NEWS AND NOTES
-We will be recording the Hoops HD Report tonight, and recapping an extremely busy week of exempt tournament action.
-Villanova has rebounded nicely after dropping two early season games. They won the Advocare invitational after beating a top 15 Florida State team in a close low scoring game. They have certainly improved since getting mauled by Michigan.
-Oklahoma State, the team that Nova knocked off in the semifinals, won the the third place game against LSU. The Pokes may be one of the teams that has kind of jumped into national relevance after a good showing in an exempt tournament.
-It hasn’t always been pretty or impressive, but Northwestern is now 5-1 after blasting Utah in the Wooden Legacy yesterday. Perhaps they are capable of playing better than some of us thought after seeing them sweat a few out early.
-After a 3-0 start which included a seemingly impressive win at SMU, Southern Miss has now lost two of three, which in and of itself isn’t necessarily too bad, but one of those was against NAIA William Carey yesterday. That IS bad. It’s so bad that I’d rank it the biggest upset of the season so far in terms of how surprising it was, and it may not be topped the rest of the year.
-Furman is now 7-0 with 3 true road wins on their resume, one of which was against the Villanova team that just won the Advocare Invitational. I don’t think they’ll get into the rankings, but that’s because the voters won’t put them there, not because they don’t belong there. They do belong there.
-Seton Hall handed Miami FL their first loss and picked up a very nice and much needed win to win the Wooden Legacy.
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-NEBRASKA AT CLEMSON. This is the first true road game for Nebraska, and it’s a very tall order against a Clemson team who’s ranked in the top 25 (or at least was coming into the day) and is looking to bounce back from a rather surprising loss to Creighton.
-WOFFORD AT SOUTH CAROLINA. We still really like this Wofford team, but they don’t have any notable wins yet, and if anything dropped one at Oklahoma that we were kind of expecting them to get. If they want any hopes at all of being in position to make the NCAA Tournament without having to win the SoCon Tournament, then they need to find a way to knock off Angry Frank’s Gamecocks tonight.
-LOUISIANA TECH AT DELAWARE. LA Tech is coming off a rather surprising loss to UNC Greensboro and is trying to rebound against a Delaware team that’s good, but not so good that LA Tech should have trouble beating them if they are as good as we think they are.
-MURRAY STATE AT ALABAMA. It’s a buy game, but watch the hell out for Murray State!! This is their first true road game of the season, and we think they are pretty strong this year. We’ll see if they’re capable of beating an Alabama team on the road that’s looked good at times this year themselves.
-MINNESOTA AT BOSTON COLLEGE (ACC/Big Ten Challenge). Minney is off to an impressive 5-0 start, and at 4-1 BC hasn’t looked great, but they haven’t looked bad either. This would be a nice win for whichever team is able to pull it off.
BUY GAMES
-Alcorn State @ Mississippi State
-Eastern Michigan @ TCU
-Omaha @ Iowa State
-North Dakota State @ Gonzaga
-Texas Southern @ Oregon