At first glance, Saturday didn’t look like a day full of matchups that would catch one’s eye. The College Football Playoff probably had something to do with that since it meant taking up a number of television time slots between ESPN and ESPN2 – and all to show a blowout and a deceptively close game. But Saturday proved to be a wild day full of Power 5 teams losing to mid-majors, and they weren’t the ones that you might have expected.
Maybe the day was meant to remind us that college basketball has it all over college football.
If you were told the day would feature the results it did, you might have thought Belmont could knock off Purdue, and understandably so. But the Boilermakers clearly out-played the Bruins for most of the game, then held them off for a 73-62 win. And if you thought BYU might go to Starkville and knock off Mississippi State, no one could think you were out of your mind, but the Bulldogs pulled away from the Cougars 103-81. Or maybe you thought Radford, who already won at Notre Dame and Texas, would pull off another one at Maryland. They got off to a good start, but the Terrapins pulled away in the second half for a 78-64 win behind 19 points and 12 rebounds from Bruno Fernando.
No, they weren’t the teams who did the trick on Saturday.
The first one of note was Gardner-Webb going to Winston-Salem and beating Wake Forest 73-69, which puts the Bulldogs at 10-5 with eight straight wins. They should be one of the main challengers to Radford in the Big South, and that was the case even before this win that should only add to their confidence.
Western Kentucky is a well-known brand in college basketball, but they’re not a Big Ten team like Wisconsin in terms of resources or conference affiliation. The Hilltoppers have plenty of talent, though, so their 83-76 win over the Badgers in Bowling Green was not a shocker by any means. It does, however, go with the theme of the day, and the 83 points is the most Wisconsin has surrendered in a game all season.
Staying in the Big Ten and with Conference USA as well, Florida Atlantic has been a pleasant surprise considering they have struggled since joining Conference USA. They went on the road and edged Illinois 73-71 in overtime to improve to 9-4.
Texas Southern, known for their especially challenging non-conference schedules, already beat Baylor and Oregon earlier in the season. On Saturday, they traveled to College Station and convincingly knocked off a Texas A&M team that looked like they might be turning a corner by an 88-73 margin. We’ll have to think again about the Aggies as SEC play is around the corner.
Then we come to the Pac-12. Last week, Arizona State made headlines as they beat Kansas for the second year in a row, picking up a much-needed signature win. But on Saturday, Princeton came to Tempe and edged the Sun Devils 67-66. Earlier in the day, Washington State lost to Santa Clara 79-71. Then UCLA lost their fourth straight and sixth in the last nine games as Liberty took care of them 73-58, which will only add to the talk about Steve Alford’s job, and as if to sound like a broken record, the hits kept coming as Seattle went to Cal and beat the Golden Bears 82-73. It’s hard to call the last one an upset as the Redhawks are now 12-3 and Cal is 5-7 and has looked like a bottom-dweller in the conference all along. Ted Sarandis and I talked once again about how bad the Pac-12 has been in our podcast, and they just proved us right once again on Saturday. With this, the Pac-12 is assured of the worst December by a major conference in the past 20 years, as they will barely top .500 for the month.
And as if all of this wasn’t enough, two Mountain West teams lost buy games: Fresno State lost 64-60 to Utah Valley and Brown blew out San Diego State 82-61, riding a 50-22 first half advantage that came in part from a run of 26 unanswered points. And there were a few other close calls as well, like Bryant giving Iowa all they could handle before succumbing 72-67 in Iowa City.
All in a Saturday of college basketball.
Side Dishes
In the big rivalry game of the day, we have a little more to go on about Kentucky, and guess what? The Wildcats look like they’re a pretty good team heading into SEC play. They were a bit of a mystery for reasons that have been discussed, but after beating North Carolina last week and convincingly beating Louisville 71-58 in Louisville, we can start talking about this team as being in the same class as Tennessee, Auburn and Mississippi State as top SEC contenders.
Kansas got Udoka Azubuike back from injury, and if there was any rust, it wasn’t readily apparent on the stat line. The big man nearly had a double-double with 23 points and nine rebounds to lead the Jayhawks’ 87-63 win over Eastern Michigan.
Florida got a good resume win that they really needed, and in dominating fashion as they scored the first 21 points of the game en route to annihilating Butler 77-43, scoring as many points in the first half as the Bulldogs scored for the entire game.
A couple of Big East openers were on tap, and it was the second one that will be remembered for a while. St. John’s went across the Hudson to take on Seton Hall, an important matchup because of proximity and the teams’ respective non-conference showings. Seton Hall rallied from a 14-point deficit to tie it, then were within two in the final seconds. A three-pointer at the buzzer by Shavar Reynolds allowed them to steal a 76-74 win and hand St. John’s their first loss of the season.
Houston remained among the ranks of the undefeated as they broke away from NJIT in the second half for an 80-59 win over a Highlander team that has six road wins on the season.
Speaking of stealing a win, George Mason almost did that at Kansas State. The Patriots trailed 36-16 at halftime after the Wildcats closed out the half on a 20-2 run, and they again led by 20 with over 12 minutes left. A 17-5 run made it a ballgame, and the Patriots had a chance to inbound with 1.2 seconds left on their side of the court, but they couldn’t connect and Kansas State survived 59-58.
One result that was a surprise in the margin is a game that we expected to be a good battle between mid-major contenders. Instead, Toledo shut down Penn in the second half to roll over the Quakers 77-45. It’s hard to imagine the Rockets coming out ahead of Buffalo, but they are now 12-1 on the season and this is a good win for them.
Tonight’s Menu
A much less busy slate includes a number of early conference games in the CAA and Horizon League.
- MAAC favorite Rider travels to VCU (2 p.m.)
- Patriot League favorite Lehigh travels to visit a West Virginia team still figuring some things out (2 p.m.)
- Lipscomb has had a nice non-conference run and pays a visit to Clemson (3 p.m.)
- In a rarity, Alabama goes on the road to visit Stephen F. Austin (6 p.m.)
- UMass heads south to visit Georgia (6 p.m.)
- Two teams that won their Horizon League openers on Friday night battle as Northern Kentucky hosts UIC (6 p.m.)
