Those tweets are gold.

So K-State fans intend to fill the "celebrating other teams beating Kansas at basketball" void opened up when Missouri left the Big 12?

Florida's lost Will Yeguete for the regular season. Yeguete's one of those 3/4 hybrid/tweener types, and someone who is invariably described as a "glue guy." His loss last year really hurt UF's defense.

So that Michigan/OSU game was intense. Both teams were playing at an extremely high level (check the 4 factors, both teams shot lights out, took care of the ball and didn't foul), in fact OSU played what was probably their best game of the season, only to have the shear talent of Michigan's backcourt win out. THJR and Burke willed the team to victory despite mediocre performances elsewhere on the perimeter. The crowd and atmosphere no doubt helped, I've never seen Crisler that hyped. OSU hadn't given up more than 1.11 PPP before Michigan put up 1.19 on them. Even on a night where GRIII and Stauskus were mediocre Michigan still managed 1.19 PPP, which is pretty insane. Their offense is better than excellent, it's elite, like 2004-5 Illinois elite.

Mitch McGary stepped in big time for the injured Morgan but going forward Michigan needs a healthy Morgan to be at their best. Morgan is the key to their defense. With him they are good to very good on that end, without him they are mediocre.

Michigan is looking good for a #1 seed but they need a split this week @ Whisky and @ MSU. Thad Matta said it best, this (the B1G) league is about getting knocked down and getting back up. You have 4 legit contenders in the B1G (Michigan, IU, OSU, MSU) and then a number of solid teams before getting to the bottom.

That just happened. IU is a great team but away from home they are clearly vulnerable. Gotta say that a conference is loaded when the 7th best team or so if capable of pulling an upset like this, granted it was at home. If I believe correctly this is now the 4th top 10 team (at the time of the game) that the Illini have beat. They move to 4-6 in the B1G and significantly boost their Tourney stock from solidly bubble to solidly in -- atm.

They move to 4-6 in the B1G and significantly boost their Tourney stock from solidly bubble to solidly in -- atm.

Illinois is 3-7 in the Big 10. I'd say they're still on the outside looking in with that conference mark.

Well I was looking at NU but Illini are now up to 46th in RPI, and look at who they have played -- a murderers row. They should fatten up against the rest of their schedule to put the w/l record with the advanced rankings. I don't like RPI but the committee loves it.

ASU scrapes past Cal. At the moment, Sun Devils are in a 3-way tie for second.

Either Oregon is turning into a pumpkin, or Colorado is getting off the mat.

If Illinois wins their three home games and at least one road game, they'll still probably need two tournament wins to get in. It's really a shame that a team capable of doing what they did last night has simply wasted opportunity after opportunity this season.

ZOMG at that Wisconsin shot.

That was impressive.

The Big 10 is so strong this year that Illinois might have a shot at 7 wins in the league and then winning the first conf tourny game. Lunardi just updated yesterday, fwiw, and he has Illinois as the last team in.

If they get to 8-10, they'd have to be a lock, right? That would mean they pick up a road win against one of Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, or Ohio State. Iowa isn't in the class of those other 3, but they are a pretty decent team.

It might be hard for the committee to overlook a team that has the wins Illinois does, especially because the competition they are going against may not have one win at the caliber of Indiana, Gonzaga, Ohio State, or Butler.

Either Oregon is turning into a pumpkin, or Colorado is getting off the mat.

Maybe just a bad game? 48-47 sounds pretty ugly.

I don't watch much basketball but sometimes catch CU, and they seem pretty thin. They rely heavily on two freshman and two sophs, and they're not blue chippers. Poor free throw shooting team. They look like a bubble team again, don't they? They don't win on the road--Oregon was the first win of note; the other two road wins were Wash St and Fresno St. And yet somehow they're around 20th in RPI-I don't get that.

Though being a bubble team is a big step up for CU basketball!

Poor free throw shooting team.

The Buffs shoot like Steve Nash* compared to ASU: 62.5 FT% this season, which ranks 324th out of 347 teams. And in conference play alone, the Sun Devils are, somehow, worse: 61.5%.

* - Not really. Colorado: 66.2%, ranking 220th.

I think I exhibit only one real instance of homerism: unrelenting schadenfreude regarding Dayton's failures. I posted about the loss to Xavier above.

Today, Dayton blew a 9 point lead with under 4 to play against Temple. That stretch featured 3 turnovers from their point guard. But the capper was Dayton being at the line with one second left on the clock, trailing by one, shooting two free throws after a surprising off-the-ball foul call. And missing both free throws.

Stanford shooting the lights out in Tempe.

Yeesh. Cardinal finished 10-of-18 on 3s. (But only 12-for-28 on 2s.)

Really hoped ASU would step up and get this one. I have a feeling the Devils are going to spend the rest of the season in the "First Four Out" zone.

Notre Dame-Louisville headed to fifth overtime. For reals.

WATN: Jay Williams in the NYT

ND-LVL last night was pretty fun.

Russ Smith is JR Smith on PEDs (as archetype, not player)

New to me: hoop-math.com. High level college PBP stats.

Huge win for Illinois. Minnesota just looked way too long in the first game, and the first ten minutes of this one, but when a team is draining threes, that team can beat anyone. I think 7-11 definitely gets them in now, but they're looking more like an 8-10 team, which should easily be enough.

Well that was fantastic, and they're making me believe a win in Evanston or Carver-Hawkeye isn't an outrageous hope.

how 'bout them badgers?

this wisconsin team looks like the finnish national team yet somehow stay in games.

and they're making me believe a win in Evanston

I first read this as "Evansville" and was surprised at the MVC fandom in here.

True story, a good friend of mine's father in law is the President of the University of Evansville. We've played quite a bit of golf together with a group at my club up by Traverse City the past two Labor Day weekends.

True story, a good friend of mine's father in law is the President of the University of Evansville. We've played quite a bit of golf together with a group at my club up by Traverse City the past two Labor Day weekends.

You should start dropping a bunch of Scott Haffner references in your conversation with the Prez.

Well that was fantastic, and they're making me believe a win in Evanston or Carver-Hawkeye isn't an outrageous hope.

It was a beautiful ugly win, but remember that Rodney Williams didn't play on Sunday.

how 'bout them badgers?

this wisconsin team looks like the finnish national team yet somehow stay in games.

Bo frickin' Ryan. I think its mostly the move from George Marshall to Traevon Jackson which has at least coincided with Wisconsin's improvement and (IMO) has catalyzed it. He's a better game manager than Marshall (who's still a bit wild). That free throw shooting has to be worrisome-best FT shooting team in the country two years ago to ranked somewhere in the bottom 10%.

True story, a good friend of mine's father in law is the President of the University of Evansville. We've played quite a bit of golf together with a group at my club up by Traverse City the past two Labor Day weekends.

It's no coincidence that Evansville and Traverse City both have teams in the Frontier League. The two cities are connected in so many ways.

Nerlens Noel went down after striking his knee on the basket support. Looked awful. He was howling in pain. Had to be carried off the court.

69-39 Sparty with 6 min to go. Ouch. Michigan's gauntlet didn't go so well.

how 'bout them badgers?

Can't think of a team I wouldn't rather watch play. Taking the air out of the ball and counting on the Big Ten refs to let more stuff go uncalled is infuriating. Look at them in the non-conference, and away from the anything-goes B1G refs and they lost to all the possible tournament teams they play.

And Noel did tear his ACL.

That pretty much eliminates Kentucky from contention for just about anything, on the off chance you still believed in them. Might be a struggle to make the tournament at this point.

Its unfortunate that Nerlens Noel has to be the poster child for the NBA age limit.

Sun Devils, I am disappoint.

Big game for Gonzaga tonight @ St. Mary's, a team that -- if KenPom #'s are to be believed -- is very underrated given their consensus status as a bubble team needing a victory over the Zags to have an at large shot. St. Mary's sits at #22 in the KenPom rankings and is a very similar team to Gonzaga in many ways. It's generally agreed that Gonzaga has an elite offense -- the nation's 4th most efficient according to Pomeroy -- and a mediocre (for a FF contender) defense at #44. The much-less heralded Gaels have the 5th best offense in the country, and the 94th best defense.

Should be a really good game between two high-powered offenses. Those of you lamenting the methodical, bruising tone of B1G games might enjoy this one.

And Colorado gets revenge on Arizona. Top of the P12 is turning into a dogpile; by the end of tonight, there will be a 4-way tie for 4th and a 2-way tie for 2nd.

Will the muddling at the top of the Pac12 hurt the number of at large bids from the Conference? I don't follow this stuff closely--any idea how many the conf will get this year?

I've read anywhere from 2 to 5.

Right now I'd say that they are going to get four -- Arizona, Oregon, UCLA, and Colorado. Only the Wildcats are a lock and after that the Ducks seem pretty safe while the Bruins and Buffs have to grind out some more wins and avoid the bad losses. Cal, ASU, or Stanford (not looking good for them after losing at home to USC tonight) could get hot and steal a bid, but as of now they have to be considered on the outside looking in.

Should be a really good game between two high-powered offenses. Those of you lamenting the methodical, bruising tone of B1G games might enjoy this one.

Well, so much for that. St Mary's needs to win the conference tourney now, I'd reckon.

I hope Sam H. has an alibi. Penn's 1979 Final Four** starting center Matthew White was stabbed to death via the neck:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-basketball/news/20130212/matthew-white.ap/

** Lost to Magic's MSU.

St Mary's needs to win the conference tourney now, I'd reckon.

They do have a home game with Creighton next weekend for the Bracketbusters event, but what seemed like it may have been a marquee victory opportunity a few weeks ago looks a bit ho-hum after Creighton shockingly has fallen apart against mediocre MVC competition.

I still think St. Mary's is better than your average bubble fodder (but not by much, really) but they have no good wins to hang their hat on, in large part because they played nobody worth a salt (and lost to some lousy teams) during OOC. They set their season up to have it all ride on beating the Zags once or twice this year, which has worked for them on occasion in the past, but Gonzaga is too good this year and now they may have to beat them in the WCC tourney (seems unlikely) or they'll be at the mercy of an NCAA committee that has left them on the outside looking in several times before in similar situations.

ASU won despite being outrebounded 40-18, 18-2 on the offensive glass.

RIP Duke's Phil Henderson, 44.

[193] Offensive Rebounding is weird. You don't mind it so much when the team still shoots 35% from the floor. Or when a guy who pulls down 9 offensive rebounds shoots 4-9 from the floor. Or when the guy with 6 offensive rebounds is 4-11.

Basically, you can get a lot of offensive rebounds on one possession, and still not score.

Florida better win a lot of NCAA Tournament games by 30 points, because for a good team with a great coach the Gators are completely ####### clueless in a close, end-game situation. Absolutely awful.

Right now, Wisconsin is pegged at an 8 seed on Bracket Matrix projection aggregator.

Is that matrix just an aggregation, or is he weighting them somehow?

Man, I love Xavier, but this season, they play the kinds of games that make people complain about college basketball. 55-42 over Rhode Island. Xavier shoots 18-45 from the floor; URI shoots 13-54 from the floor, 5-30(!) from 3. That's the kind of game that's so bad I enjoy it more _not_ watching it.

GO DEACS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're going to end each page with me talking about a Wake upset. See you in April!