Today marks the final day of Thanksgiving weekend – a few exempt events conclude today along with a few other notable matchups on the docket. While David Griggs is in a drunken stupor celebrating Nebraska’s win over Tennessee, I have volunteered to fill in today for the puppet.
NEWS AND NOTES
– The Fun Belt Conference strikes again – Little Rock scores another win of note away from home with a 64-60 win at Tulsa. This moves the Trojans to 3-0 against Division I competition.
– As we alluded to in the open, the Barclays Center Classic featured a few teams with NCAA Tournament aspirations; Cincinnati and George Washington squared off in a tight game featuring several lead changes. In the end, the Bearcats won and keeps their record perfect at 7-0. Nebraska also salvaged their weekend a little bit with a win over Tennessee in the consolation matchup.
– In the UTR version of the Emerald Coast Classic, Florida A&M actually recorded a victory against Alcorn State. In the main event, Iowa State and Illinois had a closely contested game for about 30 minutes before the Cyclones shifted gears and wound up winning 84-73. In the 3rd place game, Virginia Tech knocked off UAB in overtime; the Blazers aren’t going to have many opportunities remaining (if any) to cement an at-large NCAA profile.
– Up in the Great Alaska Shootout, Middle Tennessee ended up beating Toledo for that championship. Even more noteworthy may well be San Jose State racking up 2 wins (even if one of them was non-DI Alaska-Anchorage).
– In the Colonial Athletic Association, it was a mixed bag yesterday. VCU got a much-needed win over in-state rival Old Dominion; one of the league favorites in Hofstra got a road win at St. Bonaventure. However, the road was not kind to William & Mary yesterday; they travelled to the Beltway to face off against Howard and wound up losing 79-77.
– Creighton is still a tough out, at least in their own dungeon in Omaha. After coming off of a blowout loss at Indiana and a pair of wins in the Heavyweight Division of the Men Who Speak Up Main Event in Las Vegas, the Bluejays came back home and blasted what was an undefeated Western Illinois squad 97-67.
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-XAVIER vs. DAYTON – Advocare Classic Championship (Mythical Miami Valley Conference) – 4:30 PM on ESPN2. This dormant rivalry will revive itself for one day at the HP Fieldhouse at Disney World’s campus in Orlando. With lots of Dayton and Xavier fans in attendance, this could be a rare sellout for an exempt tournament event. (Click here for highlights from their last encounter).
-WISCONSIN at OKLAHOMA – 2:30 PM on ESPN2. There aren’t too many marquee games outside of the exempt tournaments this weekend, but it does offer a shot at redemption for Wisconsin for their season-opening loss to Western Illinois. This is also a good tune-up for the Badgers’ upcoming ACC tilt at Syracuse later this week.
-MICHIGAN STATE vs. PROVIDENCE – Wooden Legacy Championship – 10:00 PM on ESPN2. Just like they did last year, the Friars scored a significant victory away from home during Thanksgiving weekend with their win over Arizona on Friday (they beat Notre Dame at this time last year). The matchup of Kris Dunn vs. Denzel Valentine should be a very entertaining one.
-MONMOUTH vs. USC – Advocare Classic 3rd Place – 12:30 PM on ESPN2. This will actually be the 2nd game between the Hawks and Trojans since they already played a non-bracketed game at USC a couple of weeks earlier. Monmouth is in search of another signature win this weekend; USC will look to restore some lost pride after getting blasted by Xavier for the bulk of their last contest.
-BOISE STATE vs. ARIZONA – Wooden Legacy 3rd Place – 4:30 PM on ESPNU. Another recurring theme of teams needing signature wins to bolster their at-large profile; the Broncos get 1 more chance against an Arizona team that is not 100% healthy.
-NOTRE DAME vs. ALABAMA – Advocare Classic 5th Place – 7:00 PM on ESPNU. Alabama managed to score a Top 25 win for the first time in 4 seasons after their win over Wichita State on Friday. They’ll get another opportunity against a Notre Dame team that’s still learning their roles without Jerian Grant and Pat Connaughton.
-UC IRVINE vs. EVANSVILLE – Wooden Legacy 5th Place – 2:30 PM on ESPNU. The Anteaters feature one of the tallest post players in Mamadou Ndiaye; the Purple Aces feature an inside-out combination with D.J. Balentine and Egidiju Mockevicius. As this is also Chad Sherwood’s UTR game of the day, click here for a detailed preview.
BUY GAMES OF THE DAY
Utah State at Duke – 12:30 PM, ESPNU – While this technically does fall under a buy game, there is some intrigue for a Utah State program who saw their star player David Collette leave the team prior to the beginning of the season. The Aggies already have 2 wins over in-state rivals Weber State on the road and Utah Valley University at home, but a trip to Durham, NC will be a big step up in competition for the Aggies.
Jackson State at Marquette – 1:30 PM, FS1
Rider at Rhode Island
Brown at SMU
South Carolina State at Kansas State
REGIONAL RIVALRIES
Harvard at Holy Cross
Penn at Lafayette
Northern Colorado at Colorado (Front Range)
Delaware at Temple
Pacific at Sacramento State
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.