Before and After, 2/25

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Dayton at Rhode Island: Thanks to their traditional status as a multi-bid league, I don't really consider the A-10 a mid-major conference. I mean, Xavier? They're a multi-million dollar program in a glitter palace that rubs shoulder with Cincinnati every year for dominance of a major metropolitan area. There's nothing mid-major about them save that they happen to share a conference with the likes of La Salle, Duquesne, and Fordham.

So I'm a little hesitant to cover Dayton vs. Rhode Island in this space, but I am anyway because a) It's a stunningly light slate for good mid-major action for a Wednesday b) I'm intrigued by both these teams. Dayton because as long as they have Chris Wright healthy, they're a genuinely dangerous team--just ask Xavier, why don't you--but are an unbelievable 85th in the Pomeroy ratings, easily the worst mark I can remember for a team generally agreed upon the be an NCAA lock if they can just hang on through these final few games. The "lucky, or good?" question is going to haunt the Flyers until ... well, until either their season comes to an early end via a stretch collapse or they pull off a couple of NCAA tourney upsets and prove conclusively the answer was "good."

Meanwhile, Rhode Island is one of the few mid-majoresque teams that ... well ... I kind of don't like. Consider: 1. They employed college hoops' king sleazebag Jim Harrick 2. They took on Lamar Odom back when Odom wasn't a solid NBA cog but a destructive me-first Terrell Owens-like menace 3. They beat Valpo in the Sweet 16 back in '98, two rounds after the Bryce Drew miracle shot.

Sorry, Rams: I'm sure your current group of players has no resemblance to the transgressions of years past, and it's only fair to note that your late surge should be the fourth big story of the A-10's season (after Xavier, Dayton, and the annual late Temple charge) now that you're 20-8 overall, 9-4 in-conference, and can boast wins over Penn St., VCU, and Temple. I should just note that after losing five games by either three points or less or in overtime, you're as likely as anyone to emerge from the A-10 tourney scrum with the auto-bid, and ignore the thin permanent coating of slime that remains from association with scum like Harrick.

But honestly? I don't want to, because then I wouldn't have a rooting interest in this game ... and besides, Dayton needs the win for their at-large chances more than Rhody needs it for theirs (which happen to be nonexistent). Go Flyers.

After

Nevada 71, VCU 70: Man, you know VCU was already steamed about having to travel to Reno on short notice. I don't even want to think about how savagely they were cursing their BracketBuster fate after letting an eight-point lead with 4:18 left turn into a one-point defeat. The Rams still lead the Colonial by a game, but unless their two stars play a little more consistently--Eric Maynor shot 7-of-16 from the field, Larry Sanders an ugly 2-of-11--it's hard to see them negotiating the incredibly crowded CAA tournament field.

As for Nevada, the good news for the WAC comes in double doses here--not only did they get the nonconference win over a potential league champion, but Nevada didn't look so impressive that we'd expect them to upset Utah St. and spoil the Aggies' potential run to an at-large bid. Good times all the way around.

Before and after, 2/20

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VCU at Nevada: Illinois St. heading to Niagara in the first half of the BracketBusters-arranged two-gamne Valley-MAAC Challenge got the plum ESPN2 slot, but I'm more intrigued by VCU's trip to Reno for a few reasons:

1. Eric Maynor. The Duke-slayer's still one of the handful of mid-major players that's worth the price of your television's admission all by himself. (I know that didn't make any sense. Just roll with it.)

2. VCU's got beef. Sorry, but I don't think any team got a rawer deal, schedule-wise, from the BracketBuster powers-that-be than the Rams. Wednesday they played Delaware at home. Two days later they're out in Reno, taking on a team who'll boost their resume up to ... well, maybe it'll help them land an NIT bid? More likely, that Fake NIT CBI thing, honestly. Here's to hoping they play angry.

3. Future of the WAC. Nevada's top six scorers will be back next year, including 6-9 frosh forward Luke Babbitt and steady sophomore point Armon Johnson. In case you've forgotten: Mark Fox is still at Nevada, and he can still recruit like nobody's business.

4. USU's watching. Despite the hiccup at Boise, I still think Utah St. has an excellent at-large argument if they can wrap up the regular season without another drop. The biggest remaining hurdle? At Nevada. VCU's trip might give us some idea what the Aggies will be able to expect in their visit.

There's not really that much at stake--neither side has a prayer of an at-large NCAA bid--but hey, it's the Busters, and guys like Maynor and Babbitt are always worth watching. I'll be, at least.

After

Penn 62, Princeton 55 (OT): Man, has any victory ever gone from "statement game" status to "outright fluke" as quickly as Princeton's 20-point win over Cornell two weeks ago? At the time, the Tigers were 4-0 and looked like sudden, legitimate challengers to Cornell's expected dominance. Fast-forward 14 days and Princeton's on a three-game losing streak and have as much chance of catching Cornell (now 7-1 in the Ivy and 2 full games ahead of their closest chaser) as I do of catching a jackrabbit in a footrace.

As for Penn, the Quakers can hold fast to some kind of league title hope, what with their current three-game winning streak having come entirely on the road. But honestly, the best part of downing Princeton is simply being able to say they've downed Princeton.

Before and After: 2/12

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Utah St. at Idaho: Like anyone truly devoted to the mid-major cause, I keep a handy mental laundry list of the Selection Committee's most egregious mid-major snub jobs. Drexel '07. Missouri St. '06. Butler '02. And so on.

Right up near the top of that accursed list: Utah St. '04, when Stew Morrill's Aggies went 25-2 overall and 17-1 in Big West play before losing their conference tourney opener by a point ... and being relegated to the NIT because the Committee was in the middle of its "What's really important is nonconference scheduling" phase. (Three years later nonconference giants Drexel would find out the hard way that the Committee had since entered a new "What's really important is how well you dominate your conference" phase, but I guess I shouldn't rehash all that out right now.) The Aggies got some form of recompense when their '06 squad got a bid at the expense of more deserving teams from Mo St. and Cincinnati (see, I can be fair to power-conference teams ... some of the time), but I don't blame Morrill one bit if he looks at his current team's 23-1 overall record, 11-0 WAC mark, and split vs. BYU and Utah and sees--amidst what's obviously some wild success--some horrible reminders of the 2004 hose job. The Ags are four games up on the rest of the WAC field thanks to one of the nation's most efficient offenses--they're second in raw efficiency behind only UNC, according to Kenpom, and rank fourth in eFG--but that's probably not enough for Merrill. He'll want to go undefeated in league play, lest that single conference loss give the Committee a reason to exclude his team, as it did five years ago.

His team will look to clear one of the biggest hurdles to that goal tonight. Future trips to Boise and Reno are more intimidating according to both the RPI and program reputation, but it's Idaho who played the Aggies closer than any of the three in Logan; the Vandals forced a completely uncharacteristic 17 turnovers and pulled within three late in the second half before losing 70-61 Jan. 5. Aside from that game the Vandals haven't been particularly inspiring on the road, but at home in Moscow they've already upset Boise and New Mexico St. and come within four points of doing the same to Nevada. (Not to mention a nine-point takedown of Summit League darlings North Dakota St. back in November.) The Vandals' secret is the turnover game: no team in WAC play has been better at either forcing opponent's turnovers (22 a game!) or limiting their own (10.7 a game ... gee, think those extra 11 freaking possessions come in handy)?

USU's usually pretty good at holding onto the ball (32nd in the country in TO percentage) and will be the favorite for a reason. But make no mistake: this is USU's toughest test in WAC play to date, and passing it will go a long way to making sure the history of 2004 doesn't repeat itself.

After

Nicholls St. 57, Stephen F. Austin 50: This is what I wrote when previewing this game last week:

A win tonight, and at 6-2 the Colonels will be every bit as alive in the league race as the heavy favorites they host this evening.

And just like that, Nicholls became a serious team to watch in the Southland. Sure, they followed this win--powered by a stingy perimeter defense that held the Lumberjacks to 3-of-16 shooting from outside and a miserable .82 points-per-possession--with a one-point home loss to Southland West leaders Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, but they followed that with a huge 60-59 win over previous league leaders Sam Houston St. last night. That's a 2-1 record in a three-game set against the three teams bumping heads at the top of the Southland standings. The Colonels remain two games back of 8-1 TAMU-CC in the overall league race, but with an easier slate of games ahead and the Islanders still with several tough games ahead, it's anyone's conference crown.

Perhaps more importantly, it's now safe to say after their big wins that Nicholls will be heard from at what looks to be a crackerjack conference tourney. The Colonels will enter as one of five different teams--along with S.F. Austin, TAMU-CC, Sam Houston, and hard-luck Pomeroy darlings UT-Arlington--that can have legitimate expectations of coming away with the automatic bid. I'm psyched already.

A p.s. about the images: "Aggies" has always been a vague term at best and a Google image search nets nothing but various sports teams and Texas A&M students in that military dress thing they do. So you get awesome old farmers instead. The band pictured is--you may have figured this out--longtime California punk outfit The Vandals, who totally rocked the Warped Tour I attended in Atlanta in 2002.

Before and After, 2/4

The mid-major show must go on, Auburn fans, even today.

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Stephen F. Austin at Nicholls St.: You might not have realized this, but ... the Southland's not a bad conference at all, as mid-majors go. Kenpom currently rates it 19th, only one slot behind the MAC (!) and well out in front of better-known conferences like Western Kentucky's Sun Belt or Davidson's SoCon. Add that little nugget to the Southland's excellent NCAA performances the last three years--starting with Northwestern St.'s giant-slaying of Iowa and continuing through Texas A&M-Corpus Christi's leading Wisconsin at the half and Texas-Arlington making Memphis work at least as hard as, say, Michigan St. did--and it's safe to say whichever team comes out of the league tourney is going to be worth keeping an eye on come March.

That team is most likely to be Stephen F. Austin, if the RPI and Kenpom ratings are at all correct--both have the Lumberjacks inside the country's top 100, little surprise for a team with chits like wins over Drake, North Dakota St., and Ohio Valley power Austin Peay (the latter by 39 points!). The Lumberjacks aren't offensively flashy to say the least--even within the confines of Southland play, they're still seventh in the league in offensive points-per-possession, and only two players, senior center Matt Kingsley and senior guard Josh Alexander, average in the double-digits in scoring--but they more-or-less never turn the ball over and play seriously outstanding all-around defense, leading their closest conference pursuers in defensive points-per-possession by half a point.

None of that means terribly much in the larger scheme of things, of course. The Lumberjacks were last year's regular-season Southland champ, too, and were even on the outer reaches of the bubble discussion before going down to Northwestern St. in the tourney semifinals. How likely a repeat of that fate is this year will be determined by how well SFA handles games like tonight's contest at Nicholls St., who lost to the Lumberjacks in Nacogdoches (yes, that's where SFA is located) but have since reeled off four straight and back in nonconference play nearly took down Mississippi St. A win tonight, and at 6-2 the Colonels will be every bit as alive in the league race as the heavy favorites they host this evening.

After

North Dakota St. 81, Oakland 71: This was a closer game than it appears, with the Golden Grizzlies having tied the Bison at 64 with just over six minutes left to play. Then NDSU went on a 13-0 run, and that was that. The Bison finished the game a stupid 21-of-22 from the free throw line to go with better-than-50 percent shooting from the floor. Hard to lose that way. The Summit's top seed now looks extremely likely to come down to the final day of the regular season, when the Bison will travel to Tulsa to take on Oral Roberts ... but I still think Oakland--now with one win over NDSU and a serious challenge of the Bison on their home floor--will be heard from at the league tourney.

Before and After, 1/29

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Oakland at North Dakota State: I'm well aware there are bigger, brighter, sexier matchups on tonight's docket. St. Mary's gets their first shot at more-or-less locking up an NCAA bid when they travel to Spokane to take on still-underrated Gonzaga. Patty Mills, Josh Heytvelt, Austin Daye, Omar Samhan, the Kennel ... it's going to be a hell of a game. And over in Logan, Utah St. will put their unreal efficiency numbers--they lead the nation in points-per-shot--to the test against Nevada, the only team with a prayer of stopping the Aggies from rolling to the WAC title.

But I can't help it: I'm fascinated by this year's Summit League. Entranced. Mesmerized. It's a tale of three teams: one is the mainstay, Oral Roberts, who have earned more than their fair share of bids over the past few years and along with IUPUI have bestrode the conference like a colossus for most of this decade. The second is the up-and-comer, Oakland, who have scratched and clawed and gnashed their teeth behind O-Rob (and IUPUI) for years and fervently believed that 2008-2009 was going to be the season it all came together. And then there's the interloper, North Dakota St., eligible for the league's auto-bid for the first time and bringing with them a giant-killing pedigree, the league's best and most recognizable player, and even a media-friendly story you may have heard about how an entire recruiting class redshirted one season so they'd be around for a run at the Dance. It surprised me not at all to find out in a classic rant at Storming the Floor yesterday that Golden Grizzly fans are positively seething at how this season--with ORU and NDSU both two games up in the Summit standings despite Oakland having handed the Bison their lone league defeat--has played out so far.

As I wrote last week, Oakland is a good team. This ought to be their year. But it's rapidly slipping away from them, and the only way to stop it is to do things like beat the Bison again in Fargo. And if OU's Erik Kangas can keep pace with Woodside, they just might do it.

After

Buffalo 74, Western Michigan 71: Buffalo's star player--Rodney Pierce, 7-of-14, 4-of-8 from three--was just a little bit more efficient than WMU's star player--David Kool, 6-of-17, 2-of-10 from three--and that pretty much made the difference in an otherwise evenly-matched and well-played game. (The two teams combined for only 15 turnovers.) Buffalo now has a deathgrip on the MAC lead, a game up on everyone in the loss column and with three straight home contests against the dregs of the league, but WMU can come away encouraged as well: by taking Buffalo to the wire, same as Ohio and Akron did (and preseason league favorite Miami couldn't, even at home), they showed their hot start in the MAC wasn't purely a function of their easy schedule-to-date.

p.s. the "Golden Grizzly" pic that leads off this post was plucked from the archives over at Cracked Sidewalks. I like it 1,000 times more than a picture of a bear.

Before and After: 1/27

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Buffalo at Western Michigan: I'll be perfectly honest: this isn't the best game on tap for tonight. And it's not like I didn't write about the Bulls in this same series just recently. I'd rather pick something else.

But it's a light slate tonight, and K-Dub has already covered the CAA first-place mega-tilt, so that leaves us with limited options. And Buffalo traveling to Kalamazoo isn't really a bad fallback when you consider the following:

1. This is a match-up of not only the hottest teams in the MAC, but two of the three division co-leaders--Buffalo leads the East, and Western is tied with Ball St. for the top spot in the West. Winner grabs the lead in the outright MAC race.

2. Western is something of an unknown quantity, having limped--that's putting it politely--through a 3-10 nonconference performance before turning it on for their 4-1 conference start in a manner more traditionally befitting MEAC or SWAC teams finally putting their paycheck barnstorming tours behind them. But thanks in large part to junior guard David Kool (16.5 points, 4 boards a game) and the rest of the gang, you can't exactly call the Broncos' start a fluke--those four wins came by 8 and 9 on the road at Eastern and Central Michigan and by 18 and 19 at home over Toledo and Northern Illinois. If WMU beats the best team in the league tonight, they're officially a threat.

3. A win for Buffalo very likely means another week in Joe Lunardi's mock brackets, and another week of glee for the Bull-obsessed Hoops Junkie, one of the JCCW's very first bloggin' buddies and someone who makes my own righteous anger at the slings and arrows suffered by mids look tame by comparison. As I've never had the privilege of reading the Junkie when the Bulls were actually good, I'm hoping the current state of affairs continues.

So it might not be Northeastern-VCU. But it'll do.

After

VMI 87, Radford 72: Mentioned this in brief yesterday, but the battle for the Big South lead and inside track on home-court advantage throughout the Big South tournament unsurprisingly went to the school with the military background. Twins Travis and Chavis Holmes combined to score 42 and the Keydets romped to a 18-point lead at the half. With the Highlanders confirmed pretenders-to-the-throne and the roller-coaster squad from Liberty dropping a fourth conference game over the weekend (at home to Radford, no less), it will be a major shock at this point if VMI doesn't go on to wrap up the league crown.

Before and After: 1/21

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VMI at Radford: For one-bid leagues, a regular season title in mid-major basketball is a little like winning a Golden Globe. Winning one matters a lot to the people involved. A lot. They do mean something in the bigger picture, as much as a lot of people enjoy looking down on them. They're a ton of fun both to earn and to receive, and maybe almost as much as fun for those of us lucky enough to be cheering along (particularly, in the case of the Globes, when Mad Men actresses are involved). But ... but ... they're both the next-best prize, the thing that's really, really nice but not what you really want. That thing comes later.

To their eternal credit, the Big South has done their very best to change that dynamic, moving their conference tourney to campus sites--championship game included--and playing every game at the home of the higher seed. In the Big South, you can't just say "wait until the conference tourney" when a midseason loss means that tourney just became exponentially more difficult. A regular season title matters in every league, but in the Big South, it matters matters.

Which is why the biggest game on tonight's slate sees the legendary VMI Keydets, fastest basketball team in the country, travel to Radford to take on the Highlanders. Like Gardner-Webb in 2007, VMI started the year off with a bang by upsetting Kentucky at Rupp (as you probably recall), but unlike GWU, the Keydets have backed that upset up with several other impressive accomplishments: a takedown of the A-10's Richmond, a 14-3 overall record, a 10-game winning streak and perfect 6-0 conference record heading into last Saturday's home match with 12-6 (3-3) Liberty.

And that's where, if this was a cheesy sitcom or television commercial, the sound guys would have inserted the record-scratching sound. The Flames handed VMI a decisive 91-80 defeat, knocking VMI back into a first-place tie with ... wait for it ... Radford. The Highlanders have yet to beat any of the other three Big South teams above the 200-mark in the Pomeroy ratings (VMI, GWU, and Liberty, with the Flames actually leading the way), having lost the only such game they've played--at home to Gardner-Webb--by 20. But a win tonight to take over sole possession of first would make the Highlanders a serious threat to snag not only the regular season crown, but--because this is the Big South--an automatic NCAA bid.

After

Western Kentucky 63, Middle Tennessee St. 61: I said in the last edition of B&A that a close WKU win in this game would likely signal that whatever transpires between these two teams in the regular season will be mere prelude to a final titanic clash in the Sun Belt tourney, and as a two-point win on a last-second putback most certainly qualifies as "close," I'm standing by that. MTSU's hangover loss to Arkansas-Little Rock two days later means WKU (and UALR) have firm grips on the Belt regular season division titles, but this is a case where a regular season match-up really has settled very, very little.

Before and After, 1/15

A ton of juicy mid-majorness on tap for tonight, but for today's official Before we're going with ...



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Middle Tennessee State at Western Kentucky*: 2008 was about as good as it's ever going to get for the modern Sun Belt, with regular season champ South Alabama snagging an at-large bid and conference tourney usurper Western Kentucky riding Courtney Lee's hot hand and Ty Rogers' buzzer-beater into the Sweet 16. Someday, the Belt is definitely going to back and sing: It was a very good year. In the preseason, the league's hopes for an encore were pinned mostly on Middle Tennessee, who returned everybody--no, everybody from last year's run to the Belt championship, including 6-7 forward Desmond Yates, who leads the team in pretty much everything. But when Western Kentucky went out and pounded Louisville while MTSU struggled through an anonymous nonconference slate (losses to Tennessee and Vandy? OK. Losses to Belmont and Tennessee-Martin? Less OK), the favorite's burden shifted back to the Hilltoppers. But, in another reversal, it's MTSU who will arrive in Bowling Green with the perfect Sun Belt record after weathering upset bids from Florida Atlantic and Florida International--the team that upset the 'Toppers a week ago--earlier this week.

So, which team is the real Sun Belt frontrunner? If the Blue Raiders come away with a victory from Diddle Arena (*stifled chuckle*), one of the toughest places to play in the country, it's them. If it's a close game, we'll have to wait for the next meeting. If the 'Toppers in a rout, the road to the automatic bid will likely go through Western Kentucky one more time.

After

Buffalo 63, Akron 61: Lord, please forgive me for the tortured pun I'm about to write, but it really is time to be bullish on Buffalo. As of Tuesday night the Bulls had the MAC's second-best RPI, second-best Pomeroy rating, and first-best league win after hitting 22-of-27 free throws and outrebounding Akron 31-to-18 to edge the unlucky Zips by 2. (Akron is now 0-2 in the MAC after one loss in overtime and another by two points.) Things arguably got even better for Buffalo when heavy league favorite Miami OF OHIO got stunned at home by Ohio. The win bumped Ohio up over the Bulls in the RPI and Pomeroy, but nonetheless, with Miami's weak sauce opening salvos--an OT win and loss at home?--the league looks wide open, and Buffalo looks as likely as any team to claim it.

*Get it? The football player in the picture is a blue Raider! Ha ha! Ha ha!

Before and After: 1/13

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Buffalo at Akron: There's a thousand different wonderful terms and phrases from British soccer coverage I wish would make their way into American sports media. Howler ... left it late ... goal duck ... one last sting in the tail, etc. One of my favorites is "almost men," used to describe a team that has come close to glory several times and never quite gotten there. The Buffalo Bills, for instance, qould the be the quintessential U.S. example of "almost men."

And hey, speaking of Buffalo, the most intriguing match-up on an otherwise slight Tuesday night mid-major slate features Buffalo's own Bulls traveling to Akron to take on the Zips in a match-up of the MAC's two definitive "almost men" this decade. Early in the Aughts it was the Bulls who were claiming MAC regular-season crowns, falling short in the conference tourney, and praying for an at-large bid that should have but never arrived; the last couple of years it's been LeBron's high school buddies at Akron who have suffered the same cruel fate, all the way up to and including Doug Penno's banked-in buzzer beater to steal their bid.

There's signs that this year, however, it could be the Bulls or Zips robbing league favorite and runaway MAC Pomeroy rating leader Miami OF OHIO of the tourney title. Both teams made it through the nonconference slate with a winning record, Buffalo sporting a win over Temple and Akron a victory over MAAC leader Niagara. The teams rank 2 and 3 in the league according to Pomeroy. And the 0-1 MAC records-to-date are a bit deceiving--Buffalo suffered a tough 86-82 loss at fellow eight-win squad Bowling Green, while Akron was even more impressive in taking Miami OF OHIO to overtime in Oxford.

For all that, those conference-opening losses mean that tonight is the end of the optimism for whichever team comes out on the losing end. Solid ratings and close losses only mean so much when you're staring at an 0-2 mark in one of the toughest, most competitive mid-major leagues around.

After

Creighton 73, Bradley 64: And with that, the MVC race descends into complete chaos--only five games in the MoVal has three one-loss teams, three two-loss teams, and even two more three-loss teams all within two games of the lead. Unfortunately, what all of that--and Illinois St.'s overtime loss to 4-12 Indiana St.--adds up to is that this is almost certainly a one-bid league.

If Creighton continues to show the kind of balance they showed against the Braves Saturday, that bid could wind up being the preseason favorite Blue Jays' after all. They had four different players in double figures, with all 10 players who saw the floor getting double-digit minutes and none of them getting as many as 30. Perhaps most impressive is that the Jays managed it without injured leading scorer Booker Woodfox and their second-leading scorer, P'Allen Stinnett, going just 4-of-13 from the field. Until further notice, if there's going to be a favorite in the Valley, it's probably Creighton again.

Before and After: 1/10

Series explanation here.

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Creighton at Bradley: Whither the MoVal? Even if most mid-major observers wouldn't phrase it nearly so geekily, that's still one of the biggest questions in all of college basketball as we enter the conference season. The league that two years ago seemed on the verge of permanently rewriting exactly where the major/mid-major line ought to be drawn sunk into one-bidhood last season and appears to be in serious danger of suffering the same fate this season. Creighton was the pre-season new hottness before Illinois St. ran the nonconference table (albeit against a slate completely devoid of BCS or A-10 competition) to emerge as the Valley's best at-large bet. But now it's the unheralded Braves who are making the noise in the early part of the conference schedule, upsetting the Redbirds at home 56-52 last Tuesday to preserve the only 4-0 start in MVC play.

Meanwhile, with nonconference wins over Dayton and New Mexico, Creighton could have possibly gotten into the at-large conversation with a decisively-claimed MVC title. But those hopes are virtually on life support already after the Jays were annihilated 86-64 in their visit to Illinois St. and lost to Northern Iowa at home by three earlier this week. A second straight home defeat, this time to one of Creighton's hypothetical rivals for the league title, and the Jays will need something approaching a miracle to claim the MVC crown. For the Braves, meanwhile, a road victory over the preseason favorite would stamp them firmly as the conference front-runners.

On the other hand, a Jays win would keep Dana Altman's team firmly in the mix and show that the Braves--who struggled mightily away from Peoria in nonconference play, including a neutral-court loss to the UM-Kansas City Kangaroos*--will need to sharpen their road chops before they can start seriously thinking about winning the league.

After

Jacksonville 80, Mercer 59: It's all but official: after two seasons of massive upsets out-of-conference and meek-n'-anonymous defeats in A-Sun play, no mid-major team in the country has a bigger disconnect between the two seasons than Mercer. The Bears never even challenged the homestanding Dolphins, falling behind 5-0 at the jump, 40-26 at the half, and 54-28 before the 13-minute mark of the second half.

The Dolphins were led by the tag-team of forward Ayron Hardy--from Huffman High in Birmingham and scorching hot from the field at the moment, by the by--and guard Ben Smith, who combined for 35 points on just 18 shots. Smith, a junior, went over 1,000 points in his career and continued to look like the kind of offensive weapon that could swing a future conference tourney meeting with Belmont in the Dolphins' favor. If the league favorite Bruins are going to be challenged in the regular season or the A-Sun tournament, it appears more likely than ever that it's the Dolphins who are going to be doing the challenging.

*Not a joke, for anyone new to this mid-major thing. Oh, and by-the-by we'll have some Auburn men's hoops stuff tomorrow after the SEC opener against South Carolina tonight.

Before and After: 1/9

So, introducing a new mid-major hoops series, Before and After. The idea is to briefly preview an intriguing or high-stakes game on a given day's mid-major slate, then come back with a second post briefly wrapping up the game and looking at the fallout. So sort of like K-Dub's G!O!T!N! feature, but with a back half. And I won't repeat any G!O!T!N! choices, because it's already hard enough writing anything mid-major-related that doesn't already overlap with something at the TMM.

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Mercer at Jacksonville: Hey, remember Mercer? The team that seemed to prove early this season that if it played in the SEC and was located in Alabama, it would be the state's best SEC team? That followed that up with an OT loss to Georgia Tech? That might say more about the Tide, Tigers, and Jackets than the Bears, since it's kind of been downhill from there for Mercer. Their RPI is holding at an excellent-for-the-A-Sun 107 thanks to several high-profile power-conference opponents, but they didn't come close to an upset after November and much more damningly have started 1-2 in A-Sun play. The losses haven't been pretty, either: a 20-point home defeat to league-leader East Tennessee St. and--ugh--a 15-point loss at middle-of-the-conference-pack Campbell. If Mercer's ever going to prove this year's early-season upsets aren't the flukes that last year's USC takedown wound up being, now would be a good start.

As for Jacksonville, it was still just three seasons ago the Dolphins won one game and looked like potentially the worst program in D-I. After edging league favorite Belmont and taking ETSU to the wire on the road, JU is 3-1 in the A-Sun and looking capable of taking the league title fight to the Bruins and Bucs all the way to the wire (particularly with Belmont looking so generally disinterested against their fellow Davids). If the 'Phins really are ready to contend, they should be able to score a win at home against the Bears--after all, Campbell did it.