Your Home For College Hoops
Monday, December 23, 2024
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.
More early impressions are being formed as conference play continues, especially in the SEC and Big Ten. Plus a big road win in the Big 12, a big blow to the Fighting Irish, and a good coach gets in the news for a bad reason once again.
A Big Ten team squeaked one out to avoid another blemish to a non-conference resume that still needs some improving. Plus a light night featured a few close ones, and a school takes its own legal action to counter that of a former coach.
Mike Hopkins gets his first signature win as a head coach, but a big takeaway is that his team is getting better. Plus a couple of upsets and a few near misses, a game gets canceled, and an Eagle is done for the season.
Frank Martin is a heck of an accomplished coach, as well as one of the true personalities in college basketball these days, and he’s deservingly recognized for both. He also is a coach who sees the big picture, far more than most like him, and for that many who enjoy this sport should be grateful.
It’s become almost a yearly occurrence now that Scott Drew’s Baylor squads are underrated heading into a season. The Bears perennially are undersold. They don’t have blueblood status steeped in decades of tradition. They just may not ‘look’ like a top 20 team in a modern game that values guards upon guards and has little use for teams defined by a quirky defense. Maybe it’s just the bad highlighter uniforms. Whatever the reason, it’s an error that needs to be corrected.
We may be barely a week into the college basketball season, but it’s not hard to make an argument that a number of teams and conferences just might be already entering the most important 7-10 days in their regular seasons.
It doesn’t matter how realistic television sets get, or how much fun it might be to follow social media feeds during a sporting event. There is no substitution for being there. And never will be. With that, we present our ultimate road trip for the season if we could have one.
Caleb Swanigan and Purdue’s backcourt answered major questions in resounding fashion in 2016-17, leading the Boilermakers to a Big Ten title.
For an event that started with a relative thud by its lofty standards, the 79th NCAA Tournament sure has made up some ground as it hits the homestretch, and it will culminate this coming weekend with one of the more fascinating Final Four quartets in some time,
