Scattered teamthoughts

Why is Digger Phelps dancing?



Because the big boys and their ESPN propagandists got the results they needed from the land of mid-majors this weekend. Neither Siena nor Utah St. could handle their road trips to angry league rivals who have probably had the date circled on their proverbial calendars for weeks. Creighton didn't get the help they needed from Evansville to declare an outright title in the MoVal. Butler sealed up homecourt throughout the Horizon tourney, making it more likely the HL will stay a one-bid league. More than ever, it looks like it really is the "down year" for mid-major at-larges we've been hearing about since December.

The good news is that from a quality standpoint, it's as much of an "up year" as ever. The JCCW took in four mid-major games over the weekend: Niagara 100 Siena 85, Butler 58 Cleveland St. 56, Creighton 74 Illinois St. 70, and Gonzaga 58, San Diego 47. Thoughts follow:

--It's a brutal and unfortunate shame that Siena could have their NCAA hopes so badly damaged by a loss like "at Niagara." Because having seen them twice, I can tell you: the Purple Eagles are an outstanding mid-major team. Experienced, guard-savvy, with one hell of a bruiser down low in Benson Egemonye. Friday night they were ready from the jump, at home in front of a crowd frothing at the mouth, in what every one of them knew was the biggest game of their season. Countless bubble teams or even tournament locks would have gone into the Gallagher and left with their tails between their legs. But because Siena's the team that actually had to do it, they're the ones that suffer. So it goes.

--That said, the Saints didn't help themselves in a lot of ways, principally by never really catching up defensively to the breakneck pace Niagara wanted to play. So many layups, so many transition looks. Far and away the Saints' biggest weakness is a defensive presence in the post ... combine that Achilles heel with repeated failures to get back and you get Niagara's two-point percentage of 63 percent. Yikes. On the other end, Keny Hasbrouck could have picked a better game to go 2-for-20. (The rest of the team actually shot 55 percent.)

--If forced to pick at gunpoint one of these teams to go to the NCAAs, I take the Saints, 'cause when you dominate your league the way they did, you deserve it. But I'm not sure the Purps would have any less of a shot at springing a first-round upset if they snag the auto-bid. Bilal Benn is one of those undersized (6-5) power forwards that seems to be about three places at once, Egemonye I've mentioned already, and the three-headed backcourt of Tyrone Lewis, Rob Garrison, and Anthony Nelson are every bit as good as Siena's Franklin/Hasbrouck/Moore trio. Against the Saints, the three of them combined for 16 assists and one turnover. One. In an 80-possession game. Holy hell, man.

--One caveat: fewer threes, dudes. No point in hoisting 22 of them when you're shooting less than 32 percent for the year.

--Cleveland St. at Butler was easily one of the best games I've seen this year, with a flurry of precision offense and shooting eventually giving in to the heavyweight slugfest these teams probably wanted to play all along. It's so "ESPN announcer who just read over the rosters for the first time today but has to pretend to be excited"-style hacky to say something like "Either one of these teams would be a nightmare for a power-conference team down the road," but either one of these teams would be a nightmare for a power-conference team down the road.

--So why, exactly, is a team that only took the third seed in the Horizon tournament by virtue of a tiebreaker so dangerous? Because while a lot of teams talk about their brand of gridiron-style toughness, man, the Vikings live up to it. Forward J'Nathan Bullock--a man so hard the "o" in his first name ran away--is a Bullock in a china shop (ha! I'm so clever) down low. Senior point Ced Jackson caused ESPN color guy Bucky Waters to use the phrase "up in your grill" approximately 2,347 times during the Butler game. Every guy on the team falls in line behind those two. If you're a team that's not used to this kind of punishment, it's going to take some adjusting ... and if you are, you just might be a Big 10 team that's going to accidentally be dragged into a 38-33-style coinflip. Lastly, the Vikes pretty clearly save their best for the best teams on their schedule--witness the win at Syracuse, the competitive loss to West Virginia, the two losses to Butler by a combined four points. If you are a power-conference team with any kind of vulnerability to stout defense: DO NOT WANT.

--Admittedly, the Vikes aren't too much to look at on the offensive end--there's a reason they finished the Butler game with an 8-to-12 assist-to-turnover ratio, a reason they're shooting 31.5 percent from deep for the season. But even against Butler, they looked downright competent for long stretches of time, a good sign as they head into March.

--As for Butler, it's the usual: wicked ball movement on offense, steady no-risk grind-your-teeth man-to-man on D. The Bulldogs endured an off-game from behind the arc and at the free throw stripe against CSU, but nonetheless hit 80 freaking percent of their 2-point shots against one of the top-40 teams in D efficiency in the country. Honestly, if they hit their threes and tone down the turnovers just a bit, there's not a team in the country Butler can't play with.

--That brings us to Creighton, who could shoot just about anyone in the country out of the gym if they're on ... but, uh, had probably better do something along those lines if they make it to March. Because I'm just not convinced they're going to be able to hold their own on the boards. Illinois St. outrebounded the Bluejays 37-26 overall and by a 31 percent to 21 percent margin on the offensive glass. I'm not sure there's a better backcourt in mid-majordom than Stinnett, Woodfox, and Dotzler--6-to-2 combined A/TO, 15-of-22 for 46 points--but Kenny Lawson Jr. and Kenton Walker aren't going to hold up that well against big-conference beef.

--That said, who needs bigs when you've got a stroke like Booker Woodfox's?

--Illinois St. was what they've been all year--athletic, balanced (five guys in double figures), energetic both on defense an on the glass ... and, as always just not quite in control. 17 turnovers (nine more than the Bluejays), some ill-advised threes (though they shot better than usual), just enough defensive lapses to keep Creighton out in front for ... well, pretty much the entire game. That said: if I'm Creighton, I'm hoping Evansville upsets the Redbirds in the Valley first round. The length and athleticism of guys like Osiris Eldridge and Dinma Odiakosa (there's a fun name to say) don't seem to make for a particularly comfortable match-up with CU.

--OK, so the Gonzaga game was hardly thrilling--the Zags went up 10 and pretty much stayed at arm's length the whole game. San Diego doesn't have anyone to run the point well enough to match up with the Zags. And as per usual, Gonzaga was in their usual routine of three or four brilliant, NBA-quality plays with a few "Wow, I don't know if Pargo should have taken that shot" kind of plays. One example from, oh, early in the second half: Heytvelt flashes to the elbow with San Diego playing a zone. Bouldin hits him with a nice hard pass just as Heytvelt faces up. The post defender has strayed too far to his left and Heytvelt has an easy stroll to the basket and a dunk if he wants. Instead he turns and, without hesitation, shoots a little six-foot jumper. Back iron, San Diego the other way. Just go to the rim. If this team had one Casey Calvary or J.P. Batista or Ronny Turiaf, just someone to battle around inside and collect a few offensive rebounds every now and then, I'd feel a lot better about them.

--

Tripleheader teamthoughts

Booker Woodfox, actual real-life Creighton basketball player and not, in fact, a character from a late-period Dickens novel.

It's an amazing age we live in, folks. Your latest example came last Saturday, when ESPN2 decided to air six consecutive hours of mid-major basketball on Valentine's Day. For someone who remembers having to wait the entire season to get a single Championship Week glimpse of any conference with less cred than the A-10--and doesn't have to reach too far into the memory banks for it, as that was the case as recently as the first part of this decade--six hours of mid-majory goodness (including OVc and MAAC action, for goodness' sakes) is pretty amazing stuff as well.

That I got to DVR the whole thing, casually enjoy my Valentine's evening, and spend an entire lazy Sunday afternoon watching mid-major hoops is ... well, these truly are the days of miracle and wonder. Thoughts follow.

Creighton 82, Southern Illinois 60

--It's going to be a crime if the Bluejays don't find their way into the NCAAs, because I don't have a whole lot of doubt that this is the best team in the Valley by a wide, wide margin. They ran the poor Salukis straight out of their own gym in the first half: choking defense, transition buckets, wide-open 3's, clever interior passes for lay-ups even in the half-court set. P'Allen Stinnett and Booker Woodfox (surely, surely the best duo in the conference) applied their foot to the home team's throat early and that was that. 42-19 at the half, 57-30 with 12 to play. Not too much to say, really.

--Having seen both Northern Iowa and Creighton in action, it's no contest which team is better built for potential NCAA glory. UNI has nothing like Stinnett's athletic ability, Altman's been down the road many times before, the Bluejays aren't nearly so reliant on the threes falling, they've got as much beef on the inside ... I imagine the suits at the Valley are already secretly crossing their fingers and wearing their lucky underwear and sacrificing chickens in strange Haitian rituals in the hopes CU earns the auto-bid.

--SIU's had a rough couple of years, but Lowery clearly hasn't forgotten how to coach. The same defensive effort and sets are there, the same patience on offense, the same intensity ... the kids are just too young. It'll come.

Tennessee State 88, Austin Peay 80:

--Good heavens, if the opening minutes of this game had a face we'd be talking about how only its mother could love it, or it'd belong on the radio, or something along those lines. Neither team got a point on the board until the 17:08 mark and after six minutes the two teams had combined to hit one shot from the field. Ewwww.

--What's really weird is that after that, TSU started playing a totally unexpected and startlingly effective midrange game. It looked like something out the NBA; a little pick-and-pop, a little drive-and-dish, and guys like Darius Cox and Emanuel Gaiter just kept ... on ... hitting these little 15-foot jumpers. It's the sort of game-plan you basically never see at the college level, so to see it executed this well by an 8-17 team ... well, it was just a bit surprising, is all. Add in a transition game miles better than Peay's and a just-plain-better effort on both ends than the home team's, and you get a 20-point halftime lead and eight-point win for the Tigers. Go figure.

--Look, I'm never going to endorse a mid-season firing at this level. I'm with Kyle; whatever gains might be made in the last weeks of a lost season aren't worth embarrassing your head coach. That said, it has to be acknowledged that the Tigers went from losing five straight (the last four by a minimum of 18 points) to winning back-to-back road games by a total of 18 points, the latter coming against the one-time league leaders. The ends don't justify the means, but at least TSU's seeing some ends they can be proud of.

--Dude, forget Peay coming out of the OVC tourney. Fifth in the league according to Kenpom, slipping in the standings, and more than anything just disorganized-looking against TSU. The guess here is that Done Ruthless and his crew at UT-Martin are going to take it.

Niagara 83, Fairfield 76

--Scorewise, this was the closest game of the three, but I still found it the least interesting. With Fairfield's top four scorers on the year missing through either injury or suspension, Niagara had the better team, and knew it, and played like they knew it. After breaking open a 15-15 game with a 15-3 run midway through the first half, I never got the sense that the Purple Eagles were interested in really pushing the pedal to the floor; they could tell a 75 percent effort was going to get them a win, so that's what they gave. Oh well.

--Part of that effort was because they've got the players to half-ass their way through a game and still win it with relative ease. Benson Egemonye had his monstrous way in the paint, tossing the Stags' poor second-string post guys away like so many six-year-olds on his way to 23 points. The starting backcourt of Rob Garrison and Tyrone Lewis shot 50 percent from the field and always seemed securely in control. This was pretty clearly an excellent mid-major team when they push the pedal all the way down, so it's not surprising to find they're 72nd to Pomeroy (only three spots behind Siena) and have wins over Buffalo, South Florida, Drexel. Not only do they have to be the biggest threat to Siena at the MAAC tourney, but if they snuck past the Saints to claim the auto-bid, I wouldn't be surprised if they gave some power-conference team pure hell. Not many mids have the athletic goods the way the Purple Eagles do.

Western Kentucky vs. South Alabamathoughts

If it's a Saturday afternoon on ESPN2, it's time for some mid-major goodness, and after the previous week's turkey of a game between Buffalo and Toledo I was even more thankful for this past week's showcase event: a thriller between homestanding Western Kentucky and hard-luck South Alabama. The Hilltoppers wound up pulling it out 67-59, but ...

Yes, this was a thriller. I know it seems unusual to say that about an eight-point decision for the home team, but South's Dominic Tilford hit a clutch fadeaway three to give the Jaguars a 59-56 lead just before the under-4 minute media timeout. The crowd was quiet, the Jaguar bench was jumping, Tilford was rocking an awesome Rollison-esque mohawk ... everything seemed going the Jags' way.

Then their next five possessions went like so: 1. Bricked 3, offensive rebound, three-second call (!) 2. Charge 3. Bricked 3, offensive rebound, horrible miss from three feet away 4. Turnover 5. Bricked 3. South would go scoreless for the entire final four minutes of the game. Quite the downer after what had been a highly enjoyable back-and-forth battle.

I really should have put this on YouTube. At one point, color guy Bucky Waters (yes, that's his name) tried to explain that one of the Western Kentucky players is versatile, because he collects both rebounds and assists. "He's not a one-trick punky," Waters said. One-trick punky. I think that's the third album for Fail Jacobs and the Powers That Be, where they try to rip off the Clash. Or something.

Not seeing it. I gotta be honest with you, watching this game, I'm not sure how the hell Western Kentucky beat a team like Louisville (and by 14 at that!). After a decent first half, their interior guys got shredded by South's crew in the second half. (And they didn't score in either half.) A.J. Slaughter and Steffphon Pettigrew (the 1 and the 3, respectively) definitely have the height and the hops, but they never seemed particularly anxious to put their stamp on the game. (Though, full credit, their numbers at the end of the game weren't bad; Slaughter had a 6-to-2 assist-to-turnover ratio to make up for a 3-of-12 game from the field, and Pettigrew finished 5-of-10 for 13.)

Essentially, the only reason WKU won this game was because Orlando Mendez-Valdez, the 'Toppers' mighty-mite shooting guard (he's listed at 6-1; there's no freaking way he's six feet) went the hell off. 6-of-10 from deep, 24 points, just one turnover despite seeing a lot of the ball ... he was the best player on the floor by a wide margin, and without him (or even without this kind of performance), WKU loses.

Can't say I blame him, either. At one point ESPN aired the Ronnie Arrow detonation after the buzzer-beating loss at UL-Lafayette, as is their prerogative, but kudos to the crew for explaining exactly why Arrow was so steamed: the Jags had lost their previous game (to division leaders Arkansas-Little Rock, no less) when a monitor replay showed that a last-second make by South that would have sent that game into overtime had come after the buzzer. It would have been easy to follow the lead of all these yuksters in the blogosphere and merely tut-tut Arrow for his temper, but ESPN's bunch actually put in the effort to explain both sides. What a concept!

Arrow might not have landed in hot water if his team wasn't so insistent on playing close games. After a seven-point win at Arkansas St. Jan. 17, South played five straight games decided by three points or less ... and given how tight the WKU game was for the first 36 minutes, it could have easily been six.

As expected. The scouting report put together in the JCCW's recent Sweet Home Hello post on South played out pretty much to the letter Saturday: the frontcourt of seniors Brandon Davis, DeAndre Coleman, and Ronald Douglas kept the Jags in the game in the first half while Tilford struggled, and then outright dominated in the second as South wound up in the lead. But the Jags never figured out how to defend Mendez-Valdez on the perimeter and after a brief first-half flurry of competence from LaShun Watson, the backcourt was all Tilford--and he finished the game 5-of-15, 2-of-10 from 3, and unable to stop the offensive bleeding at game's end.

I'm also not sure Arrow helped his team very much by occasionally calling for a full-court press. His team was clearly comfortable in the offensive transition game (Tilford, in particular) but the 'Toppers broke the press with shocking ease and got a whole host of easy baskets. When your team's already as defensively challenged as the Jags are, it doesn't seem like a good idea to me to open up the court even more. It ended up the same old story for South--no discernible difference between the capabilities of themselves and their league-leading opponents, but the other side just ended up making the plays that mattered.

So, tourney hopes? Western still has to be seen as the current Belt favorite--they've got the league's best Pomeroy mark, the tourney pedigree, and the Louisville scalp. But they're just not playing particularly well as of late. They blew out Troy and UALR to move to 3-0 in the 'Belt, but since then they've won only one league game by double digits, lost to also-rans Denver and Florida International, and won their five home games (including tilts against Pomeroy No. 281 New Orleans, No. 247 UL-Lafayette, and No. 296 UL-Monroe) by an average of 5.8 points. If you asked me to place a bet today on either WKU or "the field" to take the league's auto-bid, I'm taking the field.

Could the Jags be that team to come out of the field? Possibly--their strength up front means that if Tilford gets hot and they get anything from the point, they can beat anyone in the conference. But their gaping defensive deficiencies and total reliance on Tilford means it's more likely they have a run like Middle Tennessee's last year--a big upset of a league power in the first round or two, but elimination in the finals or semis when Tilford goes cold.

Oaklandthoughts, live and in person

I took this! OK, not really. But I could have. If, you know, I'd had a camera. And a press pass. And I didn't sort of suck at taking pictures.

I haven't seen nearly as much live basketball as I should have in my two-plus years in Ann Arbor. In part, that's because when one's day job* requires one to spend five nights a week in a gym already, spending one's Saturday in one wasn't as appealing as it should have been for either yours truly or the Mrs. JCCW. Partly, it's because the two easiest-to-reach mid-major gyms from the A2 belong to Eastern Michigan and Toledo, and driving through the snow and ice to watch the Rockets lose 53-40 to Miami or the Eagles lose 71-48 to Akron or something similar never seemed entirely worth the effort, even for a hoops nut like myself. So, yeah, the vague plan I had back in the winter of 2006 for turning the JCCW into a kind of Ann Arbor-centric mid-major version of the great Chris West Basketball Journal never materialized.

But hey, as the almost-as-great Expose once told us, seasons change, and Saturday night we made the hour's drive to Oakland U. to check out the Golden Grizzlies defeat Centenary 78-65. Here's your West-style wrap-up:

1) I can't say Erik Kangas is any more athletic in person than he is on TV--if you're wondering why a guy who's one of the more efficient offensive players in the country for the number of possessions used isn't the designated off-the-bench marksman for some BCS school, that he repeatedly had trouble keeping up with Centenary in transition should tell you something--but heavens to Murgatroyd, the dude can shoot. He wound up taking 10 threes on the night (hitting 5), but both myself and Oakland coach Greg Kampe thought he could have fired up a few more than that. After one first-half possession in which Kangas had passed up a halfway-open look to dish to an even more-open teammate (who bricked his three), Kampe could be heard clear across court telling Kangas "I want YOU to shoot that." Coach, as sweet as Kangas's stroke is, we all do. He did end up hitting the biggest shot of the night, a nice transition three with five seconds left in the first half. Kangas took a short outlet pass, dribbled upcourt, barked for a screen, got it, and swished a 26-footer to give Oakland a one-point lead at the end of a half in which they hadn't really played all that well.

2) I'm not the first person to make this observation, but taking a look at the "members of the Summit League" display in the O'rena reminded me that the Summit truly does have an outstanding roster of nicknames. Mastodons, Jackrabbits, Kangaroos, Leathernecks, Gentlemen, and (my personal favorite) Thunderbirds? Quite a lineup, and you can't say that the Golden Grizzlies aren't doing their part--a couple of old photos in a mural along one O'rena wall betrays the fact they used to call themselves the Pioneers. Good call, OU decision-makers.

3) The combination of the visiting Gents getting off to a hot start from outside and OU missing a whole series of chippies gave Centenary an early lead of as many as 10 (Kampe isn't lying when he said he was steamed; he visibly lit into various guys half-a-dozen times in the first 10 minutes) but it was clear from the jump that the Gents weren't going to have any real answer for OU's size inside. The threat of Kangas outside and the length of Keith Benson inside meant that Oakland was all but assured of a high-percentage shot as long as they didn't turn the ball over. Result: Kangas goes for 19, Benson hits 8-of-9 from the floor and scores a career-high 26. I have no clue how the Grizzlies contrived to shoot 33 percent in these teams' first meeting.

4) Centenary has a player named Maxx Nakwasaah. Am I obliged to make a crack about his shooting not living up to his name? He went 3-of-14 from the floor.

5) OU pulled a large and lively homecoming crowd (if maybe not the sell-out Kampe seems to be claiming; we bought our tickets not more than five minutes before tip-off), and kudos to the "Grizz Gang" for a much more spirited student section than you'd find at a lot of mid-major gyms. One complaint: a lot of students and a good chunk of fans-at-large were wearing an Oakland "replica jersey" that looked nothing like the actual OU jerseys and were pretty obviously freebies as part of a Meijer**-sponsored giveaway promotion. It's not easy to find a piece of apparel that makes you think "a t-shirt would look a lot less cheap," but in this case a t-shirt would have looked a lot less cheap.

6) Like virtually every non-football PA in existence these days, the OU guy could have turned it down a couple of notches. The religious-quality exultation at made 3's was nothing new, but the "CARRYING ... THE ... BALL!" response to the Gents turning it over was a first. Then again, he was hardly the only Grizzly in the building who was a little over excited. If you look at the second photo in this gallery, it doesn't look like senior forward Dan Waterstradt would be celebrating a routine charge call in the game's first five minutes with his team down half-a-dozen, does it? Oh, but he is.

7) Double-digit loss or not, I thoroughly enjoyed the way Centenary played. Lots of good ball movement, intelligent decisions in transition, a highly functional drive-and-kick centered around the fact that in Chase Adams and Nick Stallings they essentially have two points on the floor at once. They just didn't have anyone on the roster who could handle Benson. Not saying one's a better coach than the other, but if you asked me which coach got more out of his team's talent on this particular night, given that the game was held in Oakland I'd have to go with the Gents' Greg Gary.

8) Not much to add to my overall evaluation of the Grizzlies since the two previous times I mentioned them: between Kangas's ability to spring for 30 on a good night, Johnathon Jones's steady hand at the point, and their length inside, I still think OU is the biggest threat to take down North Dakota St. at the Summit tourney--particularly now that Oral Roberts has dropped two straight.

9) The highlight of the non-basketball entertainment portion of the evening was an on-court race between two female students outfitted in those giant plastic sumo suits, specifically the part where one of them fell over just before crossing the finish line, because come on, that's funny. I think it says something about the value of said sumo suits that this was the highlight despite the fact the suits weren't even used for fake sumo.

*For any new readers: I served as a sportswriter for two weekly community papers south of Ann Arbor, and probably saw more high-school hoops during my two winters at the position than anybody not actively employed to coach high-school hoops in the area.

**The Michigan equivalent of Wal-Mart, a franchise in fact so similar I catch myself thinking "I'll need to stop by the Wal-Mart" or "Yeah, that's over there by the Wal-Mart" when in fact there is no Wal-Mart for miles.

Buffalothoughts

Between the Turner Gill saga, not one but two recent Before and After appearances, and even a road trip that took me through the Western New York area, it feels like I've spent way too much time thinking about Buffalo recently. I really wish ESPN2 had picked a different mid-major spotlight game for yesterday afternoon than the Bulls hosting woeful Toledo. But they didn't, and I'm not not going to watch a Saturday afternoon mid-major spotlight game on ESPN2, so you're getting some Buffalothoughts. Enjoy?

Yep, this kind of game.

Yeeeeeeeesh. Make no mistake: they may have won, 56-43, but for a team supposed to be the front-runner for a decent conference's league title and maybe even on the fringe of bubble discussion, Buffalo played a giant howling dog of a game. If they'd offered up that kind of dead fish-performance against a team that wasn't No. 283 in the most recent Pomeroy ratings--or even offered it up against the same team, but on the road--they'd have lost, and lost badly.

To wit: 30 percent shooting. 6-of-22 from beyond the arc against a team not particularly interested in defending the 3. A 2-for-12 stinker from leading scorer Rodney Pierce. A second-half scoring drought that went three seconds shy of seven minutes. Several "Bad D'antoni Suns" possessions where the correct instinct to push the ball in transition led to an incorrect decision to launch a quick jumper with a heel on the three-point line. And all this came at home against one of the worst defensive teams in the league! Sorry, Bulls, but if we take yesterday's performance at face value, you don't belong anywhere near an NCAA bracket.

There's a few reasons to think this was an anomaly, though. After a whole string of stellar outings--winning five straight against the entire rest of the top half of the league, three of them coming on the road, is no mean feat--the Bulls were likely due for an off-night. And to be fair, the shooting was about the only thing that was really off. Buffalo played some really energetic defense, obliterated the Rockets on the boards--18 offensive rebounds to 8--and only turned the ball over 8 times.

To boot, what you can't tell from the box score is that the Bulls did mostly play intelligent offensive basketball--particularly in the second-half drought, the Bulls attacked the Toledo zone exactly the way they should have. Dribble past the first defender, smart interior pass, kick-out when the defense converged to a wide-open three-point shooter. Too bad the Bulls couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn floating in the ocean. Or something. Combine the Bulls' rebounding and defensive tenacity and caution with the ball--rare is the game when a team takes 17 more shots and 10 more free throws than their opponent--with a shooting performance as abnormal from a positive perspective as this one was from the negative, and maybe the Bulls could hang with the right power-conference team.

That's a vigorous maybe though. Here's the stunner--the Bulls, bricks and all, aren't just tied for the MAC lead in defensive points-per-possession: they're tied with Miami for the league lead in offensive PPP as well. If the team we saw yesterday--better than they showed, but whose offensive ceiling is only going to be so high--really is the best the MAC has to offer, that five-year NCAA-victory drought is almost certainly going to extend by another year.

Anything to add about particular players? Not really. Big man Vadim Fedotov came off the bench and had some nice plays, but he had the benefit of playing against Toledo. Pierce was supposed to be the main individual attraction, and frankly he was terrible--wide-open bricked threes, bad decisions in transition, a 1-to-2 assist-to-turnover ratio. Ugh.

Do I have to say anything about Toledo? I hope not. They're a bottom-of-the-barrel team who played like it.

Recap of the weekend in Auburn news first thing tomorrow.

Gonzaga vs. St. Mary'sthoughts

Hoo boy, did I have to stay up late to catch this one. It was worth it. For a while.

What a gyp. Watching the first half of this game depressed me more than a little bit, since in terms of quality of play this game took a freaking switch to the backside of ESPN primetime offerings like Iowa-Michigan St. and Rutgers-Seton Hall. Fast pace and precise play by both teams, an electric atmosphere, future NBA studs on both sides, and of course Patty Mills throwing long-distance haymaker after haymaker to give the Gaels an eight-point lead and have them on the cusp of a season-defining win ... I mean, none of that depressed me. It was exhilarating stuff, actually, maybe the best half of basketball I've watched all year. It just depresses me I had to wait 'til 11 Eastern to watch it.

Of course, then Mills hurt his wrist and the second half was nothing more than a long, slow bleed of bricked Gaels threes and deflected entry passes as Simpson and Samhan became more and more visibly frustrated to the point I thought they were about to pick up the ball at midcourt and dribble into the post their own damn selves. In short, it wasn't nearly as much fun, and the only reason for it was Mills's freak injury.

Good Lord, hit a three. Last time I wrote about St. Mary's I noted that Mills would need to start hitting open threes to really open up the Gael offense. He went 6-of-8 from deep before leaving so, uh, mission accomplished on that end. Too bad everyone else went 3-of-19 (mmmmm, 16 percent) despite the fact there were moments in the second half when all five Gonzaga defenders could reach out and touch one of either Samhan or Simpson in the post. Those two went--get this--a combined 11-of-13 from the field, but neither one got more than 7 shots because Carlin Hughes and Clint Steindl were busy begging the Zags to collapse by hitting zero threes in nine attempts.

As always. The firm of Simpson and Samhan, LLP, was straight wrecking fools again until Mills's injury and the horrid shooting choked the last bit of space for them off of the floor. Simpson finished with 17 and 12 and abused Austin Daye on both ends on more than one occasion. I know Daye's the alleged NBA prospect, but if I'm playing a pickup game tomorrow and choosing between the two I take Simpson, twice if I can. Samhan threw himself around with usual abandon and even hit a couple of nice midrange J's, but he just never ogt enough post touches to really put his stamp on the game. Not his fault.

Exercise in frustration. Even after all these years of Gonzaga being a kind of somewhat-less-successful UNLV back in their Big West days or a West Coast version of modern-day Memphis, I still like the Zags. Like their student section's fervor, like Mark Few's loyalty, like that they attract and let loose college classics like Dan Dickau, Adam Morrison, or my current favorite Zag, floppy-haired point Matt Bouldin. (Who should go to the rack in transition approximately 10 times more often than he does.)

But man, I just can't shake the nagging feeling every single time I watch these guys that they ought to be so much better than they are. Heytvelt is a force in the post when he actually bothers to post up and receives a pass; instead he spends most of the game tooling around between the post and the arc and putting up jumpers. Jeremy Pargo still can't figure out the difference between a good shot and a bad shot, especially in transition. Daye and Bouldin could be twice as aggressive and it wouldn't be aggressive enough. I just never get the sense that these guys--or any of the last several post-Morrison iterations of Gonzaga--are a team, a cohesive whole that's even within shouting distance of the sum of its parts. Look at the assist numbers: the Zags are chockful of good passers, with Pargo, Bouldin, and even Heytvelt all plenty capable of dropping the unexpected dime, and yet they only assisted on 7 of their 24 baskets last night. Unless they learn to play better with others, I don't see this group having any more success this March than they've had the past couple.

Doubleheader teamthoughts

Yeah, you obliterate your toughest conference opponent-to-date on the road like this on national television, you get a random Google image representation of your mascot to lead off the post.

So last night was one of the very rare instances when the wonders of modern television offered up a mid-season mid-major doubleheader. Of course, it wasn't a national doubleheader--ESPN had Big 10 and Big East dates to (understandably) cover--but between IUPUI visiting Oakland on our local Fox Sports Detroit and ESPN2 carrying the St. Mary's at San Diego game in the late slot, it worked out just fine. Thoughts:

Oakland 75, IUPUI 57

How is this team 5-3 in the Summit? Dude ... Oakland is not a bad team. Steady, in-control point guard with quicks? Johnathon Jones, 10 assists to 2 TO, check. Insane long-range bomber? Erik Kangas, 8-of-11 from 3, 33 points, check. Rangy, athletic inside-and-out wing? Drew Maynard, check. Requisite size inside? 6-9 Will Hudson, 6-11 Keith Benson, 7-of-13 combined shooting, 14 combined rebounds, 4 Benson blocks, check.

Head coach Greg Kampe apparently doesn't trust the bench at all--the Golden Grizzlies only went seven deep and Kangas and Jones played the entire game despite it being over with 4 to play--but otherwise, this is absolutely your prototypical league champion from a conference like the Summit. That these guys beat Oregon, hung with Iowa and Michigan, won at a good Wisconsin-Green Bay team, and handed league leader North Dakota St. (a team sitting 70 places above them in the Pomeroy ratings) their only conference loss to date doesn't surprise me at all. Those losses to Centenary (by 20!) and Southern Utah (by 16!) ... yeah, those surprise me.

There is no justice in this world. At halftime I clicked over to the West Virginia-Georgetown game on ESPN and the Purdue-Minnesota game on ESPN2. You probably won't be surprised when I tell you that I would take the utterly anonymous Fox Sports Detroit crew over either of the two ESPN teams--Mike Patrick and Doris Burke for WVU-G'town, Brent Musberger and the train wreck that is Bobby Knight trying to call a live basketball game--in half a heartbeat.

Weird. The announcers made a little point in the second half about how a lot of shooters say they love the Oakland gym, for whatever reason. Sounds a little "Um, OK guys, whatever you say" to me. But, uh ... take the Golden Griz's team results from 3 and add them to the nights put in by IUPUI's three best three-point shooters (by percentage) and you get a total of 18-for-33, or 54.5 freaking percent. Huh. (The gym's effect did not seem to affect the Jaguars' Alex Young, 25 percent from 3 on the season, who jacked up 7 anyway and hit one of them.)

Fun. If you ever happen to come across IUPUI on TV, Shoeless Ron Hunter really might be the most animated coach in college basketball. He alone is reason enough that you ought to come across IUPUI on TV a lot more often.

St. Mary's 65, San Diego 42

Annihilation. This game was supposed to be close. St. Mary's has had as good a year-to-date as they could expect (17-1 is 17-1 is 17-1), but doesn't have an RPI top-50 win and not so long ago beat dreadful Santa Clara by a single point. San Diego of course had the NCAA first-round takedown of UConn last year, and after taking a few lumps in a rugged nonconference slate, they'd beaten Mississippi State to kick off a six-game winning streak and a 4-0 WCC start. They were at home in the same Slim Gym where they'd won last year's WCC auto-bid. The line for this game was St. Mary's minus-only-3.5.

Nevermind all that. The supposedly vulnerable Gael D left the San Diego offense ... hmm, you can pick your own metaphor on this one:

a) broken and bloody, shattered, lying dying in the street
b) in the kind of tatters normally reserved for sweaters the moths have dined on for the last several years
c) gasping for breath like a fish in a Faith No More video

The right answer of course, is "all of the above": the Toreros finished the first half with all of 14 points and behind by 18. Against a team as offensively efficient as St. Mary's: good night, Gracie.

Terror. People say this about mid-majors all the time, but if I'm a power-conference team, St. Mary's really is just about the last team I want to see in my NCAA pod. Patty Mills, Omar Samhan, and Diamon Simpson are probably the best one-two-three punch in all mid-majordom, Gonzaga included. The 6-7 Simpson doesn't get nearly the pub the other two guys do, but he's a relentless rebounder, a long and active nightmare of a defender, and knows enough to stay out of Mills and Samhan's way on the offensive end when they need him to. On top of those three, the other two starters are both seniors. Disappointingly meek submission to Texas in last year's NCAA first-round notwithstanding, this team could not be any better built for March. With one little caveat ...

Mills needs to get his three-point shot in order. San Diego played off of him for the most of the night, and it didn't matter--Mills is so quick he got to the rim almost whenever he wanted anyway. But he also got tempted into taking a few wide-slap-open threes, which he kindly bricked more often than not. He finished 2-of-6 from outside and frankly looked even less comfortable taking those shots than that. Mills is right at 33 percent for the season, and while that's not a terrible percentage, it's still awfully low for someone who shoots the 3 as often as he does--9 jacks against San Francisco, 13 against Santa Clara, 25 in a three-game stretch in late December. For St. Mary's to reach their full giant-slaying potential, they need Mills to either start knocking more of those down or start focusing even more on making sure someone else gets the same shot.

Poor Gyno Pomare. (That's pronoucned "Geno," but for you giggling sixth-graders in the back.) The 6-8 Torero forward was one of my favorite players last March, one of those guys who just doesn't seem to have the athletic chops needed to make a major impact in the post at this level. But he's as crafty with his body as they come and wills the ball into the basket time and time again; he was the best player on the court during that UConn game. Unfortunately for him, he's struggled a bit with injuries this year and then, even worse, he had to square off with Omar Samhan last night. Samhan has been an absolute monster this season and was at his most monstrous last night: 8-of-9 from the field, 11 rebounds, and perhaps even more importantly he ate poor Gyno whole on the defensive end. Pomare started 1-of-9 from the floor and finished with only 6 points and 5 boards in 29 minutes. Get 'em next time, buddy.

Northern Iowathoughts vs. Drakethoughts

Yeah, it kind of went something like this.

Certain evenings after the turn of the year, I'll flip through the 10 or so sports-devoted channels I've got on my Comcast Digital Cable, not see a single mid-major related offering amongst the likes of the 2005 World Series of Poker, a match-up of the eighth- and ninth-place teams in the Big 10, and a "Hot Stove" edition of Baseball Tonight, and I'll get angry. Then I remember that it wasn't too terribly long ago that you would never under any circumstances see mid-majors on television until the singular glory of Championship Week, and that ESPN does occasionally let mids slip onto "the Deuce" when it can find the time. (Remember when they were calling it that? Remember Keith Olbermann behind a desk in a shiny leather jacket? Remember that first ticker, that took up what seemed like a third of the screen? Ah, the '90s.)

Anyways, all of that is a convoluted way of telling you that Drake was hosting Northern Iowa on ESPN2 Saturday morning, and part of the way I try not to take that sort of thing for granted is by watching it and writing about it. Well, watching most of it: the game unfortunately wound up an 81-59 annihilation in favor of UNI. How'd that happen?

Shooting. A lot of your modern-day hoops writers acknowledge that luck plays a big role in determining your one-possession and/or overtime games, but sometimes I wonder if it plays an even bigger role than that. Opening few minutes of this game, both teams run their offensive sets, both teams get good looks from 3, UNI buries theirs--no, seriously, like all of theirs--and Drake clonks all but one of theirs. UNI goes up 13-3. And now you can see Drake start to press just a bit in their match-up zone, get pulled out of shape just a little bit to try and stop the bleeding ... and the visitors take advantage of those new spaces to drill another series of 3's. Like, a long series. End result: 40-17 with 3:11 to play in the first half and the game's outcome most assuredly done and dusted.

Obviously, in a game where one team eventually takes a 30-point lead in the second half, there's no room for what-ifs. But both these teams can shoot the ball, but every team can also have an off-day or a bad stretch: on some level, UNI just happened to be the team that shot the lights out in those opening minutes on Saturday, while Drake sat on the other end of the see-saw having that bad stretch at the worst possible time. And on some level, that decided the game.

The problems with this approach are twofold, however: first, it doesn't give UNI credit for their outstanding execution, for the rotations and skip passes and screens that found the open guy over and over again who over and over again effortlessly knocked down his shot. (Freshman guard Johnny Moran was especially useful: 6-of-13 on 3's, with a 5-to-zero assist-to-TO ratio to boot.) Second, it doesn't give Drake their proper discredit for so completely unraveling in the face of their "bad luck" to start the game. That the Bulldogs fell apart into a hundred visibly frustrated pieces was just one part of the ...

Coaching smackdown that also defined the game. UNI's Ben Jacobson's defensive plan was pretty simple: we're not going to let Josh Young beat us. Young, for those of you who never saw Drake during their 2007-2008 annus mirabilis, is and was the Bulldogs' best offensive player (no matter what the MoVal MVP voting might tell you). The Panthers chose to deny Young the ball in all parts of the court, bring an immediate double-team him whenever he dribbled inside the three-point line, and generally get away with as much off-the-ball nudges as they could. First-year Drake coach Mark Phelps never came up with an answer, watching helplessly as Young was held without a made field goal in 30 minutes of action (!) and slowly lost his cool, committing a couple of dumb fouls and getting lucky an elbow to a UNI defender's jaw came just after a whistle.

Not that Phelps's charges gave him a lot of help in finding a way to get Young involved. In one sequence five minutes into the game, Young posted up nicely on the left block and wasn't thrown the entry pass for some unfathomable reason. A moment later Young re-posted, and though this time the entry pass was made, there was a weird delay in the delivery that allowed Young's defender to push him several feet further from the basket by the time the ball arrived. Young was forced to pass the ball back out and, not surprisingly, the possession ended pointless.

Frontcourt domination. Jonathan Cox was one of Drake's stars last year, a three-shootin', reboundin', fundamentallin' demon, but he was completely invisible Saturday, as were all of Drake's frontcourt players. UNI 7-footer Jordan Eglseder owned the paint, getting just about whatever shot he wanted and repeatedly keeping alive the few Panther first-half possessions that didn't end in a made shot. 10 points, 8 boards, 2 blocks in just 17 minutes? Not a bad day's work, son. (Fellow forward Lucas O'Rear went for 11 points and 7 boards himself.) To make the Drake forwards' day even longer, they seemed to be a step slow on getting to the corners in Phelps's 2-3 match-up zone, leading to a lot of the open shots UNI so blissfully took advantage of.

So, the upshot? Remember when I said Creighton had become the nominal Valley favorite after their win over Bradley? Nevermind--the Jays got spanked at Wichita St. over the weekend for the Shockers' first MVC win in seven tries. Oops. Although Illinois St. remains the league's only prayer of an at-large bid--the nonconference-light Redbirds would basically have to virtually run the Valley table from this point and nab a big BracketBusters road win--UNI is without question the league's hottest team, having now racked up six W's in a row, including road victories over four different teams over .500 in the league: Southern Illinois, Creighton, Evansville, and Drake. It's quite the achievement, and the Panthers will now get their turn in the Valley catbird seat for a bit.

As hot as the Panthers are, it's hard to see them making too much noise in March. Precise and well-coached as they are, UNI is going to run a serious athleticism deficit against most power-conference teams, one that not even their shooting and Eglseder's size can overcome. (Thus the blowout loss to Big 10 also-ran Iowa, the home defeat to Big 12 punching bag Iowa St. Of course, they did beat Auburn.) Whatever the result of the regular season race, the Valley's best hopes for an NCAA upset remain Illinois St. and possibly Creighton.

Butlerthoughts

This dude: good.

I probably should have mentioned this before, seeing as how Auburn-Florida and a dozen mid-major games have been available for public viewing, but ESPN Full Court has been holding their annual free preview this week. Meaning that yours truly would have been able to wallow around in college hoops like a pig in slop all week ... if not for a nasty combination of evening Real Life and Comcast Full Court technical difficulties that kept me from actually getting any use out of it until Thursday night.

But at least there was Thursday night, when I got my first look of the season at Brad Stevens's amazin' Butler Bulldogs, who lost a gigantic chunk of their production from their 2007-2008 back-to-back tourney teams and nonetheless sit at 14-1 with a single road loss to Ohio St. and half-a-dozen victories over various other members of the mid-major upper crust. RPI: 9th. At-large bid, barring a total collapse in Horizon League play: secure.

So, how are they doing it, and do they have a chance of repeating their Sweet 16 successes of 2003 and 2007? I watched their 78-55 demolition of Loyola of Chicago--a streaky, front-running team with wins over Georgia and UW-Green Bay and a slew of ugly losses to virtually every other halfway-decent team on the schedule--to find out. Impressions:

Matt Howard is a beastly beast. He's just too big, too smart, and too active for teams on this level. Check the final line: 18 points on 7-of-9 shooting, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks, all in just 24 minutes. A team like Loyola not only doesn't have an answer for a player of Howard's high-major ability--if he played for, say, UCLA the national press would be writing sonnets about him--they can barely claim to have even been asked the question.

To boot, it's not only Howard, it's the threat of Howard that puts so much pressure on the defense. An example from the opening minutes: Howard makes a cut towards the basket and gets a nice Princeton-style bounce pass on the left side of the key. Immediately two Rambler defenders converge, and bother his running shot enough that it glances off the rim. But Howard, being the sort that makes coaches drool, follows his shot and causes a third defender to slide over to try and keep the rebound away from him. And so when that rebound is tipped to the far side of the rim, nobody's even close to the Butler guard who collects the rebound and lazily lays it in.

The Bulldogs have a lot of good players--more on them in a sec--but Howard really is the straw that stirs this particular drink.

The Bulldog offense might be better than it was last year. Butler's departed senior guard tandem of A.J. Graves and Mike Green deserved every one of the hosannas they got during those 2007 and 2008 tournament runs, but truth be told, they were both a little on the streaky side as shooters. Graves, in particular, had a knack for making you forget the first six routine threes he'd missed by raining in a miracle shot at the end of the shot clock on his seventh. When you've got a terror like Howard in the middle and a well-run, time-tested drive-and-kick offensive scheme, you're going to get open 3's, and it's not really surprising to think that if Butler surrounded Howard with could find a few more consistent shooters, they could be outright explosive on that end. (Or, at least, as explosive as the 312th-fastest team in D-I can be.)

So, enter freshmen Shelvin Mack and Gordon Hayward, each of which look like cold-blooded killers on the outside and hit 5 of Butler's first 6 three-point attempts against Loyola. Result: 27-7 Bulldog lead and a big flashing GAME OVER on the home scoreboard just 10 minutes in. (No word on whether Loyola asked for their quarter back.) Mack and Hayward wrapped up the game 6-for-11 from deep. If they continue shooting like that, very few teams in the Horizon are going to keep up with them.

(For the record, Kenpom's adjusted efficiency numbers say the 2009 Bulldogs are a little better than the 2008 version, but Butler has dropped off from 1.11 points-per-possession to 1.06. The big problem? Their turnover rate has gone up fairly dramatically, from the 11th-best mark in the country to the 101st. But as Mack gets more comfortable running the point and the other youngsters gain more experience, that number should drop.)

Hayward is a stud. Both he and Mack looked every bit like two of the top 25 freshmen in the country--as John Gasaway labeled them recently--but Hayward was particularly impressive, attacking the defensive glass like it had it said something about his Momma and getting a hand on more loose balls than I cared to count. As excellent as Mack is at the point, I wonder if it's Hayward who's the more valuable of the two, since Graves and Green were phenomenal defensive rebounders and would be way, way more sorely missed if a demon like Hayward wasn't around.

Defense? It's hard to imagine that without hawks like Graves and Green the Butler D would actually improve, but improve it has--from .94 points-a-possession allowed to .9, from 51st in kenpom's D-rating to 47th. Watching the Loyola game, it would be hard to pin down precisely why--thanks to Hayward and Howard the defensive glass was locked down, and Mack (and his 3 steals) showed a propensity for some very quick hands. But mostly, it seemed just the same-ol' same-ol' from Butler: fleet-footed, well-communicated, terrifically sound man-to-man defense. Looking at the Bulldogs' relative lack of height and quickness (Howard aside on the former, Mack aside on the latter) it's hard to say exactly where they're making up for the absence of Graves and Green and all the other heroes of yesteryear. But the stats--and the fact that you could look up from time to time during the game and notice that the Ramblers suddenly hadn't hit a field goal in five minutes--suggest that's exactly what they're doing. More observation is needed.

Weak points? Whenever Howard left the court, Butler got small--Garrett Butcher and Avery Jukes may be listed at 6-7 and 6-8, but they didn't exactly either look it or play like it. As soon as Howard sat down, Loyola saw much better success getting to the glass and attacking the rim. It's little wonder that with Howard sitting with foul trouble against Detroit the game previous, Butler was outrebounded by 7 and only won by 4 on their home court.

NCAA possibilities? That lack of quality size means that Butler would have a very, very hard time slaying any Goliaths if Howard got in foul trouble or had an off-game--they'd have to keep him on the court to have any chance.

But if Howard is able to play a productive 30-35 minutes and the threes are falling, Butler becomes a terrifying opponent--particularly for a smaller team that can't utilize a size advantage--because of their defense and that turtle-esque pace, which pulls games into close, tight contests like gravity. Then again, if Howard's off and Mack and Hayward aren't on from outside? The Bulldogs are an easy mark. I would imagine it's feast or famine.

So in the end I'd say all the comparisons that say "they're just as good as last year!" are about right: a first-round win and second-round scare of one of the higher-ups are definitely within reach, but more than that will take a really special performance.

Loyolathoughts. Not much to see here, really: the Ramblers seemed to have a lot of solid mid-major-type players--there was no drop-off, and possibly even some improvement, when they went to the bench--and they played as hard as could be expected, given the early 20-point hole. But to break down a defense like Butler's you've got to either have a red-hot night shooting the ball or a genuinely talented offensive star, and Loyola had neither. Based on this game, at least, it's hard to see them making any real noise in the Horizon, either regular season or at the conference tourney.