08 Jan21 - Youth Shall Be Served

Volume XII, No. 12 - 08 Jan 21 - [] Top 25 Ballot

Youth Shall Be Served

Two of the GC-led teams came of age this week with a pair of significant wins. USC served notice that it isn't taking the rest of the regular season off, coming into Pauley Pavilion and handing UCLA a 72-@63 loss. The Trojans shot 61% from the floor as freshman fDavon Jefferson led the way with 25p9r with GC gO.J. Mayo adding 16p4a. The Bruins shot only 33% from the floor behind gJosh Shipp(21p1a) and GC cKevin Love(18p12r5s). Granted, USC is only in 6th place now at 2-3 in the Pac-10, but they've already taken both Kansas and Memphis to the wire and now they've beaten UCLA on the road. Forget the won-loss record with this squad as well as with GC Kansas State, which drubbed tumbling Texas A&M @75-54 (behind 21p4r from GC Michael Beasley and 19p from redshirt freshman gBill Walker) as the Wildcats are off to a 2-0 start in the Big 12. TXAM wasn't able to smoothe out its offensive problems in the preseason and the Aggies also dropped an ugly 53-@68 loss at Texas Tech earlier in the week.

North Carolina finally lost the game it's been trying to lose for a couple of weeks now. Late heroics saved the Tar Heels on the road at Clemson a couple weeks back. They needed them again this past week, pulling out an 83-@82 win at Georgia Tech on Wednesday. The luck ran out at home on Saturday against Maryland as the Terrapins were able to come into the Dean Dome and leave with an 82-@80 win. At its worst, UNC is a three-man team (cTyler Hansbrough, gWayne Ellington, pTy Lawson) that doesn't play defense and, when pLawson sits, it becomes very shaky at the point. We've seen Roy Williams' teams in the past that had early exits from the NCAA tournament for much the same reason. There aren't a lot of teams that have the individual quickness to do what USC did to UCLA -- (Texas did it in much the same way) -- but there are plenty of teams that can do what Maryland did to UNC: (match them running and win the endplay).

Tennessee continued to roll, beating Vanderbilt @80-60 and handling Ohio State @74-69. The Volunteers force the pace as much as UNC does, but they're much more like Memphis in that they force tempo with full court defensive pressure. They're not even getting a particularly strong performance from gChris Lofton (who was Player of the Year-calibre a season ago), but the addition and immediate eligibility of versatile Iowa transfer fTyler Smith has only enhanced their spread offense and hawking defense.

With only three-fifths of the "A" starting lineup from the beginning of the season, Pittsburgh managed to beat Georgetown in convincing fashion, @69-60, behind 18p4a from gRonald Ramon and 18p from gKeith Benjamin as fDeJuan Blair(15p9r) held his own against the Hoyas' cRoy Hibbert(12p10r). Life in the mega-Big East is rough, though, as the Panthers fell later in the week at 9-9 Cincinnati, 59-@62. The 16-member Big East has gone to an 18-game schedule this season, so there's not much chance to rest on your laurels. Give Villanova credit for being one of the few teams that survived the week with two wins, beating DePaul @76-69 and winning at GC Syracuse 81-@71.

In the Pac-10, Stanford is 4-2 (thanks mostly to four home games) and beat both Arizona (@56-52) and young Arizona State (@67-52). The Cardinal is little more than a one-man team, though, with 7' cBrook Lopez doing almost all of the damage (19p6r5b and 19p16r, respectively). Scoring in the lane is (literally) a tall order against this bunch. Still, fourth place in the nation's best conference deserves a ranking.

The Atlantic 10 earned enough respect in the preseason with multiple teams coming through with name wins, that now a loss doesn't automatically send a team packing from the rankings as it otherwise would have. Xavier (losing 59-@78 at 8-8 Temple) and Dayton (losing @71-82 to visiting Massachusetts) get the benefit of the doubt one more week and stay ranked. Instead, UMass bolts in the rankings itself.

Butler's perimeter weave attack by 'tweeners tPete Campbell, tJulian Betko and tDrew Streicher works a lot better against BCS power forwards (who aren't used to guarding out of the paint) than it does against the undersized mid-major small forwards of the Horizon League. After losing 52-@56 to undefeated Cleveland State, the Bulldogs are now two games off the pace in the conference standings. They're running the risk of losing both the regular season and tournament titles and having to get into the NCAAs on an at-large bid (just like last year), forcing the NCAA to give two bids to the otherwise 1BC Horizon. Davidson, on the other hand, wasn't able to make an impression with its ambitious preseason schedule and now seems to realize an automatic bid from the 1BC Southern Conference is all they can expect. They're 8-0 in conference and they've already drubbed their three strongest rivals: Appalachian State (71-@60), Georgia Southern (@92-67) and Chattanooga (@85-58). But they don't have any margin for error.

VCU is finally atop the Colonial standings, but George Mason isn't far off the pace. (By the way, GMU's bDre Smith shot 10-for-10 on three-pointers for 34p5r against James Madison on Saturday.) Utah State beat Boise State @82-78 to take the lead in the lowly WAC -- there's no way that league will get two teams, so winning the conference tournament is the real prize there. Akron beat Ohio University @55-54 to take the lead in the MAC, but they learned the hard way last year that only a tournament crown will get them into the NCAAs. Despite losing the best tandem in school history to graduation, Oral Roberts is back on top of the (newly renamed) Summit League, thanks to a @64-63 win over IUPUI.

Having beaten Georgetown, Memphis probably already deserves the #1 ranking more than Kansas. But with the Tigers' unlikely to lose during the regular season (thanks to the soft Conference USA schedule), there won't be a chance for Kansas to move up. Kansas' schedule has plenty of opportunity for the Jayhawks to slip up -- and if they don't, they'll deserve to be ranked ahead of Memphis, anyway. Call them 1A and 1B. One of the few test remaining for Memphis comes Saturday when they host Gonzaga. Indiana hosts Connecticut on Saturday in a game that has large implications for the Big 10. How well the Hoosiers do against a middle-high Big East squad will help calibrate the cutoff for at-large bids for Big 10 teams. Minnesota, Illinois and Purdue may fare well inside the league but they don't deserve NCAA bids. If IU beats UConn, though, and later loses to one of those, it'll seem like a bigger victory than it really is.

-- Ron

Key games this week:

Monday:

@Georgetown-Syracuse, @Niagara-Marist(NY),

Tuesday:

Tennessee-@Kentucky, @Creighton-Drake, @NewMexico-Utah,

Wednesday:

NCarolina-@MiamiFL, @WVirginia-@Marshall(@Charleston,WV)(WV), Massachusetts-@StJosephs, Baylor-@TexasA&M(TX), @Cincinnati-Connecticut, @BYU-SanDiegoSt, @Hofstra-VCU, @FloridaSt-Virginia, @NewOrleans-WeKentucky, @KentSt-Akron(OH), @Lafayette-Bucknell(PA),

Thursday:

UCLA-@Oregon, WashingtonSt-@Arizona, @Xavier-Dayton(OH), @ArizonaSt-Washington, @Providence-SetonHall, @SamHoustonSt-StephenFAustin(TX), @Wagner-MtStMarys,

Friday:

@WeberSt-NoArizona,

Saturday:

@Kansas-Nebraska, @Memphis-Gonzaga, @Tennessee-Georgia, WashingtonSt-@ArizonaSt, Georgetown-@WVirginia, @Texas-TexasTech(TX), @Indiana-Connecticut, Stanford-@California(CA), Mississippi-@MississippiSt(MS), @Villanova-NotreDame, @Baylor-Oklahoma, USC-@Oregon, @Arizona-Washington, @SanDiegoSt-UNLV, @BYU-NewMexico, @Utah-TCU, @Houston-Marshall, @VCU-Drexel, @Temple-StJosephs(PA), @FloridaSt-NCState, @SoIllinois-Creighton, @NewMexicoSt-UtahSt,

Sunday:

Duke-@Maryland, Xavier-@Massachusetts, @Florida-Vanderbilt, @MiamiFL-Clemson, @Providence-Syracuse, @SetonHall-Cincinnati, @KentSt-WeMichigan.

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Top 25 - 08 Jan 21 - [] Column

1. Kansas (17-0)
2. Memphis (17-0)
3. Duke (14-1)
4. Tennessee (15-1)
5. UCLA (15-2)
6. North Carolina (16-1)
7. Washington State (16-1)
8. Wisconsin (15-2)
9. Pittsburgh (14-3)
10. Georgetown (14-2)
11. Michigan State (16-2)
12. Texas (13-3)
13. Indiana (15-1)
14. Kansas State (10-4)
15. Stanford (15-3)
16. West Virginia (13-4)
17. Mississippi (15-2)
18. Xavier (15-4)
19. Massachusetts (13-4)
20. Villanova (13-3)
21. Gonzaga (14-4)
22. St. Mary's (13-2)
23. Dayton (14-2)
24. Baylor (14-2)
25. USC (11-6)

Honorable Mention:

Maryland (12-7), Cincinnati (9-9), Temple (8-8), Cleveland State (12-5), VCU (12-4), Davidson (8-6), Utah State (11-5), Akron (12-3), Oral Roberts (9-5).