First, the bubble. After the Miss. St. win today, I agree with the consensus there's only two bubble spots left. I rank the ladder like so:
IN!
1. Maryland
2. Creighton
OUT!
3. Penn St.
4. Arizona
5. San Diego St.
I don't think St. Mary's is a threat. Including them over Creighton means taking them over a team with three times as many top 100 wins as the Gaels. Mills or no Mills--and why are we supposed to believe Mills is back to normal because he played well against Eastern Washington? Last time we saw him against a real team, he was an abomination--I don't like SMC's chances at all.
I think Maryland's gaggle of top 25 wins has them safe. Creighton vs. Penn St. and Arizona and SDSU is tougher: all four have reasons for inclusion. But ultimately I think Creighton's 11-1 final 12 record and 9-5 record vs. the top 100 will win out--though they have nothing like Penn St.s' road W's over Illinois and Michigan St., so I'm nervous.
No. 1 seeds. Take a guess between UConn, Michigan St., and Memphis for the last one--I went with the Huskies due to their lack of bad losses. Average RPI loss for UConn: 19, compared to 44 for MSU and 30 for Memphis.
And now ...
THE BRACKET
Midwest region
Dayton
1. Louisville
16. Alabama St./Chattanooga
vs.
8. Oklahoma St.
9. Boston College
Portland
5. Utah
12. VCU
vs.
4. Purdue
13. Western Kentucky
Miami
3. Wake Forest
14. Binghamton
vs.
6. UCLA
11. Wisconsin
Kansas City
7. West Virginia
10. Utah St.
vs.
2. Oklahoma
15. East Tennessee St.
vs. West region
Philadelphia
1. UConn
16. Morehead St.
vs.
8. Clemson
9. Michigan
Portland
5. Tennessee
12. Creighton
vs.
4. Washington
13. North Dakota St.
Dayton
3. Syracuse
14. American
vs.
6. Gonzaga
11. Siena
Kansas City
7. Texas
10. Minnesota
vs.
2. Memphis
15. Portland St.
East region
Philadelphia
1. Pitt
16. Cal St. Northridge
vs.
8. Butler
9. Southern Cal
Miami
5. Illinois
12. Northern Iowa
vs.
4. Florida St.
13. Stephen F. Austin
Boise
3. Kansas
14. Robert Morris
vs.
6. Xavier
11. Miss. St.
Greensboro
7. BYU
10. Marquette
vs.
2. Duke
15. Morgan St.
vs. South region
Greensboro
1. North Carolina
16. Radford
vs.
8. Ohio St.
9. Texas A&M
Minneapolis
5. Arizona St.
12. Temple
vs.
4. Villanova
13. Cleveland St.
Boise
6. LSU
11. Dayton
vs.
3. Missouri
14. Akron
Minneapolis
7. California
10. Maryland
vs.
2. Michigan St.
15. Cornell
Showing posts with label championship week makes jerry crazy happy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label championship week makes jerry crazy happy. Show all posts
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Championship Week diaries, Wednesday-Saturday
These are going to be a little quicker than usual, sadly.
Big Sky: Portland St. 79, Montana St. 77
--Watching this game--in which both teams finished at 1.3 points a possession or above--the thought crossed my mind over and over again: How the hell did these two teams lose a combined 15 games in this conference? Both of them have athletic guards, bigs who can shoot, play some wonderfully unselfish offense ... and Montana St. went 6-10? Man, I don't get it. In any case, good for the neutral: this was one of the best games of Championship Week, and if I'm going to stay up crazy late to watch a game, I'd way rather watch two teams combine to shoot an eFG over 60 percent than under 43 percent, no matter how many overtimes they go into.
--Jeremiah Dominguez: 8-of-13, 22 points, 5 assists, 3 steals, one turnover, 5-foot-6. He's as good as it gets and even better than that to watch.
--The Vikings have that Gonzaga win under their belt, came within a point of scalping Washington, and I really wouldn't put it past them to add another one next week. It'll help if they avoid the 16 line (not a guarantee) and get an opponent who won't utterly annihilate them inside--their frontcourt is nearly all Dirk Nowitzki types who shoot like crazy and only rebound or defend because no one else is there to do it--but if they get hot, they can rain enough 3's down to hang with anyone, and having Dominguez at the point is massive. They'll be one of the more dangerous 15 or 16 seeds.
Northeast: Robert Morris 48, Mount St. Mary's 46
--I'll admit that part of why I was so deliriously happy about the offensive precision in the Big Sky final was having watched these two teams lay bricks for 40 minutes solid. No often you see a winner who shoots 34 percent from the field and an eFG of 37 percent. It was only too perfect the game ended on a shoulda-been turnover that just happened to fall into the hands of someone who was able to sort of shotput the ball into the net from six feet. That's how this one went.
--Still, you have to be happy for RMU: getting eliminated on your home court by the same team who you'd swept during the regular season for three straight years would be a little too much pain for me to wish on any team, fanbase, program, etc.
--The game's billing was as a battle of Jeremies: RMU's Chappell vs. the Mount's Goode. Too bad they went a combined 8-of-20 with 6 turnovers.
--Watching RMU flounder around on offense and looking over their full schedule doesn't really fill one with confidence for their NCAA hopes--Miami was the only power-conference team they even stayed competitive with--but they do have two things in their favor: 1. Their Pomeroy rating isn't great, but it's not all that bad, either 2. the least I've ever been impressed with a victorious team during Championship Week was George Mason in 2001, when the Patriots beat UNC-Wilmington by the epic score of 35-33. (I'm not making it up.) Those same Patriots then turned around and came within a possession of beating the same Maryland team that would go to the Final Four. So impressions made in a bitterly defensive mid-major final aren't necessarily always accurate.
Patriot: American 73, Holy Cross 57
--Not much to say about this one. American was just miles and miles better. Better shooters, better post play, better defense, better home court, better everything. It was never in doubt.
--Hey, speaking of unimpressive Championship Week teams, last year I was convinced the Eagles had no prayer against a live-wire team like Tennessee. Then they went on to scare the pants off of the Vols. This year the same team is back, pretty much, though unlike last year's team instead of beating Maryland they lost to the Terps pretty badly ... and got crushed by Oklahoma and Georgetown. But it's easy to see this team pulling something major off--Carr can shoot the lights-out, Mercer is the senior point guard, and if their size isn't exactly of the "Bruising" variety, they're not tiny, either. I'm no sleeping on them this year, especially if they draw a team that won't bully them down low.
--Man, the Patriot's not really one for variety, is it? We had the Holy Cross dynasty early this decade, the Bucknell one in the middle of the Aughts, and now American's gone back-to-back. 9 titles and eight of them have gone to three teams (with Lehigh the only interloper, back in 2004).
America East: Binghamton 61, UMBC 51
--Another case of one team being just far, far more athletic and better than its opponent and getting the benefit of home court. In Rivera, Fuller, and Alvin, the Bearcats had three players UMBC didn't have an answer for.
--So why was this game still close down into the final minutes? Because Binghamton wasn't just poor against the Retrivers' half-court zones, they were utterly hapless. Rivera and Co. were incredible in transition--2-on-3, 1-on-2, it didn't matter, if Binghamton could get out in the open court, they were scoring. But in the halfcourt? Nothin', not even an idea of how to attack the zone. Sorry, but I don't see an NCAA surprise in their future, and the Pomeroy numbers agree with me. It's kind of too bad the RPI is going to give the Bearcats a 14ish seed when much better teams like Cal St. Northridge and Portland St. take on the true heavyweights.
--One thing Binghamton does have going for them: no one has a scarier or more intimidating logo. No one.
MAC: Akron 65, Buffalo 53
--Poor, poor Buffalo. They just never figured out what was wrong on offense, did they? The only answer they've ever really found this year (aside from the occasional outburst from center Max Boudreau, who comes off the bench and plays less than 15 minutes a game for reasons I don't understand) was "let Rodney Pierce do his thing." When Pierce is enduring a 1-for-9 nightmare, they're not going to have a chance. And so against Akron they didn't.
--To be fair, facing Akron didn't do them any favors--the Zips had the league's best D all year. Combine that D with an outside shooting game that's been crap throughout the season and suddenly went 8-of-14 from 3 in this game ... and, well, you get a stunningly comfy 12-point win in the MAC title game. The Zips were the best team in the conference according to Pomeroy entering the tournament--maybe it's not so much a surprise they played like it.
--I'm not sure I'd like taking on Akron if I were a 3 or 4 seed--if the Zips are hot from outside the way they were last night, they've got the D to make things very, very interesting. One problem is the point--sophomore Steve McNees's assist-to-turnover ratio (1.5-1) and 3-point percentage (36) isn't bad, but he's not the kind of guy that screams "lead his team to victory over Syracuse," either.
WAC: Utah St. 72, Nevada 62
--Thank goodness. Watching the Aggies get unfairly snubbed today was something I was not looking forward to.
--So that's what this team is supposed to look like on offense (Well, except for the six minute FG drought in the first half that let Nevada back into the game after the 21-4 start). Watching them vs. St. Mary's on BracketBusters didn't give us a lot of help on that front. Man, is Wilkinson crafty on the block--there aren't a lot of guys I've seen who keep their pivot foot in the face of doubles the way he does. (Tai Wesley is a hell of a Robin to Wilkinson's Batman down there, too.)
--Yes, I like USU's chances in the NCAAs. Their defense needs work--even when Nevada was ice-cold, they weren't a complete disaster because USU was so poor on the defensive glass--but NCAA games are reliably slow and halfcourt, and the Aggies are so good in the halfcourt offense I have to think it's the kind of setting they'd thrive in. We'll see.
--Nevada: the nervy, flatlined first 10 minutes I can forgive. The no-show after the half, on their own homecourt with an NCAA bid on the line? Man, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Guess that's the price you pay for having a team made up of freshmen, I guess.
Big West: Cal St. Northridge 71, Pacific 66, OT
--Dude ... how was this Northridge team 15-13 entering the tournament? They've got a quality 6-8, 6-9 frontcourt, a junior point guard in Mark Hill who seemed well in charge of the offense, a sharp little gunner in Rodrigue Mels (how did this guy average only 17 minutes and 8.8 points a game?) ... and they've lost two of their best players to off-court stuff and an injury! They looked nothing like a team that could draw a 16-seed last night, especially for long stretches on the defensive end, where they totally blanketed a clearly talented offensive team from Pacific.
--Particular kudos to the Matadors for pulling out a game in overtime after two players had already fouled out. Money.
--So, yeah, if you're asking me what the best possible match-up for the 16-over-1 upset might be, give me Northridge vs. Louisville. Yes, the Cards looked great in New York, but they also played three games up there, went through a big emotional high, and coughed one up to a Western Kentucky team that's not way better than this Matador squad. If CSN forced the Cards into lazily bombing away from outside and the shots aren't dropping ... why not? Make it happen, Committee.
Up next: Bracketology!
Big Sky: Portland St. 79, Montana St. 77
--Watching this game--in which both teams finished at 1.3 points a possession or above--the thought crossed my mind over and over again: How the hell did these two teams lose a combined 15 games in this conference? Both of them have athletic guards, bigs who can shoot, play some wonderfully unselfish offense ... and Montana St. went 6-10? Man, I don't get it. In any case, good for the neutral: this was one of the best games of Championship Week, and if I'm going to stay up crazy late to watch a game, I'd way rather watch two teams combine to shoot an eFG over 60 percent than under 43 percent, no matter how many overtimes they go into.
--Jeremiah Dominguez: 8-of-13, 22 points, 5 assists, 3 steals, one turnover, 5-foot-6. He's as good as it gets and even better than that to watch.
--The Vikings have that Gonzaga win under their belt, came within a point of scalping Washington, and I really wouldn't put it past them to add another one next week. It'll help if they avoid the 16 line (not a guarantee) and get an opponent who won't utterly annihilate them inside--their frontcourt is nearly all Dirk Nowitzki types who shoot like crazy and only rebound or defend because no one else is there to do it--but if they get hot, they can rain enough 3's down to hang with anyone, and having Dominguez at the point is massive. They'll be one of the more dangerous 15 or 16 seeds.
Northeast: Robert Morris 48, Mount St. Mary's 46
--I'll admit that part of why I was so deliriously happy about the offensive precision in the Big Sky final was having watched these two teams lay bricks for 40 minutes solid. No often you see a winner who shoots 34 percent from the field and an eFG of 37 percent. It was only too perfect the game ended on a shoulda-been turnover that just happened to fall into the hands of someone who was able to sort of shotput the ball into the net from six feet. That's how this one went.
--Still, you have to be happy for RMU: getting eliminated on your home court by the same team who you'd swept during the regular season for three straight years would be a little too much pain for me to wish on any team, fanbase, program, etc.
--The game's billing was as a battle of Jeremies: RMU's Chappell vs. the Mount's Goode. Too bad they went a combined 8-of-20 with 6 turnovers.
--Watching RMU flounder around on offense and looking over their full schedule doesn't really fill one with confidence for their NCAA hopes--Miami was the only power-conference team they even stayed competitive with--but they do have two things in their favor: 1. Their Pomeroy rating isn't great, but it's not all that bad, either 2. the least I've ever been impressed with a victorious team during Championship Week was George Mason in 2001, when the Patriots beat UNC-Wilmington by the epic score of 35-33. (I'm not making it up.) Those same Patriots then turned around and came within a possession of beating the same Maryland team that would go to the Final Four. So impressions made in a bitterly defensive mid-major final aren't necessarily always accurate.
Patriot: American 73, Holy Cross 57
--Not much to say about this one. American was just miles and miles better. Better shooters, better post play, better defense, better home court, better everything. It was never in doubt.
--Hey, speaking of unimpressive Championship Week teams, last year I was convinced the Eagles had no prayer against a live-wire team like Tennessee. Then they went on to scare the pants off of the Vols. This year the same team is back, pretty much, though unlike last year's team instead of beating Maryland they lost to the Terps pretty badly ... and got crushed by Oklahoma and Georgetown. But it's easy to see this team pulling something major off--Carr can shoot the lights-out, Mercer is the senior point guard, and if their size isn't exactly of the "Bruising" variety, they're not tiny, either. I'm no sleeping on them this year, especially if they draw a team that won't bully them down low.
--Man, the Patriot's not really one for variety, is it? We had the Holy Cross dynasty early this decade, the Bucknell one in the middle of the Aughts, and now American's gone back-to-back. 9 titles and eight of them have gone to three teams (with Lehigh the only interloper, back in 2004).
America East: Binghamton 61, UMBC 51
--Another case of one team being just far, far more athletic and better than its opponent and getting the benefit of home court. In Rivera, Fuller, and Alvin, the Bearcats had three players UMBC didn't have an answer for.
--So why was this game still close down into the final minutes? Because Binghamton wasn't just poor against the Retrivers' half-court zones, they were utterly hapless. Rivera and Co. were incredible in transition--2-on-3, 1-on-2, it didn't matter, if Binghamton could get out in the open court, they were scoring. But in the halfcourt? Nothin', not even an idea of how to attack the zone. Sorry, but I don't see an NCAA surprise in their future, and the Pomeroy numbers agree with me. It's kind of too bad the RPI is going to give the Bearcats a 14ish seed when much better teams like Cal St. Northridge and Portland St. take on the true heavyweights.
--One thing Binghamton does have going for them: no one has a scarier or more intimidating logo. No one.
MAC: Akron 65, Buffalo 53
--Poor, poor Buffalo. They just never figured out what was wrong on offense, did they? The only answer they've ever really found this year (aside from the occasional outburst from center Max Boudreau, who comes off the bench and plays less than 15 minutes a game for reasons I don't understand) was "let Rodney Pierce do his thing." When Pierce is enduring a 1-for-9 nightmare, they're not going to have a chance. And so against Akron they didn't.
--To be fair, facing Akron didn't do them any favors--the Zips had the league's best D all year. Combine that D with an outside shooting game that's been crap throughout the season and suddenly went 8-of-14 from 3 in this game ... and, well, you get a stunningly comfy 12-point win in the MAC title game. The Zips were the best team in the conference according to Pomeroy entering the tournament--maybe it's not so much a surprise they played like it.
--I'm not sure I'd like taking on Akron if I were a 3 or 4 seed--if the Zips are hot from outside the way they were last night, they've got the D to make things very, very interesting. One problem is the point--sophomore Steve McNees's assist-to-turnover ratio (1.5-1) and 3-point percentage (36) isn't bad, but he's not the kind of guy that screams "lead his team to victory over Syracuse," either.
WAC: Utah St. 72, Nevada 62
--Thank goodness. Watching the Aggies get unfairly snubbed today was something I was not looking forward to.
--So that's what this team is supposed to look like on offense (Well, except for the six minute FG drought in the first half that let Nevada back into the game after the 21-4 start). Watching them vs. St. Mary's on BracketBusters didn't give us a lot of help on that front. Man, is Wilkinson crafty on the block--there aren't a lot of guys I've seen who keep their pivot foot in the face of doubles the way he does. (Tai Wesley is a hell of a Robin to Wilkinson's Batman down there, too.)
--Yes, I like USU's chances in the NCAAs. Their defense needs work--even when Nevada was ice-cold, they weren't a complete disaster because USU was so poor on the defensive glass--but NCAA games are reliably slow and halfcourt, and the Aggies are so good in the halfcourt offense I have to think it's the kind of setting they'd thrive in. We'll see.
--Nevada: the nervy, flatlined first 10 minutes I can forgive. The no-show after the half, on their own homecourt with an NCAA bid on the line? Man, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Guess that's the price you pay for having a team made up of freshmen, I guess.
Big West: Cal St. Northridge 71, Pacific 66, OT
--Dude ... how was this Northridge team 15-13 entering the tournament? They've got a quality 6-8, 6-9 frontcourt, a junior point guard in Mark Hill who seemed well in charge of the offense, a sharp little gunner in Rodrigue Mels (how did this guy average only 17 minutes and 8.8 points a game?) ... and they've lost two of their best players to off-court stuff and an injury! They looked nothing like a team that could draw a 16-seed last night, especially for long stretches on the defensive end, where they totally blanketed a clearly talented offensive team from Pacific.
--Particular kudos to the Matadors for pulling out a game in overtime after two players had already fouled out. Money.
--So, yeah, if you're asking me what the best possible match-up for the 16-over-1 upset might be, give me Northridge vs. Louisville. Yes, the Cards looked great in New York, but they also played three games up there, went through a big emotional high, and coughed one up to a Western Kentucky team that's not way better than this Matador squad. If CSN forced the Cards into lazily bombing away from outside and the shots aren't dropping ... why not? Make it happen, Committee.
Up next: Bracketology!
Friday, March 13, 2009
Auburn vs. the Bubble, update the second
Reference shamelessly stolen from Andy Bitter, mostly because I'm just bitter--HAHAHAHA--that he thought of it first when I spent half of fourth grade playing this game.Stock arrow: Down. Most of the teams that lost were behind Auburn anyway and the Virginia elimination hurts.
GOOD NEWS
--Providence lost to Louisville and is toast.
--Kansas St. lost to Texas; ditto.
--Arizona lost to Arizona St. The Wildcats are not toast, but they've now lost 5 of their last 6 games, won only one game away from home--an neutral-court W over Gonzaga--in 11 tries against the RPI top 100, and with that loss finished under .500 overall in an iffy Pac-10. They're in trouble, certainly.
--Rhode Island was never really a threat to pull an at-large anyway, but losing to Duquesne ended any kind of pipe dreams about them.
--New Mexico pulled a total gag job against Wyoming. With only five top 100 wins--all of them coming at home--and four sub-100 losses, the Lobos are toast.
--Florida downed Arkansas, as you know, and will face Auburn in the SEC quarterfinals tonight. (Preview is forthcoming.) I'd have personally preferred the Hogs as an opponent for auto-bid purposes, but from the "Bubble" perspective the chance at a much, much better win is obviously a good thing.
NEUTRAL NEWS
--Virginia Tech routing Miami eliminates the 'Canes but puts the Hokies in position to definitely get themselves into the conversation with a win over North Carolina today. (Still, this is preferable to the 'Canes having won: if they'd beaten Carolina, they would have been in.)
BAD NEWS
--Virginia could not handle Boston College and will not be giving Auburn an extra top-100 victory by moving up the RPI. "Best-case scenario Auburn" has been downgraded to only 7 top 100 wins and a 4-6/3-4 1-50/50-100 split.
--San Diego St. wrapped up a three-game sweep of UNLV by whipping the Rebels on their home court. I don't know what to think about either of these teams--all things (save "last 12" record) considered, the Runnin' Rebels have the much better resume. But SDSU has now beaten UNLV three times, twice on the Rebels' home court. Surely UNLV can't get in ahead of the Aztecs, can they?
--USC upset Cal to start a push. With eight top 100 wins, they're worth paying attention to.
--The Big 10 saw all three of its alleged bubble teams win in comfortable fashion yesterday. Penn St. might still conceivably miss with a loss today, but Auburn cannot catch them.
--Maryland survived a stiff challenge from N.C. State to stay alive.
WHAT TO WATCH
--In the ACC, root like hell against Maryland and Virginia Tech. The Terps, especially, look to me like they'll be in good shape if they can knock off an overrated Wake Forest team.
--Xavier and Dayton held serve in the A-10 quarters yesterday (the latter clinching a bid in the process). They can eliminate the league's last two potential bid thieves today--though I'm not sure I'd expect either one to do it, particularly the way Temple played yesterday in dismantling a decent St. Joseph's team.
--San Diego St. likely clinches a bid if they beat BYU in Vegas today. Auburn does not want them to clinch a bid.
--In the SEC, from the bubble perspective I think Auburn wants an upset of South Carolina to potentially ease LSU's passing and form to hold in the other two quarterfinals. (Particularly, of course, Tennessee's.)
--Auburn does not want Utah St. to be tossed into the at-large pool; they face New Mexico St. in the WAC semifinals.
--USC could really start chirping if they beat UCLA today.
--As always, Auburn wants every team with a bid already locked up to keep winning and keep the remaining bid thieves--Baylor, Wyoming, anyone not named Memphis in C-
USA--out.
WHAT THEY'RE SAYING
Not too much about Auburn's tourney chances, not when so much other stuff was going on. Bitter has another run-down of yesterday's bubble action if you want it. The OA-News's Gribble and Svetitz are continuing their fun "5 Things" series from the women's tournament at the men's: pre-tourney edition is here, report from Thursday in Tampa is here. This is something that's popped up here and there around the Auburn-based Internets over the past few days:
Korvotney Barber isn’t upset that he was left off the All-SEC First-Team roster. But his folks are.Legit? My response to Barber slipping to second team is: Eh. It's not like the guys on the first team are chopped liver: Meeks and Patterson are all Kentucky has, Mitchell and Thornton have been terrific for the league champions, Varnado is a force, and Smith and Downey and Calathes are each excellent players who led their teams to the fine SEC seasons they had. Yes, Barber had an outstanding year, yes, I'd personally take him over those last three players, and yes, he's way, way better than most of the other second teamers. But it's hardly an outrage. Gee and Ogilvy are with him on the second team, so it's not like he doesn't have some good company in the "snubbed" department. Down or not, there's still a lot of talent in this conference.
“A lot of people are disappointed about it,” Barber said. “My parents are very disappointed about it.”
But not Barber. He’s just happy to be noticed.
“It’s been a (long time) since anyone’s been selected from Auburn,” he said. True. Barber, though, does have a legit beef for being put on the second team instead of the first. He’s the only player in the conference to average a double-double in league play.
The JCCW's "Where We Stand," updated:
On Tuesday I estimated that seven spots were still available, but Cleveland St. winning the Horizon and Minnesota eliminating all doubt against Northwestern yesterday mean 60 bids are now accounted for and only five are still worth debating. The JCCW breaks down the current bubble like this:
IN!
1. Penn St.
2. Creighton
3. Florida
4. Arizona
5. South Carolina
OUT!
6. San Diego St.
7. UNLV
8. Maryland
9. Auburn
10. USC
11. New Mexico
12. Virginia Tech
A quick note: dropping UNLV from No. 2 on Tuesday's list all the way to No. 7 feels like an overreaction, especially since the Rebs still have an 8-7 record vs. the top 100. But they've lost six of their last eight, their RPI numbers--average win/loss of 162/79--kind of suck, and they finished 9-8 in Mountain West play. They just don't look like an NCAA team.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Championship week diaries, day 4
I'm a day behind. You'll forgive me, I hope.
Goodness gracious goshamighty was Tuesday night an incredible evening of hoops. Two absolute classics, starting with the ...
Summit: North Dakota St. 66, Oakland 64
--In nearly every Championship Week game where a clearcut league champion, No. 1 seed, best-hope-for-an-NCAA-upset is taking on some less-qualified team, I'm in the corner of the top seed. They deserved it by winning the regular season, they have the best chance of giving me even more joy next week. Usually, I'm screaming when a team like Oakland is beating a team like NDSU and delirious when a team like NDSU pulls it out over a team like Oakland.
But not here. Sure, some of it is that Oakland is a plainly likeable, mostly local team. But a lot of it is that they played out of their minds for the first 30 minutes of this game. They were great. They were perfect. And they did not lose deserve to lose this game, and they certainly didn't deserve to lose in such hopelessly cruel fashion. Keep your heads up, Grizzlies. You've got nothing to hang 'em for.
--I wondered in my Summit preview if maybe there wasn't too much at stake for NDSU's squad of seniors, whose five-year careers had collectively built up to this one single game to make the entire run either a success or failure. Who's not going to be tight under pressure like that? I think that's how it played out--those four starting seniors went 13-of-41 from the field and got real, real jumpy when the Bison were down two possessions and the clock under 10 minutes. Sophomore Michael Tviedt saved the Bison pretty well singlehandedly--21 points on 11 shots? 4-of-4 on threes? Ben Woodside hit the winner, but Tviedt won the game.
--Too bad for Oakland that they suffered some of the same effect--Erik Kangas is one of the best pure shooters in all mid-majordom, but he tried to pull off some NBA-style drive-and-fadeaway-jumper kind of moves that neither play to his strengths nor to his team's advantage inside. Some of the Oakland fade down the stretch was simple regression to the mean--the Golden Grizzlies shot above 65 percent for most of the game, and that's just not sustainable. But Kangas's freewheeling didn't really help.
--Man alive, Will Hudson and Keith Benson, 14-of-18? 30 points? Solid. I liked the game Johnathon Jones had, too--hit some nice jumpers and ran things to precision during those first 30 minutes.
--This was my first look at NDSU and even as they weren't having their best night, you could see why they've had so much success--Woodside has a nice-looking shot and is one of those PGs whose court sense is sharp enough that he can get where he needs to go on the court even without the quicks. They got the shots they needed, they just missed them. Add in some size and plenty of other shooters and I think they're an excellent candidate for an upset next week, particularly given the giant-killing reputation they already developed a couple seasons back vs. Marquette and Wisconsin.
--As for Oakland, despite the loss of Kangas the future's nothing but bright. Every other starter is back, they'll add Derick Nelson, their leading scorer and rebounder in 2008 who missed this year with a foot injury. It's possible Nelson's injury is a blessing in disguise--with the NDSU batallion gone, OU should be the prohibitive favorite entering 2009-2010.
Horizon: Cleveland St. 57, Butler 54
--Holy hell, what a game. In a few days UConn and someone like Louisville will play for the Big East title, and it'll be a great game and the announcers will be hyping it past hype and everyone will watch and all that ... but it will not be more intense than either this game or the one above, the stakes will not be higher, and it won't be a better game than this one. End of story.
--The pressure on Cleveland St. had the opposite effect on the Vikings that it had on the Bison. For the season, senior point Cedric Jackson has shot 30 percent on 3's: Tuesday he went 4-of-8. Jeremy Montgomery shot 32 percent for the year: Tuesday, 3-of-4. How's that for focus?
--I *heart* the way the Vikings play BEAT YOU DOWN defense and the physicality guys like J'Nathan "Antonio Gates's Long-Lost Brother" Bullock play with on both ends, but they have got to keep playing offense at the end of these games. It's not often a team has a six-point lead at the 4:55 mark, goes scoreless for all but the final 14 seconds, and still manages to win. It's by design, too--every possession down the stretch, Gary Waters had his guys dribble the air out of the ball before trying to run one play at the end of the clock. Points, guys! The goal is to score points! Keep running your offense! If they do this next week and let some power-conference team off the ropes, I can't even tell you how angry I'm going to be.
--Digger Phelps naturally took the opportunity after this game to rip Butler a new one, harping on the Loyola and UW-Green Bay losses. Nevermind that UWGB is a really good team that played a great game at home, that Butler took on nearly all other comers, that their best players are a sophomore and two freshmen and they're obviously going to be a little more vulnerable to inconsistency. F you, Digger, as always.
--As for their chances next week, I'm not sure Butler quite has the goods to get into the Sweet 16 if they're not really on their game ... but as with the last couple of years, if they take on a team that doesn't defend the perimeter and needs turnovers to power their offense, they'll be in good shape.
I'd love to see CSU take on some lo-fi Big 10 or Pac-10 team: the Vikes could easily keep the game in the high-40s or 50s and turn it into a coinflip down the stretch.
Sun Belt: Western Kentucky 64, South Alabama 56
--Weird, weird game. The Hilltoppers sprinted out to a 15-point lead and made it look like we were going to have one of those games where the announcers (who included the excellent Bob Valvano, always a highlight) spend the entire second half talking about the Bubble and their favorite coaches. Then South went on a looooooong run that ended with Domini Tilford both hitting a three to put the Jaguars up 43-39 with 14:39 to play and screaming like a total lunatic in front of the WKU bench. And then the Toppers realized "Oh yeah, we're better than they are," actually started playing the way they're capable of, and cruised to the win. Unlike the two games above, this one never felt particularly intense or even meaningful--whether it was the wavering focus of the teams or the barren neutral gym with no one in it or something else, it just never really seemed like a game that had an automatic bid at stake. Weird.
--What was up with Tilford? He only took 10 shots, which is waaaaay on the low side for him. He hit four of them, all from 3. All due respect to LaShun Watson and Bryan Sherrer (who hit 2 of their 8 shots), but Tilford was the Man on this team for a reason. Not sure why he was so low-profile in such a high-profile game. Not that this really hurt the Jaguar offense--they finished the game shooting 50 percent from the field and 5-of-10 from 3. What hurt them was just 5 offensive boards on 23 missed shots and 14 turnovers. It's not easy to shoot 50 percent and still finish under a point-per-possession, but South managed it.
--WKU, on the other hand, shot only 42 percent and 35 percent from downtown ... but hauled in 12 offensive rebounds and hit 14 (of 14) free throws to South's 5 (of 8). Voila, eight-point win despite the fact their two best players--guards Sergio Mendez-Valdez and A.J. Slaughter--went 7-of-22. Actually, that's sort of the best recommendation for the 'Toppers NCAA chances you could ask for--they played indifferently for long stretches of the game, had their best players have an off-night, had one of their best post guys (Jeremy Evans) in foul trouble the entire game ... and they still won without even breaking too much of a sweat. If they're on, yes, they could repeat last year's heroics.
Goodness gracious goshamighty was Tuesday night an incredible evening of hoops. Two absolute classics, starting with the ...
Summit: North Dakota St. 66, Oakland 64
--In nearly every Championship Week game where a clearcut league champion, No. 1 seed, best-hope-for-an-NCAA-upset is taking on some less-qualified team, I'm in the corner of the top seed. They deserved it by winning the regular season, they have the best chance of giving me even more joy next week. Usually, I'm screaming when a team like Oakland is beating a team like NDSU and delirious when a team like NDSU pulls it out over a team like Oakland.
But not here. Sure, some of it is that Oakland is a plainly likeable, mostly local team. But a lot of it is that they played out of their minds for the first 30 minutes of this game. They were great. They were perfect. And they did not lose deserve to lose this game, and they certainly didn't deserve to lose in such hopelessly cruel fashion. Keep your heads up, Grizzlies. You've got nothing to hang 'em for.
--I wondered in my Summit preview if maybe there wasn't too much at stake for NDSU's squad of seniors, whose five-year careers had collectively built up to this one single game to make the entire run either a success or failure. Who's not going to be tight under pressure like that? I think that's how it played out--those four starting seniors went 13-of-41 from the field and got real, real jumpy when the Bison were down two possessions and the clock under 10 minutes. Sophomore Michael Tviedt saved the Bison pretty well singlehandedly--21 points on 11 shots? 4-of-4 on threes? Ben Woodside hit the winner, but Tviedt won the game.
--Too bad for Oakland that they suffered some of the same effect--Erik Kangas is one of the best pure shooters in all mid-majordom, but he tried to pull off some NBA-style drive-and-fadeaway-jumper kind of moves that neither play to his strengths nor to his team's advantage inside. Some of the Oakland fade down the stretch was simple regression to the mean--the Golden Grizzlies shot above 65 percent for most of the game, and that's just not sustainable. But Kangas's freewheeling didn't really help.
--Man alive, Will Hudson and Keith Benson, 14-of-18? 30 points? Solid. I liked the game Johnathon Jones had, too--hit some nice jumpers and ran things to precision during those first 30 minutes.
--This was my first look at NDSU and even as they weren't having their best night, you could see why they've had so much success--Woodside has a nice-looking shot and is one of those PGs whose court sense is sharp enough that he can get where he needs to go on the court even without the quicks. They got the shots they needed, they just missed them. Add in some size and plenty of other shooters and I think they're an excellent candidate for an upset next week, particularly given the giant-killing reputation they already developed a couple seasons back vs. Marquette and Wisconsin.
--As for Oakland, despite the loss of Kangas the future's nothing but bright. Every other starter is back, they'll add Derick Nelson, their leading scorer and rebounder in 2008 who missed this year with a foot injury. It's possible Nelson's injury is a blessing in disguise--with the NDSU batallion gone, OU should be the prohibitive favorite entering 2009-2010.
Horizon: Cleveland St. 57, Butler 54
--Holy hell, what a game. In a few days UConn and someone like Louisville will play for the Big East title, and it'll be a great game and the announcers will be hyping it past hype and everyone will watch and all that ... but it will not be more intense than either this game or the one above, the stakes will not be higher, and it won't be a better game than this one. End of story.
--The pressure on Cleveland St. had the opposite effect on the Vikings that it had on the Bison. For the season, senior point Cedric Jackson has shot 30 percent on 3's: Tuesday he went 4-of-8. Jeremy Montgomery shot 32 percent for the year: Tuesday, 3-of-4. How's that for focus?
--I *heart* the way the Vikings play BEAT YOU DOWN defense and the physicality guys like J'Nathan "Antonio Gates's Long-Lost Brother" Bullock play with on both ends, but they have got to keep playing offense at the end of these games. It's not often a team has a six-point lead at the 4:55 mark, goes scoreless for all but the final 14 seconds, and still manages to win. It's by design, too--every possession down the stretch, Gary Waters had his guys dribble the air out of the ball before trying to run one play at the end of the clock. Points, guys! The goal is to score points! Keep running your offense! If they do this next week and let some power-conference team off the ropes, I can't even tell you how angry I'm going to be.
--Digger Phelps naturally took the opportunity after this game to rip Butler a new one, harping on the Loyola and UW-Green Bay losses. Nevermind that UWGB is a really good team that played a great game at home, that Butler took on nearly all other comers, that their best players are a sophomore and two freshmen and they're obviously going to be a little more vulnerable to inconsistency. F you, Digger, as always.
--As for their chances next week, I'm not sure Butler quite has the goods to get into the Sweet 16 if they're not really on their game ... but as with the last couple of years, if they take on a team that doesn't defend the perimeter and needs turnovers to power their offense, they'll be in good shape.
I'd love to see CSU take on some lo-fi Big 10 or Pac-10 team: the Vikes could easily keep the game in the high-40s or 50s and turn it into a coinflip down the stretch.
Sun Belt: Western Kentucky 64, South Alabama 56
--Weird, weird game. The Hilltoppers sprinted out to a 15-point lead and made it look like we were going to have one of those games where the announcers (who included the excellent Bob Valvano, always a highlight) spend the entire second half talking about the Bubble and their favorite coaches. Then South went on a looooooong run that ended with Domini Tilford both hitting a three to put the Jaguars up 43-39 with 14:39 to play and screaming like a total lunatic in front of the WKU bench. And then the Toppers realized "Oh yeah, we're better than they are," actually started playing the way they're capable of, and cruised to the win. Unlike the two games above, this one never felt particularly intense or even meaningful--whether it was the wavering focus of the teams or the barren neutral gym with no one in it or something else, it just never really seemed like a game that had an automatic bid at stake. Weird.
--What was up with Tilford? He only took 10 shots, which is waaaaay on the low side for him. He hit four of them, all from 3. All due respect to LaShun Watson and Bryan Sherrer (who hit 2 of their 8 shots), but Tilford was the Man on this team for a reason. Not sure why he was so low-profile in such a high-profile game. Not that this really hurt the Jaguar offense--they finished the game shooting 50 percent from the field and 5-of-10 from 3. What hurt them was just 5 offensive boards on 23 missed shots and 14 turnovers. It's not easy to shoot 50 percent and still finish under a point-per-possession, but South managed it.
--WKU, on the other hand, shot only 42 percent and 35 percent from downtown ... but hauled in 12 offensive rebounds and hit 14 (of 14) free throws to South's 5 (of 8). Voila, eight-point win despite the fact their two best players--guards Sergio Mendez-Valdez and A.J. Slaughter--went 7-of-22. Actually, that's sort of the best recommendation for the 'Toppers NCAA chances you could ask for--they played indifferently for long stretches of the game, had their best players have an off-night, had one of their best post guys (Jeremy Evans) in foul trouble the entire game ... and they still won without even breaking too much of a sweat. If they're on, yes, they could repeat last year's heroics.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
JCCW Championship Week preview quickies
The plan, naturally, was to do full profiles for every one of my beloved mid-major conferences ... but time makes fools of us all, they say, and with the C-Week diaries now also occupying the JCCW's mid-major coverage allotment the remaining conferences (some of whom tipped off yesterday) are going to have to get the rapid-fire treatment. Oh well. In alphabetical order ...
BIG WEST
Contenders: The Big West is as balanced as it can possibly get--seven of the league's nine teams finished within three games of league champs Cal St. Northridge and those same top 8 teams all finished with overall records somewhere between Pacific's 17-11 and UC-Davis's 12-18. Combine that balance with the tournament being held at its usual neutral court in Anaheim, and you you can expect some big seeding surprises. Defense-driven Northridge has a surprisingly good Pomeroy mark for a 15-13 mid-major, ranking 107th, but Pacific isn't too far behind them at 109 and it's the Tigers who have the conference's best offense and are a shade hotter, having won three in a row including a seven-point home win over the Matadors. Either one would likely be this year's best bet for the 16-over-1 miracle, though they'll have to get past second-seeded Long Beach. The 49ers have a bye into the semifinals after tying Pacific for third in the league standings, but ranked fourth in league efficiency margin (and at a hardly-inspiring 0) behind the two favorites and +.01 UC-Santa Barbara. The final should come down to Pacific and Northridge.
Prediction: After their two close losses to Pacific in the regular season (one in OT), Northridge proves how hard it is to beat a team three times, taking advantage of their bye to pull away from Pacific late.
MAC
Contenders: Seriously, what the hell happened to the MAC this year? Preseason favorites Miami lost their starting point guard in the nonconference slate and it seems like the entire league never recovered, with team after team spitting the bit in the conference race and a disastrous BracketBusters outing confirming what had been suspected all along: this is the worst MAC pretty much ever. But at least it should make for a wildly conference tournament, as Akron and Toledo proved in grand style yesterday in the opening round games. That may be an ill omen for Akron, though: the Zips were arguably the league's most consistent team down the stretch and own the league's best defense and efficiency margin, but winning three more games in three days after slogging past the awful Rockets in overtime looks ... unlikely. Miami still has the conference's best Pomeroy mark, but lost four of their last six with one of the wins coming at home against Bowling Green. Those same Falcons aren't much to look at by the numbers, but they claimed the top seed in the tournament via tiebreaker after grabbing road wins over Akron and Buffalo and a home win over Kent St. down the stretch. Speaking of Buffalo and Kent St., they'll meet tomorrow in a quarterfinal despite having two of the four best efficiency marks in the league. Both have looked like the best team in the conference at times and the Bulls (along with Miami) are the MAC's best hope for avoiding a 15 or 16 seed. Winner gets an overseed Ball St. team in the semifinals and should make the final.
Prediction: Kent didn't look particularly inspiring against Northern Illinois yesterday, so I'll take Buffalo--the conference's best team on the boards--to eliminate the Golden Flashes, surge to the final, and take out whichever of Bowling Green or Miami survives the top half of the bracket.
MEAC
Contenders: As in 2008, there aren't so much "contenders" as there are Morgan St. and everybody else. Todd Bozeman's Bears rolled through the conference with ease, posting a 13-3 record and winning the title by three games. The question isn't really who might oust the Bears as much as if anyone can when we're talking about a league champ who was .13 better than the next-best team on your average possession. Then again, the top seed has only won this tourney once in the last five years. A few teams Morgan will need to watch out for include Hampton, who went only 8-8 in conference play but had the MEAC's second-best defense and somehow swept Morgan to hand the Bears two of those three conference losses; second-place South Carolina St., who recovered from a mid-season five-game losing streak to win 10 of their final 12; and Norfolk St., who had the second-best offensive performance in league play and only lost by four when they traveled to Morgan in January.
Prediction: After blowing it last year, the second time should be the charm for Morgan St..
SOUTHLAND
Contenders: Actually, in this league, it would be easier to say which of the eight teams that made the field isn't a contender, because five of the eight will arrive at the Katy, TX Merrill Center with legitimate designs on bringing home a bid. Starting at the top of the divisional standings gives us two sides of a coin: Stephen F. Austin has the nation's sixth-best defense according to Pomeroy, but averages only .92 points a possession; Sam Houston St. claimed the league's best efficiency margin behind a Southland-best 1.10 points-a-possession, but only five other teams in the 12-team offensively-challenged league had a worse defense. Nicholls St. and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi went a combined 23-9 on their way to the second and fourth seeds, respectively, though Pomeroy (thumbs down) and their efficiency margins disagree on how dangerous they are. (Speaking of dangerous, the EM calls Southeastern Louisiana, the No. 8 seed and SF Austin's first-round opponent, the fifth-best team in the league. Caution, Lumberjacks!) If you're buying what Pomeroy's selling, though, you also have to pay attention to UT-Arlington: the Mavericks have the third-best mark in the conference in his system, though that 13-point home loss to TAMU-CC to wrap up the season looks pretty foreboding.
Prediction: I'd love to see what a defense-INSANE team like Austin would do in the tournament--if they got matched up with Illinois they could take a crack at bettering that 38-33 thing--but I don't trust their offense to score enough to maneuver through a difficult three-game tournament. I'll take Sam Houston St. instead.
SWAC
Contenders: Start with Alabama St., who ran away and hid from the bulk of a league that typically stays competitive and balanced into its final few games. The Hornets finished at 16-2, clinched with two games to play, and as you might expect carried the stats-based rankings by a pretty wide margin. It would be a Gonzaga/Memphis/Weber St./Morgan St.-style situation if not for the presence of Jackson St., who matched ASU nearly win for win and edged the Hornets by three at home in the next-to-last game of the season. Past those two, it's hard to see any other team breaking through--no seed lower than third has won the SWAC this decade and only once has any team not No. 1 or No. 2 taken the bid, third-seeded Texas Southern in 2003--but Prairie View is at least a clearcut No. 3 at 12-6 in league play and with better computer numbers than any of the chasers.
Prediction: On the one hand, Alabama St. was the first team since Mississippi Valley St. in 2004 to win 16 SWAC games and has the far easier road to the final with Prairie View safely in the other semifinal. Then again 1) that 2004 MVSU team lost their first-round game by a point 2) the Hornets were also the 2008 regular season SWAC champs with a not-so-shabby 15-3 record, and went down in the semifinals 3) over their two games, they outscored Jackson St. by all of three points. So they're not exactly the sort of favorite you want to be the house one. That said, as with Morgan, I think the lessons learned at last year's tournament will come into play at this year's, and the Hornets will go on to the NCAAs as the strongest SWAC representative since the '99 Alcorn St. team that scared Stanford in the first round.
WAC
Contenders: Man, I'm not sure if I can remember another mid-major that went 27-4 overall, 14-2 in its conference, and won its league by three games that no one thought would actually win its conference's automatic bid. But that's the case for Utah St., who looked a bit like they'd been wearing the emperor's clothes when they lost to a Mills-less St. Mary's team in BracketBusters and dropped back-to-back WAC roadies at Boise St. and Nevada. Worse, none of those three losses was even in single digits. And so the Aggies come to Reno bringing the nation's 12th-best offense and not an ounce of respect. The consensus favorite is, in fact, tourney host Nevada, who in their final five games of the year beat both the Aggies and newly crowned Colonial champ VCU at home and--even more impressively--took down Boise St. on the road. The Wolf Pack were easily the WAC's second-best team both in the standings and according to the computers. Playing at home, it'll be a surprise if they don't grab the bid. They'll even have the easier semifinal as Boise and New Mexico St.--both of whom had their moments in the regular season, including NMSU's road win in Reno--are both in USU's half of the bracket after weaker Idaho squeezed into the third seed via tiebreaker. The Aggies are going to have to earn it, that's for sure.
Prediction: Utah St. deserves the bid, but after watching them flounder over the past few weeks on the road, I don't have any faith they'll pull it out. I think they'll squeak past NMSU in the semi, but Nevada isn't going to let the bid get away on their home floor.
BIG WEST
Contenders: The Big West is as balanced as it can possibly get--seven of the league's nine teams finished within three games of league champs Cal St. Northridge and those same top 8 teams all finished with overall records somewhere between Pacific's 17-11 and UC-Davis's 12-18. Combine that balance with the tournament being held at its usual neutral court in Anaheim, and you you can expect some big seeding surprises. Defense-driven Northridge has a surprisingly good Pomeroy mark for a 15-13 mid-major, ranking 107th, but Pacific isn't too far behind them at 109 and it's the Tigers who have the conference's best offense and are a shade hotter, having won three in a row including a seven-point home win over the Matadors. Either one would likely be this year's best bet for the 16-over-1 miracle, though they'll have to get past second-seeded Long Beach. The 49ers have a bye into the semifinals after tying Pacific for third in the league standings, but ranked fourth in league efficiency margin (and at a hardly-inspiring 0) behind the two favorites and +.01 UC-Santa Barbara. The final should come down to Pacific and Northridge.
Prediction: After their two close losses to Pacific in the regular season (one in OT), Northridge proves how hard it is to beat a team three times, taking advantage of their bye to pull away from Pacific late.
MAC
Contenders: Seriously, what the hell happened to the MAC this year? Preseason favorites Miami lost their starting point guard in the nonconference slate and it seems like the entire league never recovered, with team after team spitting the bit in the conference race and a disastrous BracketBusters outing confirming what had been suspected all along: this is the worst MAC pretty much ever. But at least it should make for a wildly conference tournament, as Akron and Toledo proved in grand style yesterday in the opening round games. That may be an ill omen for Akron, though: the Zips were arguably the league's most consistent team down the stretch and own the league's best defense and efficiency margin, but winning three more games in three days after slogging past the awful Rockets in overtime looks ... unlikely. Miami still has the conference's best Pomeroy mark, but lost four of their last six with one of the wins coming at home against Bowling Green. Those same Falcons aren't much to look at by the numbers, but they claimed the top seed in the tournament via tiebreaker after grabbing road wins over Akron and Buffalo and a home win over Kent St. down the stretch. Speaking of Buffalo and Kent St., they'll meet tomorrow in a quarterfinal despite having two of the four best efficiency marks in the league. Both have looked like the best team in the conference at times and the Bulls (along with Miami) are the MAC's best hope for avoiding a 15 or 16 seed. Winner gets an overseed Ball St. team in the semifinals and should make the final.
Prediction: Kent didn't look particularly inspiring against Northern Illinois yesterday, so I'll take Buffalo--the conference's best team on the boards--to eliminate the Golden Flashes, surge to the final, and take out whichever of Bowling Green or Miami survives the top half of the bracket.
MEAC
Contenders: As in 2008, there aren't so much "contenders" as there are Morgan St. and everybody else. Todd Bozeman's Bears rolled through the conference with ease, posting a 13-3 record and winning the title by three games. The question isn't really who might oust the Bears as much as if anyone can when we're talking about a league champ who was .13 better than the next-best team on your average possession. Then again, the top seed has only won this tourney once in the last five years. A few teams Morgan will need to watch out for include Hampton, who went only 8-8 in conference play but had the MEAC's second-best defense and somehow swept Morgan to hand the Bears two of those three conference losses; second-place South Carolina St., who recovered from a mid-season five-game losing streak to win 10 of their final 12; and Norfolk St., who had the second-best offensive performance in league play and only lost by four when they traveled to Morgan in January.
Prediction: After blowing it last year, the second time should be the charm for Morgan St..
SOUTHLAND
Contenders: Actually, in this league, it would be easier to say which of the eight teams that made the field isn't a contender, because five of the eight will arrive at the Katy, TX Merrill Center with legitimate designs on bringing home a bid. Starting at the top of the divisional standings gives us two sides of a coin: Stephen F. Austin has the nation's sixth-best defense according to Pomeroy, but averages only .92 points a possession; Sam Houston St. claimed the league's best efficiency margin behind a Southland-best 1.10 points-a-possession, but only five other teams in the 12-team offensively-challenged league had a worse defense. Nicholls St. and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi went a combined 23-9 on their way to the second and fourth seeds, respectively, though Pomeroy (thumbs down) and their efficiency margins disagree on how dangerous they are. (Speaking of dangerous, the EM calls Southeastern Louisiana, the No. 8 seed and SF Austin's first-round opponent, the fifth-best team in the league. Caution, Lumberjacks!) If you're buying what Pomeroy's selling, though, you also have to pay attention to UT-Arlington: the Mavericks have the third-best mark in the conference in his system, though that 13-point home loss to TAMU-CC to wrap up the season looks pretty foreboding.
Prediction: I'd love to see what a defense-INSANE team like Austin would do in the tournament--if they got matched up with Illinois they could take a crack at bettering that 38-33 thing--but I don't trust their offense to score enough to maneuver through a difficult three-game tournament. I'll take Sam Houston St. instead.
SWAC
Contenders: Start with Alabama St., who ran away and hid from the bulk of a league that typically stays competitive and balanced into its final few games. The Hornets finished at 16-2, clinched with two games to play, and as you might expect carried the stats-based rankings by a pretty wide margin. It would be a Gonzaga/Memphis/
Prediction: On the one hand, Alabama St. was the first team since Mississippi Valley St. in 2004 to win 16 SWAC games and has the far easier road to the final with Prairie View safely in the other semifinal. Then again 1) that 2004 MVSU team lost their first-round game by a point 2) the Hornets were also the 2008 regular season SWAC champs with a not-so-shabby 15-3 record, and went down in the semifinals 3) over their two games, they outscored Jackson St. by all of three points. So they're not exactly the sort of favorite you want to be the house one. That said, as with Morgan, I think the lessons learned at last year's tournament will come into play at this year's, and the Hornets will go on to the NCAAs as the strongest SWAC representative since the '99 Alcorn St. team that scared Stanford in the first round.
WAC
Contenders: Man, I'm not sure if I can remember another mid-major that went 27-4 overall, 14-2 in its conference, and won its league by three games that no one thought would actually win its conference's automatic bid. But that's the case for Utah St., who looked a bit like they'd been wearing the emperor's clothes when they lost to a Mills-less St. Mary's team in BracketBusters and dropped back-to-back WAC roadies at Boise St. and Nevada. Worse, none of those three losses was even in single digits. And so the Aggies come to Reno bringing the nation's 12th-best offense and not an ounce of respect. The consensus favorite is, in fact, tourney host Nevada, who in their final five games of the year beat both the Aggies and newly crowned Colonial champ VCU at home and--even more impressively--took down Boise St. on the road. The Wolf Pack were easily the WAC's second-best team both in the standings and according to the computers. Playing at home, it'll be a surprise if they don't grab the bid. They'll even have the easier semifinal as Boise and New Mexico St.--both of whom had their moments in the regular season, including NMSU's road win in Reno--are both in USU's half of the bracket after weaker Idaho squeezed into the third seed via tiebreaker. The Aggies are going to have to earn it, that's for sure.
Prediction: Utah St. deserves the bid, but after watching them flounder over the past few weeks on the road, I don't have any faith they'll pull it out. I think they'll squeak past NMSU in the semi, but Nevada isn't going to let the bid get away on their home floor.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Championship Week Diaries, Days 1/2
Big South: Radford 108, VMI 94
--Ever since the first 10 minutes of this game, I've been trying to think if I've ever seen a bigger contrast of basketball styles than one team spearheaded by a 6-10 Belarussian behemoth at center (plus a 6-8 power forward) vs. a team who plays one dude taller than 6-4 (and he's 6-7) and has played the country's fastest pace for three straight years. Watching the Keydets climb all over Artsiom Parakhouski (as Kyle said, the tall one in the picture above) was like watching a Dad play backyard basketball with his five very fast, very athletic, three-point inclined sons.
--So, yeah, there's a reason Radford outrebounded VMI 56-24. I'm also trying to remember if I've ever seen a rebounding margin of "+32." When you turn the ball over 27 times (as Radford did) and still manage to take 14 more free throws and only seven fewer shots than your opponent, yes, safe to say you've a good game on the glass.
--Can't say Radford didn't deserve the bid after winning the league by a couple of games, but man, it would have been nice seeing VMI in the NCAAs. Watching the Holmes twins run up an down the court against, say, Michigan St. would have been sweet. Oh well--the Keydets are the ultimate boom-or-bust kind of team, and shooting 16-of-50 on their 3's is pretty close to bust. (Allowing Radford to shoot 55.7 percent is pretty busty as well.)
--Occasionally, you'll see these Euro giants who are playing hoops basically because God made them 7-feet tall and a basketball court is the only place in the world it's not a curse--dour faces, not much interaction with their teammates, a general sense of obligation rather than love for the game. This is not the case with Parakhouski, who popped his jersey at every opportunity and screamed his way upcourt after the mighty accomplishment of hitting a two-footer off the glass over a Keydet half his height. Cocky? Hell yeah, but a welcome cockiness.
--Parakhouski (who finished 11-of-16 for 26 points with 18 boards) and the 6-8 Joey Lynch-Floor give Radford a puncher's chance in the NCAA's first round. (It's also, of course, why they rolled through the Big South ... no one in a league this guard-oriented has that kind of size.) Sure, the Highlanders got rolled by every high-major team they played, but hey ...take 30 seconds on every possession before feeding it into Parakhouski, let Floor-Lynch hang in there on the boards, hope the opponent has an awful day from outside, and who knows? Not that this is likely, but if Radford can avoid a 16 seed, they have a shot at being competitive.
Atlantic Sun: East Tennessee St. 85, Jacksonville 68
--Cliff Warren's quietly done one of the best coaching jobs in the country in taking JU from the depths of 1-26 a few years ago to a regular season A-Sun title and now back-to-back conference tourney championship games. But man, he's got to figure out a different way of preparing his team for these games, because this is two straight years the Dolphins have been total no-shows with the bid on the line. Weird.
--That said, JU could have been totally on top of their game and it wouldn't have mattered. ETSU left last year's tournament (in which a--to put it politely--complete horsecrap technical call handed Belmont a win they only partially deserved) feeling like they had unfinished business, and they took care of it Saturday. When a senior-laden team on this level with guys with as much talent as Courtney Pigram and Kevin Tiggs--not to mention a front line that goes 6-7, 6-8--comes out as focused and energetic as the Bucs did on Saturday, forget it. The game was 23-11 and over by the under-12 timeout.
--Tiggs and Pigram are the guys with the names, but no doubt about it, Mike Smith was the best player on the floor in the title game. Long, athletic, a sweet-looking stroke from deep ... Smith finished with 22 points on 15 shots, 12 boards, four assists, and a couple of steals. How did I not know about this guy before?
--If Smith's going to play like that, ETSU absolutely has a shot in their first-round game. They've got a little bit of size, are athletic enough to play some worthwhile D, Messrs. Tiggs, Pigram, and Smith can score on anyone, Murray Bartow's been here a couple of times before ... like Radford, there's not really anything in their resume that screams "ready to win a 15-2 game," but they looked the part of a potential David on Saturday.
--Going from the madness of Radford's Dedmon Center to the dead zone of Lipscomb's arena, where ETSU and the Dolphins played in front of a crowd of DOZENS, was all the evidence you need to show why rewarding league champs with home court is the right move.
Ohio Valley: Morehead St. 67, Austin Peay 65
--After two disappointing blowouts to kick off Championship Week (seriously, both those earlier title games looked like even-steven match-ups), the OVC made up for it with a double-overtime thriller. Figured you'd show up eventually, March.
--For the most part, neither team was particularly polished on the offensive end, but it doesn't get any sweeter than the play Donnie Tyndall drew up for Morehead at the end of regulation. 10 seconds of lull you to sleep dribbling, followed by a precision lob and wide-open jam with 2 seconds left on the shot clock and 7.6 left on the game clock. That brand of execution, particularly given the pressure and situation, made it one hell of a play. (As if to drive the point home as to how much this sport is based on total, absolute luck, Peay's ballhandler drove smack into an Eagle defender, dribbled the ball off his foot, and had it roll directly to Peay's Caleb Brown who banked in a leaner as the buzzer sounded. Morehead pulling it out in the end was definitely some kind of delayed justice.)
--Hoo boy, great as they were from a dramatic standpoint, those overtime period were tough to watch from an aesthetic standpoint. Both teams were totally gassed and weren't all that interested in running smooth offense to begin with, so, well, there's a reason they combined for 6 points in the second OT and Peay didn't hit a FG.
--I'm not sure either of these teams had much of a chance of even hanging tough come NCAA time--Peay's only productive post player is the 6-5 Drake Reed, who sometimes seem to disappear for stretches in OVC play--but given how long it's been since Morehead had gotten a Dance ticket and that they and the Governors had finished with the same record in OVC play, I was happy to see the Eagles. Besides, it's a little easier to see Morehead hanging around in the first round, thanks to 6-8 center Kenneth Faried. Faried averages 14 and 13 and looked against APSU like a kind of taller, equally-manic Renaldo Balkman, right down to the ponytail. He could at least keep Morehead alive on the glass against a power team, and I'd trust the Eagles to play better D than the Govs.
Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa 60, Illinois St. 57
--Siiiiigh. I hate to say this, but this game really hammered home how far the top end of this league has slipped over the last couple of years. UNI and ISU are both good teams as these things go ... but UNI is a painfully unathletic team that doesn't even shoot particularly well and whose best player (7-footer Jordan Eglseder) can only take the court for 20 minutes a game. The Redbirds, meanwhile, have as much athleticism as you could want but play a brand of offense they seemed to learn at the local YMCA. (30.2 percent shooting against UNI!) Already eliminated, of course, were Creighton and the Bluejays' utter lack of post presence or any kind of rebounding. There's nothing here to match the Southern Illinois's and Creighton's and Bradley's of yesteryear.
--So, yeah, it didn't really make much difference personally who won this game. I think ISU had a slightly better chance at winning a 12-5 game, since if they committed themselves on D and had a decent shooting game, they wouldn't face much of a deficit in the way of talent or hops. But in the end, eh, I'd just assume watch UNI move on--watching Champ Oguchi jack up yet another three 10 seconds into the shot clock when he could blow past his defender at any time might have me throwing things.
--Seriously, this game never should have gone into overtime. The only thing that kept ISU in the game was Eldridge's ridonkulous series of circus threes midway through the second half ... and when that's all you've got to base your offense around, you're in trouble. UNI did their best to help the Redbirds out with a curious insistence on turning the ball over and refusing to get the ball into the post.
--Then again, all ISU needed to win this game was for either 1) Oguchi to not blow an easy layup with 27 seconds left in OT 2) Sampay to go up with his offensive rebound with 1:30ish left for what would have been an easy basket. Instead he pulled it out, Eldridge missed a 3 (of course) and the Redbirds never scored again.
--OK, so does UNI have a shot at an NCAA win? Yes, a shot. Eglseder gives them some excellent size for as long as he can go--which is longer given the crazy length of NCAA TV timeouts--and point man Kwadzo Ahelegbe looked a lot more sure of himself this game than earlier in the season. Still, the specter of the Panthers proving themselves totally unable to handle the tempo or athleticism of Sien on BracketBusters Saturday looms large. They'll have to get a good, slow match-up (Illinois? Cal?) to have a true chance at advancing to the Round of 32.
--Maybe he can keep his tennis gig, but it's time to put Dick Enberg out to pasture where hoops is concerned. He made more errors than I could count, none worse than at the end of regulation when ISU committed the foul that would send UNI to the line to tie the game with 30 seconds left--!!!!--and Enberg calmly explained how the ball had gone out of bounds but would stay at that end. His color guy, Bob Wenzl, might have been worse--when Sampay pulled the OT rebound out, he effusively praised the decision. Of course he did--because purposefully passing on the chance to go up two possessions with still more than a minute remaining is such a great idea.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
JCCW Championship Week previews: Summit, Big Sky
Go West, young blogger! And, if we're talking about the Summit, also kind of towards Louisiana with a stop-off in Michigan, but mostly West.
SUMMIT
Location, etc.: All games to be played at Sioux Falls Arena, SD; top 8 of 10 included; championship Tuesday, 8 p.m., ESPN2
The Favorite: North Dakota State, ladies and gents: 16-2 league record, 15 wins in their last 16 games, league-best efficiency margin, four seniors in the starting lineup including the 23-points-a-game-with-unheard-of-efficiency Mr. Ben Woodside (pictured above) at shooting guard, a top-65 Pomeroy rating (best in the conference by a substantial margin), a win over closest competitors Oral Roberts on O-Rob's home floor a week ago today, and last but not least--the focus that comes with an an entire class of immensely talented players redshirting and spending a year on the bench solely for the purpose of this moment.
The Contender: The aforementioned Oral Roberts Golden Eagles have dominated this league the last few years and it's safe to say they're not giving up their choke-hold to the first-year eligible usurpers from NDSU without a fight. They have two senors of their own in guard Robert Jarvis and forward Marcus Lewis that average 30 points between them. Nobody has allowed fewer points-per-possession or rebounded the ball better in league play. And, of course, O-Rob has done this whole "win your conference tournament" thing before. Could the stakes be too high for the NDSU seniors?
The Darkhorse: Oakland, as I've written a few times here before, is just about as dangerous as third-seeded teams in lower-echelon mid-major conferences can get. Erik Kangas is a lights-out shooter outside and Keith Benson brings some serious defensive muscle inside. OU hasn't been as good away from home as the league's top two teams--all five of their Summit lossess took place away from the O-Rena--but they're also the league's hottest non-NDSU team, having won seven straight and six of them by double digits. A semifinal match-up between the Golden Grizzlies and Golden Eagles would be--yes--golden.
Prediction: I'm such a sucker that I'm openly rooting for Oakland exclusively out of how much I enjoyed my trip to watch them play, but North Dakota State has proven itself the best team in the league this year and they'll be much closer to home than either OU or ORU. The Bison seniors have also seen and accomplished too much in their five years at NDSU to get too rattled by the occasion, I'm guessing. I think they they take the bid.
BIG SKY
Location, etc.: First round at campus of higher seed, semifinals and finals at top seed Weber State; top 6 of 9 included, top 2 seeds get byes to semifinals; championship Wednesday, 10 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Well, Weber St. went 15-1, won the league by four full games, and will host the tournament on their home floor. You think it's them? Oh, and in efficiency terms, they had both the league's best offense and defense, a claim only the likes of teams like Gonzaga and Memphis can make. If almost anyone besides the Wildcats won this tournament it would be a total stunner, save perhaps for ...
The Contender: ... Portland St. The Vikings strolled to last year's regular season and conference titles, returned just about everybody, upset Gonzaga in nonconference play ... and then mysteriously just never got it together in the Big Sky. Still, their Pomeroy mark is much closer to Weber's than you'd expect for a team that languished four games back in the standings. The Vikes--led by mighty-mite senior PG Jeremiah Dominguez, one of my favorite players in the country--take a ton of threes and make 37.2 percent of them, a big reason they're in the top 40 in eFG in the country. If they rise up on D the same night their shots are falling, it's certainly plausible to see them winning in Ogden.
The Darkhorse: Uh ... anyone? Montana was the other team (along with Portland St.) to finish at 11-5 in the league, but the Grizzlies lost their two games to Weber by a combined 27 points. It's awfully hard to see anyone besides the Vikings challenging the champions.
Prediction: If Portland St. had their [excrement] together well enough to win this tournament, they wouldn't have spent their last two games beating such decidedly mediocre teams as Montana St. and Eastern Washington a) by six points at home b) in overtime. Weber St. should roll.
SUMMIT
Location, etc.: All games to be played at Sioux Falls Arena, SD; top 8 of 10 included; championship Tuesday, 8 p.m., ESPN2
The Favorite: North Dakota State, ladies and gents: 16-2 league record, 15 wins in their last 16 games, league-best efficiency margin, four seniors in the starting lineup including the 23-points-a-game-with-unheard-of-efficiency Mr. Ben Woodside (pictured above) at shooting guard, a top-65 Pomeroy rating (best in the conference by a substantial margin), a win over closest competitors Oral Roberts on O-Rob's home floor a week ago today, and last but not least--the focus that comes with an an entire class of immensely talented players redshirting and spending a year on the bench solely for the purpose of this moment.
The Contender: The aforementioned Oral Roberts Golden Eagles have dominated this league the last few years and it's safe to say they're not giving up their choke-hold to the first-year eligible usurpers from NDSU without a fight. They have two senors of their own in guard Robert Jarvis and forward Marcus Lewis that average 30 points between them. Nobody has allowed fewer points-per-possession or rebounded the ball better in league play. And, of course, O-Rob has done this whole "win your conference tournament" thing before. Could the stakes be too high for the NDSU seniors?
The Darkhorse: Oakland, as I've written a few times here before, is just about as dangerous as third-seeded teams in lower-echelon mid-major conferences can get. Erik Kangas is a lights-out shooter outside and Keith Benson brings some serious defensive muscle inside. OU hasn't been as good away from home as the league's top two teams--all five of their Summit lossess took place away from the O-Rena--but they're also the league's hottest non-NDSU team, having won seven straight and six of them by double digits. A semifinal match-up between the Golden Grizzlies and Golden Eagles would be--yes--golden.
Prediction: I'm such a sucker that I'm openly rooting for Oakland exclusively out of how much I enjoyed my trip to watch them play, but North Dakota State has proven itself the best team in the league this year and they'll be much closer to home than either OU or ORU. The Bison seniors have also seen and accomplished too much in their five years at NDSU to get too rattled by the occasion, I'm guessing. I think they they take the bid.
BIG SKY
Location, etc.: First round at campus of higher seed, semifinals and finals at top seed Weber State; top 6 of 9 included, top 2 seeds get byes to semifinals; championship Wednesday, 10 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Well, Weber St. went 15-1, won the league by four full games, and will host the tournament on their home floor. You think it's them? Oh, and in efficiency terms, they had both the league's best offense and defense, a claim only the likes of teams like Gonzaga and Memphis can make. If almost anyone besides the Wildcats won this tournament it would be a total stunner, save perhaps for ...
The Contender: ... Portland St. The Vikings strolled to last year's regular season and conference titles, returned just about everybody, upset Gonzaga in nonconference play ... and then mysteriously just never got it together in the Big Sky. Still, their Pomeroy mark is much closer to Weber's than you'd expect for a team that languished four games back in the standings. The Vikes--led by mighty-mite senior PG Jeremiah Dominguez, one of my favorite players in the country--take a ton of threes and make 37.2 percent of them, a big reason they're in the top 40 in eFG in the country. If they rise up on D the same night their shots are falling, it's certainly plausible to see them winning in Ogden.
The Darkhorse: Uh ... anyone? Montana was the other team (along with Portland St.) to finish at 11-5 in the league, but the Grizzlies lost their two games to Weber by a combined 27 points. It's awfully hard to see anyone besides the Vikings challenging the champions.
Prediction: If Portland St. had their [excrement] together well enough to win this tournament, they wouldn't have spent their last two games beating such decidedly mediocre teams as Montana St. and Eastern Washington a) by six points at home b) in overtime. Weber St. should roll.
Friday, March 06, 2009
JCCW championship week previews: America East, CAA, MAAC, WCC
Yes, it's a four-pack of mid-majory, previewy goodness today.
AMERICA EAST
Location, etc.: First three rounds at Albany, championship game at campus of higher seed; all 9 teams involved, bottom two seeds play in for quarterfinals; championship Saturday March 14, 11 a.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Binghamton probably isn't the poster child the America East really wants, what with that whole New York Times article about how everyone involved with the basketball team is going to hell (I'm exaggerating ... but only slightly), but right now it looks like it's the poster child the AE is going to get. The Bearcats tied Vermont for the league title at 13-3, and by virtue of a sweep of the Catamounts will host the league title game should they advance that far. 6-4 transfer guard D.J. Rivera is one the league's best and most efficient scorers at 20 points a game and the Bearcats held opponents to a lower eFG than any other defense in the league. If they get through Albany, will anyone beat them on their homecourt?
The Contender: Well, Vermont very well might. The Catamounts lost both ends of the Binghamton series ... but over the two games the difference in regulation equaled all of two points. Both in terms of efficiency margin--where Vermont has the league's best offense and second-best defense--and Pomeroy's ratings, the Catamounts are the best team in the league, and it's not even close. In senior PG Mike Trimboli and two-time league POTY forward Marqus Blakely, Vermont has the best one-two punch in the conference ... if it wasn't for Binghamton holding that tiebreaker and home-court, Vermont would be a heavy favorite to take the bid.
The Darkhorse(s): Boston U. led the league race for stretches in January and February and, like Vermont, can boast better computer numbers than Binghamton; with three players 6-5 or taller in the starting lineup, the Terriers have serious size for this level. They buried Binghamton on the Bearcats' home court by 17, though Vermont also swept them with ease.
No one else seems like a threat to make much of an impact, but Stony Brook's 8-8 league record was a quantum leap forward for them and they've got the league's fourth-best Pomeroy mark.
Prediction: Sorry, Bearcats, but Vermont is just a much better team. The Catamounts should win a tense final.
COLONIAL
Location, etc.: All games at Richmond Coliseum; All 12 teams involved, top four seeds get bye to quarterfinals; championship Monday, 7 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Take your pick amongst George Mason, Northeastern, or VCU, all of which have similar numbers and all of which finished within two games of each other. But the Patriots have a couple of things the others don't in coach Jim Larranaga, easily the league's best coach at getting the most out of his team in March, and the three-headed senior group led by guard John Vaughan--the last remaining holdover from the magic of '04--that's more March-experienced than any other group in the league. Kyle and Michael Litos both refer to GMU as the best all-around team in the league. Isn't that enough?
The Contender(s): It's close, but the numbers and the standings are in agreement (and in disagreement with the experts mentioned above): it's VCU that's the CAA's best team. When I've seen him, Duke-slaying senior PG Eric Maynor has tried to do a little too much ... much it doesn't mean he's not the best player in the league. Thanks in large part to Maynor, VCU both turned the ball over fewer times and forced more turnovers than any other team in CAA play. Northeastern posted the league's best nonconference win when they won at Providence, and the Huskies' patient, sharp-shooting offense (1st in "true" shooting percentage in the league) helped them to a 10-1 start. The Huskies faltered down the stretch--losing four of their last five CAA contests dropped them into a tie for third with Old Dominion--but if their slow style drags one of the other two favorites into a tight 55-54 kind of game, NU could shoot their way to the bid.
The Darkhorse: Old Dominion doesn't look so good by certain measurements, but after their 4-5 start, the Monarchs ripped off nine wins in their last 10 including wins over all three of the league leaders. In 6-10 center Gerald Lee, ODU will have arguably the best big man in the tourney.
Prediction: How awesome would a pair of semifinals matching up VCU vs. ODU and Mason vs. Northeastern? Unbelievably awesome. But in the end, Jim Larranaga is Jim Larranaga. I'll take George Mason.
MAAC
Location, etc.: All games at Siena; all 10 teams included, bottom four playing into quarterfinals; championship Monday, 9 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Siena won last year's league and league tournament, won this year's league by two full games with a 16-2 record, and will be playing on the home court where they haven't lost yet this year. Also, they have the Player and Coach and Sixth Man of the year in the MAAC. Yeah, I think they're the favorites.
The Contender: Of course, in any other league of the MAAC's stature, Siena would be heavy favorites. But unfortunately for them they share a conference Niagara. The Purple Eagles have a backcourt and starting five (Benn! Egemonye! Lewis! Garrison!) every bit as experienced and potent as Siena's and have every bit as much approval from the computer ratings as the Saints. And, oh yeah, they destroyed the Saints at home last week. Siena vs. Niagara should be one of the--if not the--best-played and most competitive conference finals of all Championship Week. I'm already tingly with excitement, I swear.
The Darkhorse(s): Rider tripped up both the league heavies at home, beating Siena by 2 and Niagara by 3, but they'll be hard-pressed to repeat those accomplishments away from Lawrenceville--their efficiency margin in MAAC play was barely over zero. Still, if any team's going to screw up the dream final, it's these guys.
Prediction: If this tournament was being held on a neutral court, or even if Siena had shown the slightest bit of vulnerability at home, I'd take the Purps. But aside from a fluky-looking one-point win over Iona, Siena hasn't even been challenged in Albany since the New Year--including their 17-point drubbing of the Eagles. I expect the MAAC final to be a lot closer, but Siena should take it.
WEST COAST
Location, etc.: All games in Las Vegas; all 8 teams included, in a bracket it's easier for me to just show you than try to explain; championship Monday, 9 p.m., ESPN.
The Favorite: Gonzaga wrapped up yet another perfect season in WCC play last week and has everything but the motivation: in Daye, Bouldin, Heyvelt, and Pargo, the Zags have more professional prospects in their starting lineup than most mid-major leagues have in their entire conferences. Their efficiency margin of +.28 is the largest one in the country, even more dominant than Memphis's in CUSA. Until we see Patty Mills healthy and back to normal, the Zags are the overwhelming favorite. Of course ...
The Contender: ... if Mills had stayed healthy, maybe we're talking right now about how St. Mary's is the WCC favorite. The Gaels--as you've no doubt heard by now--were just about whipping Gonzaga in Spokane when Mills broke his wrist. If Mills is his normal self, even the Zags don't have a trio of players as savvy and productive as Mills, Omar Samhan, and Diamon Simpson. It all rests of Mills's wrist, and if it's intact, even on paper the matchup is a toss-up.
The Darkhorse(s): Weird things have happened in the WCC tourney over the years where desperate also-rans have run into less desperate Gonzaga teams. So don't rule out long-downtrodden Portland, a solid No. 107 to Pomeroy and possessors of a better nonconference win--vs. Washington--than anything Gonzaga managed. Santa Clara will also have a chance at anyone in the field as long as man-mountain John Bryant--the nation's No. 1 defensive rebounder and arguably the nation's best rebounder, period--can avoid foul trouble.
Prediction: It's hard to really project what will happen with Mills, but with the tournament held on a neutral site and the bid meaning far, far more to the field than to Gonzaga, the hunch here is that the Zags won't take the bid ... leaving it to St. Mary's, who were competitive with Gonzaga even when they didn't have Mills's services.
AMERICA EAST
Location, etc.: First three rounds at Albany, championship game at campus of higher seed; all 9 teams involved, bottom two seeds play in for quarterfinals; championship Saturday March 14, 11 a.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Binghamton probably isn't the poster child the America East really wants, what with that whole New York Times article about how everyone involved with the basketball team is going to hell (I'm exaggerating ... but only slightly), but right now it looks like it's the poster child the AE is going to get. The Bearcats tied Vermont for the league title at 13-3, and by virtue of a sweep of the Catamounts will host the league title game should they advance that far. 6-4 transfer guard D.J. Rivera is one the league's best and most efficient scorers at 20 points a game and the Bearcats held opponents to a lower eFG than any other defense in the league. If they get through Albany, will anyone beat them on their homecourt?
The Contender: Well, Vermont very well might. The Catamounts lost both ends of the Binghamton series ... but over the two games the difference in regulation equaled all of two points. Both in terms of efficiency margin--where Vermont has the league's best offense and second-best defense--and Pomeroy's ratings, the Catamounts are the best team in the league, and it's not even close. In senior PG Mike Trimboli and two-time league POTY forward Marqus Blakely, Vermont has the best one-two punch in the conference ... if it wasn't for Binghamton holding that tiebreaker and home-court, Vermont would be a heavy favorite to take the bid.
The Darkhorse(s): Boston U. led the league race for stretches in January and February and, like Vermont, can boast better computer numbers than Binghamton; with three players 6-5 or taller in the starting lineup, the Terriers have serious size for this level. They buried Binghamton on the Bearcats' home court by 17, though Vermont also swept them with ease.
No one else seems like a threat to make much of an impact, but Stony Brook's 8-8 league record was a quantum leap forward for them and they've got the league's fourth-best Pomeroy mark.
Prediction: Sorry, Bearcats, but Vermont is just a much better team. The Catamounts should win a tense final.
COLONIAL
Location, etc.: All games at Richmond Coliseum; All 12 teams involved, top four seeds get bye to quarterfinals; championship Monday, 7 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Take your pick amongst George Mason, Northeastern, or VCU, all of which have similar numbers and all of which finished within two games of each other. But the Patriots have a couple of things the others don't in coach Jim Larranaga, easily the league's best coach at getting the most out of his team in March, and the three-headed senior group led by guard John Vaughan--the last remaining holdover from the magic of '04--that's more March-experienced than any other group in the league. Kyle and Michael Litos both refer to GMU as the best all-around team in the league. Isn't that enough?
The Contender(s): It's close, but the numbers and the standings are in agreement (and in disagreement with the experts mentioned above): it's VCU that's the CAA's best team. When I've seen him, Duke-slaying senior PG Eric Maynor has tried to do a little too much ... much it doesn't mean he's not the best player in the league. Thanks in large part to Maynor, VCU both turned the ball over fewer times and forced more turnovers than any other team in CAA play. Northeastern posted the league's best nonconference win when they won at Providence, and the Huskies' patient, sharp-shooting offense (1st in "true" shooting percentage in the league) helped them to a 10-1 start. The Huskies faltered down the stretch--losing four of their last five CAA contests dropped them into a tie for third with Old Dominion--but if their slow style drags one of the other two favorites into a tight 55-54 kind of game, NU could shoot their way to the bid.
The Darkhorse: Old Dominion doesn't look so good by certain measurements, but after their 4-5 start, the Monarchs ripped off nine wins in their last 10 including wins over all three of the league leaders. In 6-10 center Gerald Lee, ODU will have arguably the best big man in the tourney.
Prediction: How awesome would a pair of semifinals matching up VCU vs. ODU and Mason vs. Northeastern? Unbelievably awesome. But in the end, Jim Larranaga is Jim Larranaga. I'll take George Mason.
MAAC
Location, etc.: All games at Siena; all 10 teams included, bottom four playing into quarterfinals; championship Monday, 9 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Siena won last year's league and league tournament, won this year's league by two full games with a 16-2 record, and will be playing on the home court where they haven't lost yet this year. Also, they have the Player and Coach and Sixth Man of the year in the MAAC. Yeah, I think they're the favorites.
The Contender: Of course, in any other league of the MAAC's stature, Siena would be heavy favorites. But unfortunately for them they share a conference Niagara. The Purple Eagles have a backcourt and starting five (Benn! Egemonye! Lewis! Garrison!) every bit as experienced and potent as Siena's and have every bit as much approval from the computer ratings as the Saints. And, oh yeah, they destroyed the Saints at home last week. Siena vs. Niagara should be one of the--if not the--best-played and most competitive conference finals of all Championship Week. I'm already tingly with excitement, I swear.
The Darkhorse(s): Rider tripped up both the league heavies at home, beating Siena by 2 and Niagara by 3, but they'll be hard-pressed to repeat those accomplishments away from Lawrenceville--their efficiency margin in MAAC play was barely over zero. Still, if any team's going to screw up the dream final, it's these guys.
Prediction: If this tournament was being held on a neutral court, or even if Siena had shown the slightest bit of vulnerability at home, I'd take the Purps. But aside from a fluky-looking one-point win over Iona, Siena hasn't even been challenged in Albany since the New Year--including their 17-point drubbing of the Eagles. I expect the MAAC final to be a lot closer, but Siena should take it.
WEST COAST
Location, etc.: All games in Las Vegas; all 8 teams included, in a bracket it's easier for me to just show you than try to explain; championship Monday, 9 p.m., ESPN.
The Favorite: Gonzaga wrapped up yet another perfect season in WCC play last week and has everything but the motivation: in Daye, Bouldin, Heyvelt, and Pargo, the Zags have more professional prospects in their starting lineup than most mid-major leagues have in their entire conferences. Their efficiency margin of +.28 is the largest one in the country, even more dominant than Memphis's in CUSA. Until we see Patty Mills healthy and back to normal, the Zags are the overwhelming favorite. Of course ...
The Contender: ... if Mills had stayed healthy, maybe we're talking right now about how St. Mary's is the WCC favorite. The Gaels--as you've no doubt heard by now--were just about whipping Gonzaga in Spokane when Mills broke his wrist. If Mills is his normal self, even the Zags don't have a trio of players as savvy and productive as Mills, Omar Samhan, and Diamon Simpson. It all rests of Mills's wrist, and if it's intact, even on paper the matchup is a toss-up.
The Darkhorse(s): Weird things have happened in the WCC tourney over the years where desperate also-rans have run into less desperate Gonzaga teams. So don't rule out long-downtrodden Portland, a solid No. 107 to Pomeroy and possessors of a better nonconference win--vs. Washington--than anything Gonzaga managed. Santa Clara will also have a chance at anyone in the field as long as man-mountain John Bryant--the nation's No. 1 defensive rebounder and arguably the nation's best rebounder, period--can avoid foul trouble.
Prediction: It's hard to really project what will happen with Mills, but with the tournament held on a neutral site and the bid meaning far, far more to the field than to Gonzaga, the hunch here is that the Zags won't take the bid ... leaving it to St. Mary's, who were competitive with Gonzaga even when they didn't have Mills's services.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
JCCW Championship Week previews: NEC, MoVal, SoCon
It's finally March, baby--just check out the above pic of South's Dominic Tilford celebrating the Jags moving on (barely ... a 62-60 home win over New Orleans) in the Sun Belt tourney last night. (HT: The Dagger.) So we're keepin' it going with the previews, starting with the ...
NORTHEAST
Location, etc.: All games at campus of higher seed; top 8 of 11 teams included; semifinals match highest remaining seed after quarterfinals against lowest, rather than following bracket; championship Wednesday, 8 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: I could be wrong here, but I think it's Robert Morris. Behind the league's best defense (.90 a possession) and second-best shooting (behind Sacred Heart), the Colonials merrily rolled along to the league title by a full three games over nearest competitors Mt. St. Mary's, Sacred Heart, and LIU. RMU is about as experienced as it gets--their top six contributors are all juniors or seniors, including senior guard and NEC Player of the Year Jeremey Chappell. After losing at home to Mt. St. Mary's as the top seed in last year's NEC tourney, I somehow doubt there's going to be any lack of focus on the Colonials' part this season.
The Contender: If RMU's the decided favorite, it has to be pointed out they didn't play like it down the stretch. After starting their league slate at 13-1, the Colonials dropped back-to-back contests to Monmouth and Wagner and closed the season by beating Mt. St. Mary's by three points at home. Not confidence-inducing stuff, and if RMU does fall it's most likely the Mountaineers that are going to make it happen: they've got a virtually identical Pomeroy profile, explosive 5-9 dynamo Jeremy Goode running the point, and the confidence of having lost their two games to RMU this year by a total of 10 points (not to mention having picked RMU off in 2008). If I'm a Colonials fan, I'm desperately hoping Wagner or (more likely) Sacred Heart takes the Mount down before the NEC final.
The Darkhorse(s): Seventh-seeded Wagner isn't likely to win the whole ball o' wax, but after closing the year with a four-game win streak that included home victories over both RMU and the Mount, they look hot enough that they might cause trouble. Sacred Heart never really did much during the regular season--their best win, at home to the Mount, came all the back in the first week of December--but they're the best shooters in the league and if they get particularly hot for 40 minutes, who knows.
Prediction: Man, does Robert Morris's wheeze to the finish line--and Mt. St. Mary's Pomeroy mark-- make me nervous. But the Colonials were also playing for pride by the time they started dropping those games. At home, with the bid on the line, in Chappell's final season, I like them to just edge the Mountaineers for the title.
MISSOURI VALLEY
Location, etc.: All games held in St. Louis; all 10 teams included, bottom four play-in to quarterfinals; championship Sunday, 1 p.m., CBS.
The Favorite: Creighton is the league's hottest team, its best offensive team, its most successful Valley tournament team under Dana Altman. The Bluejays aren't heavy favorites, not in this league, but as long as Booker Woodfox is firing away, Josh Dotzler is running the point, and P'Allen Stinnett is there to slash-and-burn, there doesn't look like a better candidate than CU.
The Contender: After that nutso 11-1 start in Valley play, Northern Iowa cooled off and HOW in mid-February, dropping four of five at one point. But just as people were writing off the Panthers and handing CU the league title, UNI edged Illinois St. on the road in a big surprise according to Pomeroy and then saw off streaking Evansville at home for their share of the Valley crown. If the top-seeded Panthers really are back to their January form, a relatively easy path to the title game--Drake/Indiana St. followed by the winner of "eh, they're OK" Bradley and disappointing Southern Illinois--and 7-foot Gigantor clone Jordan Eglseder (the country's fifth-best defensive rebounder) mean UNI has as good a shot as anyone.
The Darkhorse(s): Illinois St. has the league's second-best Pomeroy rating, the league's best and most athletic defense, and Osiris Eldridge's mohawk: there's a reason the Redbirds pounded the Bluejays by 22 Jan. 3. Wichita St. was the opposite of UNI: after starting off 0-6 in Valley play they closed with an 8-4 run that included home wins over all three of the league leaders. Want a reason why Creighton might not take the bid? Their road to the final likely goes through the Shockers in the quarters and then the Redbirds in the semis.
Prediction: After two years of straight chalk in the Valley tourney--both the 2007 and 2008 finals matched the top two seeds--I think we're going to see a little chaos this time as Illinois St. puts things together, first taking down Creighton (who never did catch UNI in the efficiency race) and then blowing by slow-footed UNI in the final.
SOUTHERN
Location, etc.: All games held at UT-Chattanooga; All 12 teams included, top four seeds get bye to quarterfinals; championship Monday, 7 p.m., ESPN
The Favorite: This Davidson team has this guy you may have heard of. Now that he's healthy ... yeah.
The Contenders: The Citadel--who have not just sucked but completely sucked for as long as I've been following this sport--started off at 3-4 in the SoCon and then, in one of the more amazing things I can remember seeing in this wonderful world of mid-major hoops, rattled off 11 straight wins before slipping up at home against Wofford. The Bulldogs have the league's best non-Davidson D by a freaking mile, an 18-point road win over the Curry-less version of Davidson (still: 18 points!), and the weight of "What a story!" narrative behind them. It won't be easy for Davidson
The Darkhorse(s): The College of Charleston has an offense just as potent by tempo-free measures as Davidson (though their D is awful) and earned the SoCon's only win over the full-strength Wildcats in two years when they won at Davidson's place by two Feb. 7. Curry and Co., at the very least, will be taking them seriously. And while Chattanooga doesn't have anything to recommend them beyond their home-court advantage and ill-gained bye by virtue of "winning" the weak sauce SoCon North, that's more than the rest of the field's got.
Prediction: The Citadel has played so ridiculously well over the past month, particularly when compared to the cracks that seem to be showing in Davidson's armor, that calling the upset is actually a little tempting. But with Curry back to his usual self, Davidson is just too good a team to lose this thing.
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
JCCW Championship Week previews: A-Sun, Patriot, Sun Belt
Continuing with where we left off ...
ATLANTIC SUN
Location, etc.: All games held at Lipscomb's arena in Nashville; all 7 eligible teams included, top seed gets by to semifinals; championship Saturday, 6 p.m., ESPN.
The Favorite: Jacksonville's the regular season champ, Belmont are the old pros at this, and no one's more desperate than East Tennessee St., but with the tournament on their home court Lipscomb probably has better Vegas odds than any of them. After starting their A-Sun campaign a hideous 4-8, the Bisons (yes, with an "s") have reeled off eight straight, including home wins over all three of the contenders listed above. In fact, Lipscomb hasn't lost to any A-Sun team at home since dropping a one-point decision to Campbell back on Jan. 8. Led by 6-9 sophomore Adnan Hodzic and his 60 percent shooting from the floor, the Bisons sport the highest eFG in the league, an advantage that should be even more decisive on Lipscomb's home floor.
The Contender: Belmont and ETSU were the pre-season favorites, but Jacksonville matched the Bruins and Bucs step-for-step and in league play and had eventually become the de facto favorite of the numbers: they have the A-Sun's best efficiency margin by a wide margin and the second-best Pomeroy mark, trailing only Belmont--who had a massive lead when conference play began. The Dolphins are as balanced as it gets--four double-digit scorers, good shooters, solid on the boards, sticky-fingered on defense. If the tournament was on a neutral court, they'd feel awfully good about their chances.
The Darkhorse(s): Seems weird to call the team that's won this thing three years running and owns the league's best Pomeroy rating a dark horse, but Belmont seemed to deflate after narrowly missing out on a huge noncon upset of Tennessee and never lived up to their billing in A-Sun play. Six losses (including to the likes of Stetson, Mercer, and ETSU by 30) and the fourth-best efficiency mark suggest that it's just not in the Bruins' cards this year, but with four starting seniors and Rick Byrd on the bench, they can't exactly be dismissed, either. As for ETSU, the Bucs are the tempo-free state enthusiast's dream: despite playing at the league's fastest pace and routinely scoring in the 90s, ETSU built their runner-up league finish on the league's stingiest defense at .93 points-per-possession. If there's one guy in the league who could win the league tourney by himself, it's ETSU senior guard Courtney Pigram; if he gets hot and ETSU keeps up the tenacious defending, here comes the bracket.
Prediction: Like the semifinals for a lot of mid-major leagues this year, the A-Sun's semis--Jacksonville vs. Lipscomb and Belmont vs. ETSU, if seeds hold as they should--should be off the freaking hook ... and the finals quite possibly even better. Who survives? The numbers say the Dolphins (and I'll cop to hoping that either JU or hard-luck ETSU grabs the bid), but I'm betting that if you accounted for the Lipscomb that's going to show up at the tourney--i.e. the one that's been smoking everyone in the league for a month-and-a-half and will be playing at home--the numbers would look different. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I think the smart wager is Lipscomb.
PATRIOT
Location, etc.: All games at campus of higher seed; all 8 teams included; championship Friday March 13, 4:45 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: No doubt about things here: American won the league by two full games, will have home-court advantage, a massive +.22 efficiency margin in league play, the best Pomeroy mark by 70-some odd places, three players on the All-Patriot first team, the uncontested best backcourt in the conference in seniors Garrison Carr and Patriot Player of the Year Derrick Mercer ... you get the point. Memphis might be the only team more heavily favored than AU to win their conference tourney.
The Contender: Holy Cross handed the Eagles their only Patriot loss of the season back on Jan. 24, winning 71-62 in Worcester. The Crusaders didn't exactly roll over for the league champs in the return trip, either, pulling within three in the final minutes before succumbing 56-50. The Cross does just about everything well and is the best rebounding team in the conference by a wide margin thanks to 6-9 sophomore Andrew Keister and 6-6 senior Colin Cunningham. If the AU guards have an off-night, who knows?
The Darkhorse: Navy boasts the league's second-best pair of guards in senior Kaleo Nina and junior Chris Harris, who combine for 33 points a game in a low-fi league. The Midshipmen also won't be intimidated by having to go to American, not after leading the Eagles in the final minute on their home court last week. American swept the season series, but only by a combined six points.
Prediction: The Eagles made their computer-ranking hay more by pounding the Patriot's lesser lights than by looking that impressive against the league's other contenders, so this isn't a slam dunk. But picking against a 13-1, statistically dominant league champ who gets every game at the home gym where they were undefeated this season just doesn't seem that smart. American it is.
SUN BELT
Location, etc.: First round at campus of higher seed, all other games at Hot Springs, Ark.; All 13 teams included, top 3 seeds get byes to quarterfinals; championship Tuesday, 10 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Western Kentucky wasn't supposed to repeat in the Belt, but they did anyway, rolling to a 15-3 record and edging Arkansas Little-Rock by virtue of a season sweep of the Trojans. Even "15-3" doesn't quite reflect WKU's dominance: they went undefeated at home and lost those three decisions by a combined 11 points, the "worst" of them a five-point drop at 14-4 Troy. They had the league's best efficiency margin (+.17) by a whopping .07 points-per-possession, the league's best offense by a mile, and a late-season surge that culminated in a 19-point road beatdown of a decent Middle Tennessee St. team to cap the regular season. This is the league's best team, and it really isn't as close as the standings suggest.
The Contenders: Arkansas-Little Rock and Troy wrapped up their conference seasons tied with the Hilltoppers at 15-3 and just a game behind at 14-4, respectively. But there's reason to think both sets of Trojans might be a tad flattered by the standings. While UALR does boats the league's best defense at .92 points-a-possession, they've also been forced to suspend leading scorer Steven Moore for the season. The Trojans do have balance (three other players average double figures and Moore only averaged 13) to go with their D and will be playing close to home, so they look like the biggest challengers to WKU--but after losing to WKU by nine at home with Moore, are they really ready to beat the Hilltoppers without him? Troy might be in better shape to pull the upset, having beaten WKU at home and boasting big road wins at UALR and dangerous North Texas during a 12-1 tear to finish their Sun Belt season after start 2-3. But man, Pomeroy hates these guys (they rank fifth in the league) and their defense is atrocious--they rank 305th in eFG defense and give up more than a point a possession. With that D, is this really a team that can rip off three straight wins?
Darkhorse(s) The Sun Belt is chock-ful o' teams that could rise up and dump the favorites out of the tourney. North Texas has the league's third-best Pomeroy mark, four scorers in double digits, and lost their three games to UALR and WKU by a combined 9 points; South Alabama has a loaded, veteran frontcourt and lost a whole host of games in the final minute, including an ESPN2 special at WKU they led with less than two minutes to play; and while Middle Tennessee had to be dragged across the finish line after a fast start, the Blue Raiders are pretty much the same team that nearly stole the bid from a lower seed last season, so who knows with them.
Prediction: As you can probably tell from the above descriptions, I think Western Kentucky wins this bid with relative ease. In fact, I'd worry more about North Texas or MTSU tripping them up in the semis than I would about UALR or Troy in the final.
I'm hopeful of getting a Works post done this afternoon, but Real Life calls as well. We'll see.
ATLANTIC SUN
Location, etc.: All games held at Lipscomb's arena in Nashville; all 7 eligible teams included, top seed gets by to semifinals; championship Saturday, 6 p.m., ESPN.
The Favorite: Jacksonville's the regular season champ, Belmont are the old pros at this, and no one's more desperate than East Tennessee St., but with the tournament on their home court Lipscomb probably has better Vegas odds than any of them. After starting their A-Sun campaign a hideous 4-8, the Bisons (yes, with an "s") have reeled off eight straight, including home wins over all three of the contenders listed above. In fact, Lipscomb hasn't lost to any A-Sun team at home since dropping a one-point decision to Campbell back on Jan. 8. Led by 6-9 sophomore Adnan Hodzic and his 60 percent shooting from the floor, the Bisons sport the highest eFG in the league, an advantage that should be even more decisive on Lipscomb's home floor.
The Contender: Belmont and ETSU were the pre-season favorites, but Jacksonville matched the Bruins and Bucs step-for-step and in league play and had eventually become the de facto favorite of the numbers: they have the A-Sun's best efficiency margin by a wide margin and the second-best Pomeroy mark, trailing only Belmont--who had a massive lead when conference play began. The Dolphins are as balanced as it gets--four double-digit scorers, good shooters, solid on the boards, sticky-fingered on defense. If the tournament was on a neutral court, they'd feel awfully good about their chances.
The Darkhorse(s): Seems weird to call the team that's won this thing three years running and owns the league's best Pomeroy rating a dark horse, but Belmont seemed to deflate after narrowly missing out on a huge noncon upset of Tennessee and never lived up to their billing in A-Sun play. Six losses (including to the likes of Stetson, Mercer, and ETSU by 30) and the fourth-best efficiency mark suggest that it's just not in the Bruins' cards this year, but with four starting seniors and Rick Byrd on the bench, they can't exactly be dismissed, either. As for ETSU, the Bucs are the tempo-free state enthusiast's dream: despite playing at the league's fastest pace and routinely scoring in the 90s, ETSU built their runner-up league finish on the league's stingiest defense at .93 points-per-possession. If there's one guy in the league who could win the league tourney by himself, it's ETSU senior guard Courtney Pigram; if he gets hot and ETSU keeps up the tenacious defending, here comes the bracket.
Prediction: Like the semifinals for a lot of mid-major leagues this year, the A-Sun's semis--Jacksonville vs. Lipscomb and Belmont vs. ETSU, if seeds hold as they should--should be off the freaking hook ... and the finals quite possibly even better. Who survives? The numbers say the Dolphins (and I'll cop to hoping that either JU or hard-luck ETSU grabs the bid), but I'm betting that if you accounted for the Lipscomb that's going to show up at the tourney--i.e. the one that's been smoking everyone in the league for a month-and-a-half and will be playing at home--the numbers would look different. I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I think the smart wager is Lipscomb.
PATRIOT
Location, etc.: All games at campus of higher seed; all 8 teams included; championship Friday March 13, 4:45 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: No doubt about things here: American won the league by two full games, will have home-court advantage, a massive +.22 efficiency margin in league play, the best Pomeroy mark by 70-some odd places, three players on the All-Patriot first team, the uncontested best backcourt in the conference in seniors Garrison Carr and Patriot Player of the Year Derrick Mercer ... you get the point. Memphis might be the only team more heavily favored than AU to win their conference tourney.
The Contender: Holy Cross handed the Eagles their only Patriot loss of the season back on Jan. 24, winning 71-62 in Worcester. The Crusaders didn't exactly roll over for the league champs in the return trip, either, pulling within three in the final minutes before succumbing 56-50. The Cross does just about everything well and is the best rebounding team in the conference by a wide margin thanks to 6-9 sophomore Andrew Keister and 6-6 senior Colin Cunningham. If the AU guards have an off-night, who knows?
The Darkhorse: Navy boasts the league's second-best pair of guards in senior Kaleo Nina and junior Chris Harris, who combine for 33 points a game in a low-fi league. The Midshipmen also won't be intimidated by having to go to American, not after leading the Eagles in the final minute on their home court last week. American swept the season series, but only by a combined six points.
Prediction: The Eagles made their computer-ranking hay more by pounding the Patriot's lesser lights than by looking that impressive against the league's other contenders, so this isn't a slam dunk. But picking against a 13-1, statistically dominant league champ who gets every game at the home gym where they were undefeated this season just doesn't seem that smart. American it is.
SUN BELT
Location, etc.: First round at campus of higher seed, all other games at Hot Springs, Ark.; All 13 teams included, top 3 seeds get byes to quarterfinals; championship Tuesday, 10 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: Western Kentucky wasn't supposed to repeat in the Belt, but they did anyway, rolling to a 15-3 record and edging Arkansas Little-Rock by virtue of a season sweep of the Trojans. Even "15-3" doesn't quite reflect WKU's dominance: they went undefeated at home and lost those three decisions by a combined 11 points, the "worst" of them a five-point drop at 14-4 Troy. They had the league's best efficiency margin (+.17) by a whopping .07 points-per-possession, the league's best offense by a mile, and a late-season surge that culminated in a 19-point road beatdown of a decent Middle Tennessee St. team to cap the regular season. This is the league's best team, and it really isn't as close as the standings suggest.
The Contenders: Arkansas-Little Rock and Troy wrapped up their conference seasons tied with the Hilltoppers at 15-3 and just a game behind at 14-4, respectively. But there's reason to think both sets of Trojans might be a tad flattered by the standings. While UALR does boats the league's best defense at .92 points-a-possession, they've also been forced to suspend leading scorer Steven Moore for the season. The Trojans do have balance (three other players average double figures and Moore only averaged 13) to go with their D and will be playing close to home, so they look like the biggest challengers to WKU--but after losing to WKU by nine at home with Moore, are they really ready to beat the Hilltoppers without him? Troy might be in better shape to pull the upset, having beaten WKU at home and boasting big road wins at UALR and dangerous North Texas during a 12-1 tear to finish their Sun Belt season after start 2-3. But man, Pomeroy hates these guys (they rank fifth in the league) and their defense is atrocious--they rank 305th in eFG defense and give up more than a point a possession. With that D, is this really a team that can rip off three straight wins?
Darkhorse(s) The Sun Belt is chock-ful o' teams that could rise up and dump the favorites out of the tourney. North Texas has the league's third-best Pomeroy mark, four scorers in double digits, and lost their three games to UALR and WKU by a combined 9 points; South Alabama has a loaded, veteran frontcourt and lost a whole host of games in the final minute, including an ESPN2 special at WKU they led with less than two minutes to play; and while Middle Tennessee had to be dragged across the finish line after a fast start, the Blue Raiders are pretty much the same team that nearly stole the bid from a lower seed last season, so who knows with them.
Prediction: As you can probably tell from the above descriptions, I think Western Kentucky wins this bid with relative ease. In fact, I'd worry more about North Texas or MTSU tripping them up in the semis than I would about UALR or Troy in the final.
I'm hopeful of getting a Works post done this afternoon, but Real Life calls as well. We'll see.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
JCCW Championship Week previews: the first three
Auburn content coming up next post, pinky swear.
Git r done, Done Ruthless.
"Championship Week" is quite a fine name as it goes, but if we're trying to encompass the entirety of the NCAA hoops postseason between now and Selection Sunday, it's time to start to calling it Championship Fortnight, because--wonder of wonders--that postseason is already here. The Ohio Valley, Horizon, and my former beloved the Big South all tip their conference tourneys off tonight, and by this time tomorrow 12 teams will no longer be playing basketball in the 2008-2009 season. Now, folks, it's real.
Over the next couple of days I'm going to be previewing every mid-major conference taking part in Championship Fortnight (the Ivy, you'll no doubt recall, abstains from such undignified, pagan rituals). For further resources, I suggest you check out Awful Announcing's Championship Week TV schedule and the Bracket Board's indispensable One Stop Shop for all the tourney brackets you'll need.
We'll start with the three leagues that start today.
BIG SOUTH
Location, etc.: First round at campus of higher seed, semifinals at regular season champ, final at highest remaining seed; only top eight (of 9 eligible) advance to tourney; championship Saturday, 4 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: VMI's gotten the lion's share of the league's media attention this season, what with the Kentucky upset, the Holmes twins features, and the "Loyola-Marymount circa the Bo Kimble days" pace. But it's Radford that's been the league's best team since conference play began, and not by a small margin: the Highlanders won the league by two games, own the BSC's best Pomeroy rating (after trailing far, far behind VMI and Liberty at the end of the nonconference slate), and boast the conference player of the year in Belarussian giant Artsiom Parakhouski. The 6-11, 260-pound monster averaged a 16-and-11 double-double, ranks in Pomeroy's top-50 in rebounding on both ends of the floor, and was most recently seen pouring in 39 on 15-of-19 shooting in Radford's meaningless season-ending loss to Liberty. (Oh, he also had 19 rebounds). As the top seed in the Big South, Radford will also get the bonus of playing on their home floor for as long as they stay alive.
The Contender: After winning at Rupp Arena and on the home floors of both Radford and Liberty (by a combined 52 points!), the prospect of navigating the Big South tourney away from Lexington won't bother VMI all that much. The Keydets won't last if it gets dragged down into even a moderately-paced game--at No. 16 in the country in positive luck, the Keydets are due to lose any close shaves, and their horrendous FG defense means it's turnovers-or-die on that end--but when both Holmeses and freshman Keith Gabriel are on, they're also the only team in the tournament that could run everyone else clean out of the gym.
The Darkhorse(s): Liberty boasts the league's second-best Pomeroy mark, the Freshman of the Year in Seth "Yes, I'm His Little Brother, Go Away" Curry, the conference's best top-to-bottom nonconference performance, and road wins at both VMI and Radford. They looked like a great sleeper bet right up until a week ago, when they played host to the Keydets and absorbed a 109-72 thrashing. Of course, they turned right around from that and won at Radford--making even boom-or-bust VMI the league's second-most schizophrenic team.
No one else here looks capable of making a title run, but don't be surprised if one of the also-rans pulls off a road stunner at one of the top three teams tonight--the Big South has seen a ton of quarterfinals upsets over the past few seasons.
The Prediction: When the top three teams in the league have gone a collective 0-6 against each other playing at home and the tournament host's three league losses all came at their own place, it's safe to say that home-court advantage doesn't carry a lot of weight. So I like whichever of VMI or Liberty can get hot to upset the Highlanders for the bid ... but which one will get hot? In Pomeroy and VMI's wretched, March-unfriendly defense I trust: the guess here is that Liberty rises to the big-game occasion the way they have all year (wins vs. Virginia, George Mason) and steals the title. (This, of course, dooms them to a loss against Gardner-Webb tonight.)
OHIO VALLEY
Location, etc.: Quarterfinals at campus of higher seed, semifinals/finals in Nashville; top 8 (of 10) advance to tourney; championship Saturday, 7 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: There's not much to decide between Murray St. and Tennessee-Martin, but when the latter has the league crown (by a game) and arguably the best player and best nickname in all mid-majordom in Lester "Done Ruthless" Hudson, they've got to be the favorite. Hudson, as you probably know, is an absolute machine--points, assists, steals, boards, arean organ-playing, etc. Though the Skyhawks also have their own budding Jason Richards to Hudson's Curry in junior Delrico Lane, who leads the team in dimes and racked up 17 in Martin's final two regular-season games.
The Contender: Murray St. started their OVC slate at 3-4 but finished it on a 10-1 tear in which the only loss was a three-point drop at Austin Peay. Included in that streak was a decisive 74-59 home win over Martin, far and away the worst defeat of the Skyhawk's conference season. Boasting the league's best defense at .93 points a possession, the league's No.1 Pomeory rating by a smidge (129 to 132), and more momentum than any team in the field, the Racers have every right to think they're actually the team to beat.
Darkhorse(s): While the rest of the league has fallen far off the pace of the front-runners in terms of computer ratings and per-possession efficiency, Austin Peay took the tournament's second seed after tying Murray in the OVC standings and after leading the league for much of the season Morehead State finished only two games behind Martin. But with both those teams faltering down the stretch--Morehead has lost four in a row, while Peay lost five of eight before closing with two of the league's bottom three teams--it's more likely the top two will be challenged by hard-rising Tennessee St., winners of six straight since their controversial coaching change, or Eastern Kentucky, owners of both the league's best offense according to Pomeroy and nonconference wins over MAC contenders Akron and Ohio.
Prediction: From here, it looks like the Skyhawks and Racers are on a collision course for what should be a championship game to rival the OVC's other recent classics.* Sizing the two teams up makes it look like an utter coinflip--meaning I'll take the team with the future NBA player going 40 full minutes with the bid on the line. Give me Martin.
HORIZON
Location, etc. All 10 teams included; top two seeds get byes into semifinals, other eight teams play two rounds to fill other two semifinal slots; first round on campus at higher seed, second round and semifinals at No. 1 seed, championship at highest remaining seed (No, it doesn't get any more complicated than this--ed.); championship Tuesday, 9 p.m., ESPN
The Favorite: I don't really have to write any more about Butler, do I? I'll just say this--even in a league as deep as the Horizon, the Bulldogs were a full half-point per-possession better in conference play than anyone else in the league.
The Contender(s): Take your pick, folks. UW-Green Bay, who beat Butler by 9 at home on Jan. 22 and has the league's best offense by a mile? Cleveland St., who were within four points of sweeping the Bulldogs and can match anyone in the conference pound-for-pound? Or Wright St., the best defenders in a league chock-ful of them, allowing just .90 points-per-defensive possession in league play? All three are in Pomeroy's top 100 and all three could walk away with the bid if they can just find a little offense (in Cleveland or Wright's cases) or a little defense (in UWGB's).
The Darkhorse: Past the very-similarly-profiled teams above, there's not much, but Illinois-Chicago did beat Northern Iowa and Vanderbilt out-of-conference, so there's some talent (and danger for likely second-round for Cleveland) there.
Prediction: This league was the opposite of the Big South--none of the Wright-Cleveland-UWGB triumvirate won a road game either at each other or at Butler. But it doesn't mean it can't be done--witness lowly Loyola-Chicago's win at Hinkle Fieldhouse, or Cleveland's brave assault on the Butler fortress last Saturday. The guess here is that end-of-season desperation will give one of the chasers just enough of an edge to trip up the bid-assured Bulldogs. So which one? I don't think it's Wright--just not enough offense there. Of the other two, it's Cleveland who's just a shade hotter--although it's thanks in part to a cushy schedule, the Vikes had won eight straight until that two-point loss at Hinkle. I think the next time, Cleveland St. gets over the top and makes the HL a two-bid league.
All times are EST, by the way.
*The OVC has been decided by buzzer-beaters twice this decade already--so why can't I find anything on YouTube? Someone somewhere is asleep at the wheel.
Git r done, Done Ruthless."Championship Week" is quite a fine name as it goes, but if we're trying to encompass the entirety of the NCAA hoops postseason between now and Selection Sunday, it's time to start to calling it Championship Fortnight, because--wonder of wonders--that postseason is already here. The Ohio Valley, Horizon, and my former beloved the Big South all tip their conference tourneys off tonight, and by this time tomorrow 12 teams will no longer be playing basketball in the 2008-2009 season. Now, folks, it's real.
Over the next couple of days I'm going to be previewing every mid-major conference taking part in Championship Fortnight (the Ivy, you'll no doubt recall, abstains from such undignified, pagan rituals). For further resources, I suggest you check out Awful Announcing's Championship Week TV schedule and the Bracket Board's indispensable One Stop Shop for all the tourney brackets you'll need.
We'll start with the three leagues that start today.
BIG SOUTH
Location, etc.: First round at campus of higher seed, semifinals at regular season champ, final at highest remaining seed; only top eight (of 9 eligible) advance to tourney; championship Saturday, 4 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: VMI's gotten the lion's share of the league's media attention this season, what with the Kentucky upset, the Holmes twins features, and the "Loyola-Marymount circa the Bo Kimble days" pace. But it's Radford that's been the league's best team since conference play began, and not by a small margin: the Highlanders won the league by two games, own the BSC's best Pomeroy rating (after trailing far, far behind VMI and Liberty at the end of the nonconference slate), and boast the conference player of the year in Belarussian giant Artsiom Parakhouski. The 6-11, 260-pound monster averaged a 16-and-11 double-double, ranks in Pomeroy's top-50 in rebounding on both ends of the floor, and was most recently seen pouring in 39 on 15-of-19 shooting in Radford's meaningless season-ending loss to Liberty. (Oh, he also had 19 rebounds). As the top seed in the Big South, Radford will also get the bonus of playing on their home floor for as long as they stay alive.
The Contender: After winning at Rupp Arena and on the home floors of both Radford and Liberty (by a combined 52 points!), the prospect of navigating the Big South tourney away from Lexington won't bother VMI all that much. The Keydets won't last if it gets dragged down into even a moderately-paced game--at No. 16 in the country in positive luck, the Keydets are due to lose any close shaves, and their horrendous FG defense means it's turnovers-or-die on that end--but when both Holmeses and freshman Keith Gabriel are on, they're also the only team in the tournament that could run everyone else clean out of the gym.
The Darkhorse(s): Liberty boasts the league's second-best Pomeroy mark, the Freshman of the Year in Seth "Yes, I'm His Little Brother, Go Away" Curry, the conference's best top-to-bottom nonconference performance, and road wins at both VMI and Radford. They looked like a great sleeper bet right up until a week ago, when they played host to the Keydets and absorbed a 109-72 thrashing. Of course, they turned right around from that and won at Radford--making even boom-or-bust VMI the league's second-most schizophrenic team.
No one else here looks capable of making a title run, but don't be surprised if one of the also-rans pulls off a road stunner at one of the top three teams tonight--the Big South has seen a ton of quarterfinals upsets over the past few seasons.
The Prediction: When the top three teams in the league have gone a collective 0-6 against each other playing at home and the tournament host's three league losses all came at their own place, it's safe to say that home-court advantage doesn't carry a lot of weight. So I like whichever of VMI or Liberty can get hot to upset the Highlanders for the bid ... but which one will get hot? In Pomeroy and VMI's wretched, March-unfriendly defense I trust: the guess here is that Liberty rises to the big-game occasion the way they have all year (wins vs. Virginia, George Mason) and steals the title. (This, of course, dooms them to a loss against Gardner-Webb tonight.)
OHIO VALLEY
Location, etc.: Quarterfinals at campus of higher seed, semifinals/finals in Nashville; top 8 (of 10) advance to tourney; championship Saturday, 7 p.m., ESPN2.
The Favorite: There's not much to decide between Murray St. and Tennessee-Martin, but when the latter has the league crown (by a game) and arguably the best player and best nickname in all mid-majordom in Lester "Done Ruthless" Hudson, they've got to be the favorite. Hudson, as you probably know, is an absolute machine--points, assists, steals, boards, arean organ-playing, etc. Though the Skyhawks also have their own budding Jason Richards to Hudson's Curry in junior Delrico Lane, who leads the team in dimes and racked up 17 in Martin's final two regular-season games.
The Contender: Murray St. started their OVC slate at 3-4 but finished it on a 10-1 tear in which the only loss was a three-point drop at Austin Peay. Included in that streak was a decisive 74-59 home win over Martin, far and away the worst defeat of the Skyhawk's conference season. Boasting the league's best defense at .93 points a possession, the league's No.1 Pomeory rating by a smidge (129 to 132), and more momentum than any team in the field, the Racers have every right to think they're actually the team to beat.
Darkhorse(s): While the rest of the league has fallen far off the pace of the front-runners in terms of computer ratings and per-possession efficiency, Austin Peay took the tournament's second seed after tying Murray in the OVC standings and after leading the league for much of the season Morehead State finished only two games behind Martin. But with both those teams faltering down the stretch--Morehead has lost four in a row, while Peay lost five of eight before closing with two of the league's bottom three teams--it's more likely the top two will be challenged by hard-rising Tennessee St., winners of six straight since their controversial coaching change, or Eastern Kentucky, owners of both the league's best offense according to Pomeroy and nonconference wins over MAC contenders Akron and Ohio.
Prediction: From here, it looks like the Skyhawks and Racers are on a collision course for what should be a championship game to rival the OVC's other recent classics.* Sizing the two teams up makes it look like an utter coinflip--meaning I'll take the team with the future NBA player going 40 full minutes with the bid on the line. Give me Martin.
HORIZON
Location, etc. All 10 teams included; top two seeds get byes into semifinals, other eight teams play two rounds to fill other two semifinal slots; first round on campus at higher seed, second round and semifinals at No. 1 seed, championship at highest remaining seed (No, it doesn't get any more complicated than this--ed.); championship Tuesday, 9 p.m., ESPN
The Favorite: I don't really have to write any more about Butler, do I? I'll just say this--even in a league as deep as the Horizon, the Bulldogs were a full half-point per-possession better in conference play than anyone else in the league.
The Contender(s): Take your pick, folks. UW-Green Bay, who beat Butler by 9 at home on Jan. 22 and has the league's best offense by a mile? Cleveland St., who were within four points of sweeping the Bulldogs and can match anyone in the conference pound-for-pound? Or Wright St., the best defenders in a league chock-ful of them, allowing just .90 points-per-defensive possession in league play? All three are in Pomeroy's top 100 and all three could walk away with the bid if they can just find a little offense (in Cleveland or Wright's cases) or a little defense (in UWGB's).
The Darkhorse: Past the very-similarly-profiled teams above, there's not much, but Illinois-Chicago did beat Northern Iowa and Vanderbilt out-of-conference, so there's some talent (and danger for likely second-round for Cleveland) there.
Prediction: This league was the opposite of the Big South--none of the Wright-Cleveland-UWGB triumvirate won a road game either at each other or at Butler. But it doesn't mean it can't be done--witness lowly Loyola-Chicago's win at Hinkle Fieldhouse, or Cleveland's brave assault on the Butler fortress last Saturday. The guess here is that end-of-season desperation will give one of the chasers just enough of an edge to trip up the bid-assured Bulldogs. So which one? I don't think it's Wright--just not enough offense there. Of the other two, it's Cleveland who's just a shade hotter--although it's thanks in part to a cushy schedule, the Vikes had won eight straight until that two-point loss at Hinkle. I think the next time, Cleveland St. gets over the top and makes the HL a two-bid league.
All times are EST, by the way.
*The OVC has been decided by buzzer-beaters twice this decade already--so why can't I find anything on YouTube? Someone somewhere is asleep at the wheel.
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