After a few nights away because of travel, sickness and football, its time for the return of the 4-Point Play.
3 Most Important Results from Tonight
Temple 78, Duke 73 – Just a huge win for Temple in its quest for an at-large bid should it be needed, placing the Owls on top of the Atlantic 10 pecking order. As for Duke, this just confirms what we already suspected. The team will win a lot of games but is inherently flawed. The result will be some odd road losses and a seed of 2 or 3 instead of 1.
Dayton 79, Saint Louis 72 (OT) – Another gigantic win for the inconsistent Flyers puts them second in the A-10 pecking order behind Temple. Now they need to not collapse in February (again) and they need middling BCS conference victims Wake Forest, Minnesota and Ole Miss to not collapse in conference play so those wins retain value alongside the win over Alabama. For Saint Louis, things still look ok, but not great as the collection of BCS conference victims looks a whole lot more impressive than it actually is this season (Washington, Boston College, Villanova, and Oklahoma).
Georgetown 73, Marquette 70 – Huge comeback for Georgetown that seems to validate the Hoyas even more. For Marquette, there might be some reason to worry now as the Wisconsin ship is taking on water right now, the losses pile up (that's three in five games) and a trip to the Carrier Dome awaits on Saturday. Uh oh.
Worst Loss from Tonight
Iowa 64, Minnesota 62 – This isn't a terrible loss, but Minnesota can't afford losses to anyone that isn't likely to compete for a tournament berth and Iowa (even with the win at Wisconsin to go with this one) isn't a contender. It appears that the loss of Trevor Mbakwe has finally caught up to this team.
3 Biggest Games of Tomorrow
Indiana vs Michigan – By far the biggest game of the night. Can Michigan succeed where Kentucky and Ohio St. failed: in Bloomington. I suspect someone will manage a win there before the end of the season, the question is who.
Oregon vs Stanford – Two of the front runners in the Pathetic 12 go at it with Stanford trying to get to 3-0 and establish itself a credible at-large case (Cardinal are only Pac-12 school with any semblance of a decent collection of wins with Oklahoma St. and NC State in its victim list) while Oregon tries to recover from getting trounced at Washington and get back in the chase.
Oregon St. vs Cal – Time to scrape the bottom of the barrel here. Thanks Pac-12 for stinking and making Thursday nights so bad. I have nothing else interesting to say about this game.
Final Thought on the night in College Basketball
Xavier lost again tonight, this time to La Salle to drop to 9-5 on the season and 1-5 since the brawl with Cincinnati. What has happened to Xavier can now be explained, I think. The Xavier roster was one built upon being tough and scrappy. Being fighters. Now that there has been a real fight, that image and identity has been stripped. Without it, Xavier just doesn't know how to play. In effect, it looks lost on the court. Until the Muskateers find a new identity (or is allowed to regain its old one), the team is destined to losing games because of a lack of toughness and lack of fight like what happened tonight.
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