Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. With the weekend approaching, we have a lot to look forward to, but there’s a lot that has just happened to talk about as well.
We start with the Big Ten, where Thursday was a wild night. Purdue stayed on a roll, holding off Michigan in an entertaining game with great three-point shooting by both teams. The Boilermakers ultimately sweep Michigan and remain undefeated in conference play. The same could not be said for Ohio State, though, as the Buckeyes lost on a buzzer-beater.
What does this mean for the Big Ten? We look at how the conference is shaping up, including what could happen for the NCAA Tournament if it were to begin now.
From there, we turn to the ACC. Virginia is two games ahead of everyone else entering a very tough stretch, but is anyone talking about it? There is now something that might help take attention away from the Cavaliers’ performance: Louisville may be punished severely by the NCAA. Dan Dakich said that the NCAA is set to penalize them heavily, but the report has yet to gain much traction as the school denied it.
In the face of this, the Cardinals gamely battled Miami on the road on Wednesday night, but lost. We talk about that game and how the ACC as a whole is shaping up, and also want to call your attention to a story on Louisville by our Paul Borden.
Louisville’s adversity this season included their non-conference slate ending with a thud as arch-rival Kentucky annihilated them. The Wildcats have not exactly prospered since then, however, as they just fell out of the Top 25 for the first time in almost four years after losing at South Carolina and at home to Florida last week. Simply put, this Kentucky team isn’t up there with other recent ones, and the Wildcats may have been surpassed in the one-and-done recruiting game.
That leads us into the Big 12/SEC Challenge this Saturday, with ten games to watch led by Kentucky at West Virginia at 7 p.m. We look at that and more as we look ahead and wrap up. We didn’t stop there, though, throwing around ideas for something similar to this, and possibly even with mid-majors, where once upon a time we had ESPN BracketBusters.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Let us know what you think, including on Twitter where you can find me. We look forward to talking about college basketball again next week.
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