CLICK HERE for last night’s UNDER THE RADAR Video Podcast
NEWS AND NOTES
-For John Stalica’s UTR Game of the Day between North Dakota State and South Dakota State – CLICK HERE
-Texas Tech had to sweat out Abilene Christian, but ended up picking up the win 51-44. While Texas Tech hasn’t looked like a Big 12 frontrunner yet this season, and certainly didn’t look that way the other night, it’s also worth nothin that ACU played an outstanding game. It was their first loss of the year, and chances are they’ll be able to make quite a bit of noise in Southland play, so they’re a really good UTR team to keep an eye on.
-Florida State needed overtime to knock off Indiana. As frustrating of a loss as it was for the Hoosiers, they still played an outstanding game on the road against a really good team, and there is more reason for optimism than pessimism right now. It’s been a while since we’ve been able to say that about IU.
-Richmond once again played a decent first half and a terrific second half. They pick up the win against Northern Iowa and remain unbeaten on the year. Northern Iowa is just 1-4, but that’s partly due to the schedule that they’ve played so far. By the end of the year I think they’re going to have a lot of wins.
-Cincinnati picked up a close win against Furman. That may not sound impressive to those that don’t follow Under the Radar, but we think Furman is a team that’s good enough to land inside the bubble, and we were actually kind of expecting them to beat Cincinnati last night. So, for Cincinnati to play Xavier tough and then beat Furman, there is some promise there that the Bearcats might be good enough to go dancing.
-Clemson is a far better team than what any of us thought, especially on the defensive end. They ate Maryland’s lunch yesterday and remain unbeaten on the season.
-Providence picked up a nice road win against TCU. Despite some early stumbles and stretches where they appeared to underperform, they’re 4-2 with some decent wins away from home. I’d say their footing is still solid and their prospects are still good.
-Xavier improved to 7-0 with an impressive blowout win against Oklahoma. The Musketeers have let to leave the city of Cincinnati, but they’ve won all the games they’ve played, and appeared to have their best game of the year for the second game in a row.
-Missouri remains unbeaten after taking a pretty good Liberty team that had some nice wins of their own and should dominate the Atlantic Sun. I don’t want to overstate a win over Liberty, but this Mizzou team has looked pretty solid all season long.
-Boise State picked up a really nice win at BYU. We didn’t think too much of them coming into the year (at least I didn’t), but after seeing them last night and considering their only loss was to an outstanding Houston team, I’d have to say they look more like a tournament team than not at the moment.
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-SAN DIEGO STATE AT ARIZONA STATE. Both teams are ranked and both already have some decent wins. Both will also likely be in the top half of the bracket, so this is a resume building opportunity and it should be a fun one.
-Purdue Northwest (nondiv1) @ Ohio U – buy game
-North Florida @ East Carolina – buy game
-Jackson State @ Ole Miss – buy game, first game for Ole Miss
-Kansas City @ Minnesota – buy game
-Gardner Webb @ Western Kentucky – buy game
-Long Beach State @ San Francisco – buy game