Skirmishes, Middle Fingers, Buzzer Beaters - The Best College Hoops Day Of The Year Exceeded The Hype, Showed Exactly What To Expect This Season
It's rare that we get a day that lives up to the hype in sports. We see it all the time and it typically plays out the same way, doesn't even matter the sport. Everyone talks about how loaded the schedule is and how the slate is going to be awesome before and then it ends up being a dud. That was not the case yesterday. In fact it was one of the best (non-March) days in a long, long time for the sport.
Quick recap of some scores:
UConn 77, Gonzaga 71
Tennessee 66, Illinois 64
Dayton 71, Marquette 63
UCLA 57, Arizona 54
Texas A&M 70, Purdue 66
Memphis 87, Clemson 82 (OT)
Kentucky 93, Louisville 85
Cincinnati 68, Xavier 65
Boise State 67, St. Mary's 65 (OT)
And a couple buzzer beater highlights:
Other assorted highlights:
Now, I said in the headline is laid out what to expect this season. I truly believe that and here's what you should know:
- The SEC is by far the most dominant conference in college basketball. We're looking at a potentially historic year in terms of dominance, depth and talent.
- Auburn's ass kicking of Ohio State has them on pace to be historically dominant on KenPom
- You can start looking at tiers. We've seen enough big games. National title contenders to me are as follows: Auburn, Kentucky, Tennessee, Duke, UConn, Gonzaga, Iowa State, Marquette, Houston, Alabama and Florida. The Final Four contender list is incredibly deep. We're going to see a run from a high seed, it's just a matter of who. You look at a team like Dayton who is probably going to be a 7 seed. They could easily make a Final Four.
- Speaking of UConn, the whole thing about them having a down year was overblown. They sucked in Maui, that's fair to say. But now all they do is win. Speaking of which, how the hell were they a dog while playing at MSG?
- UCLA is flying under the radar. I don't know if it's because they are in the Big 10 while playing in California or Mick Cronin, but they are a Final Four tier team to me. They just shut down Arizona (might suck) and won in Phoenix. Tyler Bilodeau was a monster. They are also the best team in the Big 10.
- Brad Underwood took blame for losing the game to Tennessee. Smart because it was dumb that he didn't call timeout after the make. He admitted so, but he's gotta be better there. Illinois is right there with UCLA, but Underwood can't lose those sort of moments.
- Mark Pope.
- Go to a game at Dayton. I can't stress this enough, places like that are some of the best atmospheres:
As for the rest of the year it's simple. We're going to see that group I listed as national title contenders pull away a bit. But, teams are going to lose. Gone are the days of talking about undefeated and 2 loss teams. Conferences are too deep, the talent level is too spread out. We're not going to overreact to one game as much anymore because now we have a body of work. Teams might have 1 more big nonconference game before the gauntlet starts. It's now all about seeding. You're going to have races for 1 seeds and what not, but a loss isn't going to kill teams as much now.
- Player of the Year race is Johni Broome and Kam Jones
-Mark Pope again.