2008-2009 College Basketball Thread......

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

*looks at latest poll*

#2 Duke
#3 UNC
#4 Wake Forest

Oh, hell....

Dont look now but Clemson is #11 and you come to Littlejohn Saturday...

[MylesKnight]

What was it three days ago, Boston College goes into Chapel Hill and beats pretty much everyones' odds-on favorite to win it all (UNC) in very impressive fashion.

Tonight, with under 4 minutes to play in Chestnut Hill, Harvard (yes mighty Harvard) leads BC by 10.

[Karlifornia]

Duke is the best team in the country. They play the best, most consistent defense.

[MylesKnight]

Karl, cool thing is we'll actually get to find that out for real in this particular D-I NCAA Sport.

Harvard up 11 with under a minute left btw. Wow.

[Wolfpack]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Dont look now but Clemson is #11 and you come to Littlejohn Saturday...

Yeah, but you're Clemson for chrissake. You do this every year before you slide during ACC play. And no matter what, I'm counting on you taking your first loss by the 21st at the latest anyway....

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

Yeah, but you're Clemson for chrissake. You do this every year before you slide during ACC play. And no matter what, I'm counting on you taking your first loss by the 21st at the latest anyway....

Thats 16-0 good sir

[MJ4H]

Arkansas hosting Mississippi State to open conference play tonight. Hope to build on momentum of upsetting 2 top 10 teams within a week. I just had to order an extra dish network package to watch the game even though it's supposed to be broadcast to our local Fox Sports channel. For some reason, when they try to do that, it gets on FSN South, but most people in Arkansas get FSN Southwest.

Grrr.

[Izulde]

It's a bizzaro world when the announcers are singing the praises of Sanchez.

[MJ4H]

Well, to be fair, the results of his post play have been:

1) travel
2) missed shot
3) got fouled, made one free throw

That's pretty good for him.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

Well, to be fair, the results of his post play have been:

1) travel
2) missed shot
3) got fouled, made one free throw

That's pretty good for him.

True. Jiri's annoying me by taking too damned many shots and Rotnei's stroke seems to be off some so far. But man, do I -love- watching Washington play.

We could stand to be less sloppy with our ballhandling too.

[MJ4H]

Lid on the basket. Awful first half. Down 2. Playing like that is the recipe to get beaten by an average Mississippi State team.

[Izulde]

STOP FUCKING SHOOTING, JIRI!

[MJ4H]

It might be worthwhile to reverse the trend of missing every shot and them making every shot.

[Izulde]

We're also acting like defense is something foreign. Ugh.

[Izulde]

Uh okay, I'm a moron. I've been calling Stefan Welsh, Jiri Welsh all night. *facepalms*

[MJ4H]

I was wondering who you were talking about.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

I was wondering who you were talking about.

Yeah, I don't know how that happened.

Man, we're just falling apart on both ends of the floor right now.

[MJ4H]

Well there's your difference in this game. Three point shooting. Jesus Christ.

MSU: 11/25
Ark: 2/17

And the announcer just said, and I agree, that Arkansas's shots from three have been overall better looks. It's just that MSU is making everything they throw up and Arkansas is not.

[MJ4H]

Great. All that fanfare, and we get to start 0-1 in the SEC. Sigh.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Originally Posted by MJ4H

Great. All that fanfare, and we get to start 0-1 in the SEC. Sigh.

Mizzou was the same way yesterday. Had a great non-conference season and then promptly laid an egg on the road at Nebraska in our first conference game. Frustrating.

[GoldenEagle]

Memphis won its first road game yesterday at UCF. I think the team showed maturity as they were down 8 at one point in a rocking environment at UCF. Tyreke Evans is playing the PG position and doing a pretty good job. He still makes freshman mistakes, but not nearly as much as he did in the losses against Syracuse, Xavier, and Gerogetown.

If Memphis runs the table in CUSA again this year, it will be impressive. CUSA is as strong as it has been since the split and Memphis is not as good. The one thing we can do though, is throw an almost endless supply of bodies at our opponents. We rotate ten guys. I think our depth and pace won the game yesterday at UCF.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by Mizzou B-ball fan

Mizzou was the same way yesterday. Had a great non-conference season and then promptly laid an egg on the road at Nebraska in our first conference game. Frustrating.

VERY.... frustrating..

[MylesKnight]

G.E., how are ya?

Good win for Memphis yesterday in Orlando. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it down, but it was a madhouse. UCF broke the attendance record at the New Arena (9,800+, with capacity listed at 9,500), man what a difference a few years make. I can remember going to games and being able to sit right behind the bench with attendance numbering maybe 1K on a good night.

Hopefully this game gives the Knights confidence and the team is able to make a run at postseason play. With one of the youngest teams in the nation, we shall see though.

Jermaine Taylor proved that the CUSA Player of the Year hype is deserved, with 24 against against the Tigers.

The depth was the difference. The press itself didn't cause a ton of turnovers but it did slowly wear down the Knights. That was a heckuva run by the Tigers (18-3, I believe) down the stretch that completely flipped the game.

Now that the game with the UofM is over, I hope to see the Tigers continue to win the rest of the season and represent the League well once again.

[MylesKnight]

UNC is now 0-2 in ACC play.

Wake Forest 92, North Carolina 89

[Radii]

That Teague kid for Wake was incredible. Wake is definitely for real. This loss for UNC isn't a huge surprise, but coming after the loss to boston college it is disturbing to be 0-2 in the conference.

[Karlifornia]

Carolina will be fine. A few losses early on could bring them closer together in the long run.

[Wolfpack]

Originally Posted by Karlifornia

Carolina will be fine. A few losses early on could bring them closer together in the long run.

Or, they could be struggling a bit with the weighty expectations that have been placed on them. I'm not sure I've seen a team in recent memory be placed on so high a pedestal as this Carolina team has (probably have to go back to the 1984 UNC team that had Jordan in his junior year). I'm sure they'll finally get things back into gear, but they've gone from being discussed as an all-time team that had potential to run the table for the first time since Indiana in 1976 to now facing a prospect of not only not being the top seed in the ACC tournament, but also perhaps scrambling a bit to make sure they aren't playing in the first round on Thursday (shouldn't be an issue, but it's at least on the table now where it didn't seem fathomable before last Sunday).

Given how lousy all my teams were yesterday, Wake's win was a small salvation to the weekend, at least.

[Wolfpack]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Thats 16-0 good sir

Yeah, well, I didn't necessarily say you'd start sliding against us, did I?

[MylesKnight]

I do agree with Wolfpack in that there were a lot of things said about the potential of this Carolina team prior to the season, in terms of this possibly being among the all-time best teams in College Basketball.

This team still is the odds-on favorite to cut down the nets in early April, but if a shield of invincibility (primarily via the media of course) existed prior to and early on this season, it's now gone.

For what it's worth, the best team that I've seen play in my lifetime was a team that didn't win it all, the 1990-'91 UNLV Runnin' Rebles, which went 34-0 before losing to Duke in the Final Four. They still will be the best in my humble opinion after this season as well.

[Radii]

Originally Posted by Wolfpack

Given how lousy all my teams were yesterday, Wake's win was a small salvation to the weekend, at least.

And sealed this as one of my worst sports weekend's in awhile

You and Karlifornia are both right of course. Also, damn this crappy 12 team conference for messing up basketball scheduling. UNC only plays Wake once, and only plays Clemson once this year. If I could change anything about sports I'd almost certainly take the selfish route and send BC, Miami and Va Tech back to the Big East where they belong :P

[Wolfpack]

Originally Posted by Radii

And sealed this as one of my worst sports weekend's in awhile

You and Karlifornia are both right of course. Also, damn this crappy 12 team conference for messing up basketball scheduling. UNC only plays Wake once, and only plays Clemson once this year. If I could change anything about sports I'd almost certainly take the selfish route and send BC, Miami and Va Tech back to the Big East where they belong :P

That Clemson game's in Chapel Hill, though, right? How conve-e-e-e-nient!

Besides, I'd kill to have my team suffer anywhere near the "problems" your team is having right now (you mean they aren't the greatest team in history? Horrors!). I'm just damn sick at this point of watching the SOS from the NC State basketball program. I mean, if Wake-f'ing-Forest can go from outhouse to penthouse in basically two years, what in the hell have we been doing over the past two decades?

[MrBug708]

UCLA beats USC tonight. USC hung tough with UCLA for most of the night. I love Hackett's game. You knew he probably deserved getting his jaw broken by Mayo last year, but the kid is college basketballs version of Stockton. Dirty as hell but knows how to do it and you'd love him on your team

[mckerney]

Nice win for Minnesota today, shooting 62% and 9-9 from 3 and holding Penn State to 36% from the field. Good to see that the junior college transfers are starting to contribute, Devron Bostick had 19 points in 14 minutes and Paul Carter had 14 in 20 minutes in the 20 point win.

They have had a fairly week schedule up to this point, but at 15-1 right now and with the way they've played it's amazing how much Tubby has turned them around already.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by MrBug708

UCLA beats USC tonight. USC hung tough with UCLA for most of the night. I love Hackett's game. You knew he probably deserved getting his jaw broken by Mayo last year, but the kid is college basketballs version of Stockton. Dirty as hell but knows how to do it and you'd love him on your team

Yup, that was a tough one tonight. Even though I expected it to be tough, I still thought the Bruins should have done better than they did in some aspects of the game. That stretch in the middle of the second half where UCLA let the Trojans go on a 10-0 run was ugly, just no offensive continuity. I am glad they got it back together before the end.

[Karlifornia]

Trojans are like the Oregon State football team of PAC-10 basketball...they always seem to start off slowly, but come out of nowhere towards the end of the season.

[Buccaneer]

Fuck Georgetown.

[mckerney]

Nice to see Tubby has the Gophers continuing to win the games they should, taking the record to 16-1. Needing to have a great showing in the Big Ten with thier non conference schedule it would have really hurt to drop a conference game to a worse team in Wisconsin.

[MylesKnight]

Wonder what the Kentucky folks in charge are thinking about Tubby Smith now. Good for him. Nobody classier in the College Game.

[Groundhog]

St. Mary's with 13 wins in a row now and just one loss - to UTEP. We've been getting a lot of their games on TV over here (and their Pepperdine game is on our ESPN this weekend) which has been great. I finally feel like I have a team to root for in college hoops now.

[MylesKnight]

Hopefully this is the year someone knocks Gonzaga off the mantle atop the WCC. St. Mary's looks to be the team to do it.

UTEP was the only loss for the Gaels. That W may be huge come selection Sunday for the Miners.

GO CUSA!!

[MylesKnight]

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like everytime there is a Pac-10 Game on Fox Sports Net there is at least one UCLA'er among the announcing crew?

By the way, any thoughts on what happens with Arizona Basketball at the end of the season? This guy coaching is listed as the Interim correct?

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by MylesKnight

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't it seem like everytime there is a Pac-10 Game on Fox Sports Net there is at least one UCLA'er among the announcing crew?

What's wrong with that?

By the way, any thoughts on what happens with Arizona Basketball at the end of the season? This guy coaching is listed as the Interim correct?

It's too soon to say if the current guy can take the reins, or if they will have the national coaching search, but I don't think there's any doubt that what Lute built up calls for a replacement on the level to keep what he did in place. The Pac 10 is better when Arizona is one of the top programs. There are some terrific coaches at the other programs (Bennett, Montgomery, Floyd, Sendek, Kent, Romar and of course Howland), and UA needs to step up and fill that spot big time.

It has long been suggested that UA is the job Mark Few would leave Gonzaga for, but we'll see. That would be a great hire.

[Butter]

Minnesota came back to win that game last night? Wow. Tubby is doing a great job so far.

[MJ4H]

Just as a note, the fact that Tubby may be doing well in Minnesota doesn't change the fact that he was not getting the job done at Kentucky, which is why he was let go. He may be capable of doing a great job, but he wasn't. His recruiting especially was far below where it had been.

[Atocep]

Definitely worth watching.

[hoopsguy]

Funny stuff.

Looks like there are a lot of good games tomorrow. I'm bummed that Wake/Clemson is on at the same time as Illinois/Michigan State.

[hoopsguy]

So after getting to watch most of the Syracuse/ND game, and a good chunk of the G'Town/Duke game, I was settling in for the big game of the day: Wake/Clemson.

Only ABC here is instead showing Kansas @ Colorado. Ugh.

[hoopsguy]

Dola: just found Arizona St @ UCLA on CBS, which makes for a pretty nice consolation prize. Very deep pool of quality games today.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Atocep

Definitely worth watching.

+1 , especially since I had no idea what it was going to be. Even my son liked that one.

[JonInMiddleGA]

The Paul Hewitt era continues right on track, losing at home in OT to NC State.