NEWS AND NOTES:
-For all of the In-Season Tournament Brackets and Schedules – CLICK HERE
-For John Stalica’s UTR Game of the Day – CLICK HERE
-Kansas squeaked past Duke 75-72 in Las Vegas. Both these teams have tested themselves big time, and both will likely end up having monster years. They’ve each played the types of schedules and won the types of games teams need to play to end up as protected seeds, and even #1 seeds. Duke losing by 3 in November to the #1 team in the nation on a neutral floor hardly even qualifies as a setback.
-UConn’s 73-72 loss in Maui DOES qualify as a setback. UConn came in ranked #2, and will likely be dropping down the polls quite a bit after dropping games to both Memphis and now Colorado. And they’ll be tested again tonight by Dayton. Speaking of Dayton…
-For the second day in a row Dayton took a highly ranked team to the final minute of the game, but came up just short as they fell 89-84. You kind of hate to see a team play as well as Dayton and not yet finish off one of those big time wins. They’ll have a good year, and based what they’ve shown us so far it’s hard to imagine them not blowing through the Atlantic 10, but they don’t get numerous opportunities at wins like this throughout the season the way teams from the P4 level conferences do.
-Also in Maui, Auburn held off North Carolina to pick up yet another win against a top 15 team away from home, and they’ll face Memphis tonight, who is also off to an incredible start this season.
-Alabama and Houston squared off in the Players Era Festival in another game that featured two top ten teams. Alabama held on to get the overtime win 85-80 in a game that seesawed back and forth. I’m still all in on Houston being a Final Four caliber team, and they’ll have many chances to pick up big wins between now and March, but as of now they’ve failed to get a win in their first two big tests of the year.
-Oregon, who we had a lot of questions about coming into the year, is starting to answer those questions. They had a nice road win at Oregon State last week, and beat a really good Texas A&M team 80-70 in the Players Era Festival yesterday. If they continue to do well in this event they should shoot up the rankings.
-Creighton will NOT be shooting up the rankings. They are down a key player and have not looked good at all in their last two games. Props to San Diego State who picked up the 71-53 win, and who also looked a little sluggish in a few of their early games, but looked really good yesterday.
-Clemson has started to look better and has now picked up two nice wins in the Sunshine Slam. They beat San Francisco handily on Monday and beat what was an unbeaten Penn State team 75-67 yesterday.
-Grand Canyon finally got a notable win with an impressive 78-71 showing against what was an unbeaten (and untested) Stanford team in Palm Springs. Hawaii, Georgia, and Saint Louis still remain on their schedule, so there are a few more chances to at least get a few notable wins.
-Boston College, who we just didn’t have any thoughts on at all coming into the year other than being the likely doormat of the ACC, has shown out this year! They improved to 6-1 yesterday after beating Boise State 63-61 in the Cayman Islands Championship. The Eagles will take home a little bit of hardware, but more importantly add some good wins to their profile which is starting to stick out a little bit.
-Rutgers needed overtime to get by Notre Dame 85-84 in the Players Era Festival. While it remains to be seen how good Notre Dame is, it was still a nice bounce back for Rutgers after the loss at Kennesaw State.
-Keep an eye on Furman. They are now 7-0 after a win over Seattle U (who I know isn’t that good) and are starting to look like a UTR team with a lot of promise.
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HIGHLIGHTED GAMES:
-LOUISVILLE VS INDIANA (Battle 4 Atlantis). Both teams have shown signs of promise, and Indiana is high in the rankings, but neither team has managed to win any games that aren’t home buy games yet. Louisville was blown out by Tennessee in their only real test of the season, and Indiana has had no real tests yet, so we should learn something about both of them today.
-WEST VIRGINIA VS GONZAGA (Battle 4 Atlantis). This appears to be a massive mismatch. Gonzaga should have no trouble getting the win and moving on to the winners’ side of the bracket.
-COLORADO VS IOWA STATE (Maui Invitational). Colorado’s win over UConn yesterday came after I talked about what a huge mismatch the game was going to be and how down Colorado was this year. Now Colorado is suddenly 5-1 with a very impressive win on their profile. They’ll have their hand full again today against an Iowa State team that battled Auburn in the first game and got by what appears to be a really good Dayton team yesterday.
-OREGON VS SAN DIEGO STATE (Players Era Festival). San Diego State had appeared sluggish in their first few games this season, but they weren’t sluggish yesterday as they absolutely blasted Creighton. Oregon comes in at 6-0 with a really nice win against Texas A&M yesterday, so both teams showed out in their first games of this event.
-MEMPHIS VS AUBURN (Maui Invitational). Both teams come in unbeaten with multiple big wins. Something tells me that regardless of the outcome of this game Memphis will not be unranked next week. Both are already putting together profiles that would land them as solid protected seeds, and both have the chance at another big win today.
-OKLAHOMA VS PROVIDENCE (Battle 4 Atlantis). Both teams come into this game completely untested. They’re unbeaten, but they’ve played nothing but home buy games.
-TEXAS A&M VS CREIGHTON (Players Era Festival). Creighton has not looked good at all in their last two games, and they’re also without a key player. Texas A&M is a team we were big on coming into the year, and while they haven’t looked terrible, they haven’t exactly looked as good as their ranking yet either. I do think that at some point a switch will flip and they’ll start playing at a much higher level. They have the chance to pick up a notable win for their resume today.
-DAVIDSON VS ARIZONA (Battle 4 Atlantis). Davidson comes in unbeaten, but has only played home buy games. We will see during this event whether or not they are for real. Arizona has tested themselves a couple times, but lost the couple times they did it. They still appear to be a very good team, but this would be their biggest win to date if they are able to pull it off.
-MICHIGAN VS XAVIER (Fort Myers Tip-Off). Xavier is 6-0 with a couple of notable wins, but this would probably be their strongest of the season so far if they can get it done against Michigan. The Wolverines are a respectable 5-1, but also don’t yet have a win as good as this one would be.
-MICHIGAN STATE VS NORTH CAROLINA (Maui Invitational). Both teams are off to very solid starts, and both have the chance to leave this event by adding one more high caliber win to their resumes.
-SMU VS WASHINGTON STATE (Acrisure Holiday Invitational). Both teams have very respectable records with SMU coming in at 5-2 and Wazzu coming in at 6-1. SMU also battled against a really good Mississippi State team last week. They lost, but they have shown signs of potential. It will be interesting to see what they can do against each other tonight.
-RUTGERS VS ALABAMA (Players Era Festival). Rutgers recently had a loss at Kennesaw State and had to struggle to get by Notre Dame last night. Alabama is coming off a really nice win against Houston. So…one of these teams appears to be far more proven than the other right now.
-UCONN VS DAYTON (Battle 4 Atlantis). In the last 48 hours, these teams have lost four games by a combined total of 10 points, and three of those four losses came against top 12 teams! After playing so well, especially in the case of Dayton, you’d hate to see them take on that level of competition, have a chance to beat not one, but TWO really strong teams away from home, and then still come away with nothing. The winner of this game will get what should be a really strong resume-building win. There’s actually quite a bit to play for even though it’s the 7th place game. It’s arguably one of the more meaningful games of the day.
-NOTRE DAME VS HOUSTON (Players Era Festival). Houston has two losses, one of which was to Auburn and the other to Alabama. As good as I think they are, they still don’t have anything other than a buy game win. That should change tonight.
BUY GAMES (and other games of note):
-Detroit Mercy vs Rhode Island (Jacksonville Classic) – Rhody can remain unbeaten
-Northern Kentucky @ Charleston
-New Orleans @ Baylor
-UT Martin @ Tennessee
-Bucknell @ Maryland
-Lindenwood @ Missouri
-South Dakota @ Nebraska – Nebraska just got a really nice road win at Creighton
-Alabama State @ Cincinnati
-Milwaukee @ UCF
-Cornell @ Syracuse
-Utah Valley @ Samford (Samford Thanksgiving Special) – Utah Valley can improve to 5-1 on the year
-UMass Lowell @ Saint Louis – SLU better be on upset alert
-Wyoming vs LMU (Cancun Challenge) – Wyoming can get to 6-1
-Stonehill @ Marquette
-Cal State Northridge @ Montana – CSUN can get to 6-1 and pick up their 3rd true road win
-Mercyhurst @ California