For last night’s legendary Hoops HD Under The Radar podcast – CLICK HERE
Southeastern Louisiana (5-5, 0-0) at Nicholls (4-5, 0-0) – 8:00 PM ET (ESPN+)
Tonight’s UTR Game of the Day goes to Thibodoux, Louisiana for the Southland Conference opener for both the Lions of Southeastern Louisiana and the Colonels of Nicholls. SELA has a bit of a deceptive record with 3 non-D1 wins, but they do have a win at Wyoming and a neutral-court win against Campbell in the win column. Only against Xavier did the Lions look overmatched thus far in the season. Boogie Anderson has averaged 11.8 points a game for SELA in their first 10 games of the season.
The Colonels of Nicholls have won back-to-back regular season titles in the Southland, although they have not appeared in the NCAA Tournament since 1998. Nicholls also has 3 non-D1 wins that are included in their 4-5 record, although they do have a decent win against San Diego that was part of the Las Vegas Holiday Classic in the 3rd place game. Latrell Jones averages 15.8 points a game and 5.0 rebounds a game for the Colonels.
OTHER NEWS, NOTES, AND GAMES (From the Puppet):
-UCLA went on the road to face a Maryland team that is really good, and who’s fans were really psyched, and by the first media timeout they were totally in control of the game and they absolutely blew the Terps off the floor. The final score was 87-60. That was not indicative of just how dominant UCLA was. It was probably the single most impressive performance of the year considering the strength of the opponent, the location of the game, and the margin of victory.
-Charleston, Auburn, and Mississippi State all had to sweat a little bit, but all ended up with wins.
-Wake Forest had to do more than just sweat. They were behind with less than 2 seconds to play to Appalachian State and didn’t have the ball. Generally in that situation the game is over, but somehow Wake forced a turnover, got the ball back, and on the inbounds play got a shot up that went in. Wake won 67-66. Barely.
-UCF picked up their first true road win of they year as they pretty much controlled the whole game and knocked off Ole Miss 72-61. UCF is for real this year! This gets them to 8-2 on the year.
-Last, but certainly not the least notable, Louisville picked up their first win of the year as they pretty much controlled the entire game against Western Kentucky and ended up winning 94-83. WKU was a team that we thought could land inside the bubble, and a loss like this absolutely torpedoes their chances. While Louisville did look good last night, they hadn’t looked like a top 300 team at any point this season, and this loss is going to hurt the Toppers.
-UC IRVINE AT SANTA CLARA. UC Irvine has looked really good at times this season and can add another notable win to their resume if they’re able to knock off a pretty good Santa Clara team, that’s 6-1 at home on the year so far. These are the kinds of games the Eaters need to win if they want any shot at all of gettin the committee’s attention.
-SEATTLE AT OREGON STATE. Seattle is a very impressive 7-1 on the year with the only loss being at Washington. Oregon State isn’t great, but they’ve shown at times that they are capable of playing well and they are 4-1 at home, so this would be a really nice win for Seattle who appears to have their best team in recent memory.
-Lehigh @ Wisconsin
-Westmintster (nonD1) @ Utah State