The “bubble” is weaker than ever this year according to many (and they’re probably right). At the same time, major conference teams are better than ever at scheduling collusion and avoiding dangerous matchups against teams outside their accepted sphere. Correlation? There’s a good chance of it. With the big-money conferences working the system to hoard ever-more Quadrant 1 games (again: why aren’t people howling about these schools “gaming” power ratings??), we have fewer and fewer data points now to compare the resumes of an Indiana and a UNC Greensboro. Coupled with the selection committee’s almost complete disregard for any results outside of Quadrant 1, and the result is people think every resume missing those wins is deficient. Result: you get teams the likes of 14-11 Butler, 13-11 Indiana or the likes of Arizona State or Oklahoma badly stumbling in conference yet still presumed to be in or right on the fringe.
Buffalo’s relative struggles of late-two road losses in a Mid-American Conference that is not a bad league at all-have been in part due to some key players struggling of late. In particular, the Bulls need to get Jeremy Harris going again. The lefty with the smooth game has scored in double figures just twice in the Bulls’ last seven games, shooting just 32% over that stretch. Similar goes for Nick Perkins, who is averaging 7.8 points over his last four games, making 8 of 27 shots. Picking up some of the slack has been Dontay Caruthers, who has been red-hot averaging 18.4 points and shooting an incredible 78% over the team’s last five games, but Buffalo goes from really good to lethal when Harris and Perkins are at their best.
Watching UCLA turn the ball over and over and over against Washington recently and in too many games this season in general, it should be quite clear that Steve Alford was the least of this year’s team’s problems. This is just a sloppy team that has some real individual talent but pays almost no attention to detail. Regardless of the fact that Alford isn’t going to be a popular sympathetic figure, the idea that he was the reason the Bruins have underwhelmed is silly.
Bucknell has come back from double-digit deficits to win seven times this year. If one is looking for a darkhorse that won’t panic and won’t be afraid of the moment against a higher seed in the NCAA Tournament, they could do a lot worse than the Bison, a young-but-talented team that has won 10 of 11 to take a commanding lead in the Patriot League standings. Bucknell’s best comeback was a rally from 26 points down in the second half at Army to win, and it’s a squad with wins over teams like Rhode Island and UNLV in the Diamond Head Classic plus on the road at St. Bonaventure and Vermont. The Bison are a deep team with depth up front and in the backcourt, and if they rebound well they’re very capable of a win or two in the NCAAs.
The best story in NCAA Division I that not a soul is talking about this year: Presbyterian has suddenly become a contender in the Big South. The Blue Hose-yup, that’s their name-have never had a winning season in 11 years competing at the Division I level and lost at least 20 games each of the previous six years, yet this year are 15-12 overall and a solid fourth at 7-5 in the Big South. Second-year coach Dustin Kerns came over after years as an assistant at Wofford, and he’s engineered a turnaround with a team averaging nearly 11 three-pointers made per game and hitting 38.3% from long range.
The Colonial Athletic Association race is going to be a fun one to the end. Hofstra gained some deserved notoriety for its 16-game winning streak that recently ended, but Northeastern ended that string with a convincing win at home in Boston 12 days ago. The Huskies are just two games behind the Dutch, and defending champion College of Charleston is the definition of lurking, with six straight wins before losing to Hofstra by four on Thursday. Northeastern in particular has won eight of nine and has been a different team since Vasa Pusica got healthy. A lead guard who can shoot, make plays, pick-and-roll and who plays under terrific control, Pusica can flat-out take over a game on his own, and he was outstanding in the Huskies’ 16-point win over Alabama in November, a game where he unfortunately injured his wrist. It took a month to get him back, but ever since then Northeastern is 10-3 with its three losses by a combined eight points.
Old Dominion has had a quietly really good season, moving to the top of the Conference USA rankings. The Monarchs aren’t loved by efficiency ratings because they’ve won a lot of close games, but that shouldn’t diminish what they’ve done, and their 20-6 overall record would be even better if not for a pair of late meltdowns and a third game lost at the buzzer. ODU led Oregon State by nine with six minutes left in the Paradise Jam quarterfinals in November before falling apart and losing 61-56, a loss that also cost the Monarchs a chance to play Missouri in the semifinals and a possible game against Kansas State in the final. Old Dominion also led Texas-San Antonio by 17 with just over three minutes left yet somehow lost by a point after the Roadrunners hit seven three-pointers in the final 4:32, and the Monarchs also lost 70-67 to Marshall on a three-pointer with less than two seconds left. ODU does have the win at Syracuse in December, a win at home against VCU and could get some boost from C-USA’s flex scheduling plan that will give it more chances against the likes of North Texas and Western Kentucky down the stretch. NCAA tourney squad or no, Jeff Jones’s team is a good, workmanlike squad that is always fun to watch defend and usually find a way to win.
The trend of teams running up scores, presumably under the guise of needing to pump up their NET or efficiency rankings, is a troubling one. We get it, these are major college sports, but there still comes a point when it’s frustrating to see so little attention paid to sportsmanship, or the example being set for young people whether it be college students or kids much younger. Starters throwing alley oops in a 15-point game in the final seconds, when there’s an opportunity to show a little class-or even let some reserves play a bit-sets a bush league example for our youth. As hard as reserves work in practice at many schools, they deserve a chance to get on the court at the end of games, and if a NET or Pomeroy ranking takes a minute hit because of it, it’s a worthwhile exchange for the goodwill engendered with kids who work hard often with little playing time reward. At the same time, it has to be pointed out that this is what many in the sport bargained for. There’s been a cry for more use of “advanced” statistics and incorporating margin of victory in rankings, even as the NCAA-correctly, we’d surmise-resisted them in good part because it was uncomfortable with encouraging teams to run up scores. We’ve got them now, and we also get the after effects and unintended consequences.
Right there with ancient tri-rivals Yale, Harvard and Princeton at the top of the Ivy League is Cornell, and the Big Red shouldn’t be taken lightly. They won at Harvard last weekend, lost to Princeton in overtime, and in one of the more impressive comebacks in a game we’ve seen this season flat-out punked Pennsylvania in the second half two weeks ago. Looking listless in the first half in falling behind by 10, the Big Red turned up the defense and attacked relentlessly in the second half and took 24 free throws, in all posting a 36-13 advantage in free throw attempts for the game. Matt Morgan has been in Ithaca seemingly forever and is one of the top scorers in the country (23.5 ppg), and Dan Earl’s team qualified for the four-team Ivy tourney last year and already has two road wins in league this year.
Ted Sarandis made a terrific point on a recent Talking Hoops podcast on Hoopville with Phil Kasiecki, that it seems “mid-majors” (we hate the term, but acknowledge that many use it) have all but given up on TV coverage. One supposes this critique rings somewhat hollow in a universe now where there are so many viewing options, from the traditional of over-the-air, cable and satellite to video streaming services. From one who still vastly prefers watching games on a television over a comparatively puny mobile device, though, and also still from experience has concerns about the reliability of video streams, it’s disappointing to see how many less-exposed conferences have eliminated their packages on regional cable networks. The America East, CAA, Horizon, MAAC and NEC are among quite a few that used to offer a healthy schedule of games produced in-house or regionally but have quit them in favor of streaming online or banking on their few appearances a season on one of the national all-sports networks like ESPNU or CBS Sports Network. The Big West is the latest one we’ve noticed no longer has a presence; the conference was a regular on Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West for years, but now streams mainly on ESPN3. Certainly, there are a fair amount of people who now make streaming their go-to…but there are also many who still watch TV, too.
Twitter: @HoopvilleAdam
