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Georgia State at Green Bay, 1:00 PM, espn3
The game of the day on Saturday is obviously Kentucky at Louisville. But if you want something else to keep an eye on during that contest, you may want to tune in to today’s UTR Game of the Day. The Georgia State Panthers, led by Ryan Harrow, R.J. Hunter and former Louisville player Kevin Ware will be heading to Green Bay to take on the Phoenix, led by star player Keifer Sykes. These two teams have consistently been among the Top Ten Under the Radar teams all season and it should be a great game this afternoon.
Georgia State enters with a record of 7-3, an RPI of 51 and a KenPom of 63. Their sole losses so far this year have been to tournament-caliber teams Iowa State, Colorado State and Old Dominion. The biggest problem the Panthers have is a lack of quality wins and a lack of a chance to pick up any more after today with the Sun Belt Conference looking weaker than normal this year. They did, however, beat Green Bay at home handily 72-48 back on December 4, and a sweep of their home-and-home series this year will help a lot if they need an at-large bid in March.
Green Bay has a similar problem as they head into Horizon League play. The Phoenix are 9-3 on the season with an RPI of 38 and a KenPom of 48. In addition to the loss at Georgia State, the Phoenix lost an early season game at Wisconsin and are coming off a tough neutral court loss in Las Vegas to UC-Irvine. The Horizon League does appear stronger than the Sun Belt, though no other team is currently better than 100 in the KenPom ratings. Green Bay can hang their hats on a nice road win at Miami, at least, but getting swept by Georgia State will hurt if they falter in their conference tournament.
Both teams in today’s game are well aware of what happens when you slip up during conference tournament play, as Green Bay and Georgia State both dominated their conference regular seasons last year, only to fail to capture the automatic bid. The result, in both cases, was an NIT bid. Both teams appear better than the NIT this season, but need to keep winning if they want to Dance. Today’s game is the start of that journey.