College football has a couple of weeks where the top teams have “scrimmage” against less than competitive opponents. In college basketball there are several weeks of such “scrimmages.” If you haven’t paid much attention to college hoops until now, you are probably in good company. With college basketball having a top 25, but lacking a BCS system, it makes it less critical for teams to win every game in front of them on their schedule. Although taking the season as a whole in considerstion when filling out your March Madness brackett, you really only need to pay attention to the conference tournaments at the end of the season and who’s hot to fill out a fairly decent brackett. In the end though, the office idiot always seems to be the one that wins. You know what I’m talking about, the person that fills out their brackett acording to mascots, colors, or schools they have actually heard of??? It happens all the time, but for those of us that truly enjoy the excitement and passion of college basketball, you need to catch the action now. If your devotion to college basketball has been lacking so far this season, here are a few things you might have missed:
North Carolina is the most talented individually, but are they the #1 team?
(1) Oklahoma is Good in Basketball Too – The Sooners just completed another successfull football season, losing in the BCS National Title Game and finishing #5 in the nation. Backed by sophomore phenom Blake Griffin, the Sooner basketball team is also ranked #5 in the nation. Averaging 22 points and 13 rebounds per game, the Sooners better make the best of this year because all things are pointing towards Griffin entering the NBA Draft this summer. I wouldn’t call the Sooners “the new Jayhawks,” but they are having a great season so far.
(2) UNC Off to a Slow Start – The Tar Heels fell short of a National Title last year, but all the players committed to coming back for another year (including Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough…who also just barely became the leading scorer in North Carolina history). The Tar Heels slipped up last week losing to Boston College at home and then lost to Wake Forest this week. They should be fine with their loss to Wake Forest, who are #3 in the nation, but their loss to BC might not sit as nicely with them because BC followed their schlacking of the Tar Heels by losing to Harvard. No, that wasn’t a typo, Harvard has a basketball team and BC lost to them at home.
(3) The Big East is Pretty Good – For being so horrible in football, the Big East Conference more than makes up for it in basketball. Not only is Pittsburgh the current #1 team in the land, but there are seven other teams that are currently ranked in the top 25. Now that we are getting into the nitty gritty of conference play, I wouldn’t suspect this to be the case at the end of the season, but it is impressive. The Big East will become victim of Donner Party Syndrome, a.k.a conference cannibalism.
Tags: NCAA
January 14th, 2009 at 8:53 am
I am sad to admit that I am usually the office idiot that you mentioned above… I follow college basketball but I only follow two colleges closely, the rest I don’t really care about.