was their second loss this year rather than their first.

"First you hate 'em. Then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them."

(Said with a little gest, in a "What I wouldn't give to be spat on" kind of way as a member of a fanbase that in some respects should be institutionalized with their behavior. :) )

not surprising.....knew they they had better talent.

Crazy doings in DC last night...

Dayton vs. George Washington tied 60-60 with :22 left. GW at the line for free throws. They miss the first, but hit the second. Dayton tries to inbounds the pass, but in the middle of the play, a technical foul is called. Turns out, GW was subbing a player in for the free throw shooter, and he entered the game during the first free throw. So, they had 6 players on the floor during the 2nd free throw, which went unnoticed. But after the FT make, the shooter did not leave the floor, so they had 6 defenders out there during the in-bounds, and were caught... when the whistle blew, one player tried to hide in press row, the other quickly tried to blend in with the bench... but it was too late.

UD gets 2 FT's, and the ball... and are fouled on the technical in-bounds play to take a 63-61 lead and win by that score. Dayton had been bit by some bad luck vs. GW over the years, it was nice to finally win one by luck instead.

Dayton goes to 17-2, 3-1 in the A10 and keep their bubble status alive with 3 home games to come, where they rarely lose.

Hah, I hope that looked as entertaining/amusing when it happened as it does in my head the way you're describing it.

Well that was embarrassing. I've been saying for a few years that Gary doesn't seem to be the right fit for Maryland, and never was it more obvious than today.

/tk

Just saw the score. Ouch.

Arkansas struggling at home to overcome Auburn's ridiculously over-expectation shooting (started 8/10 from 3). Seems to be a pattern here. Auburn leads by 7 at the break.

Big win for the UW at home today, continuing UCLA's struggles under Howland to win in Seattle - that's 5 straight now the Huskies have won over the Bruins in Hec Ed.

Washington now sits alone atop the Pac-10 at 6-1 in conference and 15-4 overall. I expect the Huskies to break in to the top-25 this coming week.

Big win for Virginia Tech on the road vs Miami, 88-83 in overtime. The Hokies have had a hell of a week.

So, 7 years is the shelf life for a national title. Good to know for when I can rightly start prepping the "Tressel must go" banners for Ohio State football home games.

Mizzou went on a nice tear while I was on vacation. Now 17-3 and 4-1 in conference with a RPI of 31. Looking good for a NCAA bid, which would be wonderful given our 4 year drought.

It's not like that. I've long thought Gary hurts himself as a coach. He does well (generally) coaching the underachievers and the ones who nobody else wanted. When they are more talented or have potential to be "stars" he doesn't seem to know what to do with them, to make them better and bring out the best. Therefore, we go through cycles..when we're good, we recruit better, which means we get the people that Gary doesn't seem to coach well, therefore we underperform, so we get the "lower" caliber players, who Gary responds well with, so we do better...rinse, repeat.

To be consistently competitive in the ACC, that doesn't work. It's something I've noticed over the last 10 years or so, and I have been saying for a few years now that either Gary needs to change his coaching style or we need a new coach.

/tk

I'm very happy right now.. and honestly.. pleasantly surprised.

Mike Anderson's recruiting at Mizzou has changed my thinking regarding this topic. Your description of Coach Williams reminds me a lot of the Quin Snyder years at Mizzou. We had some huge recruiting classes during his stay at MU where we'd have top 10 recruiting classes year in and year out. The problem was that most of the players would repeatedly fizzle out and not perform anywhere near their expectations.

In contrast, Mike Anderson has targeted atheletic players with great work ethic and good academic numbers. While many of them are not the elite 4 and 5 star players, they seem to be extremely coachable and adapt well to his style of coaching.

I don't think the ranking aspect of your point is as important as the players he was coaching. There are certain kids who fit well with a coach. Where a coach gets into trouble is when he/she goes out and gets the highest ranked players rather than the players who fit best to his coaching style. It may make the fan base happy on signing day, but it can be detrimental to the program's progress overall.

I agree with this, but this pretty much agrees with what I was trying to say. Maybe I should've expanded "Gary needs to change himself as a coach" to also specifically include his recruiting, but as of now, he hasn't, he's done the same thing a few times that I've been paying attention. We do well, the top players want to come to MD, he signs them, we do poorly, he gets players that are less..."desirable" by the top schools, we do better, he gets top players...

Drives me nuts. :)

/tk

Mizzou is on the opposite end of the recruiting right now. Mizzou recruited kids like Suggs (Washington), Brandenburg (Virginia), and Releford (Kansas) in the 2008 recruiting class who were all 4 or 5 star players. Coach Anderson ended up signing players like Marcus Denmon, Kim English, Lawrence Bowers, and Keith Ramsey. They were all three star players who are now getting significant minutes for our team while the previously listed recruits that we didn't sign are sitting on the bench and rarely playing for the other schools. The moans about our lackluster recruiting class have quickly vanished into the delight over a great start to the season.

I can easily see a similar problem at Illinois in the next two years when Weber takes in those highly ranked classes. I'm not sure that Weber is at his best with those kinds of players.

Anyone have a clue why Notre Dame and Georgetown are still ranked? Both have 6 losses including 3 straight losses. Neither has any business still being ranked.

Let me guess... Missouri's not ranked.

I think if it were up to a lot of people the entire ACC and Big East would be ranked and maybe Oklahoma, UCLA, and a few others.

Because the Big East is the best conference in the country. It doesn't count against them when they lose in conference.

Hey, leave the ACC out of this! We've got 4 very good teams at the top and they're all ranked highly. The rest of the crap in the middle can sort itself out and hopefully a couple of them can earn their way into the tournament in March. The Big East is the conference that thinks its a mortal lock to get 9 tournament teams and that is probably deserves 10 or 11. :P


Notre Dame's last 3 losses are all to top 10 teams. I would have still included them in the top 25. Georgetown I would not.

Interesting. Losing to three ranked teams in a row earns a ranking?

Losing to three top 10 teams means you're not a top 10 team. You then have to look at the rest of the team's games.

Mizzou doesn't belong in the rankings currently IMO. If MU wins both of the games this week (@KSU, Baylor), they probably have earned a ranking at this point. Certainly, people are starting to taking note......

http://www.fannation.com/si_blogs/in...ps?eref=fromSI

Can I guess the sleeper team? I'm gonna say it's Kansas!

Exactly. That only furthers my argument. Notre Dame is currently 71(!) in the RPI. Their NCAA credentials are as follows......

Record: 11-6
Record vs. Top 100: 2-5
Record vs. 100+: 9-1

One of their two top 100 wins is quickly diminishing in significance given their recent slide: Georgetown. They also already have a 'bad' loss against St. Johns. In addition, one of their wins is not counted for RPI and NCAA bid consideration. There's absolutely nothing about that resume in its current state that even suggests anything more than a bubble team, though even that is questionable given the RPI of 71.

Don't forget that the rest of the schedule for ND is not all that easy. Likely losses, or at least pick-em games:
@Pitt
@UCLA
Louisville
@WVU
@Providence
@UConn
Villanova(?)

Each of these games is currently projected as a loss on kenpom.com. If that holds, the Irish will be 16-14, 7-11 in conference and requiring a big-time run in the conference tournament to make the field.

As it stands right now, I think there are a lot of teams with better resumes than ND. They are on the brink of losing five in a row, including a pair of home games where they had previously won 45 straight. The team is a mess besides Harangody right now ... they can't hit 40% as a team and that is with LH shooting over 50% in the two home losses.

Losing to three ranked teams in a row earns you a slower drop than you would otherwise suffer had you lost to garbage. We're talking about the difference between being 25th and being in the "others receiving votes" category here, its a pretty marginal difference.

Dola, note that I'm talking about the subjective polls. I didn't realize we all of a sudden expect poll voters to rank teams based on Pomeroy rankings or the RPI. :P Notre Dame was ranked 13th and lost two road games vs other top 25 teams. They fell to 19th. Then they lost a home game to the #4 team in the nation. They fell to 23rd. Seems pretty standard to me?

Standard by polling precedent, perhaps. If we're making a list of top 25 teams right now, they don't even come close given their current body of work. Obviously, they lost another game last night and have now lost 4 in a row. They're now 2 games under .500 in conference and 2-6 vs. quality opponents. Their NCAA hopes have hit a major buzzsaw at this point.

Good win by OU last night at OSU. Really tough place to steal a win, especially in a rivalry game.

That's definitely true. All the pundits who assume the Big East is a lock to get 9+ teams into the tournament are probably assuming that all these ranked teams are simply going to beat up on each other and probably win the rest of their games vs the bad teams in the Big East. Notre Dame's game vs Pitt is quickly approaching "must win" territory.

I do wonder though, since everyone's estimation of the Big East is so very high, I would not be surprised to see any team that makes it to .500 in conference play getting in.