Wednesday night’s scores contained a few mild surprises, as well as more evidence of how wide open things are this season. It also gave us quite the surprise coming out of the Midwest, one that was hard to see coming mainly in terms of the score:
Tulsa 80, Memphis 40.
And with that, we have a new leader in the American Athletic Conference, for the time being at least.
Tulsa came into the night having won three straight, two of them on the road plus Houston at home. That might have been the first sign that the Golden Hurricane was certainly capable of winning this game in their home arena, but a blowout? That was hard to see coming, but on occasion, there’s a game where one team plays well and the other team plays poorly. Tulsa scored 40 points in each half, forced 20 Memphis turnovers and held the Tigers below 29 percent shooting, including 2-21 from long range.
This is the third straight game where Tulsa has held an opponent under 55 points, and in the prior game, Houston scored 61 against them. It’s fair to say that the Golden Hurricane has recovered nicely from the 75-44 shellacking they took at Cincinnati in the second game of conference play, following a similar score in a win over Temple (70-44). For that matter, they rebounded from a bad end to non-conference, as they had lost three straight and four of five prior to the beginning of the conference slate.
An at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament won’t be coming for this team, but this current run has to lend credence to the idea that they could win the conference tournament in March. Hold teams down like they have done of late, and you will have a chance to win.
Tulsa has outperformed where they were selected in the conference’s preseason poll five straight years. This year, they were picked tenth, and right now, it looks like they are on track to outperform the projections for a sixth year in a row.
Side Dishes
Seton Hall continues to rule the Big East, much as there is really very little separation from top to bottom in the conference. The Hall ran their winning streak to nine straight and a 7-0 Big East mark by holding off Providence 73-64 behind another well-balanced team effort. Also, Xavier held off Georgetown 66-57 in Cincinnati, and Creighton went to DePaul and handled the Blue Demons 83-68, going 10-25 from long range.
There is also little separation between the top 12 teams in the Big Ten, and that continued to be shown on Wednesday night. Penn State got a nice road win at Michigan by a score of 72-63, while Iowa rallied to knock off Rutgers 85-80 in Iowa City
Other results of note: Louisville needed a big second half and got it to edge Georgia Tech 68-64; Dayton rolled over St. Bonaventure 86-60; Auburn got back on track with an 80-67 win over visiting South Carolina, getting 26 points from Devan Cambridge; Mississippi State got to .500 in SEC play with a 77-70 win over Arkansas; Rhode Island handed Duquesne their first Atlantic 10 loss with a 77-55 win thanks to a dominant second half; Syracuse edged Notre Dame 84-82 in South Bend; Cincinnati beat Temple 89-82, sending the Owls to 2-5 in American Athletic Conference play; Davidson upended Saint Louis 71-59, which moves both teams to 3-3 in the Atlantic 10; Loyola-Chicago took over first place in the Missouri Valley by handling Indiana State 75-55 and with Southern Illinois holding off Northern Iowa 68-66; Virginia Tech edged North Carolina 79-77 in double overtime on a short jumper with 0.4 seconds left, just after the Tar Heels had tied it on a tough shot of their own; and Nevada pulled away from UNLV 86-72.
The Big 12 announced punishment stemming from Tuesday night’s brawl at the end of Kansas‘ win over Kansas State in short order. Kansas forward Silvio De Sousa is suspended for 12 games, while teammate David McCormack will sit the next two. Kansas State junior forward Jason Love is out for the next eight games and Antonio Gordon is suspended for three. McCormack’s suspension is surprising considering he appeared to be right in the thick of the mess. De Sousa will be eligible to return for the regular season finale at Texas Tech, while McCormack will also return against Texas Tech but for a game in Lawrence next week against the Red Raiders.
Shareef O’Neal, the son of Hall of Famer Shaquille, is transferring from UCLA. The redshirt freshman has averaged just over ten minutes a game off the bench for the Bruins, one year after he had to miss a season as a result of open heart surgery to correct a right anomalous Coronary artery. While he was rated highly coming out of high school, that health scare puts things in perspective, and the fact that he has been able to return to the court is a big win all by itself as he decides his next step.
New Mexico State took another injury hit, as leading scorer and rebounder Trevelin Queen will miss four to six weeks of action after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery on Wednesday to address a lateral meniscus tear. The senior suffered the injury at Utah Valley last week and played through it later that night and two nights later at Seattle, before being re-evaluated, at which point more was learned about the injury. The timeline means he should be back before the WAC Tournament, and likely in time for at least one more regular season game before that.
The field for the 2020 Empire Classic benefiting Wounded Warrior Project was announced, and Baylor, Michigan, NC State and Villanova will battle at Madison Square Garden on November 19-20, 2020 in the championship rounds.
Tonight’s Menu
There’s a good number of games on tap, but a relative dearth of interesting matchups among them.
- In Big Ten action, Minnesota visits slumping Ohio State (6:30 p.m.) and Indiana hosts Michigan State (8:30 p.m.)
- An emerging rivalry in the Ohio Valley is renewed as Murray State hosts Belmont (7 p.m.)
- The top two teams in the Atlantic Sun meet as Liberty travels to North Florida (7 p.m.)
- The Pac-12 gets busy later on, starting with Washington at Utah in a matchup of two teams that need a win to get going (8 p.m.), while Colorado hosts a suddenly hot Washington State team (10 p.m.) and Oregon State hosts UCLA while Oregon hosts USC (11 p.m.)
- A good one to watch in the West Coast Conference is Saint Mary’s hosting San Francisco (10:30 p.m.)
