It’s a huge day in football, but it’s a busy day in college basketball as well. Below is a rundown of all of today’s action, as well as a look back at yesterday.
NEWS AND NOTES
-For Chad Sherwood’s Under the Radar Game of the Day – CLICK HERE
-The exempt tournament theme of renewing old rivalries continues this year! We’ve seen Texas v Texas A&M, Gonzaga v Washington, Syracuse v UConn, and tomorrow we’ll get to see Xavier v Dayton. Xavier blew past USC, whereas Dayton needed to hold on to beat what appears to be a very red hot Monmouth team, who had a shot to tie the game at the buzzer, but missed. The win for Monmouth would have meant infinitely more than the win for Dayton did, because Monmouth has so few opportunities at notable wins, so to pick up yet another one would have been huge. I still think Monmouth is good enough to make the NCAA Tournament, and to be in a position to where they don’t have to win the conference tournament to do it, but they’ll have a small margin for error. The third place game on Saturday is huge for them.
-Gonzaga likes to build up early leads, and then give them up. They appeared to be completely in the drivers seat against UConn, but let go of the wheel and UConn had a chance to tie it at the buzzer. The Zags held on to win. It wasn’t the first time they appeared to have a game in hand early, but let the other team back into it. They did the same thing against Texas A&M on Thanksgiving. UConn, again, lost in a thriller. It was the second time in about 24 hours.
-Northeastern finally looked like the team that was playing so well at the end of last season when they hit a shot at the buzzer to win at Miami FL. It was the first loss of the season for the Canes, who had looked extremely impressive up until that point. I was ready to give up on Northeastern, but when you look at their profile now they suddenly have just one loss, they’ve won multiple games away from home, and they have a win at Miami FL. The entire complexion of their season has suddenly changed.
-Providence is unbeaten, and got a big win against Arizona out in Las Vegas. Arizona really struggled in both games of this tournament, including two days ago against a winless Santa Clara team. Too much holiday turkey, I guess.
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-TENNESSEE VS NEBRASKA (Barclay’s Center Classic). Neither team has has done anything yet to show that they’re good enough to make the NCAA Tournament.
-SOUTH DAKOTA STATE AT UMKC. A win for South Dakota State gets them to 7-0, which is impressive, but they haven’t had a really big test yet.
-VALPARAISO AT BALL STATE. Ball State has just one loss on the season and has yet to lose at home, but Valpo is likely too much for them. Valpo doesn’t have a wide margin for error due to a lack of opportunities at big wins, but they’re still good enough to play their way inside of the bubble.
-CHATTANOOGA VS JACKSONVILLE STATE (Emerald Coast Classic). Chattanooga has just one loss on the season and continuing to pick up wins away from home will help their profile.
-GEORGE WASHINGTON VS CINCINNATI (Barclay’s Center Classic). Both teams come in unbeaten, and for Cincinnati it’s probably their toughest test of the season so far. Both will have other chances at resume building wins, but not so many that this game isn’t important to both teams.
-NORTHERN IOWA AT NORTH DAKOTA. Northern Iowa has a nice win against North Carolina, but this is their first road game and they need wins away from home in order to build a solid profile.
-LA SALLE AT ROWAN (nondiv1). Very cool story behind this game. Read Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day – HERE
-LITTLE ROCK AT TULSA. Little Rock already has a big win against San Diego State, and if they can pick up a second big road win then you have to start thinking of them as an NCAA Tournament team, at least for now. Tulsa has a win over Wichita State, but it’s hard to say how much credit they’re going to get for that seeing as how much Wichita is struggling. They had a decent showing out in the Paradise Jam, but still have a lot of work to do.
-OLD DOMINION AT VCU. This is an old conference rivalry that is now an OOC rivalry, so it has probably cooled off some, but there is still some heat here. This year, it’s a actually a big game for both teams both on and off paper. Old Dominion was pitiful in their last two games and has a lot of work to do if they want their profile to impress the committee. They also have very few opportunities at notable wins, so from their perspective this is a rivalry game with a very pivotal feel to it.
-HOFSTRA AT SAINT BONAVENTURE. Hofstra got the big win against Florida State, but followed that up with two losses. They need to be able to beat teams like Saint Bonaventure in road games in order to build up their profile.
-HAWAI’I AT TEXAS TECH. Hawai’i hasn’t lost yet, and Texas Tech has just one on the season. Granted, neither team has really been tested yet either, so we should learn a little more about them today.
-KENT STATE AT PITTSBURGH. Kent State has just one loss, and a win in a game like this is how they can make a statement and get people’s attention. Pitt is still unbeaten, but other than a half of basketball against Gonzaga that didn’t count, they’re also untested.
-WILLIAM & MARY AT HOWARD. A win for W&M gets them to 5-1 and gives them another win away from home.
-UNC WILMINGTON AT EAST TENNESSEE STATE. We highlight this only to point out that UNCW is 3-0, and like a lot of Colonial teams, they’re off to a really good start.
-SOUTH DAKOTA AT SACRAMENTO STATE. A win for Sac State gets them to 5-0 on the year.
-IOWA STATE VS ILLINOIS (Emerald Coast Classic). Illinois finally looked like a decent basketball team yesterday against UAB after struggling against lower caliber competition, but they weren’t exactly playing against a team that’s as strong as Iowa State, who blew past VA Tech in their first game.
-GEORGIA AT SETON HALL. I think Georgia is a good team, but they need at least a decent win away from home in a game like this to jumpstart their season.
-WESTERN ILLINOIS AT CREIGHTON. Western Illinois has been one of the surprise teams of the year. They started off by beating Wisconsin at Wisconsin, but that was only the beginning. They haven’t lost since and have been running over their competition. If they pull off a win at Creighton then we really need to start taking them seriously.
-SAINT LOUIS VS LOUISVILLE (Brooklyn Hoops Holiday Tournament). Both teams are 4-0, but it still appears to be a big mismatch in Louisville’s favor.
-COLORADO STATE AT UTEP (Corpus Christi Coastal Classic). Both teams are still flying way under the national radar, but both are 5-0, and Colorado State has a win at Northern Iowa, so it’s an early test for both teams, who may be a little better than what most people realize.
-BELMONT AT BYU. I haven’t totally given up on Belmont yet, but if they are a team that’s good enough to get an at-large then they need to win this game.
BUY GAMES
-Bryant @ Georgetown
-Denison (nondiv1) @ Davidson
-SIUE @ Butler
-Lehigh @ Purdue
-Cleveland State @ Maryland
-New Orleans @ Northwestern
-Prairie View @ UNLV
Throwback Thursday: Thanksgiving Tournaments
Click here for David Griggs’ rundown of today’s NCAA action; also click here for Chad Sherwood’s rundown of today’s featured under-the-radar contest in Nashville.
While the Thanksgiving holiday was originally a quiet portion of the college basketball calendar with the exception of a few holiday tournaments, the popularity of Thanksgiving week (and some cases prior to the week of Thanksgiving) tournaments has exploded in recent seasons. One of the original capstone moments came not during Thanksgiving but rather prior to Christmas in 1982 when Virginia was upset by the Chaminade Silverswords, a small Marianist college in NAIA located in Hawaii.
Beginning in 1984, the Maui Invitational became a popular “exempt” tournament for NCAA teams. This meant that a team could play up to 3 games but only have it count as one game on a team’s regular season schedule. Nowadays, a team can play a maximum of 4 games as part of a bracketed event, even if 1 or 2 of those games are considered non-bracketed. The Maui Invitational has featured 4 champions of the tournament who would go on to win the national title – Michigan in 1988, North Carolina in 2004, North Carolina in 2008, and Connecticut in 2011. It has also featured a previous champion who would be an eventual national runner-up in Arizona in 2000. There used to be a period when teams could only play in 2 exempt tournaments every 4 seasons, but that restriction was lifted in the mid-2000s. This may have best been summed up by the 2003 champion Dayton Flyers – they beat Central Michigan, San Diego State and Hawaii to win the Maui title that year. The real irony here is that Dayton has arguably had better performances in Maui when they had 3rd-place finishes in the tournament; each year they would get a pair of wins against notable NCAA Tournament teams (i.e. Connecticut and Maryland in 1999) that would help catapult them to what was then a rare at-large bid for the Flyers in the 1999-2000 season.
Another tournament that used to be one of the premier Thanksgiving destinations was the Great Alaska Shootout. This tournament actually goes back to 1978 when it originally began as the Sea Wolf Classic (hosted by the Alaska-Anchorage Seawolves). Even though no champion of this tournament has never gone on to win the national title later that season – there were 2 champions who would finish as the national runner-up; Seton Hall in 1988 and Kentucky in 1996. One of the best championship games in the Great Alaska Shootout came between Cincinnati and Duke in 1998; you can click here for some footage of this memorable game between a Duke team that would also finish as a national runner-up that season and a Cincinnati team where Kenyon Martin was an emerging superstar. The Bearcats would be victorious on this night, however.
In recent seasons, however, the elimination of the 2-in-4 rule has freed more marquee programs to play in other tournaments that have sprawled throughout the country, much to the detriment of the Great Alaska Shootout and the Preseason NIT. In its heyday, the Preseason NIT would be a 16-team single-elimination field that would feature the first two rounds to be played on campus sites and the final 2 rounds to be played in Madison Square Garden on Thanksgiving weekend. The very first Preseason NIT was held in 1985; Duke would beat Kansas in the championship in New York and would also beat the Jayhawks in the Final Four later that season. When under-the-radar teams began crashing the party, dwindling attendance helped lead the tournament to eventually change its format to one where 4 pre-determined teams would host the first 2 rounds on their campus sites and then play each other in a bracketed event in MSG. The “under-the-radar” teams would also play bracketed games with each other so that they too could play up to 4 games under the umbrella of an exempt event. Today, the Preseason NIT has dwindled to a 4-team, 2-game non-exempt event that will rotate between the Barclays Center and the older Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
But some of the events that have sprung up in recent years have benefitted both major teams and non-major teams alike. The MAAC hosts an annual tournament in Orlando (now the Advocare Classic); C-USA hosts the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, and the Big West hosts the Wooden Legacy in Fullerton (early rounds) and Anaheim for the final day of competition. These events serve as early tests for major programs and also give under-the-radar teams a chance to play the big boys (and occasionally each other) in a neutral court setting as opposed to on-campus sites as buy game fodder.
So let us be thankful for what these tournaments have provided and will continue to provide for college basketball fans as they gradually become part of what is indeed a festive holiday weekend.