3 Most Important Results from Tonight
Georgetown 57, Alabama 55 – Huge win for Georgetown. The Hoyas will enter the national rankings next week and now have a three final tune up games before Memphis gets another shot at them and then Big East play begins. As for Alabama, the loss at home really stings, but the resume is still shaping up quite nicely a year after a 12-4 conference record couldn't get the Crimson Tide into the NCAA Tournament because of a horrible non-conference resume.
Cleveland St. 45, Wright St. 43 – Cleveland St. already has wins over Vanderbilt and Rhode Island and, though they play in a mid-major league, they have a shot at an at-large berth, especially with much of the top half of the league (pretty much everyone except Butler) off to hot starts. To get an at-large though, the Vikings could ill afford a loss to Wright St. Nice job to avoid a loss on a night where the score tells us Cleveland St. obviously didn't play well at all.
Ole Miss 70, DePaul 68 – Good win for Ole Miss, but in reality, both of these teams didn't look ready for NCAA Tournament contention. Ole Miss blew a lead and was fortunate to get out of Chicago with a victory and they only did so because DePaul was sloppy in the final stretches of the game once they got back into it.
Worst Loss from Tonight
Westminster UT 73, Northern Colorado 60 – No major upsets, so a low-major losing in shameful manner gets highlighted tonight. By nobody's definition is Northern Colorado a good team. They entered 2-4. Nonetheless, losing at home to an NAIA school means much shaming is coming your way if anyone pays attention, and I'm paying attention. Just a terrible loss for the team and for the Big Sky where Northern Colorado resides as the league tries to get above a 14 seed for its league champion this year.
3 Biggest Games of Tomorrow
Syracuse vs Florida – Florida has already been tested (and failed) on the road against one of college basketball's elite teams. So the question now is if Syracuse is as good as Ohio St. Also, how will Syracuse respond to the continuing controversy over now former assistant Bernie Fine's sex abuse scandal. Lots of subplots in the dome tomorrow night.
Louisville vs Vanderbilt – Festus Ezeli is still out for Vanderbilt, a team that needs a big win after losing to Cleveland St. early in the season and was beaten earlier this week in overtime by Xavier. At the Yum Center, the Commodores seem unlikely to get that win. Louisville is outscoring opponents by an average of 19.4 points per game though this is their toughest test of the season thus far (though Long Beach St. and Butler are decent teams), but they should be able to beat Ezeli-less Vanderbilt at home and might do it fairly convincingly.
Seton Hall vs Auburn – This game looks a lot like the Ole Miss-DePaul game from tonight. Two schools that haven't been good in recent years playing a game to see which one might be able to make a run at the NCAA Tournament at some point. In a change from recent years, neither of these teams is carrying miserable losses with Auburn 4-0 against admittedly pathetic competition (7-18 combined record for the Tigers victims) and Seton Hall 5-1 with only an OK loss to Northwestern in the negative category. Given that this is Auburn's first road game, I expect it to be a bad trip, but a learning experience for a team that has been down for quite some time (last NCAA Tourney trip: 2003).
Final Thought on the night in College Basketball
The trend started by the ACC-Big Ten Challenge of conference challenges is a good one for college basketball. In particular, the SEC-Big East Challenge is looking like a big success in its first year, giving us a nice game between Alabama and Georgetown tonight and some marquee games tomorrow night. Hopefully more of these events can happen and, just dreaming here, it would be nice if something like this could happen in football, a sport in need of many more major non-conference matchups than what exists now. That said, I will enjoy the ongoing games in the SEC-Big East Challenge and the Mountain West-Missouri Valley Challenge and be glad that at least those exist.
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