Sunday, December 30, 2007

College Hoops: A Day of Upsets

While everyone was watching NFL history, the college cagers were putting together a pretty exciting day themselves. I do not want to oversell it, as most teams took care of business, but by my count, there were at least five upsets yesterday. Some kind of quirky, some absolutely fucking trips to woodshed.

The day started with Wisconsin knocking off #9 Texas 67-66 with a 3-pointer and a steal off the inbounds pass to seal it. I'm guessing Michael Flowers got laid tonight, as he hit both the late 3-pointer, and made the steal. Texas guard A.J. Abrams (not to be confused with Lost producer J.J. Abrams) missed a free throw that would have given the Longhorns a 3 point lead going into the last possession. Ouch.

Gary Parrish thinks this game means that Wisconsin is a team to contend, or at least cause problems in the Big 10. I have to agree. The Big 10 was looking super top-heavy up to this point, with Indiana and Michigan State alone at the top. This win announces that Wisconsin can handle tough road games. (Sorry for no direct link to Gary's actual Wisconsin article--the blogs at CBS don't have permalinks. Gary assures me that they are working on that. Really--he emailed me to let me know. After I pestered him about it. I'm not kidding. I have the ear of the stars of College Basketball blogging world.)

Hmm. I seem to remember saying some nice things about Winthrop last year. Today, they knocked off one of the handful of undefeated teams left in Division 1. Winthrop beat the #19 Miami Hurricanes 76-70 after Miami had a double digit lead early in the second half. Winthrop is only 7-5 in the early goings here, so it is hard to say that they are the same team they were last year, especially without Bradshaw, who was their go-to guy in the paint. But Winthrop goes about 7 men deep, and they have a dangerous backcourt. Also note, those 5 losses include losses on the road to West Virginia and Mississippi. I'll say it again this year--watch out for Winthrop.

Hey, speaking of West Virginia. As of today, they were ranked nationally (#23), and being led by Evil Genius Bobby Huggins. They lost to the Sooners in what was arguably the most exciting game of the night. Double OT, with some big shots, and some impressive players. Both of these squads have some exciting players. And you might assume that if Oklahoma beat West Virginia (as they did, 88-82) Longar Longar had a big game. And he did. He had a very Longar Longar type game. But Blake fucking Griffin was in a lot of ways the star of the show. 18 points, 16 boards, and showed a mobility for a big man that is going to scare the fuck out of opponents. I watched a bit of this game with miwacar. Don't be surprised if he blogs about Blake Griffin. He was very impressed with him.

The Biggest Upset of the Day goes to the Dayton Flyers, even though they've won 10 straight, and should be in the top 25 themselves. In one poll, they are not. So they invited #6 Pittsburgh to their house and were rude hosts, slapping Pitt around for 40 minutes. Dayton destroyed Pitt, 80-55. Thin about that. That's a 25 point smackdown of the #6 team in the country. Dayton is clearly going to be ranked come Monday. Will they be in the Top 10? No--not even with this 10th straight win, and demolishing of Pitt. They will vault into the teens, maybe. Pitt will drop into the teens. There's a good chance that Pitt will still be ranked higher than Dayton after this demolishing. There doesn't exist one good reason for why that should be. I'm looking at Pitt's lineup, and who they graduated, and I'm shocked they are in the Top 10 at all. Expect them to fall further.

Also, Boise State beat #23 BYU. No one cares about what happens in Mormon country, and I don't think BYU was a real #23 anyway. BYU's best player looks like this. Nuff said:



1 comment:

Andrew Wice said...

West Virginia v. Oklahoma was a good game. West Virginia should have won in the first OT, I humbly submit.

What's the deal with the Okie uniforms? They look like JV practice gear.