NEWS AND NOTES
-For Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day – CLICK HERE
-Purdue had a lead at Minnesota for the whole game and seemed poised to pick up a major road win, but Minney pulled it out in the final minute. Purdue had a chance to force overtime in the final seconds, but couldn’t get up much of a shot and the Gophers held on for a 71-68 win.
-Winthrop, who has just one loss, began a stretch of back to back road games at Radford last night, and totally ran away with it. If they can do the same thing tonight and win out we may see them crawl inside the bubble.
-Colorado has been up and down this year, but they were definitely up last night with a decisive road win at Stanford. Stanford is still hovering around the bubble, but I think they are on the right side of it. Colorado gave their resume a nice boost last night.
-Belmont is now 20-1 on the year after their decisive win against Eastern Kentucky last night. The problem for Belmont is that none of their wins have come against anyone in the top 150 of the NET, so it’s still a weak case for an at-large bid, but they should at least get a look from the committee.
-Washington State ran away from UCLA last night in a bit of a surprising result. UCLA made a run late to cut it to 81-73, but for most of the game the lead was bigger than that.
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-SAINT BONAVENTURE AT VCU (Atlantic Ten). Both teams are hovering around the bubble, and both desperately need this win. They both pretty much need to dominate their schedules the rest of the way to secure a spot inside the bubble.
-WINTHROP AT RADFORD (Big South). Winthrop won convincingly the other night and if they can do the same tonight there will probably be some talk of them belonging inside the bubble if the can win out.
-GEORGIA TECH AT CLEMSON (ACC). Clemson is safely inside the bubble and can climb up the seedlist if they can continue to string together wins down the stretch. Georgia Tech is outside of our bubble, but they have played like a tournament team at times and they do have the opportunities they need between now and the end to play their way into the field.
-RICE AT WESTERN KENTUCKY (Conference USA). WKU pretty much has to win out through the regular season to get inside the bubble, but they are good enough to do that. Having said that, they seemingly have a history of slipping up and losing games that they should win, so they don’t want to overlook a Rice team that’s having a decent year.
-ILLINOIS AT NEBRASKA (Big Ten). Illinois has been on a roll lately and shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping that up on the road tonight.