Hoops HD

NEWS AND NOTES

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For John Stalica’s UTR Game of the Day between Radford and Liberty – CLICK HERE

HIGHLIGHTED GAMES

-AUBURN VS DAVIDSON (Veterans Classic, Annapolis MD).  Auburn is coming off a Final Four season, and big things are expected of Davidson this year as they return a lot of talent from last year’s team.  It’s Davidson’s first game, and Auburn’s first challenge.

-COLORADO STATE AT DUKE.  Both teams come in 1-0, but Duke’s win against Kansas was the slightly more impressive win.

-NORTH CAROLINA AT UNC WILMINGTON.  Both teams won their opener, but UNC clearly looks like the superior team and shouldn’t have too much trouble.

-NORTH TEXAS AT VCU.  This is a buy game, but I like this UNT team and think that they may be able to stick with VCU for a while.  They appear to be overmatched and they’re on the road, but this should be more competitive than most buy games.

-LOYOLA CHICAGO AT FURMAN.  Both teams are 1-0.  Furman won this one last year before going on to Villanova and beating them as well.  You may recall they exploded onto the scene with back to back road wins against teams that were in the previous year’s Final Four.

-AKRON AT WEST VIRGINIA.  This is the season opener for the Mountaineers, who are once again healthy and who did look pretty good in a charity game against Duquesne.  Akron won their first game, but they’ll face a much bigger test tonight.

-VERMONT AT SAINT BONAVENTURE.  A lot of us at Hoops HD are really big on this Vermont team.  If they’re as good as some of us seem to think they are, then this should be a winnable road game for them.

-BOWLING GREEN AT LSU.  Bowling Green is the preseason favorite to win the MAC.  They’re probably overmatched tonight, but they’ve got a chance to make an early splash on the national scene.

-HARVARD AT NORTHEASTERN (Bean Pot).  Both teams won their opener, and while Harvard looks to be the better team, playing on the road against a rival will be a lot tougher than playing at home against MIT.  We should learn a little something about the Crimson tonight.

-NORTHERN KENTUCKY AT MISSOURI.  This is a buy game, but since NKU is one of the better teams in the Horizon League we’ll go ahead and highlight it.  Both teams come into this 1-0, and while Mizzou should win, they better not overlook the Norse.

-UNC GREENSBORO AT KANSAS.  This may look like a mismatch, and perhaps it is, but UNCG is a top 50 caliber team that just missed the NCAA Tournament a year ago, and may be good enough to land inside the bubble this year.  Winning at Kansas is probably over their heads, but it will be interesting to see what they can do against one of the best teams in the country.

-WEBER STATE AT UTAH STATE.  Utah State escaped their season opener against Montana State.  They face their Beehive State rivals tonight.

-ILLINOIS AT GRAND CANYON.  Some people are really big on Illinois.  Quite frankly, I’m not seeing it, and the fact that they needed overtime to get by Nicholls in their opener didn’t help my opinion of them much.  At least they won, though.  Grand Canyon couldn’t get past a div2 team in their opener.  Still, it winning at GCU is never easy.

-WASHINGTON VS BAYLOR (Armed Forces Classic, Anchorage AK).  This is an early season neutral floor game between two teams that look like they could be NCAA Tournament teams.  It should be a fun one.

-ARIZONA STATE VS COLORADO (Not Pac 12, Shanghai China).  I guess the Pac 12 couldn’t find a team to go to China for their annual early season game, so they just decided to send two Pac 12 teams.  In case you’re wondering, this will not count in the conference standings.  But, it is an important game.  We feel that both are contenders to make the NCAA Tournament.

-OAKLAND VS DELAWARE (Sunshine Slam, Kissimmee FL).  Both teams 1-0

-UTSA VS SOUTHERN ILLINOIS (Sunshine Slam, Kissimmee FL).  Could be a fairly competitive UTR game

BUY GAMES

-Eastern Kentucky @ Kentucky – both teams 1-0
-UIC @ Memphis – both teams 1-0
-Siena @ Xavier – both teams 1-0
-Sacred Heart @ UConn
-Longwood @ George Mason – both teams 1-0
-Radford @ Liberty
-Florida Atlantic @ Miami FL
-Coppin State @ Virginia Tech
-Arkansas State @ Ole Miss
-Eastern Illinois @ Wisconsin
-Fairleigh Dickinson @ DePaul – both teams unbeaten
-Sam Houston State @ Mississippi State – both teams 1-0
-Merrimack @ Northwestern
-Mississippi Valley State @ Utah
-Portland @ USC – both teams 1-0

NEWS AND NOTES

-For John Stalica’s UTR Game of the Day between Marshall and Robert Morris – CLICK HERE

–JNG.  Even though we are just a couple of days in, people are already asking for/demanding Joby’s Nitty Gritty Rankings (the JNG)!!!  As far as how they work and what computers and programs he uses….I have no idea.  What I do know is that all 353 teams need to have played at least one game against a div1 opponent in order for his formula to work.  Otherwise, if he tried to run the formulas, his computer would explode or something like that.  As soon as all teams have played a div1 game they will be posted, and they will be updated on a pretty much daily basis from that point on.

-Notre Dame led North Carolina throughout much of the first half and through part of the second half.  UNC eventually opened it up and got the win, but the Irish made a pretty good account of themselves.  They look a lot better than the team that lost 8 out of 9 (or whatever it was) to end the season a year ago.

-Syracuse squared off against Virginia, which is never a good idea if you can avoid it.  They did hold the defending national champs to just 48 points!!  The problem is that they themselves only scored 34 points.  Starting the season off with a conference road win is a pretty good way to start things off.

-Ohio State and Cincinnati played one of the ugliest first halves of basketball that you may see all season, but they both kind of came out of it in the second half and we saw a free flowing, well played game where both teams were able to score.  For the second year in a row, Ohio State picked up the 64-56 win.  It wasn’t just the second year in a row that Ohio State won.  It was the second year in a row that they won 64-56.  Cincinnati did look pretty good (at least in the second half) under their new head coach.  To go on the road against a ranked team and be able to stay with them, and to shut them down defensively, is a pretty promising sign despite the loss.

-Boston College held off Wake Forest in their ACC opener.  BC is now in first place in the ACC, and will be for the next six weeks or so.  Think about that!

-Pitt picked up a nice win at home against Florida State.  I’m not going to say that I’m shocked by it, but it was a game that I thought the Noles would win.  It’s a great start for a Pitt team that hasn’t had much to be excited about in the last several years.

-Mount Saint Mary’s had a 59-45 lead on Georgetown about midway through the second half, and had played an outstanding game up to that point.  Then Georgtetown finally wok up, outscored them 36-9 from that point on, and ended up getting the win.

-San Jose State started the season off with a really solid road win at Hofstra.  SAN JOSE STATE!!!  A SOLID ROAD WIN!!  I’m trying to think if that has ever happened before.  As it stands now, I think they’ve got the most impressive win out of anyone else in the MWC.  Granted, it’s very early, but that was a good start.

-I thought Merrimack would have a chance to win their div1 debut against Maine.  I was wrong.  The Black Bears picked up the win and never even really had to sweat.

-Belmont and Illinois State went back and forth before Illinois State was able to pull out the win at home.  It was a good showing by a Belmont team that had a fair amount of roster turnover, and I don’t want to say it was a bad loss in the sense that they can still bounce back, but the margin for error is so small for a UTR team that they need to be able to win games like this one.

-Oklahoma State really had to sweat out Oral Roberts, but they were able to come up with the win.

-UCLA got all they wanted from Long Beach State, and actually trailed for most of the game, but was able to pull it off in Mick Cronin’s debut.

HIGHLIGHTED GAMES

-WINTHROP AT HARTFORD – Hartford can improve to 2-0 with a win

-SEATTLE AT WASHINGTON STATE.  This may be the most intriguing game of the night.  Seattle was decimated with injuries last year, but prior to that they had looked pretty good.  They’re healthy this year, and they may be able to take down (and possibly even beat) a low level Pac 12 team on the road.

-BRYANT AT RUGERS – buy game

-PRESBYTERIAN AT CLEMSON – buy game

-SOUTHWESTERN (nondiv1) AT TCU – buy game