Hoops HD

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there from us here at HoopsHD.com!

While Turkey Day is traditionally a football day, recent years has seen a wealth of college basketball games available as well.  The Wooden Legacy, Battle 4 Atlantic and Old Spice Classic all have quarterfinals starting today.  In addition, there is a non-bracketed event in Las Vegas and the final two quarterfinals in the Great Alaska Shootout.

Today’s SCGD turns to the great state of Alaska, the only state in the country that does not have a Division I college basketball team, but the site every year for the Great Alaska Shootout, hosted by Alaska-Anchorage (Alaska-Fairbanks used to host the Top of the World Classic this time of year as well, but that event was cancelled about five years ago).  Last night, Tulsa upset Indiana State and TCU barely survived against Alaska-Anchorage to advance to the first of Friday’s semifinals.  Tonight, Green Bay will battle Pepperdine in the first game, while our SCGD turns to the final game of the night, Harvard vs Denver (Midnight Eastern tip time, CBS Sports Network).

Harvard enters tonight’s game with a 4-1 record, though their best win of the four was against Bryant.  They had appeared to be well on their way to winning at Colorado on Sunday, only to completely fall apart in the second half and end up losing by 8.  The Crimson’s non-conference schedule this season, however, should be more about obtaining a good seed in the NCAA tournament than obtaining an at-large bid, as there does not appear to be anyone in the Ivy League that can contend with them for the regular season title.  The Ivy is the lone conference without a postseason tournament, giving their automatic bid instead to the regular season champion.

Denver entered the season as one of a pair of teams that appeared to be ready to battle for the Summit League title.  They were predicted by some, yours truly included, as being good enough to contend for an at-large bid as well.  Joe Scott’s Pioneers have only played two games so far, but were beaten fairly easily at Cal and at home by Stanford.  With their toughest games after the Shootout being at Colorado State and home against Belmont, the Pioneers have almost no margin for error left if they are going to get on the board this March.  That makes winning tonight’s game, and in fact winning this entire tournament, almost an absolute must for Denver.

Two key players to keep an eye on tonight — Wesley Saunders for Harvard and Chris Udofia for Denver.  Saunders is a 6-5 combo guard/forward who averaged over 16 points per game last season and has netted 15.2 so far this year.  Udofia is a 6-6 forward who has averaged 14 points over the Pioneers first two games and should be the team’s top scorer all season long.

Thanksgiving Week.  The time for turkey, family, football…and exempt college basketball tournaments.  This week will bring us the Maui Invitational, Battle 4 Atlantis, Old Spice Classic, Wooden Legacy, Great Alaska Shootout, Cancun Challenge, Legends Classic, the conclusion of the NIT Season Tip-Off and more.  Lost amongst all the major schools playing in their tournaments this week is a new player on the exempt tournament list — the Gulf Coast Showcase.  The Germain Arena is Estero, Florida is the site the next three days for this mid-major focused event.

The tournament starts today with four quarterfinal round games (all times Eastern):

12:00 PM – Louisiana Tech vs UNC-Greensboro

2:30 PM – Illinois-Chicago vs San Diego

6:00 PM – Wagner vs Stetson

8:30 PM – Southern Illinois vs St. Bonaventure

The semifinals and consolation bracket semifinals will be played on Tuesday, and the final games (1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th places) will be played Wednesday.  Streaming video of the entire event is available at http://gcs.bdglobalsports.com/.

Louisiana Tech, on paper at least, appears to be the best team in this field.  However, San Diego has also been off to a solid start and could give them a challenge in the semifinal round.  On the other side of the bracket, the team to beat appears to be Wagner, who already has a home victory over Vermont this season — and by now everyone should know what Vermont almost did at Duke last night.

While the Gulf Coast Showcase is certainly not one of the marquee highlight events of this exciting week of exempt tournaments — it does give us a chance to see a full field of mid-major programs participate in a tournament, as opposed to the majority of the other exempt events which historically have not allowed more than a small handful of these schools into their fields each year.

After taking a few days off, the SCGD is back today with a game between two teams that should be amongst the best in their respective conferences…and an in-state rivalry on top of that.  It was not very long ago that the state of North Dakota was not even mentioned in Division I sports, without a single school competing at the top level.  Today, the state has both North Dakota and North Dakota State in Division I and both schools are amongst the best in their conferences (the Big Sky for UND and the Summit League for NDSU).  North Dakota State has also become a powerhouse in football, where they should be the top seed in the FCS tournament when its bracket is announced today.

These two programs will meet at UND’s home court in Grand Forks, North Dakota at 6:00 PM Eastern today for their fourth ever encounter as Division I foes (television coverage on MidcoSN and Fox College Sports-Pacific).  While the North Dakota State Bison hold a 2-1 edge in matchups since both teams moved to Division I, UND leads the all-time series 158-128 — a series that dates back to 1905.

The North Dakota State Bison enter today’s game with a 2-2 record, coming off a road win over Western Michigan after losing at St. Mary’s and losing a one point heartbreaker at home to Southern Miss.  They have been led so far by Taylor Braun’s 16 points per game and TrayVonn Wright’s 13.5 Points and 6.8 rebounds per game.

The University of North Dakota is playing only its third game of the season, having defeated non-D1 Minnesota-Morris before losing at Wisconsin 103-85 last time out.  That game was notable for the Badgers having hit triple digits for the first time in over a decade.  UND has also been putting up points so far though, as senior Troy Huff led the way with  37 against Wisconsin.

The other notable fact about North Dakota is that it is the lone school in Division I without a team nickname.  The school retired its Fighting Sioux name before last season after an extensive fight with the NCAA about it, but pursuant to state legislation cannot adopt a new nickname until 2015.  So for now, they are simply the University of North Dakota.