PC and How6rd's CBB Corner: Week 4

Dude…

Week 4 proved to us again why this is anyone’s game to win the National Championship. #1, #3, #4, #7, and #10 all lost this last week. Multiple loses to big name schools happened over Conference Championship Weekend in college football. I paid more attention to basketball than football. Here is How6rd and PC’s latest week 4 takeaways!!!

PC’S CBB Corner

Kansas beats reigning champion: Kansas started off as the preseason #1 in the polls. After losing to Marquette in Maui, the Jayhawks invited reigning champion, UCONN, into Phog Allen. UCONN has looked just as dominant as they did last season against every opponent they faced in the NCAA Tournament last season. Phog Allen was bombarded with energy. Students were camping out as early as the previous Friday before the game. If you’ve never been to the Phog, it definitely should be on your bucket list for college basketball fans. In the arena named after the coach who is known as the “Father of Basketball Coaching” an electrifying game took place. UCONN didn’t come out as the team to beat. Kansas did. With a 38-31 lead going into halftime, it looked like Kansas would be alright. The thing about UCONN is that they have so many weapons that all they need is one guy to go off. On this day, it was Tristian Newton. He led the UCONN Huskies to a lead in the second half. Kevin McCullar put the team on his back and delivered clutch 3 pointers to help gain the lead back. KJ Adams, who’s mom died earlier this week and was flying out to her funeral that next day, put on a show and posted 18 points and 5 rebounds with 2 huge blocks down the stretch. This game went back and forth with Kansas narrowly defeating the Huskies 69-65. The biggest takeaway is that both these teams are legitimate national title contenders. They both have the big men, solid guard play, and the defensive capacity to get the job done. Big win for Kansas, but UCONN shouldn’t let their heads drop. It’s just hard to win at the Phog. Pay Heed to all who Enter, Beware the Phog.

UMM Neptune, We may have a Problem: Villanova was a staple of stardom in the Jay Wright era. They were always picked to win the Big East and were a National Championship contender almost every year. I still remember “the shot” in 2016. However, ever since Jay Wright has left the game, Nova has struggled mightily. Nova finds themselves at 6-3. Usually this isn’t a big deal. However, Nova has lost to Penn, St. Joseph’s, and Drexel. Kyle Neptune has lost against 6 teams that are sub 100 KenPom teams. To put it in perspective, Jay Wright lost to only 3 sub in over 300 games. Neptune has lost 6 in 43 games. Is it time to panic in PA? The future of this Nova team is relying on their 2nd year head coach to figure it out. Sure, it’s early into the 2023-2024 season, but this isn’t the start that Nova was hoping for.

BIG Time Loss Saturday: Conference Championship weekend is supposed to be all about football. We had some great matchups. Georgia vs. Alabama. Iowa vs. Michigan. Texas vs. Oklahoma State. Finally, Florida State vs. Louisville. On a weekend with serious College Football Playoff indications, I was glued to college hoops. #1 Purdue, #3 Marquette, #4 UCONN, #7 Duke, #12 Kentucky, and #18 Villanova all lost to teams they were supposed to beat. #1 Purdue technically lost on Friday night to Northwestern on the road. S tough environment to win in, but should’ve happened. #3 Marquette also lost on the road to Wisconsin in a terrible shooting night, #4 lost to #5 Kansas in a terrific college basketball game, #7 Duke lost to Georgia Tech who is coming off back to back top 25 wins. #12 Kentucky lost as 17 point favorites to UNC Wilmington. Finally, #18 Villanova lost back-to-back to St. Joseph and Drexel. Top teams and blue bloods all faced losses in massacure fashion. This is why college basketball is much better than college football. You can win or lose in any given game. Whereas in football, you can go undefeated and not make the playoffs. Sorry Florida State, that was harsh.

How6rd’s Big East/Mid-Major Roundup

Villanova needs some form of structure or change…BAD- After an outstanding performance in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament the Wildcats looked to shut all the noise from their disappointing loss to Penn, but then this past week happened. In what was supposed to be an easier week for the Wildcats and pretty much be a tune-up for the big week they have before conference play starts Villanova ended up going 0-2 in the Big 5 Classic against Saint Joseph’s and Drexel. Now I actually really like the Saint Joseph’s team this year as they have looked solid twice against some solid Power 5 programs (I’ll get to that a little further down), but that still was a game that should’ve been won by a team that needed to prove true consistency in ‘Nova. The game following that against Drexel was even worse and the Wildcats never even led in the game even though they cut the lead down to 1 multiple times as the shooting outside of star player Eric Dixon was horrific. There is a long season ahead for the Wildcats to turn things around and as I said before this is a learning process for Kyle Neptune, but with how much talent there is on this roster a downward trend like this is the last thing many watching college hoops expected from them in 2023. Villanova now drops to 6-3 and has a tough stretch ahead with Kansas State and UCLA in the upcoming week and this team needs to pull another performance like they had in their Battle 4 Atlantis run or it’s going to be a nasty tumble before Big East play even starts for them.

A terrible first half made a great second half go to waste for Marquette- Believe it or not Marquette actually played some solid ball at some point in their matchup against unranked Wisconsin, but being down by 16 points in the first half along with allowing three-pointers it seemed like every time they were on defense it was too much to overcome. The Golden Eagles actually didn’t do too bad on defense overall yet Wisconsin’s Max Klesmit went 5/8 from behind the three-point line alone and the rest of the team around him shot around 30%, yet they were down 13 points at halftime. The second half looked promising from Marquette as Shaka Smart did his usual halftime adjustments to get this team out of bed and they looked like the team we’ve seen all season starting off on a 14-2 run and cutting the deficit down to a single point. Unfortunately, they didn’t score a single shot from the field for almost seven minutes as teams tend to do and just like that the game was back to being out of reach with 4:52 to go with their big second-half run gone to waste. Luckily for Marquette, this loss didn’t stick out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the college basketball atmosphere as many of the top teams were highly tested or took a loss, so just as in every other school’s case this year they got a long season ahead to make minor adjustments for a big run.

Xavier falls short, but the future looks very bright- After a very rough upset against Oakland the Xavier Musketeers looked to have a very questionable squad with at the very least the same defensive issues and streaky shooting problems as the 2022-23 squad. This made the upcoming home game against a very strong-looking Houston team look daunting and potentially like a blowout, but Xavier instead turned everything that looked bad around and nearly pulled off a huge upset at the Cintas Center. Outside of the end of the first half and the beginning of the second, Xavier’s shooting was much more up to par than what they showed against Oakland finding a way to make shots when the threes weren’t falling and they even went on a nice 13-2 run to take the lead just inside of seven minutes at 52-51. Then foul calls took over the rest of this game and it was a free-throw shooting contest for both teams going forward that Houston won in the end being carried by LJ Cryer’s career-high night scoring 23 points. The 33 fouls called in the second half alone was a very tough watch BUT still gave us a good insight for both of these teams as Cryer is easily amongst the top players in the nation who can light a fire under this team any night. As for the Musketeers, they look a lot more “put together” than they did against Oakland the previous game as most of the players on the squad are playing together for the first time this season and Sean Miller looks like he’s able to get the most out of his players still as we saw from a season-best performance out of Quincy Olivari. It may be some time before we see what Miller can really do with this team, but being able to take a contender for the Big 12 title this year to the limit is a very good showing for this Xavier squad win or lose.

The mid-majors were the top dogs this week - I thought I would just break down a lot of what went on with these teams instead of only talking about one or two teams in-depth, but the teams looking outside of the “Power 6” showed that the name of that group for the top 6 conferences is only just a name. We start off with the top mid-major teams currently as both FAU and Colorado State continue to impress as the best non-Power 6 teams. The Owls did exactly what was asked of them and DOMINATED two teams above most other mid-major programs this season in Liberty and Charleston as they look to be exactly the team the AP Poll had faith in to put inside the top 10 during the preseason. As for the Colorado State Rams, they took down some solid PAC 12 foes which was headlined by Isaiah Stevens and his double-double performance putting up 20 points and 11 assists followed by the rest of the team showing out on an off-night from him against the Washington Huskies. Now let’s get to the true chaos…

Starting with Saint Joseph’s (or SJU) big-time win against Villanova in the Big 5 Classic the Hawks finally pulled off what they were so close to doing a week prior against Kentucky and Erik Reynolds once again was the top star for this team putting up 24 points on 5/8 made