Wright State at Butler (Horizon League) Tonight marks the first slate in which every college basketball game nationwide is a league contest. We have action in the CAA, SoCon, NEC, OVC, Horizon, America East, Sun Belt, Badlands Conference, Big West, Big Sky and WAC. We truly live inside parentheses now. And our G!O!T!N! features the mid-major that had Hoops Nation's best performance outside the brackets. The Bulldogs are the No. 1 team in our weekly ratings, primarily due to a 12-1 record against the 22nd toughest schedule in the country. There were Red Line Upsets against Northwestern and UAB, and a stunning win at TS-22 No. 2 team Xavier. Only a three-point loss at Ohio State stands between them and 13-0. We've said it before and we'll bore you with it again, but this is a much more dynamic, well-rounded team than the previous two -- and the 2006-07 and 2007-08 editions had three NCAA wins between them. While the A.J. Graves-led squads relied on ball control to win, this team can outshoot, outrebound, outhustle anybody. And having three underclassmen averaging in double figures means that Bulldog fans are well-advised to re-up on season tickets for the next few years. This is going to be a very good team for a very long time. Standing in the way tonight is Wright State, the league rival that forced a two-bid Horizon two seasons ago with a fantastic 60-55 win against these Bulldogs in the 2007 title game. After a start that had all the markings of a lost season, the Raiders began the campaign 0-6 before a complete shutdown versus Toledo sparked a stretch of wight wins in nine games. The most impressive was a 71-62 victory over Cleveland State in a previous G!O!T!N!, a win over the preseason league favorites that truly signaled that Wright was off the wrong track for good. Brad Brownell's squad has outrebounded six straight opponents and enjoyed balanced production. After a hand injury to major scorer Vaughn Duggins, the team relies hero-of-the-night performances. During this run, four different Raiders have acted as leading scorer. BIRMINGHAM -- Normally in this space, I'll meander on about some philosophical thing or some other non-basketball topic, and then field a pile of back-channel comments about what a horrible job I'm doing and how I should just give up. This is exciting for me, because I get to play out this daily script in a different place five times a week. But not today. Over the holidays, we issued Hoops Nation the greatest challenge we've ever issued. During our Stephen Curry triple-superhero contest, which resulted in an unprecedented three Bally-winning entries, Alan Hyder's tri-themed drawing included Flash Gordon and the artist referenced Queen's movie theme "Flash." We offered a lifetime Basketball State subscription to the first person who put together a YouTube tribute to No. 30 with this amazing, awesome song. Now that everybody's back from break, we have a respondent. Tim Burke, who is a supergenius (and already has his own Bally), sent in an HD masterpiece that may be the most awesome three minutes ever committed to digital video. Before you click any further, make sure your bowels are empty. This is going to blow a lot more than your mind. The State of College Basketball is a new-ish ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four in a simulation of 2006-07, did okay as a predictor last season, and enters 2008-09 ready for more. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 and a half (we include the A-14) conferences. This is the full chart, and this is a recording. 1. Butler (Horizon League), 113.649, 12-1 (3-0) The Bulldogs remain the most dangerous team this level contains, staying above the fray in an increasingly fractious and unpredictable Horizon. Last Saturday, Butler bludgeoned Valpo with a +8 shooting margin and a +10 advantage on the boards. Wright State, which skewered Cleveland State last week in a G!O!T!N!, will be a stiff Thursday test before a comfortable home win against 4-9 Detroit, but the rest of the league is as difficult to read as a minefield.
High Point at Winthrop (Big South) This is a season for big changes in mid-majordom, and most are not necessarily the positive kind that our president-elect talks about. There have been massive shifts in power as multi-bid conferences like the Valley, WAC and CAA struggle to retain their national relevance, a situation exacerbated by the dwindling number of chances against the nation's top teams. Brand names like Bucknell and VCU are having worlds of trouble maintaining BracketBusting consistency, and Davidson fans are surely fearing a dropoff that looks inevitable whenever superstar Stephen Curry plays his last game there. And then, of course, there's Winthrop. Anybody who fills out a bracket in March knows the name, as it's been drilled into their consciousness nearly every year for the last decade. But the perennial Big South champions are 2-10 on the young season, with a 1-2 league record that includes blowout road losses to VMI and Radford -- teams the Eagles chewed up and spit out for years. Last season, teams couldn't score 60 points against them, now they're often having trouble reaching that number themselves (60.5 PA), and the defense isn't forcing the turnovers like it used to. The reason why Winthrop is so down is because simple college reality caught up to it: there are no seniors in the regular rotation, and just three juniors (including leading scorer Cameron Stanley, with a modest 11.2 ppg). It's a young team, and will grow up in the face the brunt of the league's anger. After all, the Eagles have been rubbing the Big South's collective nose in the mud for a long time, and they won't get any mercy. Even though they lost, often badly, High Point has been the Eagles' most consistent rival during the past decade -- mostly due to the fact that the Panthers showed the least fear of any Big South team. Between on-court confrontations, nasty recruiting battles and back-and-forth trash talk, High Point has never backed down from Winthrop. This year, however, they're in the same boat, and a three-year streak with winning marks (including a 22-10 campaign in 2006-07) seems doomed to end. HPU hasn't found a replacement for two-time conference POY Arizona Reid, and probably won't for a while. In the interim, the team's 4-9 record conceals a 1-9 record against Division I teams, with only a win over North Carolina Central to date. The offense has been just as woeful as WU's, with a paltry .828 points scored per possession (325th among 343). It's a long road back for both teams, but there will be rewards for those who stick with these teams during these times. ATLANTA -- One of the upsides to spending so much time in basketball arenas is that my connection to popular music remains simple, true and direct. In this atmosphere, with athletic competition on the floor and fans demanding two hours' worth of entertainment, organized payola can't find purchase. If a song comes over the P.A. system that sucks, the reaction is immediate and awkward. Down here, there's no preset Jock Jams playlist like you'll find at the cookie-cutter "NBA Experience." In mid-major college basketball, the setlist is usually handled by an assistant SID, work-study or volunteer, and each is an individual study in what works and what doesn't for any particular crowd. Not surprisingly, most places play a lot of hip-hop during warmups, time outs and halftime. As far as the popular form goes, it's a genre that ran out of ideas years ago, and as such it's become as much benign background noise as Muzak. In the age of iPods, some DJ's are more adventurous about getting off the script. A couple weeks at Furman, the crowd got to hear a set of straight-up Freedom Rock -- imagine getting fired up for a game with the opening licks of "Sweet Home Alabama." A few places in the Ivy League bust out some indie rock from time to time. At Quinnipiac a few years ago, before they got the new arena, halftime meant time to chill heads with some Aphex Twin and Massive Attack. |
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