After spending the last 2 days on stories local and regional it's time to go national again. There was an impressive docket of college basketball games on Wednesday night.
For those who don't know, the national ranking is the in the parenthesis.
(20) Duke played (5) North Carolina
(3) Oklahoma played Texas Tech
(4) Iowa played Penn St.
(8) Xavier played (23) Providence
(15) Dayton played St. Joe's
Some of the games went the way the predictors would have said, some did not AKA upsets. That is one of the things that makes college basketball and especially the tournament one of the most popular parts of sports.
I can only claim to have seen one of those five games and won't get to all five here cause I just don't have opinions worthy of conveying about the ones that I'll skip. So here goes!
In the latest classic battle between Duke & UNC the outcome did not match the way the game actually went. 74-73, Duke.
Midway through the first half, the sixth man for Duke, Matt Jones, went down with a sprained ankle and never returned in the game. So instead of trying to use someone who could be a liability coach K went with 5 guys, except for a few minutes when the latest Plumlee had foul trouble and had to be replaced. 5 guys all playing nearly the entire game against UNC going 10 deep. It's still Duke, the reigning champions, so I can't bring myself to call it a Goliath situation but those are tough odds for any team to manage. For so much of the game UNC was in control. Duke had the lead at 20-18 and then not again until a minute left in the game, off some made free throws by Grayson Allen. That was after being down 8 just minutes before, followed by Brandon Ingram going on a 6 point run on his own. 5 manned and on the road to boot Duke showed their quality and stamped the latest chapter in the rivalry in fantastic fashion.
It may have been the best game of the night and the only one I viewed but up next, OU vs. TT.
I'm a Buddy Heild fan. I want him on the Timberwolves next year. I can't think of a shooter as good as he is in college since Steph Curry was knockin em down for Davidson. Going beyond the man, I just like the team Oklahoma has going into the tournament, at least to sweet 16, maybe elite 8 - gotta wait and see on that. I digress, when it's a match up between the number 3 team in the country and a fringe tournament team, it's an easy pick to make. OU, no question about it. But not last night. Getting beat by Kansas is one thing, losing to Tech is much worse. Or maybe not, cause Tex has won three games in a row over ranked teams so a tournament team it probably is and maybe the hottest unranked team in the country right now. 65-63 leaves a lot of potential answers to the fact, none of which I'll get to now.
Third and final?
Penn st. versus Iowa. Personally, I'm still doubtful of Iowa being deserving of a top five rank but the numbers are given out by people who generally know more about it then me and I have absolutely no influence in the numbers so I'll move on. The outcome is probably predictable since the premise of my write up is that the top teams had a tough time. Well you'd be right. Give yourself a prize! PSU is a five hundred team who got a good win. l don't want to take anything away from them for it but considering the season Iowa is having I'd say it's more a blip then a start of trend. Good for those kids, sincerely! Hopefully it was a good game. Memorable for the victors. But it was one game I don't think it'll have much of an impact once Iowa laces em up again.
The over arching fact is that it was a wild Wednesday on the hardwood. Xavier beat Providence. St. Joe's beat Dayton. So one top team got away unscathed. The rest were the victims of a few teams giving it their best shot, creating memories for themselves and history for the books. I'm a Duke fan. I'm a Buddy fan. And I live on the fringe of Big ten country so I'm all in on the night of basketball that was, with no concern for most of the results (though I was celebrating hard when the horn sounded in Chapel Hill). I'm a fan first and if this how the regular season keeps going then I can only imagine how March will be! Lets enjoy the ride but remember that there's always a loser and for those kids, it was a tough day and having those numbers next to the school name doesn't mean much in the first moments. Well that's all I've got for now!
Up Next: Post All Star break Timberwolves game 1
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