jerseyshorejohnny
Well-known member
Hoop Thoughts
• Worst loss of the weekend? Easy. North Carolina’s 21-point shellacking by Louisville in the Dean Dome, the worst home loss at the school under Roy Williams. The lack of competitive toughness was striking for a team with this much talent. I’ve always thought that no one coaches effort better than Williams, so I know that performance really sticks in his craw. If Williams’ players want to understand what a culture built on toughness looks like, then the Cardinals gave them a great illustration. Chris Mack is bringing a Xavier attitude to the Ville, and when he brings in truly elite recruits, it will be something to behold. Keep in mind that in its previous game, Louisville lost at Pitt, allowing the Panthers to snap their 23-game losing streak in the ACC. The Cardinals played angry.
• I can’t remember a bigger turnaround by a first-year coach than what Kermit Davis is pulling off at Ole Miss. Davis inherited a team that won 12 games last season and finished 5-13 in the SEC. The media picked the Rebels to finish dead last in the league. Yet last week they knocked off two ranked teams – Auburn at home, Mississippi State on the road – to improve to 13-2 on the season and 3-0 in the SEC. The win over the Bulldogs was especially sweet for Davis given that he grew up in Starkville, his father coached at MSU from 1970 to ’77 and Kermit played at MSU (and started his coaching career there).
• That sure was a big win Kansas State got at Iowa State on Saturday. Not only was it a dramatic road victory against a good team, but it marked the return of the Wildcats’ leading scorer and rebounder, 6-8 senior forward Dean Wade, who had missed the previous six games with a foot injury. Wade had nine rebounds in just 22 minutes. Kansas State lost two games without Wade (home to Texas, at Texas Tech), but the selection committee won’t hold that against the Wildcats if they continue to show they are tournament-worthy with Wade in the lineup.
• I have no idea what the Florida fans behind Tennessee’s bench were saying to the players – I’m sure it was bad – but I do believe that it was a bad decision for the players to do the Gator chomp after their win in Gainesville on Saturday. The best way to shut the fans up is to win the game, which is exactly what the Vols did. No need to invite bad karma into the locker room.
• The biggest shot of the weekend was obviously Duke freshman Cam Reddish’s game-winning 3 against Florida State. As everyone knows, Reddish had really been struggling, shooting 18.6 percent (16 percent from 3) over his previous five games. It’s not a coincidence that Reddish had his breakout in a game where Zion Williamson didn’t play the last 21 minutes after getting poked in the eye. Reddish has had a hard time being the third wheel in the Blue Devils’ offense, but this should prove to him that he doesn’t need to think of himself that way. If that shot gives him the confidence to be more effective moving forward, then Duke is going to get a lot better, which is a scary thought.
• By the way, as someone who has advocated getting rid of all monitor reviews, I must point out that Reddish’s shot was preceded by a review that correctly reversed the call awarding Florida State the ball following R.J. Barrett’s missed free throw. This is one of those rare instances when an official blatantly missed a call that would have had a direct impact on the outcome of a game. I still say this does not happen enough to warrant all the delays that replays cause, but they do happen.
• While I’m at it, let me also acknowledge that although I also argue that teams should foul when they are up by three points with under six seconds to play, that strategy backfired when Oregon tried it in the final seconds of its home game against UCLA last Thursday. Not only did the Bruins get the ball back and tie it following the intentionally missed free throw, but they also could have won the game in regulation but for the missed free throw attempt by freshman forward Chris Smith. UCLA won in overtime.
• Gonzaga got an impressive win at San Francisco late on Saturday, finishing with a 17-2 run. The best news for the Zags was that 6-10 junior forward Killian Tillie had 14 points, six rebounds, three blocks and three assists in 19 minutes off the bench. It was Tillie’s third game back since recovering from a leg injury. Tillie and the Zags will only get better as he continues to work his way back into shape.
• Baylor, meanwhile, got bad news last week when its second-leading scorer, 6-9 sophomore forward Tristan Clark, had season-ending knee surgery. Clark was leading the country in field goal percentage. Without him, it’s quite the tough climb for Baylor to reach the NCAA Tournament out of this bear of a league.
• It sucks seeing TCU point guard Jaylen Fisher continue to struggle with that knee injury. The 6-2 junior missed nearly half of last season because of a meniscus tear, and he has missed the Horned Frogs’ last three games with swelling in the same knee. TCU lost two of those three games, and its only other loss came at home to Lipscomb when Fisher played seven minutes after he missed the first three games. So you can see how important he is to this team. There is no indication from TCU as to when Fisher might return.
• Though the Bruins lost at Oregon State on Sunday night, how about Murry Bartow starting 3-0 as the interim coach at UCLA? I had forgotten Bartow was also the interim head coach at South Florida after Orlando Antigua got fired in January 2017. I’m sure Bartow has no shot at getting the job, but there’s enough talent on this team to win the Pac-12 tournament and play in the NCAA Tournament. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
• Ohio State is gonna keep seeing a lot of zone until the Buckeyes prove they can solve it.
• N.C. State’s comeback win over Pitt was especially impressive given that the Wolfpack’s starting point guard, Markell Johnson, took a hard fall and did not play in the second half. And the Pack’s starting power forward, 6-9 senior Wyatt Walker, was ejected early in the first half for a flagrant foul. That’s mental toughness, folks.
• With its win over Wichita State on Saturday, Houston extended the nation’s longest homecourt win streak to 29 games. Just making sure you knew.
• St. John’s shouldn’t be hurt too badly in the eyes of the selection committee by its loss at DePaul given that Shamorie Ponds sat out the game with a strained lower back. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear Ponds will be out for too long.
• Tell you what, the Big East must be damn good if Providence is in last place with a 0-3 record. I’m not sure there are any great teams in this league, but there are definitely no bad ones.
• This is quickly becoming a season to forget for Bob Huggins. Not only is West Virginia still without the school’s all-time shot blocker, Sagaba Konate, who has missed the last nine games with a knee injury, but Huggins also didn’t play two of his starters, Wesley Harris and Esa Ahmad, a single minute during Saturday’s home loss to Oklahoma State. The Mountaineers are 0-4 in the Big 12, and it appears they will miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.
• I don’t even know what to say about Syracuse anymore. I gave the Orange my coveted Buy Plus rating in the Hoop Thoughts Stock Report, but on Saturday they lost by 14 points at home to Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets overpowered Syracuse on the inside, and Syracuse made things worse by – again – shooting poorly from outside. Tyus Battle is 4-of-21 from 3 over his last six games. Oh, and they get to play at Duke on Monday night. Good times.
• Sneaky good win by a sneaky good team: LSU beat Arkansas in overtime on the road on Saturday to improve to 2-0 in the SEC. Don’t sleep on the Tigers.
• In doling out free advice to game analysts, allow me to channel my inner Aaron Burr and say: Talk less. Smile more. Nobody ever turned off a game and said, “I wish the announcers talked more.”
• Oh, and TV directors please stop cutting away from the court during the late stages of close games. We don’t need to see a coach or a player or a fan reacting to the action. We need to see the action. I am continually amazed at how often directors commit turnovers in these situations.
• I’ll say it again: Washington is the best team in the Pac-12. The Huskies beat Utah on the road by 16 points last week. They have Cal and Stanford at home this week, so I like their chances to be 5-0 in the league. I know the Pac-12 is bad, but trust me, these guys are good. Remember, they took Gonzaga to the final possession in Spokane back on Dec. 5 before losing by two.
• Have you made a point to watch Ja Morant? He had a career-high 18 assists last week in Murray State’s win over Tennessee-Martin. Think about that. Do you know hard it is to get 18 assists in a game – a college game, no less? He also had 26 points on 14 shots. Plus he did this. It’s a wonderful time to be alive.
• So when a coach gets angry and throws off his suit coat, he has to leave it off for the whole game, right? Even if it happened in the first half? I believe that is one of Naismith’s Original 13 Rules.
• There are plenty of reasons why Arizona State has been so inconsistent (the Sun Devils lost at Stanford by 14 on Saturday night to fall to 2-2 in the Pac-12), and one of them is the way 6-4 freshman guard Luegentz Dort has come down to earth. The Canadian scored 20 or more points four times in four of his first eight games, but he hasn’t done it once in his last eight. That includes scoring just six points on 1-of-8 shooting in a home loss to Princeton in late December. It’s a little early to be hitting that freshman wall, me thinks.
• Marquette guard Markus Howard, who obviously taught Luka Doncic that stepback move, put in the performance of the season when he went for 53 points in last Wednesday’s overtime win at Creighton. But that game should not have gone into OT because replays showed that Sam Hauser’s game-tying 3 came just after the clock hit 0.0. The refs didn’t think the replay was conclusive enough, but I disagree. Great win, though.
• I am always tickled when a guy makes a basket and then goes back downcourt, claps his hand and exhorts his teammates to play tough defense. Everybody gets pumped up when the ball goes through the hoop.
• I also love when during a key late possession a coach comes out of a timeout playing a different defense than the one his team had been playing before the break. He knows the other coach has drawn up a play against the wrong defense.
Chess matches complete me.
Five games I’m psyched to see this week
Iowa State at Texas Tech, 9 p.m. ET Wednesday, ESPNU. Iowa State’s big win over Kansas is so last week. The Cyclones have lost two straight, and it’s going to take quite an effort to avoid a third. The Red Raiders continue to lead the country in defensive efficiency, and on Saturday they got their first win at Texas since 1996.
Michigan State at Nebraska, 8 p.m. Thursday, FS1. Nebraska has won a school-record-tying 20 straight at home. Setting the record won’t be easy against a team that is playing great basketball. Nebraska also plays at Indiana on Monday night, so this is a big week for a team that has lost two of its last three.
Indiana at Purdue, 2 p.m. Saturday, Fox. This is always a fun rivalry, but it’s especially delightful when it puts two gifted offensive guards against each other in Carsen Edwards and Romeo Langford.
Kentucky at Auburn, 4 p.m. Saturday, ESPN. Both have had some stumbles, but they are still two of the top three teams in the SEC. It has been a long time since a game at Auburn was this highly anticipated. The Tigers need to make some outside shots against a team that continues to have problems defending the 3-point line. It would also be wise for the Wildcats to avoid another slow start. They’re not playing Texas A&M or Vanderbilt in this one.
Virginia at Duke, 6 p.m. Saturday, ESPN. This game is why God invented college basketball. Not only does it involve two of the top teams in the country but also two completely different ways to play the game – and in Cameron Indoor Stadium, no less. Much of the narrative will focus on how the Cavs will defend those alpha males, but in case you haven’t noticed the Blue Devils play some pretty mean defense, too.
This week’s AP ballot
(Last week’s rank on my ballot in parentheses)
Tennessee (1)
Duke (2)
Michigan (3)
Virginia (4)
Michigan State (5)
Gonzaga (6)
Kansas (7)
Texas Tech (9)
Virginia Tech (8)
Florida State (11)
Nevada (12)
Kentucky (13)
Marquette (17)
Oklahoma (21)
N.C. State (18)
Ole Miss (NR)
Auburn (10)
Louisville (NR)
North Carolina (14)
Maryland (NR)
Villanova (NR)
St. John’s (16)
Buffalo (23)
Washington (NR)
Murray State (NR)
Dropped out: Ohio State (15), Mississippi State (19), Iowa State (20), Houston (22), Minnesota (24), Seton Hall (25)
We have reached the time of year where the second half of the ballot becomes a weekly jumble. The transitive property is no longer proper. For example, what to do with an N.C. State that lost to North Carolina, which lost to Louisville, which lost to Pitt, which lost to … N.C. State? This all happened a few days apart. Some of it comes down to the voter’s gut. Who do I think is better? That’s the lovely subjectivity at play.
If you had told me last fall that by the middle of January I’d have Ole Miss in my top 20, I’d have said you were wackier than Marshall Henderson after a bad night’s sleep. The Rebels’ record is impressive, but until last week it was hard to take them too seriously because their best win came on a neutral court against Baylor back in November. But Ole Miss announced itself in grand style last week. I know its win over Auburn was at home, but I still felt Ole Miss deserved to be ranked ahead of the Tigers. That drove my decision on where to place the Rebels as much as anything. Mississippi State, meanwhile, deserved to be dropped for losing at home to Ole Miss and before that in overtime at South Carolina. That leaves the Bulldogs without a win over a top-30 KenPom team.
I left St. John’s on my ballot because the loss to De Paul came without Shamorie Ponds, and also because it looks as if he’ll be back soon. Plus, I frankly had a hard time finding teams I wanted to rank at that point. Washington doesn’t have any great wins, but it has some really good losses, not just the close shave at Gonzaga but also neutral-court losses to Minnesota (by two) and Virginia Tech (12). If I’m saying I think the Huskies are a good team, I should back it up.
I don’t know if I’ve even looked at Murray State all season to see whether I should rank it, but when I did, I noticed that the Racers’ two losses were road games, at Alabama and Auburn. The 4-0 start in the OVC plus Ja Morant adds up to No. 25. I also looked at Indiana and Purdue for the final spot, but because I took the Hoosiers off my ballot last week, it didn’t make much sense to add them following a week in which they lost two games – even though both came on the road against Michigan and Maryland. Purdue was close courtesy of home wins over Maryland and Iowa (by 16), and even though Wisconsin has been wobbly of late, it is still not easy to beat the Badgers in Madison as the Boilermakers did on Friday night in overtime. They were close, but didn’t quite make it.
I know there is a lot of sentiment to rank Iowa, but every time I examine the schedule, the Hawkeyes come up just short. They have home wins over Iowa State, Nebraska and Northwestern, none of which are on my ballot. The Hawkeyes play Michigan State at home a week from Thursday. I think they’re a good team, but this is precious real estate here. You’ve go to earn your way onto my ballot.
See ya next week, Hoopheads.
• Worst loss of the weekend? Easy. North Carolina’s 21-point shellacking by Louisville in the Dean Dome, the worst home loss at the school under Roy Williams. The lack of competitive toughness was striking for a team with this much talent. I’ve always thought that no one coaches effort better than Williams, so I know that performance really sticks in his craw. If Williams’ players want to understand what a culture built on toughness looks like, then the Cardinals gave them a great illustration. Chris Mack is bringing a Xavier attitude to the Ville, and when he brings in truly elite recruits, it will be something to behold. Keep in mind that in its previous game, Louisville lost at Pitt, allowing the Panthers to snap their 23-game losing streak in the ACC. The Cardinals played angry.
• I can’t remember a bigger turnaround by a first-year coach than what Kermit Davis is pulling off at Ole Miss. Davis inherited a team that won 12 games last season and finished 5-13 in the SEC. The media picked the Rebels to finish dead last in the league. Yet last week they knocked off two ranked teams – Auburn at home, Mississippi State on the road – to improve to 13-2 on the season and 3-0 in the SEC. The win over the Bulldogs was especially sweet for Davis given that he grew up in Starkville, his father coached at MSU from 1970 to ’77 and Kermit played at MSU (and started his coaching career there).
• That sure was a big win Kansas State got at Iowa State on Saturday. Not only was it a dramatic road victory against a good team, but it marked the return of the Wildcats’ leading scorer and rebounder, 6-8 senior forward Dean Wade, who had missed the previous six games with a foot injury. Wade had nine rebounds in just 22 minutes. Kansas State lost two games without Wade (home to Texas, at Texas Tech), but the selection committee won’t hold that against the Wildcats if they continue to show they are tournament-worthy with Wade in the lineup.
• I have no idea what the Florida fans behind Tennessee’s bench were saying to the players – I’m sure it was bad – but I do believe that it was a bad decision for the players to do the Gator chomp after their win in Gainesville on Saturday. The best way to shut the fans up is to win the game, which is exactly what the Vols did. No need to invite bad karma into the locker room.
• The biggest shot of the weekend was obviously Duke freshman Cam Reddish’s game-winning 3 against Florida State. As everyone knows, Reddish had really been struggling, shooting 18.6 percent (16 percent from 3) over his previous five games. It’s not a coincidence that Reddish had his breakout in a game where Zion Williamson didn’t play the last 21 minutes after getting poked in the eye. Reddish has had a hard time being the third wheel in the Blue Devils’ offense, but this should prove to him that he doesn’t need to think of himself that way. If that shot gives him the confidence to be more effective moving forward, then Duke is going to get a lot better, which is a scary thought.
• By the way, as someone who has advocated getting rid of all monitor reviews, I must point out that Reddish’s shot was preceded by a review that correctly reversed the call awarding Florida State the ball following R.J. Barrett’s missed free throw. This is one of those rare instances when an official blatantly missed a call that would have had a direct impact on the outcome of a game. I still say this does not happen enough to warrant all the delays that replays cause, but they do happen.
• While I’m at it, let me also acknowledge that although I also argue that teams should foul when they are up by three points with under six seconds to play, that strategy backfired when Oregon tried it in the final seconds of its home game against UCLA last Thursday. Not only did the Bruins get the ball back and tie it following the intentionally missed free throw, but they also could have won the game in regulation but for the missed free throw attempt by freshman forward Chris Smith. UCLA won in overtime.
• Gonzaga got an impressive win at San Francisco late on Saturday, finishing with a 17-2 run. The best news for the Zags was that 6-10 junior forward Killian Tillie had 14 points, six rebounds, three blocks and three assists in 19 minutes off the bench. It was Tillie’s third game back since recovering from a leg injury. Tillie and the Zags will only get better as he continues to work his way back into shape.
• Baylor, meanwhile, got bad news last week when its second-leading scorer, 6-9 sophomore forward Tristan Clark, had season-ending knee surgery. Clark was leading the country in field goal percentage. Without him, it’s quite the tough climb for Baylor to reach the NCAA Tournament out of this bear of a league.
• It sucks seeing TCU point guard Jaylen Fisher continue to struggle with that knee injury. The 6-2 junior missed nearly half of last season because of a meniscus tear, and he has missed the Horned Frogs’ last three games with swelling in the same knee. TCU lost two of those three games, and its only other loss came at home to Lipscomb when Fisher played seven minutes after he missed the first three games. So you can see how important he is to this team. There is no indication from TCU as to when Fisher might return.
• Though the Bruins lost at Oregon State on Sunday night, how about Murry Bartow starting 3-0 as the interim coach at UCLA? I had forgotten Bartow was also the interim head coach at South Florida after Orlando Antigua got fired in January 2017. I’m sure Bartow has no shot at getting the job, but there’s enough talent on this team to win the Pac-12 tournament and play in the NCAA Tournament. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
• Ohio State is gonna keep seeing a lot of zone until the Buckeyes prove they can solve it.
• N.C. State’s comeback win over Pitt was especially impressive given that the Wolfpack’s starting point guard, Markell Johnson, took a hard fall and did not play in the second half. And the Pack’s starting power forward, 6-9 senior Wyatt Walker, was ejected early in the first half for a flagrant foul. That’s mental toughness, folks.
• With its win over Wichita State on Saturday, Houston extended the nation’s longest homecourt win streak to 29 games. Just making sure you knew.
• St. John’s shouldn’t be hurt too badly in the eyes of the selection committee by its loss at DePaul given that Shamorie Ponds sat out the game with a strained lower back. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear Ponds will be out for too long.
• Tell you what, the Big East must be damn good if Providence is in last place with a 0-3 record. I’m not sure there are any great teams in this league, but there are definitely no bad ones.
• This is quickly becoming a season to forget for Bob Huggins. Not only is West Virginia still without the school’s all-time shot blocker, Sagaba Konate, who has missed the last nine games with a knee injury, but Huggins also didn’t play two of his starters, Wesley Harris and Esa Ahmad, a single minute during Saturday’s home loss to Oklahoma State. The Mountaineers are 0-4 in the Big 12, and it appears they will miss the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.
• I don’t even know what to say about Syracuse anymore. I gave the Orange my coveted Buy Plus rating in the Hoop Thoughts Stock Report, but on Saturday they lost by 14 points at home to Georgia Tech. The Yellow Jackets overpowered Syracuse on the inside, and Syracuse made things worse by – again – shooting poorly from outside. Tyus Battle is 4-of-21 from 3 over his last six games. Oh, and they get to play at Duke on Monday night. Good times.
• Sneaky good win by a sneaky good team: LSU beat Arkansas in overtime on the road on Saturday to improve to 2-0 in the SEC. Don’t sleep on the Tigers.
• In doling out free advice to game analysts, allow me to channel my inner Aaron Burr and say: Talk less. Smile more. Nobody ever turned off a game and said, “I wish the announcers talked more.”
• Oh, and TV directors please stop cutting away from the court during the late stages of close games. We don’t need to see a coach or a player or a fan reacting to the action. We need to see the action. I am continually amazed at how often directors commit turnovers in these situations.
• I’ll say it again: Washington is the best team in the Pac-12. The Huskies beat Utah on the road by 16 points last week. They have Cal and Stanford at home this week, so I like their chances to be 5-0 in the league. I know the Pac-12 is bad, but trust me, these guys are good. Remember, they took Gonzaga to the final possession in Spokane back on Dec. 5 before losing by two.
• Have you made a point to watch Ja Morant? He had a career-high 18 assists last week in Murray State’s win over Tennessee-Martin. Think about that. Do you know hard it is to get 18 assists in a game – a college game, no less? He also had 26 points on 14 shots. Plus he did this. It’s a wonderful time to be alive.
• So when a coach gets angry and throws off his suit coat, he has to leave it off for the whole game, right? Even if it happened in the first half? I believe that is one of Naismith’s Original 13 Rules.
• There are plenty of reasons why Arizona State has been so inconsistent (the Sun Devils lost at Stanford by 14 on Saturday night to fall to 2-2 in the Pac-12), and one of them is the way 6-4 freshman guard Luegentz Dort has come down to earth. The Canadian scored 20 or more points four times in four of his first eight games, but he hasn’t done it once in his last eight. That includes scoring just six points on 1-of-8 shooting in a home loss to Princeton in late December. It’s a little early to be hitting that freshman wall, me thinks.
• Marquette guard Markus Howard, who obviously taught Luka Doncic that stepback move, put in the performance of the season when he went for 53 points in last Wednesday’s overtime win at Creighton. But that game should not have gone into OT because replays showed that Sam Hauser’s game-tying 3 came just after the clock hit 0.0. The refs didn’t think the replay was conclusive enough, but I disagree. Great win, though.
• I am always tickled when a guy makes a basket and then goes back downcourt, claps his hand and exhorts his teammates to play tough defense. Everybody gets pumped up when the ball goes through the hoop.
• I also love when during a key late possession a coach comes out of a timeout playing a different defense than the one his team had been playing before the break. He knows the other coach has drawn up a play against the wrong defense.
Chess matches complete me.
Five games I’m psyched to see this week
Iowa State at Texas Tech, 9 p.m. ET Wednesday, ESPNU. Iowa State’s big win over Kansas is so last week. The Cyclones have lost two straight, and it’s going to take quite an effort to avoid a third. The Red Raiders continue to lead the country in defensive efficiency, and on Saturday they got their first win at Texas since 1996.
Michigan State at Nebraska, 8 p.m. Thursday, FS1. Nebraska has won a school-record-tying 20 straight at home. Setting the record won’t be easy against a team that is playing great basketball. Nebraska also plays at Indiana on Monday night, so this is a big week for a team that has lost two of its last three.
Indiana at Purdue, 2 p.m. Saturday, Fox. This is always a fun rivalry, but it’s especially delightful when it puts two gifted offensive guards against each other in Carsen Edwards and Romeo Langford.
Kentucky at Auburn, 4 p.m. Saturday, ESPN. Both have had some stumbles, but they are still two of the top three teams in the SEC. It has been a long time since a game at Auburn was this highly anticipated. The Tigers need to make some outside shots against a team that continues to have problems defending the 3-point line. It would also be wise for the Wildcats to avoid another slow start. They’re not playing Texas A&M or Vanderbilt in this one.
Virginia at Duke, 6 p.m. Saturday, ESPN. This game is why God invented college basketball. Not only does it involve two of the top teams in the country but also two completely different ways to play the game – and in Cameron Indoor Stadium, no less. Much of the narrative will focus on how the Cavs will defend those alpha males, but in case you haven’t noticed the Blue Devils play some pretty mean defense, too.
This week’s AP ballot
(Last week’s rank on my ballot in parentheses)
Tennessee (1)
Duke (2)
Michigan (3)
Virginia (4)
Michigan State (5)
Gonzaga (6)
Kansas (7)
Texas Tech (9)
Virginia Tech (8)
Florida State (11)
Nevada (12)
Kentucky (13)
Marquette (17)
Oklahoma (21)
N.C. State (18)
Ole Miss (NR)
Auburn (10)
Louisville (NR)
North Carolina (14)
Maryland (NR)
Villanova (NR)
St. John’s (16)
Buffalo (23)
Washington (NR)
Murray State (NR)
Dropped out: Ohio State (15), Mississippi State (19), Iowa State (20), Houston (22), Minnesota (24), Seton Hall (25)
We have reached the time of year where the second half of the ballot becomes a weekly jumble. The transitive property is no longer proper. For example, what to do with an N.C. State that lost to North Carolina, which lost to Louisville, which lost to Pitt, which lost to … N.C. State? This all happened a few days apart. Some of it comes down to the voter’s gut. Who do I think is better? That’s the lovely subjectivity at play.
If you had told me last fall that by the middle of January I’d have Ole Miss in my top 20, I’d have said you were wackier than Marshall Henderson after a bad night’s sleep. The Rebels’ record is impressive, but until last week it was hard to take them too seriously because their best win came on a neutral court against Baylor back in November. But Ole Miss announced itself in grand style last week. I know its win over Auburn was at home, but I still felt Ole Miss deserved to be ranked ahead of the Tigers. That drove my decision on where to place the Rebels as much as anything. Mississippi State, meanwhile, deserved to be dropped for losing at home to Ole Miss and before that in overtime at South Carolina. That leaves the Bulldogs without a win over a top-30 KenPom team.
I left St. John’s on my ballot because the loss to De Paul came without Shamorie Ponds, and also because it looks as if he’ll be back soon. Plus, I frankly had a hard time finding teams I wanted to rank at that point. Washington doesn’t have any great wins, but it has some really good losses, not just the close shave at Gonzaga but also neutral-court losses to Minnesota (by two) and Virginia Tech (12). If I’m saying I think the Huskies are a good team, I should back it up.
I don’t know if I’ve even looked at Murray State all season to see whether I should rank it, but when I did, I noticed that the Racers’ two losses were road games, at Alabama and Auburn. The 4-0 start in the OVC plus Ja Morant adds up to No. 25. I also looked at Indiana and Purdue for the final spot, but because I took the Hoosiers off my ballot last week, it didn’t make much sense to add them following a week in which they lost two games – even though both came on the road against Michigan and Maryland. Purdue was close courtesy of home wins over Maryland and Iowa (by 16), and even though Wisconsin has been wobbly of late, it is still not easy to beat the Badgers in Madison as the Boilermakers did on Friday night in overtime. They were close, but didn’t quite make it.
I know there is a lot of sentiment to rank Iowa, but every time I examine the schedule, the Hawkeyes come up just short. They have home wins over Iowa State, Nebraska and Northwestern, none of which are on my ballot. The Hawkeyes play Michigan State at home a week from Thursday. I think they’re a good team, but this is precious real estate here. You’ve go to earn your way onto my ballot.
See ya next week, Hoopheads.
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