CBB Corner: Week 12

Dude…

The conference play continues to get tougher and tougher as we go through the year. Loads of teams are Jockeying for positions to place themselves in contention for that covenant conference championship. Teams from around the nation have been tearing each other apart left and right. There are so many games going on that it’s tough to keep up with all of them. Thankfully, The Dudes have been watching and are going to give you the latest on College Hoops.

PC’S CBB Corner

Wisconsin should be a title contender- The Wisconsin Badgers were a great team I didn’t see coming. Sure, they’re a Big 10 school, but I didn’t think they would have this much success. After losing badly to Penn State at their place, Wisconsin has bounced back and won 3 in a row. Making them the solo leader in the Big 10. AJ Storr has been leading this Badger team all year. This sophomore averages over 15 points a game and is monumental to Wisconsin’s success this season. He hasn’t had to carry the team alone though. He’s had help from Steven Crowl who is averaging just under 12 points per game, but brings in over 7 rebounds a game as well. Tyler Wahl has been a consistent shooter all season with just under 12 points per game as well. Greg Gard, who is a veteran of this sport, has built this team back up to the legacy it was once in. Can they hold it together down the second half of conference play? Who knows. However,  Gard has had successful seasons in the past, but none have looked this promising. Gard is hoping to repeat what Bo Ryan and lead these men to a Final Four. The path doesn’t get easier as they welcome Purdue into the building on Sunday.

Northwestern defeats yet another top 10 team at home- Speaking of the leaders in the Big 10, Northwestern has Fort Knox as their home court advantage. Many enter, but few come out on top. The Wildcats welcomed #10 Illinois into their building. Now yes, Northwestern is in Illinois. However, Boo Buie made the entire Illinois team call him daddy. Buie was electrifying against Marcus Domask who put on another entertaining back and forth battle. With about 8 minutes left in the game til the final whistle, these two went at it. The game went to double overtime and Buie yet again put his team on his back and put up 29 points in the win. The Wildcats got some massive help from Brooks Barnhizer who had 23 points and went 4-5 from 3. Marcus Domask has 22, along with Coleman Hawkins. The major disappointment was in Terrance Shannon Jr.’s performance. He had 12 points on 3-8 shooting. He went 1-5 from deep. The Fighting Illini need him to play better. This Northwestern team has now defeated Purdue and Illinois in their own building. Northwestern is building up quite the tournament resume, and if Boo Buie continues to play well, they’ll find themselves dancing in March.

Iowa State owns the state of Kansas- Welp, this sucks. The Iowa State Cyclones balled out against both K-State and then Kansas in Aimes. The Cyclones beat the K-State Wildcats 78-67. Iowa State never seemed to have the game lost. With 4 minutes left, K-State got within 2 points. In those final 4 minutes, the Cyclones outscored the Wildcats 15-6. Milan Momcilovic led the team with 19 points. He was a major contributor behind the 3 point line, hitting 3 threes to boost the Cyclones. Then, the Cyclones invited in the Wildcats big, bad brother in Kansas. Iowa State handled them too. The Cyclones hit 14 threes to scrape by Kansas with a 79-75 win. The Jayhawks turned the ball over way too many times and the bench only gave the Jayhawks 2 points. This has been a major concern for Kansas and Iowa State exploited it. Iowa State now stands at 16-4 and 5-2 in the Big 12. This may not be a Big 12 title year for TJ Otzelberger, but they should be expected to make it to the second weekend in March. If the freshman can play like they did against KU, they may go even further.

Houston escapes- The Big 12 is the most loaded conference this year. Hands down. They have 8 teams in the Top 25 right now. They doubled the amount of teams from any other conference. Houston has had its first taste in the Big 12 juggernaut. They’ve honestly held their own. Sure, they lost back to back on the road, but since then, they’ve been playing terrific basketball. Houston went into Horns up territory and scraped past a gutsy Texas team. LJ Cryer was supposed to be the guy in this game. However, Kelvin Sampson showed that he has multiple guys that can go off. Jamal Shead was terrific in this game. He had 25 points and should have seen the ball come his way every possession. Although it didn’t play out that way in the final stretch. When the game went to overtime, it seemed like the strategy was LJ Cryer hero ball. The rest of the team seemed to be standing off the side as LJ took a million dibbles and then threw up a shitty shot. That happened for the majority of the possessions. Some of the bricks were rebounded and put back up for points. Thanks to Joseph Tunglar who ended up having 4 offensive rebounds coming off the bench. In fact, Houston had 15 total offensive rebounds. This proved to be monumental for the Cougars victory of 76-72. Now, the Cougar have been tested on the road in the Big 12. They have a legit shot at becoming the Big 12 champion. However, their road doesn’t get easier as they head to Phog Allen to face the Jayhawks in what should be a spectacle.

Super Saturday Showdown!- This may be one of the most exciting weekends in all of College Hoops. First, at 11 am, the #1 team in the land in UCONN, goes into Madison Square Garden to face Rick Patino’s St. Johns team. Pitino and The Red Storm have been playing together very well as of late and find themselves in a pivotal spot to take down the defending champions. Then, at 1 the “no horns down it’s offensive” Rodney Terry’s Longhorns battle their in state rival in TCU. TCU has become a tough place to come out with a win, and Terry’s Longhorns are dying for a win after a heartbreaking loss to Houston. This will be a physical game that should come down to the wire. Then at 3, the Kansas Jayhawks welcome the Houston Cougars into Phog Allen. Phog Allen, a place where it’s nearly impossible to come out with a win, will be rocking as the greet Houston to their first visit as Big 12 opponents. Kansas has been on a losing skid and Houston has been on a winning streak. Both teams want to win this one to boost their spot in the competitive Big 12 rankings. Then at 5:30, the Blue Blood clash will commence. Duke is making the short trip to play their rivals in North Carolina for a top of the ACC battle. Both squads are in the top 10 and it should be an instant classic like every game they’ve had in recent years. To round out your Saturday, at 7pm, top dawg Tennessee go into Rupp Arena to take on Big Blue Kentucky. Another top 10 clash comes to fusion as College Basketball fans ooze from the mouth. If you didn’t get enough hoops, tune into Sunday to watch Purdue at Wisconsin, which should be an all time classic. There are many weekends you want to concentrate on during the season, but this one may be the biggest one yet.

How6rd’s Big East/Mid-Major Roundup

DePaul fires their head coach, and the next hire can’t get worse-  This is a bit overdue to shed any light on one of the worst, if not THE worst, power conference teams in the country being DePaul as they decide to fire their head coach to start the season in Tony Stubblefield. Stubblefield’s tenure started off promising going 15-16 in the 2021-2022 season looking to have a light at the end of a gloomy tunnel finishing right where they left off. Instead, it has gotten way worse as they only have 3 total wins this year and haven’t even had a contest in the Big East that’s resulted in a loss closer than 14 (yes fourteen) points. DePaul University is the closest school among the power conferences to downtown Chicago and it seems as for years they’ve missed out on any solid pickup from that area. I think it’s a mix of both poor recruiting and just no structure for solid players who do come from there personally, but one thing for sure about the next path the Blue Demons will have to take is what are they able to do to get the Chicago pipeline on their side finally. They’re a Big East school so the marketing alone is there, and if the next coach can create a system that can get players from the city, whether it’s a hidden gem or a highly touted prospect, then this could be the rock bottom this school needed to get to.

The Spiders' stock is back up-  Do you remember just a couple of years ago that Richmond team who upset Iowa in the tournament after winning their conference tournament? Well this team may be even better by a long shot as the Richmond Spiders just upset one of the best Mid-Major teams this past week in Dayton and they are off to a 7-0 conference start. Head coach Chris Mooney is in his 19th (!) season as the head coach for Richmond and after the fans called for his job multiple times he has shown in the last few years why he has stuck around for so long. Mooney has been through a lot of good and bad years with the school as he’s only made the NCAA tournament three years since being the head coach, but he may have finally found a consistent roster with what he had now led by their speedy point guard Jordan King who hustles both sides of the court to keep his team close in just about every game. The biggest part of this team is how well they control the tempo of the game, as they showed against Dayton if a team lets Richmond control how fast and consistent the scoring happens in the game chances are the opposing team is probably losing. If the Spiders continue to show out on both offense and defense this year like they have this is a well-rounded team that can make the A10 a stronger conference than expected for the tournament.

Mountain West, where talented teams can win or lose any time-  Before typing this out I was getting ready to talk about how the San Diego Aztecs were looking strong for an unranked team and probably heading back into the top 25 next week, but the Colorado State Rams said otherwise and have jumped back into the top after a brutal week before. Since the Aztecs lost to a very talented New Mexico team, they looked stellar handling Nevada and Wyoming (who both beat Colorado State last week) in blowout wins and a really close loss to Boise State on the road. As the Aztecs looked to be rolling, the Colorado State Rams were falling fast getting blown out by Nevada and losing in overtime to Wyoming after being heavily favored going into the game. With the Rams desperately needing a win at home they got out the gates fast building up a 14-point lead halfway through the first half, but what was most impressive about the Rams is how they handled blowing a 10-point lead in less than four minutes in the second half. After the Aztecs went up by one with seven minutes left Colorado State went on a 9-0 run and completely flipped the game back around led by the Joel Scott show, as it was the first time in a while that the Rams seemed unfazed and just played their game to close it out. Colorado State gets a huge win in this one after getting close to falling out of the “at-large bid” conversations for the tournament while SDSU is still looking strong having all five of their losses be against five of the top 70 teams in the country (according to KenPom) and all on the road as well.