Hofstra at Northeastern (Colonial) During George Mason's Final Four run, when head coach Jim Larranaga said that the initials "CAA" stood for "Connecticut Assassins Association," he wasn't kidding. The Colonial earned two double-bid years, as well as national postseason glory, by establishing a reputation as a band of giant-killers. In both 2006 and 2007, the league scored 11 wins over teams from conferences north of the Red Line. This year, with scheduled nonconference play finished, there are just five, and none have resonated on a national level. Needless to say, the CAA is looking at sending a single representative for the second straight year. Only one team has multiple road wins against the top eight conferences, and that's Northeastern (7-5, 2-0). A thrilling win at Providence and defensive shutdown at Indiana probably won't look as good as they did at the time, once those two victims take heavy losses in their own leagues, but both were major accomplishments for a program that's struggled since its rise from the America East to the CAA four summers ago. The Huskies have taken two straight 9-9 league records and won just 12 road games in their first three seasons as league members, but things are looking up. Some predicted NU to take the league championship -- and the team has won four roadies as well as its first pair of league tilts. While Matt Janning has been a workhorse with 37.5 minutes per contest (No. 6 in the country) and a team-leading 15.9 ppg, the rest of the team has struggled both offensively and defensively. At 26.8 rebounds per game, only 21 teams in the country do a worse job on the boards. Hofstra, if you'll remember, was the most controversial snub of the 2006 Tournament (seriously... Air Force?) but made up for the slight with a strong NIT run, finishing with 26 wins. After a 22-10 campaign the following year, with a team that was better, the Pride fell hard to a 12-18 record in 2007-08. (Doesn't matter though -- power teams still won't play them.) Hofstra started out with a gaudy 8-1 record before losing three of its last four (9-4, 1-1), including a home CAA game against Drexel on Saturday. CAA fans already know about sophomore scorer Charles Jenkins, but they might not have realized that the team has won of the weirdest profiles in America. The Pride is the second-best rebounding team in the nation (41.1 rpg), holds opponents to 39 percent shooting, but can't shoot a lick themselves. The Pride's regular rotation includes eight players shooting 41 percent or worse.
Creighton at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) We don't often keep the G!O!T!N! camera crew in one place for any significant time, but after the events of New Year's Eve afternoon, we have a situation in the Valley that requires additional monitoring. On Wednesday, Illinois State absolutely destroyed Evansville 80-50, a total shutdown in every facet. This result wouldn't have looked very impressive, say, last year, but the Purple Aces came in with a 9-2 record against a tough schedule, and the Redbirds were looking for validation of a 12-0 record against one of the country's softest slates. Immediately after the contest, Illinois State's RPI jumped into the 30's, and its SOS climbed 35 spots to No. 270. So even though it was late December in the MVC, this was an important result. That giant win sets up a monster matchup with the preseason favorites in the league, Creighton (12-2, 9-0). After a minor blip in late November that included road losses to Arkansas-Little Rock and Nebraska (teams the Bluejays usually overcome), a gut check on toughness sparked a nine-game win streak, none of which have been close. Booker Woodfox was handed the lead job in an offense that shoots the 3 incredibly well, and has been the team's leading scorer in seven of those games. On defense, however, is where Creighton's greatest gains over last year have come. Dana Altman's club forces a lot of turnovers (19 per game), and has allowed just 34.7 percent shooting in the team's first two Valley wins over Wichita State and Indiana State. For the Redbirds (13-0, 2-0) to win this, and take their fourth straight victory in the series, they'll have to successfully pick the lock of that toughened Jays D. It'll require sterling performances by at least two of their big trio: MVC POY candidate Osiris Eldridge, Oregon transfer Champ Oguchi and 5-10 secret weapon Lloyd Phillips. The three are all averaging at least 12 ppg and have proven themselves capable of hot shooting nights during the 2008 part of the schedule. Illinois State has already earned half of last season's victory total (a 25-10 NIT season), but a win over Creighton on Saturday would put it in the driver's seat for an NCAA upgrade. POCATELLO, Id. -- First of all, we have a chat today over at ESPN SportsNation at 4 p.m. Eastern, or 2 p.m. Mountain Standard. Don't forget! One last blast of mid-major mystery before we turn our attention solely to conference races, and forget that the top eight conferences exist -- a luxury we'll be able to afford until March. As we've been discussing all week, the number of mid- versus major games is plummeting. The number of games involving at least one sub-Red Line school has gone from 78 percent to 73 percent. Top conferences, as a group, scheduled fewer guarantee games and BracketBuster gut-checks, opting to save their cash and pride and taking on opportunities to play other majors on TV. There's a year-over-year deficit of 300 chances at the big boys, games that will probably never return. Jonathan T., a man who likes soft pretzels, grabs the flag and runs with it. I would argue that the solution to the power conferences’ self-centeredness is the same as it has been for many years: take them onto the floor in March and see what they’ve actually got. If CAA, MVC, A-10 and other such teams are proving it to each other from November to February but the BCS conferences aren’t paying attention, they’ll learn the hard way of their error with the whole country watching on national television... and we will have no sympathy for them. While we're edging closer to a virtual Division I-A in college basketball, I'd still argue that there's no real error here. The programs in the top eight leagues have their own self-interests to protect, and more power to them. An undisputable fact of life is that a November Big East-ACC game in worth much more on the open market than a Horizon League-Missouri Valley matchup. You have future NBA stars and hot-air hype on one hand (something casual fans will never transcend), and sated curiosity about future apple-cart tippers on the other. If people actually cared that much about the latter, this site would be a hell of a whole lot more popular than it is. The State of College Basketball is a new 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), 113.661, 11-1 (2-0) Of course, there was no Week 4 here on this site thanks to the holidays, but the index has been churning out results on an hourly basis anyway. The Bulldogs are first in the RPI, fourth in strength of schedule, and first in the TS-22. They're 3-0 since our last transmission of this type, having beaten Florida Gulf Coast, Xavier and UAB. While ball control has been the No. 1 weapon of the past few years, this team is much more dynamic. Take, for example, the UAB win: +6 on turnovers, but a resounding +9 on the boards and a gentlemanly -11 on fouls.
Evansville at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) Much of today's action is of the afternoon variety, because Americans are conditioned to party like rock stars on New Year's Eve. And as 2008 comes to a close with a full slate of Valley games, here's one game that will go a long way in determining what the league will look like in 2009. I didn't see Evansville coming, but my computer did. The Purple Aces are 9-2 (1-0 MVC) against the 21st toughest schedule in the country, with only a couple of roadie losses to popularity-contest chat entrants Butler and North Carolina counting against them. (And other than one gigantic Tar Heel run, Evansville was totally in that game.) Statistically, nothing really pops out at you about the Aces... the interior defense and rebounding has been solid, but that's incongruous with the fact that the regular rotation tops out at 6-5. Shy Ely, the senior guard with the name of a late-night hip-hop DJ, is averaging 17.2 ppg but hasn't shot all that well (44.2 percent). It's just a team that plays well together, and has rode that indescribable wave of hoops magic so far. Just ask chance double-champions Drake, which Evansville dumped by 11 in Sunday's Valley opener. Then there's Illinois State, which spent most of this decade sharing the Valley ashtray with Evansville. The Redbirds broke through with a 25-10 season last year, which didn't result in NCAA joy because of league-wide weakness and the MVC's low number of Red Line Upsets in nonconference. This year, they scheduled way down (SOS: 306), but pollsters and sportswriters across the country are intrigued about the 12-0 team in the Valley. Being a TMM reader, you're smarter than that, and you have retained your healthy skepticism. Especially after a wild 72-69 eke-out at Missouri State out of a 15-point deficit, a game that showed a lot of things, but not dominance. If Illinois State has shown weakness, it's been defending jump shots and giving opponents all the extra possessions they need. Will Evansville take advantage? |
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