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Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Sometimes in college basketball, comebacks happen so fast and so suddenly that it’s literally as if a storm blew through, and a game seemingly in hand suddenly has slipped away. SMU was the victim in such a scenario in its NCAA Tournament loss to UCLA in March; last night, the Mustangs returned the favor.
After another nice-if not necessarily glamorous-win, it’s time to ask: what to make of Texas Tech this year?
Three games this past weekend leaped out at us, and Ray takes a tempo free look at them, all big games and especially for the winners.
Of all the stats one will see this year, this may be one of the hardest to believe: Saturday’s game between Xavier and Cincinnati marked just the second time ever that both teams were nationally ranked entering the Crosstown Shootout.
Duke taught us once again last year that you don’t have to be flawless or even the strongest team on paper to win a national title. This year’s team is carrying a similar vibe early on as a talented-but-still-growing young squad.
Cincinnati took home the Barclays Center Holiday Classic title in a great championship game. Ray has notes from that and the consolation game.
The 38th annual Great Alaska Shootout wrapped up Saturday night. The event is not what it used to be, and that’s too bad for Anchorage-and for college basketball.
An otherwise non-descript non-conference game in mid-November included one of the more tantalizing-and enjoyable-scenes we will see all of this college basketball season.
It was a quiet day in terms of final scores, but a rivalry game included a scary injury, one team could have taken the second half off on Sunday, and an Ivy League contender suffers a key loss.
We continue our look at our favorite games for every day of the season, our ultimate dream road trip through an entire college basketball season. We started on Monday with November, continued with December on Tuesday, and today we move into January:
