Monday, March 1, 2021

The Top Teams in College Basketball Today in the Style of Sports Illustrated in the 1970s

EAST:  1.  Villanova (15-4)  2.  Virginia (15-6)

MIDEAST:  1.  Michigan (18-1)  2.  Iowa (18-7)

MIDWEST:  1.  Baylor (18-1)  2.  Houston (20-3)

WEST:  1.  Gonzaga (24-0)  2.  San Diego St. (19-4)

You didn't really think Baylor was going to win at Kansas, did you?  This weekend was a disaster for anyone hoping that Kentucky would hold the all-time win record after this season is over.  Kansas is now only six wins behind, and it's not clear how many more wins Kentucky can get this year.  I had been hoping for deep runs in the SEC Tournament and the NIT, along with some bad luck for Kansas, but that doesn't seem to be happening right now.  The Cats went into this season without a point guard -- or pretty much anyone who knew how to play basketball at a high level -- and it's going to cost them.

45 comments:

  1. Baylor (18-1) and West Virginia (17-6) are locked up in a great one in Morgantown. Baylor made a layup with two seconds left to tie the game at 81 and send us into overtime.

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  2. This is one of the best games I've seen all year. It's now 88-88 with 1:15 left in OT, and WVU going to the line.

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  3. WVU makes one of two, and they lead 89-88. 1 minute left. But Baylor scores at the other end! Now the Bears lead 90-89 with 45 seconds left.

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  4. With 37 seconds to go, Baylor creates a tie-up, and the possession arrow belongs to the Bears!

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  5. With 34 seconds left, WVU fouls to send Baylor to the line on a one-and-one. It doesn't work. Baylor makes both FTs, and leads 92-89 with 34 seconds to go.

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  6. At the other end, WVU is called for a charge! That should do it.

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  7. This game featured the number-3 team (Baylor) and the number-6 team (West Virginia). The next game features the number-2 team (Michigan) hosting the number-4 team (Illinois). IT'S MARCH, PEOPLE!

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  8. Baylor wins, 94 to 89 in OT. That should be good enough for them to get a number-1 seed, even after Kansas wins the Big 12 Tournament.

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    1. Jimmy Dykes says Baylor has about four guys on its team that decide they are not walking off the floor without a win. He then said this, too, about Mississippi's center after he clapped loudly in the face of some Kentucky players. I've come to really enjoy Jimmy Dykes, and I think I would adore him as my neighbor. One of the things that has grown on me is how it seems like, every Kentucky game I see him call, that he introduces a new catchphrase and then uses it throughout that game as though it's really well-known and common throughout the sport. At first last night, I thought this catchphrase was going to be how Kentucky's defense was smart to be playing "tight" within the three-point arc (but then an Ole Miss guy who entered the game hitting 14 percent of his 3s on the season hit about three wide-open long ones). Instead, the catchphrase of the night were variations of this guy who refuses to walk off the court without a win. It's like if Joe Dean Sr. debuted "string music in Lexington K Y!" late in the first half of some UK game, said it every time James Blackmon or Jim Master hit a shot the rest of that game and then never said it again any time you heard him. (Next game, Blackmon makes a 3, and it's "rip city in horse country!" or something like that.) And I'm not making fun here; I actually do enjoy this thing about Jimmy Dykes; it's unique, and it's fun to try to guess what phrase is going to take. He seems like a very nice and gracious person, and I think he's having fun and doesn't worry about appearing silly. I have a neighbor like Jimmy Dykes, and he's great, and I think Jimmy Dykes would be a terrific neighbor, too.

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    2. I think I'd rather have Jimmy Dykes as my neighbor than as an analyst. The last time I listened to him was a few years ago, when everything was built around the idea of a nail in front of the free throw line. To this day, I still have no idea what he was talking about.

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    3. Last night on Twitter, someone said that ESPN's college basketball broadcasts are now basically podcasts, and that's certainly true of the UK games.

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    4. Right! The nail thing ... I remember that ... and never heard about it after that one game.

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  9. Michigan, which has looked so good all season, looked terrible in the first half, and they trail 33-22 at the half.

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  10. Ken Pom thought that Michigan (18-1) would beat Illinois (18-6) by a score of 78-71. Instead, the Illini crush Michigan 76-53. That is a stunning result.

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  11. K-Pom, who has been devastatingly accurate about Kentucky for most of the last two months, has the Cats losing 64-63 at Ole Miss tonight.

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    1. He was pretty close on this game. In fact, UK stayed at 53, which is pretty much where they've been since Christmas.

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  12. All through this SEC season I've been waiting for someone to really crush UK. Alabama beat them by 20, and then beat them again by 11. Tennessee beat them by 11, although UK led that game into the second half. In fact, UK led the 11-point loss against Alabama deep into the second half. They other losses were all by 7 points or less. So they've only been really dominated once, and that was by the best team in the league.

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  13. Anyway, Ole Miss may be winding up for a blowout here. The Rebels are up 10-4 at the first TV timeout.

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  14. I don't understand what happened to Keion Brooks. I thought he was on the verge of being really good.

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  15. Ole Miss 12-11 with 11:43 left in the first half.

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  16. Ole Miss hits a three. Boston throws the ball out of bounds. Mintz fouls a jump shooter. Ole Miss is up 17-11.

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  17. What's maddening is that Calipari will never tell us what really happened this year. He won't ever admit that he made any mistakes, other than "I should have coached better" or "I asked these guys to do too much." So the whole thing will just go down as a mystery.

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  18. Also, a bunch of these guys will leave -- even though they have absolutely no chance of playing pro ball -- and we'll never know why, or whether Cal tried to get them to stay. That will be a mystery, too.

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  19. And so we'll start over again next year, and we won't know if that team is any good until we're about five games into the season, and then it will be too late to do much about it.

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  20. Ole Miss up now 21-12. As I said earlier, the big question is whether Cal wants to do what it takes to win another NCAA title. He's a great coach, and he can definitely win again if that's his goal.

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  21. But what this season reminds me of, more than anything, is the later years of John Thompson's career, when Thompson had lost interest in winning and saw himself mainly as a guy who helped young men become better people. If that's where Cal is, he'll have to go somewhere else.

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  22. And if we have another year like this one, my guess is that's exactly what will happen.

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  23. Matt Jones, who's been wrong about almost everything all season, just tweeted out that this doesn't feel like a real game -- and he's right about that. I think after the Florida game, they finally accepted that they can't win, no matter what they do. They're back to doing whatever they want on offense, which means they will struggle to score 60 points.

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    1. When they play like this, people say that they're being selfish -- or that they are showing off for pro scouts. That may be true -- but how on earth can you help yourself with pro scouts when your team can't score 60 points at Ole Miss?

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  24. One final point: I don't care who coaches the team, or who plays for the team, I have an overwhelming belief that UK won't be good again until they are playing in front of a full house at Rupp. Kentucky without its fans is like iced tea without sugar.

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  25. I thought about getting on the HP last night and live blogging this game, thinking it might encourage you to take the night off from the misery--you've been such a sport about sticking with the Cats this year. But I was too lazy. It's the thought that counts, right?

    I also thought about opening a live-blog post about the game and then switching it and the TV to a live blog of a Gilmore Girls rerun. We've been watching Gilmore Girls in the evenings with the daughter over the last few weeks, and it's really great. But I decided that would be too snarky, and I didn't want to be piling on poor Devin Askew, Coach Cal, etc.

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  26. 2021 SEC Men's Basketball Championship Schedule

    FIRST ROUND:
    Wed., March 10
    7 p.m. Game 1: Seed #12 (right now, South Carolina) vs. Seed #13 (Texas A&M)

    SECOND ROUND:
    Thurs. March 11
    12 p.m. Game 2: Seed #8 (Mississippi State) vs. Seed #9 (Kentucky)
    2 p.m. Game 3:Seed #5 (Tennessee) vs. Game 1 winner
    7 p.m. Game 4: Seed #10 (Georgia) vs. Seed #7 (Missouri)
    9 p.m. Game 5: Seed #11 (Auburn) vs. Seed #6 (Mississippi)

    QUARTERFINALS:
    Fri., March 12
    12 p.m. Game 6: Seed #1 (Alabama) vs. Game 2 winner
    2 p.m. Game 7: Seed #4 (Louisiana State) vs. Game 3 winner
    7 p.m. Game 8: Seed #2 (Arkansas) vs. Game 4 winner
    9 p.m. Game 9: Seed #3 (Florida) vs. Game 5 winner

    SEMIFINALS:
    Sat., March 13
    1 p.m. Game 10: Game 6 winner vs. Game 7 winner
    3 p.m. Game 11: Game 8 winner vs. Game 9 winner

    CHAMPIONSHIP:
    Sun., March 14
    1 p.m. Game 12: Game 10 winner vs. Game 11 winner

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  27. The Conference USA tournaments start March 9. I just voted in a poll hosted on Twitter by @redtowel radio:

    Red Towel Radio @redtowelradio
    Question for today’s show:
    Is this the year the Hilltoppers break through and win the Conference USA tournament?
    3:08 PM · Mar 4, 2021·Twitter for iPhone


    There remains 22 hours of voting to go, but, right now, "Yes" is leading "No," by 96 percent to 4 percent. Mine was one of 25 votes so far.

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  28. Florida State is wearing black uniforms at Notre Dame today. I will never understand why so many teams don't want to wear their team colors. Except for Virginia Tech. I know why Virginia Tech doesn't want to wear its team colors.

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  29. For today, Senior Day at home, the last day of the regular season, Askew did not start for UK. In fact, he only played 19 minutes. The Cats rolled over South Carolina 92 to 64. They finish the season with a record of 8-9 in the SEC, and 9-15 overall. If their game with Texas A & M hadn't been cancelled, they would have gotten to .500 in the SEC.

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  30. I will never understand what he was doing with Askew this season. It wasn't good for the team, and I don't even think it was good for Askew.

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  31. Here's UK on Ken Pomeroy:

    Overall ranking: 49
    Offensive ranking: 83
    Defensive ranking: 28
    "Luck" ranking: 353

    For the year, UK shot 33.2 percent from 3-point range (203d in the country)
    For the year, UK shot 45.6 percent from 2-point range (309th in the country)

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  32. Alabama, down by six points at halftime, puts up 59 points in the second half and rolls at Georgia, 89 to 79. Crimson Tide win the SEC with a record of 16-2.

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  33. In 18 SEC games, Alabama had an offensive rating of 106.8, and a defensive rating of 91.2. That's a difference of 15.6, which is really good. Since 2002, UK has had nine teams that had a difference of more than 11 in SEC play. Three of those teams reached the Final Four, and five others reached the Elite Eight. Only the 2016 team, which had a difference of 17.0 and lost in the second round, lost early after doing so well in SEC play.

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  34. In 17 SEC games, UK had an offensive rating of 101.7, and a defensive rating of 100.0. That's a difference of 1.7, which is not good. Since 2002, only Billy Gillespie's first team -- in 2008 -- had a lower differential in SEC play. Remarkably, Gillespie was co-SEC Coach of the Year that season. The next year he had a difference of 4.4, went to the NIT and was fired.

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  35. Today, Purdue beat Indiana in men's basketball for the ninth time in a row. That is a staggering fact to me.

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  36. For the first time since 2011, Morehead State is going to the NCAA Tournament! The Eagles, who went 17-3 in the OVC this year, dominated Belmont (which had gone 18-2). I was expecting a close contest, but Morehead went 9-19 from three-point range. That sharpshooting, combined with their superior athleticism (they outrebounded Belmont 38-28) was too much for the Bruins.

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  37. Morehead won the game 86 to 71. It's very rare for the OVC final not to come down to the wire.

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  38. Since joining the OVC in 2013, Belmont has won the tournament three times: 2013, 2015, and 2020. The 2020 title did them no good, as the NCAA's were canceled. Dominating the OVC has always been harder than it looks.

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