Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. As conference play continues, stronger impressions continue to form, and the week began in fine fashion.
We start by looking back at Syracuse going to Cameron Indoor Stadium and knocking off Duke in overtime on Monday night. It’s a win that could get Syracuse going in a good way, while Duke not only lost the game, but also saw Tre Jones go down with an injury that will keep him out for about a month. That’s not a small loss for Duke, and we’ll get a sense of how they cope without him quickly as Virginia comes to town on Saturday in a highly-anticipated game.
After that, we stay in the ACC to talk about the job Jeff Capel and his staff is doing at Pittsburgh. The Panthers were in full rebuilding mode, and they had a non-conference schedule built largely for such a team. They were agonizingly close at Iowa in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and were in it at West Virginia, but they finally broke through recently against Louisville and Florida State, the latter one that not many saw since it was opposite Syracuse/Duke. It’s a sign of how deep the ACC is.
Speaking of deep conferences, the SEC certainly qualifies, and we turn to them next. The conference is fun to watch like last year, and right now South Carolina has been quite the pleasant surprise at 4-0 in conference play after rallying to win at Vanderbilt on Wednesday night.
Wednesday night saw the good (South Carolina and Iowa State getting big road wins), the bad (Minnesota getting annihilated at Illinois) and the ugly, the last of which we talk about. What was that? Tulsa head coach Frank Haith and UConn head coach Dan Hurley both got ejected at the same time in their meeting on Wednesday night. It’s something neither of us can remember seeing before.
Finally, before wrapping up, we get into the subject of NCAA expansion once again as that was in the news earlier in the week. Next year, Dixie State from Utah will join Division I as a member of the WAC.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Be sure to tune in again next week when we talk about college basketball once more.
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