For Rocco Miller’s recap of Georgia Tech’s win against Nebraska – CLICK HERE
Howard (0-9) at Hampton (3-5, 0-5 D1) – 7:00 PM EST (Watch Live)
Tonight’s UTR Game of the Day reunites a former pair of rivals in the MEAC – Howard hits the road to take on the Hampton Pirates (home of former Bad Boy Rick Mahorn). While Hampton has moved on from the MEAC to the Big South recently, they are beginning a week in which they will take on Howard and Norfolk State back-to-back. Jermaine Marrow has averaged over 25 points a game through Hampton’s first eight games this season.
This is also a game that has been billed “The Battle for the Real HU” – the Bison come into tonight’s game looking for their first victory of the season. While they’ve lost both home games, including Washington Adventist (NAIA) and the rest of their games against div1 opponents have been road games (including 4 games in the round-robin Men Against Breast Cancer Classic with Notre Dame, Marshall, Toledo and Robert Morris), they will have home games against Appalachian State, Harvard and Penn coming up in December. Charles Williams is averaging 17.7 points a game for the Bison thus far.
OTHER NEWS NOTES AND GAMES
-We saw an extremely impressive, and somewhat surprising, showing from Purdue yesterday as they ran Virginia off the court in a 69-40 win. The Boilermakers have faced three straight ranked opponents and beaten two of them. I’d say that’s a good week.
-Ohio State’s showing at North Carolina probably topped that. They blew the Tarheels off of their home floor. UNC doesn’t lose too often, they lose at home even less, and they almost never get blown out at home. It was Ohio State’s first true road game, and I’d say they were up to the challenge.
-LMU actually led Colorado for most of the game. It wasn’t until the final minutes that the Buffs got the lead and got control. The 76-64 score doesn’t really indicate how close the game actually was. Still, Colorado gets the win and remains unbeaten at 7-0.
-DePaul trailed for most of the game against Texas Tech, but it was close all throughout. They hit a 3 with less than ten seconds to go to force overtime, and then made several big plays in OT to get the win. DePaul remains unbeaten on the season, and now has wins over Texas Tech, Iowa, and Minnesota. That has all the makings of a tournament caliber resume. After the game, the fans stormed the court, and even though Texas Tech wasn’t ranked, it was still very much justified!!
-Georgetown, despite all the off the court drama and the loss of two key players, went down to Oklahoma State and beat a very good team on the road. That is one of the more impressive performances of the week just when you factor in what Georgetown has gone through and the caliber of the players that left the team.
-California Baptist knocked off UC Riverside to capture this year’s Battle of Riverside!!!!
-OKLAHOMA AT NORTH TEXAS. Coming into the year, I thought North Texas would be a lot better than what they are. Their 3-5 start to the season is kind of a disappointment. Still, the Sooners aren’t going to want to just completely overlook them. It’s their first true road game of the season, and it’s perhaps the most winnable true road game that they have on the schedule.
-FURMAN AT AUBURN. I’m big on this Furman team, although they are coming off a loss to a South Florida team that you would have expected them to beat even though they were on the road. They’ve got a much taller order tonight against 14th ranked Auburn on the road, but it’s the kind of game that if they were somehow able to win then it could put them in a situation to be inside the bubble come March and not need to win the conference tournament in order to get in.
-LA Tech @ Mississippi State – buy game, although LA Tech is off to a decent 5-2 start
-Central Arkansas @ Wichita State – buy game
-Northern Illinois @ Saint Mary’s