NEWS AND NOTES:
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-After a short break for Christmas, the games are starting to get started back up. Virginia blew out Morgan State yesterday in a home buy game. Prior to that on Christmas Eve TCU picked up their first true road win, and probably their best overall win of the season, as they knocked off Hawaii in the Diamond Head Classic 3rd place game 65-51. Nevada is now 12-1 on the year after winning the Diamond Head Classic and looked pretty good against an 8-4 Georgia Tech team that we should probably start paying a little bit of attention to as ACC play starts up.
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES:
-USC AT OREGON (Pac 12). USC has underperformed so far, but they still have a lot of talent and are good enough to start stringing together wins in league play and get things turned around. Winning on the road at Oregon won’t be easy, but if they can pull it off it would be huge for them both on and off paper.
-UCLA AT OREGON STATE (Pac 12). UCLA has been one of the bigger disappointments of the season so far, and a team that I thought would easily land inside the bubble is now so far away from hit that it’s easy to want to just write them off entirely. They have lost five of their last six, but they’ve also been competitive against teams like Marquette, Gonzaga, Villanova, and Ohio State this year, so most of their losses aren’t terrible. This is a winnable conference road game, and it’s one they need to get if they want to start working their way back toward the bubble. Oregon State has won five straight, but all were home buy games against teams that are weak even by UTR standards.
-UC RIVERSIDE AT UC IRVINE (Big West). We at Hoops HD love the RiverVine Cup! (Also the Big West opener for both teams)
-Central Arkansas @ Oklahoma
-Coppin State @ Maryland
-Sam Houston @ Texas Tech