College Basketball Recap - Dec. 9th

Not much happened Monday. Louisville got their third win in three days as they beat Lamar, Georegtown was all over Savannah St., San Diego lost again to put them below .500 in non-conference play, and St. John's beat NJIT. Dickie V. mentioned the St. John's game on Tuesday and said they shouldn't be playing teams of NJIT's caliber. As if there's never been a power conference team in the history of college basketball that hasn't beaten a crappy D-I team. This was almost as bad as his whining and crying about how Virginia Tech didn't get in last year (which he STILL complains about from time to time). I love your passion, Dick Vitale, but seriously, you're an idiot sometimes.

Tuesday, however, was more fun. Some very good matchups, and we learned some important things about a few teams. Start with:

Texas beat Villanova, 67-58

Texas - This is the third game I've seen them in, the other two being their other top 25 games, vs. ND and UCLA, and they look to be a very dangerous team thus far. Their perimeter D is as good as anyone's I've seen all year. Villanova had major troubles getting the ball to the basket, and outside of Cunningham nobody really played that well offensively. Mason is one of the best on the ball defenders I've seen this year. Scotty Reynolds couldn't get anything going all night. Texas is an extremely physical team defensively, and they really wear you down over the 40 minutes. They have good depth and size too, although the defensive rebounding was suspect at times. Offensively, they're not going to run anyone out of the gym but they do have weapons. Mason is a very good PG for this team and he seems very comfortable running this offense. Abrams, as we all know, can shoot with the best of them. James continues to impress me with his offensive development and him and Abrams took over late. This is what a slow paced, defensive team needs... a couple of weapons who can hit big shots at the end of games.

Villanova - My first look at them. Looking over their stats coming into the game, I wasn't sure if this was just a team that spread the ball well or a team with a few decent offensive players and that's it. And yes, I understand it was Texas's defense they're going up against, but I'm leaning towards the latter. Remember, there's plenty of teams who can play good perimeter defense in the Big East. UConn, Pitt, Louisville, Syracuse (when they want to), Marquette, even Georgetown... Villanova's going to have to find ways to score consistently, especially in the paint. Cunningham was magnificent but he isn't going to be enough. Stokes was good in the first half but completely disappeared in the 2nd. Reynolds has to take over in situations and find ways to get to the bucket/score. Better movement without the ball would be nice too. Overall, I'm sure the fact that this was their first test of the season and that they were basically worn down by Texas contributed heavily to the loss but right now I can't peg them above 7th in the Big East at best (sorry, I believe Marquette's the better team at the moment).

Ah well, it could be worse. They could've had West Virginia's problems on offense. The Mountaineers shot 33% from the floor and 4-16 from three as they lost to Davidson 68-65. They were without Alex Ruoff and Joe Mazzoula, which is basically their starting backcourt, and that left Da'Sean Butler as their only legit scorer. He had a solid game, and Devin Ebanks helped, but overall it was not a good day for West Virginia offensively. As far as the future, they have @ Ohio State on Dec. 27th and then conference play starts. They don't have any awful losses but their best win so far is @ Ole Miss, which means they have some work to do in Big East play. Meanwhile, the Wildcats pick up a decent neutral site victory, which should keep them safe for the moment. This team has no offense when Curry is not playing well, but when he is, this team is capable of beating anyone simply because Curry is capable of scoring on anyone. They stepped it up at the end defensively as well. This is how this team needs to close out games against good opponents.

In other top 25 action, Purdue shut down Ball State to win 68-39. Outside of the top 25, the Hokies lost yet another tight game @ Georgia 67-66. I'm sure they'll win some decent games in conference, but at this point their out of conference resume is basically empty and in all 4 losses they had a real chance to win at the end. It has to be difficult for the players and fans to endure this game after game. And Wisconsin beat Idaho State, 60-58, making this the second bad team they've almost lost to this year. A win's a win, but come on now. The Big Ten is going to be WIDE open this year, and I could see any one of 5 or 6 teams winning it all and pretty much anyone beating anyone on any given night. Except for IU.

IU sucks. Ha.