PC and How6rd's CBB Corner: Week 9

Dude…

There comes a point in time in any season when things get taken up a notch. The playoff hunt for the NFL. The Play-In Tournament in the NBA. The Wild Card race in the MLB. These mostly happen towards the end of the season. Not in college basketball. The heat gets cranked up right now. Conference play has just begun, and there’s no end in sight for teams. To make it to the end, you must combat these foes multiple times a week. Duking it out to claim a spot in the covenant NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The dudes engulfed into the first conference games of the season. To show the world, who is struggling, and who is succeeding.

PC’S CBB Corner

Kansas gets lucky again: Obviously, as a KU fan I’m starting with them. The Jayhawks defeated TCU in the final minutes of the game. Yes, there was a huge controversial call at the end of the game. Up two with a minute to go, Ernest Udeh Jr (TCU’s center and former Kansas big man) came down with a pivotal rebound that would almost certainly seal the win for the Horned Frogs. This would make two years in a row where TCU has walked into the Phog by slaying the dominant Jayhawks. However, as the play developed, a lone Jayhawk had taken a tumble on the floor. Hunter Dickenson, who was fighting for the rebound with Udeh Jr, was on the floor. The officials called a timeout and went to look at the monitor to decipher what just happened. In the replay, Udeh Jr. hits Dickenson in the mouth going up for that game sealing rebound. It seemed like a pretty obvious inadvertent foul. This would cause Kansas to shoot a one-and-one for the chance to tie the game up. However, the refs called it a flagrant one. Dickenson went to the free throw line and sank both free throws. Due to the flagrant one call, Kansas got the ball back. Kansas devised a play to get the ball to Dickenson in the post. He calmly secured the bucket for the lead/ TCU had one final shot at the end, but the ball never made it through the net. Now, most fans that weren’t a fan of the Jayhawks were outraged with yet another call going Kansas’s way. If I was in the same position, I would probably agree. But I’m not. Everyone else can go suck a fat one. By rule, it was a flagrant foul. He hit him in the face even if it wasn’t on purpose. That’s a flagrant foul. Besides, TCU was up the ENTIRE game. How come they couldn’t have shut down Kansas? Wouldn’t that help them win? What if everyone flew for that rebound, or boxed out Dickenson better, would the result be different? You can blame the refs all you want, but TCU had every opportunity to win that game. TCU will be fine. If Trey Tennyson plays the way he did the rest of the season, TCU should be fine and hopefully make the tournament. Don’t blame the refs when your team puts the game in their hands. They should’ve ended it, but it ended up ending them.

Tennessee on Top: Tennessee has been playing extremely good basketball this year. After being a 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament last season, the Volunteers lost Zakai Zigler went down with a knee injury and the Tennessee season soon followed. Now, Tennessee is back with a vengeance. Sure, the Volunteers have lost some games already. However, they’ve lost to Kansas, Purdue, North Carolina who are all in the top 10 right now, and FAU when they were shooting out of their minds. The latest test came against an undefeated Chris Beard’s Ole Miss team. I thought this was going to be a game. I was wrong. Zakai Zigler and Vescovi completely incinerated the Rebels. It wasn’t even a close game. The Volunteers took care of business and now find themselves at number five in the rankings. The SEC is a gauntlet this year, but Tennessee seems to be battle tested and may come out on top.

ACC Talent: Normally, the ACC is a conference we talk about with great enthusiasm. Lately, the league has been mediocre at best. However, what’s fun is the constant shift between good and bad teams. How much each team beats up on one another. It usually makes them stronger, like Miami, who went to the Final Four last year. This year, there is the same buzzsaw like mentality in the ACC, with different teams doing the killing. The same two teams find themselves at the top. Duke, who has had one ugly loss, but has shown greatness in others. North Carolina is at the top once again, taking care of PJ Hall and on fire Clemson. Armando Bacot heard the noise that he may not be the best big in the conference and shut down those discussions after beating PJ Hall to a pulp. Now, there are some surprises at the top this season as well. One, being the Clemson team that just lost to North Carolina. They may have hit a skid here, but they are more than capable of slaying a few giants if they’re shooting well. Another amazing team that’s been in the gutter for a long time is Wake Forest. Wake Forest got a huge win over Miami to lead them to a 3-0 start in the ACC. Wake Forest looks deadly and could be a real problem for teams moving forward. The ACC is pretty weak yet again, but the high end will always be high and they may be a legit threat come tournament time.

How6rd’s Big East/Mid-Major Roundup

Seton Hall back to playing big-time hoops- It’s been a while since we’ve seen any true firepower from this squad or at least entertaining ball over in New Jersey, specifically the Myles Powell era, but the Pirates might’ve gotten their spark back under Shaheen Holloway. Being a second-year coach from St. Peter’s and their miraculous Cinderella run, Holloway has made this team very “bend but don’t break” on the defensive side of the ball constantly forcing errors for the opposing team. On top of that we saw in the Marquette game that when the team is shooting well it’s tough to really contain them, as Al-Amir Dawes has had a roller coaster season with good and bad performances yet when it is going well as it did in their huge home game this team is on another level. There are shooting inconsistencies and bad turnovers that are made at least once a game which makes me hesitant to crown this squad as the regular season Big East champs right now, but if any team makes a splash out of this chaotic conference in the NCAA Tournament I’m pushing my chips towards the middle for the Pirates from Newark to make that statement.

Is the Mountain West even “mid-major” at this point?-  Technically speaking the Mountain West has not gotten the push just yet to actually be given the high major title just recently taking the college nation by storm, but the Mountain West conference holds a handful of the most impressive-looking teams consistently having good games in what’s been a rough year for most schools around the nation. Starting with Utah State they are among one of the top mid-major squads currently with only one loss on the season at this point having multiple blowout wins as they have almost a completely revamped team from a year ago with transfers balling out everywhere. Colorado State has had an up-and-down season with a couple of losses and close games in bad shooting performances, but when they’re at their best there is a reason they are ranked as the Utah State Aggies are completely dominating multiple teams. San Diego State is well known for what they did last season, and even though they lost a couple of games they were supposed to win on the year to other mid-major squads they still are deep in depth and looking like they could show out with another big run in March. The two other squads in New Mexico and Boise State don’t have as impressive resumes as the previous teams mentioned, but they’ve both had multiple dominating wins of their own handling their out-of-conference schedules and are as threatening as anyone to win this conference. Personally, I wouldn’t be shocked to see this group get multiple teams making the tournament again and they once again are looking like the best conference in college basketball out on the West Coast.

American Gangster and the Bayou Bandits-  As I stated before the season started if you wondered where Will Wade had ended up after falling out of the LSU basketball run he was on from being let go, he’s now the head guy leading the charge at McNeese State University who just pulled off a huge upset against Michigan. Now say what you want about how the Wolverines have played this year but aside from their loss against Long Beach State this team hasn’t been a slouch at home or within the “terrible” part of the Big 10, but the Cowboys of Louisiana are very much no slouches themselves and really just looked like the actual power conference team overall last Friday. Between solid production from their lineup along when the bench players were on the court, they were shooting lights out in Ann Arbor in a nearly sold out environment led by a 30 point game along with 10 rebounds and six assists from Shahada Wells who is basically a high-major basketball player taking the charge of a mid-major team. Will Wade knows how to find the best in his players and aside from Wells the ultimate x-factor he has brought to light in this squad is sophomore guard DJ Richards who has averaged nearly 19 points in his last three games and almost couldn’t miss from the perimeter against Michigan. As McNeese pulled off the “upset” in this one 87-76, looking like a team competing for a Big 10 title themselves, if there’s a Cinderella team you’re looking to follow before tournament play starts then hop on Will Wade’s Cowboys hype train in 2024.