Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. Two straight weekends have come and gone with plenty of interesting results and surprising ones, but maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised. Before we get to that, though, there was plenty of news to talk about.
We start with the biggest news of the day: the news about Texas guard Andrew Jones. The sophomore was diagnosed with leukemia, which shook up the college basketball world. Any time someone is diagnosed with this, it’s awful news, but it takes on a different meaning when it happens to a 20-year-old young man. We noted in the Morning Dish how many in the college basketball world weighed in on Twitter after this news broke.
From there, we talk about news involving a central figure in the FBI’s investigation into corruption, forward Brian Bowen. The one-time Louisville Cardinal was suspended and then left Louisville as the school tried to figure out what to do with him from an NCAA standpoint, and now South Carolina is taking a chance on him. This is something of a low-risk, high-reward move, because the worst thing that can happen is that the NCAA declares him ineligible before he is ever eligible to play from a transfer standpoint, which would be after the first semester in the 2018-19 season.
After that, we get into news of a setback by a St. John’s team that is already reeling. Red Storm guard Marcus Lovett was lost for the remainder of the season, a big offensive blow to a team that started Big East play 0-5.
After that, we get more into the action on the court, building off the weekend that was. Here are a few key notes to start with:
- Nine ranked teams lost on Saturday
- Three top five teams lost to unranked teams over the weekend
- Over the course of the season, 13 unranked teams have knocked off a team ranked in the top five
Two conferences where this has especially stood out are the Pac-12 and SEC, both of which look like they will be fun to watch from a competitive standpoint.
We hope you enjoy this episode and share it with your fellow college basketball fans.
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