The Boubacar 2/14/2008 (Streak Stopper Edition)PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- If you're an eagle-eyed reader, or just someone who can see things that are orange against a tan background, you have likely noticed the new Welmer-Whelliston Widget™ on the right side of the page.
And the best part of this? It's all for charity. OK, so it's not. I'm keeping all the money. But the widget is updated in real time, every night. Welmer leads by 14 now (just wait until my 25 games in seven days during Championship Week, though), and he was at Northwestern calling a Big Ten game while I was sick at home on the couch watching hoops on TV, The Official Wife of the Mid-Majority™ feeding me cocktails of NyQuil and Dasani. I don't know how he does it, stays on his feet all season. I need him to refer me to his general practitioner.
The incredible part of all of this is that Drake is still three games up on the field, and the Bulldogs' RPI is still in the Top 10. (They didn't lose much juice in The State index either, thanks for asking.) There's still a little bit of wiggle room left before this team stops feeling NCAA-safe going into St. Louis next month. But if they drop the game in Northern Iowa this weekend, there will likely be an increased level of hackling from the naysayers.
I made the ridiculous claim in my ESPN chat yesterday that Xavier would torch Charlotte for 90, but the X (21-4, 9-1) ended up behind in the first half and finally barely surviving 62-60 to win its ninth straight. The Musketeers are still a couple games clear and NCAA-safe by all counts, but there's a teeming mass of basketball humanity below. Saint Joe's (7-3) broke a two-game road slide by trashing St. Bona at home, and Temple (6-3) outran Rhode Island (6-4) 92-89 in the third-place battle (told you free throws would hurt this team... 67 percent last night). URI has the best player in the conference in Will Daniels and seven more wins overall than the Owls, but that's the way the A-14 goes these days. The lower part of the second tier is getting very crowded indeed. Look at Saint Louis, a punching-bag of the national media for scoring 20 points against George Washington last month... they avenged that by holding GW to 38 last night. The Billikens are 5-5, and in the hunt, baby! And aside from the X, you could say that Duquesne is the conference's second-hottest team with three straight wins, including last night's two-point win at Dayton, in which they turned the ball over just eight times. But here's what I haven't heard people talk about yet. Remember Missouri State from 2006? Had an RPI of 21 out of the sixth-rated conference, with a non-losing 12-6 record in league games. Lost in the Valley quarters, and they were left out, becoming the team with the best RPI to not make the NCAA Tournament. The scenario we're likely to see play out is that of the four teams left standing in Atlantic City, three will go and the one closest to .500 in conference play will be sent to the NIT. And unless you're Xavier, any loss in the quarterfinals means it's over. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that we could have multiple teams with RPI's in the 20's out in the cold, their bids going to undeserving SEC or Big East teams. Would that be enough for the NCAA to dump the RPI for good? Please?
And there have been great games on too. Like the Davidson-UNCG tilt from the Southern Conference that started off last night's mid-bleheader. The homestanding Spartans looked poised to score a huge upset of the league-undefeated Wildcats, shooting 70 percent in the first half and leading by as much as 20. But at the halftime buzzer, Stephen Curry nailed a halfcourt 3 (he does things like that) and went absolutely insane in the second half, scoring a career-high 41 points and leading Davidson (18-6, 16-0) to an 83-79 come-from-behind win. We've said it before, and we'll say it again, but Stephen Curry is good at playing basketball. Then, in the 9:00 p.m. game, George Mason plowed Towson by 12 on the road, while the Patriots got every rebound they wanted. We were asleep by halftime.
Despite the loss, it was a great game for NJIT's leading scorer, the pride of Montenegro, 6-8 junior Nesho Milosevic. He shot 9-for-19 and double-doubled with 21 points and 11 rebounds. And while we're looking for bright spots, the defense has actually improved over the course of the season. They're forcing enough turnovers to put them in mid-table nationally, and they're out of the bottom 25 in a lot of field-goal defense type of categories. Will it help them beat Chicago State in the home finale on Saturday, or Longwood (Feb. 18) or Utah Valley State (Feb. 23) on the road to avoid becoming Hoops Nation's first-ever 0-29 team? We're holding our breath. And we didn't forget, although you thought we did... How 'Bout™ the MAC? Not to be outdone by the A-10, the Midwestern 12 is holding its own annual war of attrition. Since getting a juicy BracketBuster with George Mason, Ohio has lost two of three, including last night's 54-52 sloppy drop at Toledo. The Bobcats have these offensive blackouts that strike at any moment, like the one in the final minutes that erased a second-half double-digit lead. And did they give leading scorer and all-around post-pounder Leon Williams 10 shots? No. They've only lost once in eight games when that happens, and that was Saint Mary's. How 'Bout™ High Point? The preseason picks in the Big South avenged an earlier bad loss to then-undefeated UNC Asheville 80-71. All of a sudden, the Bulldogs (7-2) have lost two in a row and have been pulled back to the pack. Winthrop at 7-3 is just a half-game back, and HPU is well within one-seed striking distance, in third at 6-4. How 'Bout™ Northwestern State? Went on the road and gave index darlings Sam Houston State the worst loss of the year by far, 78-69, and became the first team all year to shoot 50 percent against the Bearkats (32-for-59). It was the final straw for our computer, which promptly dropped SHSU out of the top 10. Those feisty Demons? They're 7-3 and two games back in the loss column in the East Division, and they have a home shot against the red-hot West leaders from Stephen F. Austin (20-3, 8-2) on Saturday. The Lumberjacks, for their part, turned the screws on Central Arkansas last night, holding the Bears to 23 percent shooting. And finally, How 'Bout™ Evansville? Beat Creighton at home by four to claim their third Valley win of the year, despite shooting 30 percent from the floor. It was the other 30, the number of free throws they made (93.8 percent), that iced the win. This isn't the first time this has happened -- they beat Wichita last week with a 30 percent shooting performance, but survived 64-56 with 26 made freebies (81.3 percent). The really weird part? These were out-of-their-minds unconscious performances by the Aces, the second-worst free-throw shooting team in the conference at 62.8 percent. |
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