Shifting our Focus
With only one college bowl game left to be played (the national championship), now is a good time to shift our focus to basketball (unless you are an LSU or Clemson fan).
As I have mentioned in some of my posts before, this has been a crazy year for college basketball. I have seen so many changes in the rankings and underdog wins from unranked teams, and it has been fantastic! As of this week there have been no less than six teams that have occupied the number one spot and I think the longest streak of holding #1 stands at two weeks.
This tells me that there is a very even playing field out there. No one or two teams are rising to the top as the definite favorite for the tournament in March. In fact, I think we are going to see a huge variation of brackets filled out this year. Some people who normally only fill out one, might choose to fill out two brackets just to hedge their bets.
I know there is still a lot of ball to be played before March, and I for one hope it continues to be as exciting as these past two months.
Speaking of underdog victories, this one blew me away on Friday night. Ohio State has a pretty fantastic team this year and the fact that they were beaten by an unranked Badgers team is a good sign. Especially for the other teams in the Big 10.
Saturday saw a large number of top 25 teams hitting the court. The Indiana/Maryland game started out pretty close, but Maryland eventually ran away with the victory. Georgia beating #9 Memphis was another surprise for me. I do love upsets as long as it doesn't involve one of my favorite teams.
Florida State taking out Louisville is another great upset that happened this weekend. Louisville has a good team and they gave an exciting showing against Kentucky. The fact that they were beaten so badly by Florida State tells me it might have just been an off game for them. I'd still keep my eye on Florida State...
Unranked Marquette taking out Villanova was another highlight of the weekend. As I said before, baring injuries and other collapses from teams, I think there is going to be a healthy pool of teams playing in the first 64 games of the tournament.
The Iowa/Penn State game came right down to the wire and was as exciting as I expected it to be. Utah gave Oregon a run for their money as did Pepperdine against #1 Gonzaga. I think even if these are just flash in the pan performances from these unranked teams, it still shows that the big guns have weaknesses that can and will be exploited by evenly matched teams.
I wonder if you can guess which game I was excited about all weekend. That's right, the Michigan vs. Michigan State game was the highlight of my weekend. I knew it was going to be a tough game, but it was exciting to see the Spartans basically wipe the floor with Michigan. They still have a lot of stuff to work on. Turn overs have plagued them for the last five seasons, but when they are clicking on all cylinders they are awesome. Winston was nothing short of magic having a career high scoring game. From what I can see, State has some weapons on the bench that are hopefully going to take them far into the tournament this year.