Your Home For College Hoops
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
North and south, east and west, there were high-level games and fantastic finishes last night. We’ve still got more than a month yet until we get to March-including a Leap Year day-but it felt like a snapshot from the greatest basketball month of the year.
On Monday, Oklahoma ascended to the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press Top 25 poll for the first time in 26 years. The Sooners’ stay there will almost certainly be a short one.
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.
Just over a week ago, UCLA was losing to Wake Forest in the Maui Invitational for its second loss in two days. Just under three weeks ago, the Bruins lost at home to Monmouth in their season opener. After last night, though, UCLA now holds one of the true trump cards that likely any team will hold all season.
The ACC just might be ready to become the juggernaut it was expected to become. Plus more tournament action, including finals set, and one team with potentially another significant injury.
Thanksgiving Day traditionally hasn’t been a hotbed for college basketball, but in recent years the sport has had an increasing presence on the day, with the continued proliferation of exempted tournaments. (And that’s not an all bad thing, considering the lackluster quality of the NFL games yesterday…)
You can go a long time in this college basketball season and not have a better day of games than Tuesday provided, as the day was loaded with power matchups, revivals of rivalries, and just plain good games that were worthy of the national platforms they were provided, even if played at times that were the furthest thing from prime time.
Brad Stevens and Shaka Smart once seemed they might be long-tenured at their schools when both were consistently spurning numerous job offers despite repeated opportunities to move on to bigger (paying) things. A couple years later, though, both are gone now to new challenges.
Calm in the face of daunting situations. Both Robert Morris and Dayton had it Wednesday night, and as a result, both are moving on in the NCAA Tournament.
Conference tournaments are well underway, and one in particular is living up to what the regular season led us to expect. Plus a big program is hit by the NCAA, and the coaching carousel has started for this year.
