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Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Watching Wisconsin this season, one gets the feeling that the Badgers could shut it down right now and cancel the rest of their regular season schedule, get some rest, get a good start on second semester homework, eat some brats on State Street, and then begin playing again in March and still be a favorite to make a Final Four run.
There may not be another game this entire college basketball season that was more predictable than last night’s interconference matchup between Cincinnati and San Diego State. As expected, the game between the Bearcats and Aztecs was an evenly matched defensive grinder.
“Anybody can beat anybody” is a cliché. It’s also being proven on a regular basis early in this college basketball season. The upsets keep coming this year, and if there’s one thing we’re learning early this college basketball season, it is that you cannot take anyone lightly. That seems to go especially for NCAA Division I newcomers and transitional members.
What looked like it should’ve been the game of the night wasn’t much of a game at all. Iowa State sometimes gets on those offensive runs at home when it looks like one of the top five teams in the country, and the Cyclones did it Thursday night in a 95-77 win over Arkansas. A game that looked to have a ton of promise coming in was never really close, and the Razorbacks were tagged with their first loss in seven games.
With November turning to December, we’re on what is easily the quietest month of the college basketball season. There are good reasons for that, of course (final exams) and not so good ones (far, far too many guarantee games).
The Big East is getting by just fine. Here is how good the Big East has been so far this year: nine of its 10 teams are so far undefeated. Villanova is 5-0. So are Providence and Creighton. Xavier and Seton Hall are 4-0. Georgetown, St. John’s and Butler are 3-0. Shoot, even DePaul is 2-0.
College basketball’s first big day of the season was really almost all we could’ve asked for. From early morning to into the night, the day offered a number of outstanding games that might already get some people thinking March. Exciting finishes, back-and-forth games, offense, defense, big schools, little schools, fantastic inbound plays-you name it, you could find it on Tuesday.
A new college basketball season is almost here, and on the occasion we are reminded yet again just how poorly this sport brings in a new season.
The Mountain West Conference didn’t quite match its performance of past seasons, but the top of the conference looked familiar and there is now some membership stability.
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.
