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Monday, January 20, 2025
Xavier simply doesn’t look good, and the Musketeers certainly don’t look like the kind of team we’ve grown accustomed to seeing. They are now below .500 since the fight against Cincinnati, and find themselves in the once-unthinkable position of the bubble for the NCAA Tournament.
Duke doesn’t have a team like some of their past powerhouse teams, but this incarnation of the Blue Devils just finds ways to win games. That’s the biggest explanation for their success thus far.
Yale’s luck may have run out on Saturday night, and with it, their chance of an Ivy League title. They have battled back all season long, but finally dug themselves a hole they couldn’t dig out of in a 66-51 loss at Harvard with first place on the line.
The tenth annual BracketBusters took center stage on Saturday, and while it gave us some good matchups, whether or not it has the intended effect when it was started is debatable.
Tommy Brenton means a lot to Stony Brook. Saturday’s 76-69 win at Northeastern was the latest evidence of that, in case there wasn’t enough last season or most of the past couple of months.
The stage is set. Saturday night at Lavietes Pavilion will be a potentially epic battle with first place on the line after Friday night’s results. Old rivals Yale and Harvard will battle for the top, with Harvard hoping for a repeat of the result the last time these two teams met.
Saint Joseph’s appears to be playing more like they did during a lot of non-conference play, which is a positive since they played well often. It’s a stretch that has been driven in part by their best player, and it has head coach Phil Martelli knowing they have work to do but in a better place with this team.
There’s no way to sugar-coat it: Towson is having a season to forget. And while the bottom line isn’t the first place new head coach Pat Skerry is looking, Tuesday night’s 70-51 loss at Northeastern was not a good one for the Tigers.
St. John’s hasn’t stopped competing despite numerous challenges this season. That was clearly evident in a tough 71-61 loss at Georgetown on Sunday, one where the team moved forward despite the game going in the right-hand column.
It can be easy to forget that Georgetown is a young team, although at this stage of the season their young players have some games under their belt. But from the outset, this team has played more like a veteran team than one would expect a team with 10 freshmen and sophomores, and the bottom line reflects a team that has learned a lot about how to win.
