Bozzlife: College Basketball Holiday Wrap-up

The holiday weekend has mostly been devoted to football and the NBA, but there have been some notable top 25 college basketball games over the past couple of days.

There were no games on Christmas Eve, and the Big 10 was the only conference that was active on Christmas day.

My Michigan State Spartans saw their second consecutive loss in conference play against the #9 Wisconsin Badgers. Despite their ranking my brother in law who is a college basketball guru mentioned his feeling that the Badgers are probably the best team in the Big 10.

Michigan State actually kept the game really close. Much closer than the final score would lead you to believe. As is typical, turnovers were a huge issue for the Spartans. This has been a recurring theme for the team over the past half decade or so. Longer than I can remember anyway and longer than I think is acceptable.

The Wolverines beat Nebraska and much to my chagrin it might not be long before they find themselves ranked higher than Michigan State in the polls.

I really feel that Michigan State has the potential to be a final four team, I just hope they can get all the pieces in place and all of the kinks out of the way in time.

Probably the biggest shock of Christmas day was the overtime win by unranked Minnesota over #4 Iowa. I think this speaks to my brother in laws assertion about Wisconsin. While Iowa clearly has a all-star of a player in Garza, they don't necessarily have the other pieces in place to support him.

The Badgers are a well rounded team with many key players contributing to their success. I feel like Michigan State can be a similar team with the individual talent they have at their disposal.

There were only four top 25 games the day after Christmas with the biggest shock being unranked Northwestern beating #23 Ohio State. It makes me feel a little less horrible about the Spartans losing to them this past week. It also proves that the Wildcats deserve a place in the top 25 with two wins over ranked opponents.

They may not stay there, but at least for now they definitely deserve a ranking.

Gonzaga is finally earning their #1 ranking by actually playing games and winning them in decisive fashion. They are definitely making up for lost time.

Check back tomorrow when I cover some more NFL stuff as well as some of the college bowl games that have been taking place over the past week.