Under the Radar Game of the Day, Wednesday, January 7, 2015: Loyola (Chicago) at Evansville

Posted on January 7, 2015 by Chad

Loyola (Chicago) at Evansville, 8:00 PM Eastern, FSN-Regional, Fox College Sports Central and espn3

The UTR Game of the Day heads to Evansville, Indiana tonight as the Purple Aces welcomes the Loyola (Chicago) Ramblers in for a Missouri Valley Conference game.  Loyola has been one of the most surprising teams in the MVC so far this season.  Despite being picked to finish near the bottom of the standings, the Ramblers put together a 10-2 non-conference record which included wins over Texas Tech and Boise State.  They have gone 1-1 in MVC play so far as well, with a win over Bradley followed by a loss at Northern Iowa.  While the Ramblers would have to come up with several more solid wins without slipping up at all in order to even sniff an at-large bid (and that may not even be enough), they are definitely going to  be tough to beat, especially at home, and will be a very difficult out in the MVC tournament in March.

Evansville was a team that we picked to finish near the top of the MVC standings this year and so far they have, more or less, performed as we predicted.  Despite losing 19 times last season, the Aces are already 11-3 including wins over Fresno State, Belmont and Northern Iowa in their MVC opener.  The bad news for Evansville is that they pretty much gave back all the credit they earned for defeating UNI by losing an overtime game last time out at Indiana State.  While the game against the Sycamores was their big MVC in-state rivalry, it was not the type of game a team with tournament hopes can afford to lose.  The Purple Aces will have several chances to score key wins, including at least two games with Wichita State, before the season ends, but for now they need to rebound from the Indiana State loss and score a solid home win over a good Ramblers team tonight.

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Highlighted Games for Tuesday, Jan 6th

Posted on January 6, 2015 by David Griggs

For Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day – CLICK HERE

-OLE MISS AT KENTUCKY (SEC).  With most of the ranked teams out of the way, Kentucky begins the easier portion of their schedule in the SEC.

-ARKANSAS AT GEORGIA (SEC).  Arkansas is in the rankings and is having a good year, but they traditionally have not played well on the road, and this Georgia team is unbeaten at home.  If Georgia wins, it won’t be an upset.

-EAST CAROLINA AT CINCINNATI (American).  Cincinnati does not have a large margin for error due to the lack of quality win opportunities in the AAC.

-WESTERN MICHIGAN AT AKRON (MAC).  Both teams are probably outside the bubble, but both come in at 9-4 in what is shaping up to be a very competitive and exciting MAC this year.

-MARQUETTE AT GEORGETOWN (Big East).  Both teams need this one, but Marquette needs it a whole lot more.

-MICHIGAN AT PENN STATE (Big Ten).  Both teams need this one, but….well….both teams need this one.

-CONNECTICUT AT SOUTH FLORIDA (American).  If UConn does not win this game they will need to improve just to get to the level of being in bad shape.  In other words, they’ll be in worse than bad shape if they don’t win.

-SAINT LOUIS AT GEORGE WASHINGTON (Atlantic Ten).  I really like this GW team.  For the second year in a row they’re good, and for the second year in a row no one is really paying attention to them.

-VILLANOVA AT SAINT JOHN’S (Big East).  The Johnnies are good, but they face the real possibility of starting off 0-3 in conference play despite being ranked.  Nova is still looking to earn a #1 seed.

-OKLAHOMA STATE AT IOWA STATE (Big Twelve).  Both teams have looked pretty good.  Perhaps Oklahoma State has been a little underappreciated, but if they get a road win like this one that will change.

-OHIO STATE AT MINNESOTA (Big Ten).  Both teams are good, but both need to improve their profiles, so there is a sense of urgency to this game despite it being early.

-PROVIDENCE AT BUTLER (Big East).  If Providence wants to land safely inside the bubble then this is the kind of game that they’re going to have to win.

-TEXAS A&M AT ALABAMA (SEC).  Neither team has done anything spectacular, but both have bloated records so it’s worth paying attention to.

-NEW MEXICO AT SAN DIEGO STATE (Mountain West).  This is a down year for the Lobos, but they’re still a respectable 10-4 and San Diego State has shown they are beatable.  Both teams need to improve their resumes, and to do that they need to win games like this.

-MORGAN STATE AT SAINT MARY’S.  Buy game.

 

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Under the Radar Game of the Day – Tuesday January 6, 2015: South Carolina Upstate at UMKC

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Chad

South Carolina Upstate at UMKC, 8:00 PM Eastern, free streaming at wacsports.com

The UTR Game of the Day heads to Kansas City, Missouri tonight for a non-conference matchup between the WAC’s UMKC ‘roos and the A-Sun’s South Carolina Upstate Spartans.  With January here, non-conference games are getting sparse, and tonight’s game is the final such tilt for both teams before starting conference play this weekend (with the sole exception of Upstate’s scheduled game against a non-D1 team on February 3).

UMKC enters tonight’s game with a 5-11 record, and only 3 of those wins being against D1 competition.  The first of those wins was a huge one though, as the ‘roos won at Mizzou, 69-61, on the season’s opening night back in November.  Sophomore Martez Harrison is the player to watch for the ‘roos, having scored in double digits every game so far, including lighting up Indiana State for 34 in one of their other wins.

South Carolina Upstate has been showing that they intend to contend in the Atlantic Sun this season, as they enter tonight’s game with an 11-4 record and (narrowly over Florida Gulf Coast) the best KenPom Rating in the conference.  Most notably, the Spartans won at Georgia Tech on December 6.  They have also picked up a win over an SEC team, albeit Mississippi State.  A pair of seniors are the standout players this season for the Spartans, Ty Greene and Fred Miller.  Greene had a great game last time out, scoring 26 against Hampton.  He will need to have another strong game tonight for the Spartans if they want to head into conference play coming off of a road victory in Kansas City.

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Bracket Projections: January 5th

Posted on January 5, 2015 by David Griggs

Chad Sherwood built the following bracket….

 

For our latest Bracket Racket: CLICK HERE

BRACKET NOTES

– This is the bracket through games of Sunday, January 4, 2015.  For the most part, this bracket is based on how teams have performed to date.  No projections are made as to the outcomes of future games, other than the team that has the best resume to date in each conference is deemed to be the automatic bid winner (even if they do not currently have the best record in the conference).  Honestly, I have ever been able to figure out why so-called “Bracketologists” that claim they know everything about college hoops simply choose the first place teams from each conference for the automatic bid winner — are they too lazy to take 2 minutes and figure out which team is in fact the best on the league, and thus the team most likely to receive its automatic bid?  With so many conferences having unbalanced league schedules, conference record (especially this early in the season) is an almost a meaningless stat and should never be the criteria for projecting a field.

– The ACC ended up leading the way with 8 bids, followed by the Big 12 with 7 and the Big East with 6.

– Oregon is on the 12 seed line while the NC State/UNLV play-in game is on the 11 line.  This was done because of bracketing problems resulting from BYU being in the First Four and the requirement that at least one of the two at-large vs at-large First Four games go to a Friday-Sunday site.  Since that couldn’t be the BYU game, and I don’t believe the committee would send a First Four winner all the way out to Seattle, the only choice left was to move them up to the 11 line and drop Oregon down.  In addition, NC State got UNLV instead of Xavier due to a shift among the First Four teams because the committee would not repeat the same matchup from last season’s First Four.

– The SEC getting four teams in, all above the First Four, kind of shocked me at first, but Arkansas has a good profile, LSU has a very good win at West Virginia and South Carolina now has a very good neutral court win over Iowa State.  None of the these teams has any awful losses on their profiles, which made them better than the rest of the teams being evaluated at the bottom of the field.

– NC State, Xavier, BYU and UNLV were the last four teams in.  None of them truly deserve a bid, but again they were better than anyone else for now.  UNLV’s resume is particularly weak, but at this point in the season one big win can propel a team into a bracket projection, and they definitely have that with the win over Arizona.

– In no particular order, the next seven teams out were Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, TCU, Providence, Minnesota, UTEP and Georgia.  In fact, Providence was the very last team left out, and it was a very close call between the Friars and UNLV.

– As always, I love to see some of the matchups created here purely by application of the bracketing rules.  The 8/9 games between Temple-Syracuse and George Washington-Georgetown are particularly appealing.  Also, Kentucky and Louisville being the top two seeds in the Midwest Region with a chance to meet again is interesting..though we know how painful those games can be to watch.

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Highlighted Games for Monday, Jan 5th

Posted on January 5, 2015 by David Griggs

For the most recent edition of the Bracket Racket Podcast – CLICK HERE

For Chad Sherwood’s UTR game of the night – CLICK HERE

For the latest Bracket Projection – CLICK HERE

 

TONIGHT’S HIGHLIGHTED GAMES

-NOTRE DAME AT NORTH CAROLINA (ACC).  Notre Dame has a bloated record and has looked pretty good, but this is by far their toughest test of the year up to this point.  Both teams are in the rankings, and both appear to be tournament bound, so it’s a chance to add a quality conference win to the profile.

-WEST VIRGINIA AT TEXAS TECH (Big Twelve).  WVA has been impressive this year.  It’s never easy to win on the road, and although this won’t be either, it is still one of their more winnable conference road games.

-TEXAS STATE AT GEORGIA STATE (Sun Belt).  If Georgia State wins out they may have a shot at landing inside the bubble, but anything short of that and they’re likely needing the automatic bid.

-INDIANA AT MICHIGAN STATE (Big Ten).  Indiana has looked more impressive than expected so far, and Michigan State has been more disappointing than expected.  It’s a big game for both teams.

-WRIGHT STATE AT GREEN BAY (Horizon League).  Green Bay has a shot at an at-large if they win out, but anything short of that and they’ll really be cutting it close.

-OKLAHOMA AT TEXAS (Big Twelve).  This is the first edition of the Red River Shootout.  It’s a conference rivalry between two ranked teams, so it should be fun.

-NEBRASKA AT IOWA (Big Ten).  Iowa is having a much better year than expected, and Nebraska is doing much worse.  Nebraska has not looked like an NCAA Tournament team at any point this year, and they need a win like this to turn things around.  Iowa, on the other hand, has looked very good.

-SELA AT SFA (Southland).  Even winning out for SFA may not be enough, but they should at least get a look if they run the table in league play.

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Under the Radar Game of the Day – Monday, January 5 , 2014: Texas Southern at Southern

Posted on January 5, 2015 by Chad

For the latest Bracket Racket, CLICK HERE.

Texas Southern at Southern, 9:00 PM Eastern, ESPNU

It must be January, as tonight kicks off ESPN’s BIG MONDAY coverage (though with a break next week for the football championship game).  There was a time when Big Monday meant a tripleheader of Big East, Big Ten and Big West basketball.  Then conference realignment and new television deals came along, and now it is an ACC-Big 12 doubleheader on ESPN, and a pair of games on ESPNU normally from the MEAC and/or SWAC.  Tonight’s ESPNU coverage begins with West Virginia at Texas Tech, then swings down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Texas Southern takes on Southern University in our UTR Game of the Day.

The problems at Southern U. were well documented on this site last season, as all of their APR data for about a ten year stretch was deemed unusable by the NCAA for pretty much all sports.  The entire athletic program was therefore banned from any postseason play last year.  As the school was never able to reconstruct its data, heading into this season the Jaguars do not have a full four years of APR data to use.  The NCAA utilizes a four year average score, and with a couple of 0’s in for the unusable years, Southern’s APR this season is 489 when it needs to be over 930.  Southern is ineligible again this season and unless the NCAA gives the school some sort of waiver, they are probably looking at receiving at least one more year on the postseason ban list after this one.

The Southern Jaguars enter tonight’s game at 4-11 overall and 1-0 in SWAC.  Their three wins outside of the SWAC were all over non-D1 competition.  Tonight’s opponent only has 4 wins as well, sitting at 4-10 and 1-0 in the SWAC.  However, their three non-SWAC wins were all against D1 opponents — Lamar, Michigan State and Kansas State.  Mike Davis’ Texas Southern Tigers pulled perhaps the biggest upset we have seen in years by heading into East Lansing, Michigan on December 20 and coming out with a six point overtime victory over Tom Izzo’s Spartans.  The Tigers followed that up eight days later with a win over Bruce Weber’s Kansas State Wildcats.  While the Tigers have lost ten games this year, all of their losses have come away from home against some pretty tough competition (Indiana, Gonzaga, Florida, SMU, and Baylor to just name a few).  As a result, despite being six games under .500, Texas Southern holds the best RPI, BPI and KenPom ratings by far in the SWAC and stands out right now as the clear favorite to win the conference.  In fact, with their two big non-conference wins, the Tigers may even have a shot at being the first SWAC team since 1999 to be seeded higher than the 16 line in the NCAA tournament!

As a final note, with Big Monday kicking off tonight, we would be remiss if we did not take a look back at the greatest advertising campaign in the history of ESPN’s college basketball coverage.  Take it away, Mr. Goulet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7eFWUAAFT0

 

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