Your Home For College Hoops
Sunday, December 22, 2024
The NCAA released its first-ever NET rankings on Monday, showing off its new grouping tool to replace the RPI. To absolutely zero surprise, many still aren’t happy. Plus, Texas Southern gets another stunner, Gonzaga to No. 1, Nebraska gets a road win and Wofford gets an SEC scalp.
It’s an unfortunate fact of the current college hoops climate that schools like Northeastern taking on an Alabama are facing a must-win in mid-November, but the Huskies capitalized big.
Road teams ruled the games on tap in the Gavitt Tipoff Games, which has quietly become a nice early season event. Plus no surprise with a couple of SEC home wins, a close call with another SEC team’s flight, and one Blackbird had a really nice night to continue a good start.
A busy night featured several mid-majors picking up nice road wins against high-major opponents. Plus a busy night in the SEC sees a few teams pull their games out, some good mid-major matchups were on tap, and the NCAA looms large at two schools.
Presenting our now-annual list of 20 teams we’re watching this season, an open-ended wide view of nation with teams we think are on the way up, might face pivotal seasons, or we just plain enjoy watching.
What wasn’t a bad year for the CAA had a tough ending as only one team saw any form of postseason play.
As Championship Week heats up, we talk about bubble teams who may or may not want to earn their way into the NCAA Tournament, as well as a couple of mid-majors whose conference championship game was played earlier in the week.
By its own lofty standards, the Big Ten has had a rather lousy basketball season. It’s hard to have much sympathy for a conference that practically prints money, but one supposes the league deserved a night like Thursday for its troubles this year.
The Pac-12 appears to be hyper-competitive, but after its schools’ non-conference showing, is that a good thing? Plus two teams stand out early in the Horizon, surprising results in two other leagues, and a couple of Big Ten teams take personnel hits.
The first three days of the college basketball season have been largely uneventful, not surprising when schedules are littered with endless guarantee games and schools seemingly have little interest in even playing at all so early in November. Here are some quick-hit notes looking around the country after the first weekend of regular season hoops:
