Hoops HD Daily Rundown – Thursday, Feb 9th

Posted on February 9, 2023 by David Griggs

NEWS AND NOTES:

-For the latest UNDER THE RADAR Video Podcast, where we run through all of the non-major conferences – CLICK HERE

-For John Stalica’s UTR Game of the Day, which is a BIG one between Louisiana and Southern Miss and may not just be the Under the Radar Game of the Day, but the Game of the Day PERIOD – CLICK HERE

-For Jon Teitel’s interview with Charles McClelland, who is the SWAC Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner of this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Selection Committee – CLICK HERE

-Tennessee struggled throughout the entire game at Vanderbilt, but appeared to have it won in the final seconds…until they didn’t.  Up 65-63 and with the ball, the Vols passed up what would have been a wide open dunk, which would have given them a 4pt lead, in order to force Vandy to foul.  This is simply NOT thinking through how a 4pt lead is a two possession lead.  I think by now you all know how this one ended.  A couple fouls later, Tennessee misses the freethrow and Vandy hits a game winning 3 to pull off the huge 66-65 upset.

-I had been saying for over a week I like how Florida has been playing, and I was half expecting them to be very competitive at Alabama last night.  They were not.  WOW!!  Bama blew them off the floor 97-69, and that score probably understates just how dominant Bama was.

-West Virginia desperately needs wins, and given the strength of their remaining schedule they are going to be extremely hard to come by, but they got a BIG one last night knocking off Iowa State 76-71.  Iowa State now in a bit of a slump having lost three of their last four, but are in absolutely no danger at all.  The one game they did win in that stretch was a blowout win over Kansas.

-Creighton went on the road and got a huge 75-62 win against a Seton Hall team that had been playing really well.  This is actually probably a better win than what it looks like on paper because Seton Hall is in the middle of a stretch where they’ve been looking really good, and for Creighton to go on the road and win in the fashion that they did is really impressive.

-San Diego State held on for a nice 63-61 road win at Utah State.  They had a commanding lead at the half, but almost gave it up.  The game was exceptionally heated, and in the first half exceptionally poorly played and overly officiated.  Several technicals and even ejections were issued, and after what seemed to be a 15 minute pause for replay the game finally resumed, but the flow was completely gone.  Nevertheless, it is a nice road win for the Aztecs and they remain safely inside the bubble.

-Wisconsin and Penn State both really needed the win last night when the two faced each other, and Wisconsin got it.  A 79-74 road win will hopefully (for their sake) help the Badgers start to turn things around.

 

HIGHLIGHTED GAMES:

-IOWA AT PURDUE (Big Ten).  Purdue is still the top overall #1 seed in most peoples’ fields, including our own, and they will remain there if they can hold serve tonight.  Iowa is relatively safe despite having some holes in their resume, but they could REALLY boost the value of their profile if they could somehow pull off the upset tonight.  That is much easier said than done, though.

-RICE AT FLORIDA ATLANTIC (Conference USA).  FAU is safely inside the bubble and will likely go into the field on the first ballot if they can win out through the regular season, which they are good enough to do.

-NORTHWESTERN AT OHIO STATE (Big Ten).  Northwestern continues to hover around the bubble, but right now I think they are inside of it.  They need this win on the road in order to stay inside it.  It’s not easy winning on the road, but this is still the kind of game that a tournament caliber team should be expected to win.

-UCLA AT OREGON STATE (Pac 12).  UCLA is will within the range of a protected seed and should be able to hold serve tonight.

-SAN FRANCISCO AT GONZAGA (West Coast).  Gonzaga is hovering around the 4/5 seed range in our brackets and should stay there so long as they hold serve the rest of the way

-SAINT MARY’S AT LMU (West Coast).  Saint Mary’s is now in sole possession of first place in the WCC and could even end up with a protected seed if they can finish running the table.

-ARIZONA STATE AT STANFORD (Pac 12).  Arizona State is outside the bubble and needs to string together some wins down the stretch just to reach the field.

-ARIZONA AT CALIFORNIA (Pac 12).  Even though this is a road game it should still be a cakewalk for Arizona, who still has an outside shot at a #1 seed if they can win out.

-USC AT OREGON (Pac 12).  This could be a tough road game for a USC team that has been playing better and who has also played their way inside our bubble, but who would also be much more safer if they’re able to pick up a win like this one.

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Under The Radar Game of the Day – Thursday, February 9th

Posted on February 9, 2023 by John Stalica

Louisiana (20-4, 10-2) at Southern Miss (21-4, 10-2) – 8:30 PM ET (ESPN+)

Tonight’s UTR Game of the Day goes to Hattiesburg, Mississippi for a matchup of the top 2 teams in the Sun Belt; the Southern Miss Golden Eagles host the Louisiana Rajun’ Cajuns. The Cajuns are in the midst of a 10-game winning streak and includes a 75-61 home win against Southern Miss earlier in the season. More recently, Jordan Brown had 26 points in Louisiana’s 77-67 win at home against fellow league contender Marshall.

Southern Miss started off the season 8-0 before losing against co-Southland leader Northwestern State on the road. The Golden Eagles did get off to a relatively slow 3-2 start in the Sun Belt, but the two losses were on the road against Louisiana and Marshall. Since then, Southern Miss has won seven straight games in conference play. Felipe Haase had 26 points in the Golden Eagles’ last outing – a 79-71 victory on the road at Georgia State.

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Under the Radar – Feb 8th

Posted on February 8, 2023 by David Griggs

This week’s featured conference is the Big West, which as it is most years has been hugely exciting all year long.  UC Santa Barbara has been the frontrunner for most of the year, and we thought they might actually be able to get a serious look from the committee if they were able to win out, but they suffered a very surprising loss to Cal State Northridge this week.  UC Irvine, UC Riverside, Hawai’i and Long Beach State are other teams that are right up there in the conference race.

After that, we move on and look at the other 22 UTR leagues and start off with a rather bizarre night in Maine as their game against Vermont was delayed because the floor was crooked and needed to be re-laid.  Teams like Oral Roberts and Colgate are getting very close to clinching first place bids, the Ivy League and SWAC races are heating up both at the top of the standings and to make the cutline for the conference tournaments.  Hofstra is actually tied with Charleston in the Colonial, and although their season profile isn’t as strong as CofC’s we feel that they may actually be more dangerous right now.  We discuss all that, and more.  And, as we do every week, we close with this week’s UTR Top Ten.

And for all you radio lovers, below is an audio only version of the show…

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Sowing the seeds we love: HoopsHD interviews NCAA Selection Committee member/SWAC Commissioner Dr. Charles McClelland

Posted on February 8, 2023 by Jon Teitel

For Today’s Hoops HD Daily Rundown – CLICK HERE

For those of you who simply cannot wait until Selection Sunday to find out what the Selection Committee is thinking, the top-16 teams will be revealed in a sneak preview later this month. This is not a crystal ball showing exactly which schools will become protected seeds on March 12th…although 3 of the #1 seeds from last year’s preview DID end up as #1 seeds last Selection Sunday (Arizona/Gonzaga/Kansas). Rather, it served as a peek behind the curtain at what the committee was thinking and what criteria they were using in their analysis of everyone’s body of work. HoopsHD’s Jon Teitel got to chat with Selection Committee member Dr. Charles McClelland about Quad 1 wins and becoming committee chairman next year.

There were several topics on the agenda at your annual selection committee meeting last summer: what sort of broadcast/media issues were discussed? The executives from CBS/Turner/TNT met with the committee about different strategies and how to improve in any areas. It is a great way to learn what is most important in terms of TV timeouts, talent, game windows, tip-off times, etc.

How many hours/day will you be working on selection stuff this month? We watch a lot of games but it is tough to put an exact time limit on it: I would say I dedicate a minimum of 4-5 hours/day. We each have 3 primary conferences and 3 secondary conferences. We watch games live and on Synergy and on replay. We have some interaction with all of our conferences and also meet with the women’s selection committee.

If a team wants to make the NCAA tourney, are they better off scheduling decent teams who they think they can beat, or great teams who they can only hope to upset, or a nice mix of both, or other? It definitely helps to schedule teams who are “competitive”. My league is the SWAC and we schedule a lot of guarantee games on the road. 1 thing I learned early on is that the NET is made up of factors such as efficiency, who you play, and whether you won. It helps to play good teams but also to play competitive ballgames. It is hard to know from the start exactly which opponents will be good or bad but you can look at a team’s history in KenPom/Sagarin to get a good idea of how they will do this year. Playing outside of D-1 is definitely not something we want to do in the SWAC, but at the same time you do not need to play all of the traditional powerhouses. If you play competitive/efficient basketball you will significantly help yourself.

Committee members are able to see many modern rankings on the official team sheets (such as BPI/KPI/KenPom) in addition to the traditional ones: how have you made use of these advanced metrics, and do you have a favorite 1? I do not think that any 1 takes precedence over another: they are all part of our toolbox. We have some that are predictive and some that are results-based: we use all of the tools at our disposal to make the best recommendation. The NET is 1 tool of many that we utilize.

A couple of years ago the committee implemented a 4-tier system that emphasizes the location of wins/losses: is there a specific quadrant that you are drawn to the most (lots of Quad 1 wins, any Quad 4 losses, other), and why? Your 1st attention is drawn to Quad 1 wins because that shows that you beat 1 of the top 50-75 teams in the nation. However, it can fluctuate: a Quad 1 win today can become a Quad 2 win tomorrow. Conversely, Quad 4 losses show that you are playing the bottom of the schedule and have not been successful. If I had to hone in on 1 quadrant it would definitely be Quad 1.

How do you measure a team from a high-major conference (who have an entire season to get Quad 1/Quad 2 wins) vs. a team from a less-prestigious conference (who only have a couple of months to get such wins, and often not with any home-court advantage), and does that truly help you find the 36 best at-large teams? 1 of the things that has been synonymous with this tournament is winning the games you play. Our committee believes that a win in November is as good as a win in March so you have to capitalize on all of your opportunities. Power conference teams do have more opportunities for Quad 1/Quad 2 wins, but if you look at a team like FAU, they are a top-20 NET team and have become a Quad 1 opportunity for all of their C-USA opponents.

The NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) includes metrics such as scoring margin and net offensive/defensive efficiency: do you think that a team should receive extra credit for a victory greater than 10 PTS, and why should anyone care how efficient a team is as long as they are winning games? I do not have a position either way as to scoring margin. The NET matrix has proven to be relatively effective: if you look at the past 2 years it has been as good as any other matrix. We debated internally whether the number of points you win by matters but I think good offensive efficiency means that you are scoring at a very acceptable rate without missing a lot of shots or turning the ball over. On the defensive side, if you stop opponents from scoring then the margin is already baked into that. It is my humble opinion that the NET is not perfect…but it has been pretty effective.

What role do injuries (for example, Ryan Kalkbrenner at Creighton/Kris Murray at Iowa) play on the seeding of a team? Injuries are a critical part of what we look at, including during our conference monitoring. If you are missing 1 of your best players and you lose a game then that is something that we need to know. We want to know when a player comes back and whether he is healthy when he does so: it was very tough to keep track of these things during the peak of COVID.

I know that you try to spread out teams from the same conference into different regions but what happens if a league like the Big 12 ends up with 6 of the top-16 teams in the nation? There are procedures in place to ensure that teams do not play each other until a certain point after the 1st/2nd rounds. It is rare to have so many great teams in 1 conference in the top-16 so it would be an unusual occurrence. A lot of the bracketing is computer-based so it will let us know if something pops up but sometimes it is impossible to avoid it once you reach the Sweet 16/Elite 8.

Next year you will become the 1st person from an HBCU league/school to chair the men’s basketball selection committee: how big a deal is it, and how excited are you? I think it is a really big deal and I am extremely excited! From an overall growth perspective our teams have continued to evolve: Southern University made back-to-back tourneys in the late 1980s with Avery Johnson/Bobby Phills and Norfolk State pulled off a 1st round upset back in 2012. It is a humbling experience to be a part of the greatest collegiate sporting event in the world.

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Hoops HD Daily Rundown – Wednesday, Feb 8th

Posted on February 8, 2023 by David Griggs

NEWS AND NOTES:

-For John Stalica’s UTR Game of the Day – CLICK HERE

-Marquette, who had been looking like the best team in the Big East, did not look like it last night.  Winning on the road at UConn is tough, but they were absolutely blown off the floor.  UConn played what was probably their most impressive game since before Christmas and picked up the 87-72 win in a game that wasn’t even as close as that score indicates.

-Kansas State blew out a TCU team that’s good, but that’s also still dealing with injuries 82-61.  The Wildcats are one of several teams that are still in the hunt for a #1 seed, and yesterday’s win certainly helps.

-Indiana kept Rutgers at arms length for pretty much the entire game, and while Rutgers did make it close in the last couple of minutes, they couldn’t quite pull off the upset on the road.  The Hoosiers continue to cruise with the solid 66-60 win.

-North Carolina trailed by as many as 25 (I believe) in the second half at Wake Forest, but actually did go on a run late to make the final score look respectable.  Still, they lost 92-85 and their resume continues to be void of any wins that indicate that they are a tournament caliber team.

-Auburn’s resume was flimsy going in to last night, and despite playing a good game at Texas A&M, they didn’t get the win and their resume still looks flimsy.  TAMU, on the other hand, is sprinting toward the bubble, and may actually be inside of it by now.  If not, then they are certainly getting close.  After a somewhat so-so start to the season, they’ve now won 11 of their last 13 with much of that coming in SEC play.

-Arkansas, who I’ve been beating up on for weeks for not having a road win and lacking any real quality wins at the top of their resume, got a very impressive quality win on the road at Kentucky last night 88-73.  I now have to do a complete 180 and start to give Arkansas some props.  They played very well at Baylor just over a week ago, and while they didn’t win it was still an impressive showing on the road against a very good team, and was an indication that they had it in them to play at a high level.  Last night at Rupp Arena, they finally did it.

-One of the biggest games of the night happened very late at night as Nevada, who was squarely on the bubble, picked up a hugely important road win against a very good New Mexico team 77-76.  This was just a great game.  Both teams are good, both played well, and both could have really used this win so there was a lot at stake.  It was close the entire way, and Nevada won the game 77-76 on a last second shot.

-Last, and perhaps least, the race in the Atlantic Ten would actually be really exciting if it only meant something.  For the first time in the last 30 years or so, it doesn’t.  Five teams are logjammed at the top of the league and separated by just one game, and one of those teams is Fordham!  Dayton’s 62-58 win at VCU last night tightened up the race even more.  While both Dayton, VCU, and Saint Louis, have all shown they can play at the level of an NCAA Tournament team at times, the key words there are “AT TIMES.”  More often than not, they haven’t played at that level and none of those three (along with the rest of the A10) have done enough to make the field without winning the auto-bid.

 

HIGHLIGHTED GAMES:

-CREIGHTON AT SETON HALL.  Both teams have really been playing well lately.  Creighton has won six straight, and Seton Hall has won seven of their last eight.  Creighton is much further up the seedlist, but Seton Hall has the opportunity to get waaaay inside the bubble if they keep playing the way that they have been.  It’s a game between two teams that are red hot and that can improve their resumes even more with a win.

-IOWA STATE AT WEST VIRGINIA (Big 12).  Iowa State is one of six Big 12 teams that is within reach of a protected seed, so every game has a pivotal feel to it for them if they want to end up getting one.  West Virginia is simply trying to get inside the bubble, and we think needs five more wins in order to make it happen, so every game they play from here on out will have a pivotal feel to it.

-WISCONSIN AT PENN STATE (Big Ten).  Penn State is in a complete and total free fall and they need to string together some wins just to pull themselves out of it.  Wisconsin isn’t doing well either having lost seven of their last nine.  Both of these teams need this win just to get the process started of getting turned back around.

-FLORIDA AT ALABAMA (SEC).  I like how the Gators have been playing and think they can end up in the field if they keep it up….but I don’t think they can beat what is probably one of the two best teams in the country on the road.  If they do, then of course the value of their resume will skyrocket, but that’s a very big if.

-OKLAHOMA AT BAYLOR (Big 12).  Baylor is continuing to look like a solid protected seed and even has an outside shot at making a run at the #1 line, whereas Oklahoma is looking more and more like an NIT team despite their big win against Alabama a little while back.

-SAN DIEGO STATE AT UTAH STATE (Mountain West).  San Diego State is coming off an impressive blowout win against a pretty good Boise State team, but that was at home.  Going on the road is always tough in this league.  Having said that, this is a game that they should be able to win.  Utah State has a good record and a good net, but they don’t have any wins that really jump off the page and they’ll need to win out or come close to it in order to be seriously considered.

OTHER NOTABLE GAMES:

-Tennessee @ Vanderbilt (SEC) – should be a winnable road game for a team that’s solidly been within the range of a protected seed all year long
-Memphis @ South Florida (American) – Memphis is coming off a loss and really can’t afford any more to any teams that aren’t Houston
-Boston College @ Virginia Tech (ACC) – Some feel that VA Tech can make a run at the bubble.  If they want to do that then they better start doing it now
-Tulsa @ Houston (American) – it’s a conference game, but it could end up looking very much like a buy game
-Georgetown @ Providence (Big East) – it’s a conference game, but it could end up looking very much like a buy game
-Texas Tech @ Oklahoma State (Big 12) – Oklahoma State is red hot and has played their way onto the bubble.  If they keep stringing together wins they’ll be very safely inside it
-LSU @ Mississippi State (SEC) – Mississippi State has a ton of work to do, but if they can finish the season strong then they can still make the field

Posted in Daily Rundown, News and Notes | 1 Comment

Under The Radar Game of the Day – Wednesday, February 8th

Posted on February 8, 2023 by John Stalica

UNC-Wilmington (19-6, 9-3) at Charleston (22-3, 10-2) – 7:00 PM ET (FloHoops)

Tonight’s UTR Game of the Day heads to the Low Country where the Charleston Cougars return to Under The Radar and host the UNC-Wilmington Seahawks in a pivotal CAA matchup. Charleston beat the Seahawks 71-69 in the first game in Wilmington and cracked the Top 25 shortly afterwards. However, back-to-back losses to Hofstra and Drexel dropped the Cougars into a first-place tie with Hofstra and back down to a 1-game lead over UNC-W. Dalton Bolon had 18 points in the Cougars’ last game – an 84-67 win at Delaware.

UNC-W also had a bit of a hangover after the Charleston loss – the Seahawks had a surprising loss at William & Mary before losing on the road to Hofstra shortly thereafter. The Seahawks have since won four straight games, including a revenge win at William & Mary. Trazerian White averages 13.4 points a game and 5.6 rebounds a game for the Seahawks.

Posted in CBB on TV, Daily Rundown, News and Notes, Under the Radar | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment