Monday, Nov. 23 in College Basketball

The first major weekend in college basketball was relatively overshadowed by football, both of the college and professional variety. That means you missed a VCU upset over Oklahoma and a bunch of ranked teams beating down cupcakes. Except for Butler. And Louisville, to a lesser extent. Sunday featured a few other decent games, including a Kansas State upset over Dayton off of 26 points from Jacob Pullen, Villanova getting a game from Ole Miss in the 1st half before pulling away early in the 2nd to win the Puerto Rico title, Miami beating South Carolina for the Charleston Classic title (5-0 isn't too bad either), and Tennessee and Purdue advancing in the Paradise Jam, but through different circumstances (more on that later). Monday begins Feast Week, which means if you're not excited about college basketball now, you need to be. The Maui Invitational starts today, and while the field isn't as strong as in years past, it should be very competitive. Other tournaments are starting or finishing up and we'll get our first look at a couple of Top 25 teams, like Texas. Here's what's on the Monday slate:

Game of the Night:

Paradise Jam Final:

Purdue v. Tennessee: The Vols limp into the championship game after shooting 37% from the field and 3 of 12 from three but beating DePaul by 4. Purdue, meanwhile, shut down St. Joseph and knocked them out early in the 2nd half with a barrage of threes. Tennessee is capable of putting massive amounts of points on the board with their full court press, but Purdue has the ball-handling and passing skills necessary to break the press consistently. The Boilers will likely try to slow the game to more of a half-court pace, and if they do that I think they'll have the advantage, as they probably execute better in the half-court than the Vols do. If Tennessee is able to speed up the game and get some turnovers, though, this could be a long game.

Pick: Purdue 69, Tennessee 66

Others:

Maui Invitational:

Cincinnati v. Vanderbilt: No ranked teams in this tournament, but plenty of teams around the same level. These are both teams that received their fair share of preseason hype, meaning I want to see if either are legit.

Arizona v. Wisconsin: This should be an interesting match-up of teams that were depleted by graduation/the draft and are looking to rebuild quickly.

Paradise Jam Consolation:

Northern Iowa v. Boston College: I know, I know, it's early, but in this blog, we're always thinking about March, and both of these teams really don't need another loss.

DePaul vs. St. Joseph's: I'll take the 5th place game over this one, actually.

CBE Classic

Texas v. Iowa, Wichita St. v. Pitt: Both of the favorites should take care of business tonight, setting up a fun final tomorrow. Then again, things never seem to turn out the way you expect. But I certainly don't expect a team that couldn't beat Texas-San Antonio to beat Texas-Austin. That's Texas if you don't know. But you should. Okay, I'll stop typing.