Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. Conference play is picking up, although a big series of non-conference games is ahead of us.
We begin by looking at the new team atop the polls, Tennessee. The Volunteers have played at a high level all year, but in their first game at the top, they got all they could handle from winless Vanderbilt. Grant Williams reminded us that he’s the reigning SEC Player of the Year.
From there, we look at a few interesting notes from around the country on teams like Loyola-Chicago, Houston and Hofstra. Of note, Hofstra is now 8-0 in the CAA and three games up on everyone else as we hit the halfway point this weekend.
After that, we look at the power conferences, starting with the Villanova-led Big East. The Wildcats looked questionable at times in non-conference, but are leading the pack in the Big East and along with Marquette are well ahead of everyone else. The Big Ten is next, led by Michigan State, Michigan, Maryland and Purdue. The Big 12 is deep, with Kansas tied for the top spot but still vulnerable, and the SEC is deep as well and should rival the Big Ten for NCAA Tournament bids. The Pac-12 is bad, quite likely a one-bid league considering only one team is in the top 50 of the NET rankings, and their struggles could be the gains for a conference like the Atlantic 10 (also down).
The next subject matter of interest is Conference USA as they near an important point. The conference announced an in-season scheduling system for the final weeks of the regular season to put teams in groups in the standings and then to play each other. The conference will soon announce how this will play out for this season, but the end results relative to the goal – more teams in the NCAA Tournament and perhaps other postseason tournaments – are more a matter of what happens before conference play, and on that score, the conference is better off than prior seasons but still has a ways to go. However, give them credit for an interesting idea all the same, one that could pay dividends later on if the teams improve in non-conference.
In closing, we look at the SEC/Big 12 Challenge on Saturday as that will be the featured set of games.
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 more college basketball as conference races heat up.
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