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Thursday, November 21, 2024
Like most of the year anyway but especially now at the end of December, this is a time when football traditionally takes center stage in the Southeastern Conference. Thursday also marked the open of the conference season for SEC basketball as well, though, and an entertaining night it was.
On the second Saturday in December, the stars were out across the country in college basketball. A day that was anticipated for its matchups ended up being a showcase for some herculean individual efforts. Several players delivered huge, memorable performances that reminded us once again that the sport will never lack for talent to step up, no matter how many players leave early for the pros.
Three distinct events, all exceptional and special in their own way, led the college basketball schedule Tuesday. They were unique, poignant, just fun, or all of the above, and it’s impossible to feature mention one but not the others.
With holiday tournaments past, college basketball hits a docile stretch, a relative lull in the schedule. One filled with guarantee games, light weeks while teams take final exams, made-for-TV games, and more guarantee games.
It would be hard to find a league that had a more suspenseful and more meaningful final day of its regular season than the Atlantic Sun Conference did this year.
Temple has been one of the more schizophrenic teams in the country this year that of late has been giving us a taste of just how good it can be when right. Thus, it was only fitting that the Owls’ game against Connecticut on Thursday was a microcosm of their season.
North Florida became the latest program to blossom in the Atlantic Sun, and the Ospreys, Florida Gulf Coast and USC Upstate gave the league a solid three-team base at the top in 2014-15.
By its extremely lofty standards, this year’s Maui Invitational is rather light fare, though still one of the kings of the in-season tournaments. Maui is always a highlight of November and Thanksgiving week, dating back to its emergence in the late 1980s, and the tourney opened yesterday with quarterfinals. The best game of the four was the last one, as old WAC and Mountain West rivals San Diego State and BYU went at it good deep into the night for us on the mainland.
The Atlantic Sun had a big run in the postseason once again, showing that while the conference doesn’t get a lot of notice during the regular season, its teams can’t be dismissed when March rolls around.
It’s hard to believe, but Selection Sunday is officially less than a month away — 26 days to be precise. That means it’s separation time. The best teams throughout the nation need to raise the bar to claim a regular-season conference championship and jockey for NCAA Tournament seeding. For the […]
