NCAA Hoops Recap: Sparty On!
If you have been able to pull yourself away from the World Cup action for any amount of time, you might have noticed that we are starting to get into the heart of college basketball season. Barring a few traditional match ups here and there, conference play has started.
This is the time when teams start building their resume for the chance to make it into the "big dance" come March. There will be wins, there will be loses, unexpected outcomes, and ones you saw coming from a mile away. What there definitely won't be is a lack of excitement. All roads lead to March and we are putting the pedal to the floor to get there!
Monday brought us two games in the top 25. If you had told me a month ago that Gonzaga would be 6-3 on the season and ranked #18 I probably would have laughed at you. Clearly this isn't exactly the team that we saw last year, but they still have some of the parts and I have zero doubt by the end of the season they will be ready to rock and roll.
They defeated Kent State 73 to 66 and #22 San Diego State beat Troy 60 to 55.
Tuesday brought us 8 games in the top 25. It looks like the most exciting game would have to be #17 Illinois taking down #2 Texas in overtime 85 to 78. That's one heck of an upset there. As of Tuesday Houston was still in the #1 spot and had a commanding victory over North Florida 76 to 42.
Additionally, #3 Virginia retained their ranking with a 55 to 50 win over James Madison. Hats off to unranked Wisconsin for handing #13 Maryland a 64 to 59 loss in Big 10 action.
Wednesday night we had four top 25 games. I should mention Michigan State also played on Wednesday night, but given their past performance they dropped out of the top 25 and they didn't show up in my feed. They were able to defeat Penn State who is also unranked. I honestly forgot about the game, my wife and I had a lot going on and it just slipped my mind.
I was talking to my father in law last night and he said it was a really good game. He's been watching basketball a bit longer than I have, so I will take his word for it! The final score was 67 to 58 MSU, so that tells me they might be on their way to getting the house back in order.
It's actually interesting the number of teams from the Big 10 who you would expect to be in the top 25 this year and yet they are nowhere to be found. I have no doubt they will eventually make their way there, but not yet.
There were zero upsets on Wednesday. There weren't even any close games in the top 25, the #4 Purdue, #7 Tennessee, #14 Indiana, and #5 UConn teams all took care of their opponents with little resistance.
Finally, last night there were two top 25 games played. #25 Ohio State narrowly defeated unranked Rutgers 67 to 66 and unranked Iowa took down #20 Iowa State in a 75 to 56 beat down. Well done Hawkeyes!
Tonight there is only one top 25 game being played. It's #18 Gonzaga against unranked Washington. I should point out that Washington is 7-2 on the season. Given the recent slide by Gonzaga at the beginning of the season, it isn't unbelievable to think there could be an upset. In fact, I might put some money on it!
Tonight I will likely be watching a stream of my nieces game. I think they play tonight. Tomorrow, there are 14 top 25 games on the schedule so I will likely try to catch a couple of those along with the Michigan State/Brown game. Sunday gives us four more top 25 games.
Have an awesome weekend and check back next week to see how your favorite top 25 team fared and to hear about all the upsets from the weekend.
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UVA defeated James Madison by a paltry 5 points? isn't JMU a single-A school?
Yeah, I don't think they are D1 I could be wrong though. I think my brother in law's brother in law used to work there as the wrestling coach. He is now coaching the US team in Colorado or something like that.
A number of people I went to high school went to college there. I visited the campus a couple of times. Nice looking campus but a pretty small school generally speaking. They didn't really expect to be good at sports though.
Wow, that is cool. So you almost could have went there? I've never seen the campus or been there myself.
I probably could have gone to school there if I had wanted to. JMU is not a prestigious university and I wasn't a prestigious student either. I think I was disinterested because of the fact that it was so close to where I went to high school. This eagle wanted to fly far away!
That's funny, I always thought they were kind of prestigious. I guess if you grew up around there you would definitely know better than me though!