The Big Ten/ACC Challenge has come to a close, and after some good ones along the way, the last night of game action was really a dud. All six games were decided by double digits, with four having margins of at least 20 points. The Big Ten won it 8-6, but two of the ACC’s premier teams had something concerning in addition to the loss on the evening.
The first is the defending national champions, as Virginia went to Purdue and got thrashed 69-40. There’s no shaming in losing at Purdue, and on rare occasions it’s just not a team’s night. But scoring is likely to be a more acute issue for Virginia this year than most, because this is a much younger team than a year ago. The Cavaliers will certainly play their stout defense, but that seemed to leave them this time around as Purdue shot over 45 percent from the field including 13-25 from long range.
But more importantly, the Cavaliers didn’t have a good night offensively. And they haven’t done much at that end all year. Virginia shot 37 percent from the field, including 4-24 from long range. They turned it over 16 times, too, and that hurts.
The season is now eight games old, and the Cavaliers have scored less than 50 points in half of those games. Their season high is 65. Sure, they’re not allowing many points a night, but you have to score to win, and with this team, points have been hard to come by.
Later in the evening, we saw that North Carolina has the same concern, but that’s very new for the Tar Heels. Ohio State came to Chapel Hill and blew out the Tar Heels 74-49, pulling away more as the night went on. The 49 points were a season low by far, but this game as much as any highlighted that this team can struggle to score aside from Cole Anthony.
Right now, the Tar Heels are really in a bad place offensively, because Brandon Robinson missed time earlier due to injury, and on Wednesday, Armando Bacot had to leave the game with an ankle injury, and Roy Williams didn’t sound optimistic about a return anytime soon. That’s two of their double-digit scorers besides Anthony, and without them, they didn’t look good at all. Take nothing away from Ohio State, who might be having the best start of any Big Ten team, but North Carolina seems to have a real concern. They haven’t scored 80 points in a game this season, and if there’s one thing Roy Williams’ teams there have done, it’s score.
The big problem hasn’t been giving the ball away, as the Tar Heels are taking good care of the ball. But they’re barely shooting 40 percent on the season, including just over 30 percent from deep. Two graduate transfers this team was counting on, Justin Pierce and Christian Keeling, have had a rough go of it thus far. Certainly, one had to know the Tar Heels would be heavily dependent on newcomers as they lost a ton from last season, but who knew they would be this offensively challenged?
It wasn’t all that surprising that Maryland took care of Notre Dame 72-51, as we have seen that the Terrapins are very good, or that Penn State handled Wake Forest 76-54. But these two results were quite surprising, at least in the margin and in the low offensive output for the losing team.
North Carolina goes to Virginia this weekend for an early ACC game. With the way both teams are playing offensively right now, how low do you think the score could be?
Side Dishes
NC State pulled away from Wisconsin 69-54 and Georgia Tech pulled away from Nebraska 73-56 in the other Big Ten/ACC Challenge games on the night.
After having their Big 5 winning streak snapped against them last season, Villanova held off Penn 80-69 last night behind 27 points from Saddiq Bey. The Quakers made a charge in the second half, but history would not repeat itself.
Georgetown hasn’t had an easy few days, but the Hoyas went to Stillwater and picked up a big 81-74 win over Oklahoma State. Mac McClung had 33 points, and he now has to become a star for this team while others have to do more. As noted on the podcast, the Hoyas have a path to the NCAA Tournament, but it is much tougher now. This is a very good start.
DePaul remained undefeated by knocking off Texas Tech 65-60. The question one must ask is who this game says more about – does it mean DePaul is better than they are being given credit for, or does it mean Texas Tech really is just okay and that some might over-estimated them based on what they did a year ago? Many of us surely didn’t want to underestimate the Red Raiders after doing so last year.
Other results of note: Utah won the big rivalry game on the night, taking out BYU 102-95 in overtime; South Carolina headed north and beat UMass 84-80; Washington held off Eastern Washington 90-80; Utah State got a push from San Jose State but held them off 71-59; San Francisco took care of Cal 76-64; and in the two best of the opening night games in Mountain West play, New Mexico edged Boise State 80-78 and UNLV edged Fresno State 81-80 in double overtime.
Tonight’s Menu
The slate is much lighter tonight ahead of the weekend, as only ten Division I games are on tap.
- An old MEAC matchup is among the earliest games as Howard travels to Hampton, while St. Francis Brooklyn goes to Hartford and High Point hosts Elon (7 p.m.)
- A trio of games tip the next hour, with a couple that should be pretty good as Mississippi State hosts Louisiana Tech and Oklahoma travels to North Texas, while Wichita State hosts Central Arkansas (8 p.m.)
- Southeast Missouri State hits the road to visit Abilene Christian (8:30 p.m.)
- The best game of the night looks to be Auburn hosting Furman (9 p.m.)
- Finishing up the night are Montana State hosting South Dakota State and Saint Mary’s hosting Northern Illinois, both tipping at 10 p.m.
