NCAA Basketball Recap: Don't Mind the Dust...
When we last left off, it was Thanksgiving Day and Michigan State had just taken down the number 14 North Carolina Tarheels in overtime during the third place game of the Maui Invitational. That was definitely something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Then the Lions won for the first time in eight years on Thanksgiving Day and things were looking really good.
Between NCAA football, NFL football, and NCAA basketball, there has been a lot going on. I already covered the previous two, so now it is time to cover the last one. First, let me do a little bragging.
My niece had a game the other night with her high school varsity team down in Ohio. They lost the game 39 to 34, but she had some really impressive stats (and one not so impressive one). I actually don't have the stats from the fourth quarter of the game because we were asleep, but through the first three quarters of the game she had six assists, six rebounds, seven steals, four points, and seven turnovers.
Obviously that turnover number isn't the greatest, but this is high school basketball and you would be shocked just how common those are at this level, so I'm not too sad about that!
Okay, back to the NCAA. On Thanksgiving Day there were nine games in the top 25. (2) UConn continued their slide from earlier in the week and they fell to Dayton 85 to 67 in the first upset of the day. Then Illinois added to the pile beating (19) Arkansas 90 to 77. Oklahoma didn't want to be left out and they took down (24) Arizona 82 to 77.
(23) Ole Miss had a tough scrape against BYU that went into overtime, but they came away with the win 96 to 85.
Friday gave us eight games in the top 25 with West Virginia taking down (24) Arizona 83 to 76 in overtime. This was another one of those holiday tournament games that were going on through the week. The last upset of Friday came at the hands of Butler over (25) Mississippi State 87 to 77.
Saturday there were another eight games in the top 25 if you were able to pull yourself away from college football for a bit. There were two upsets and they were very close games. Both of them were decided by three points or less.
San Diego State upset (6) Houston 73 to 70, and Oregon beat (9) Alabama 83 to 81.
Sunday and Monday was all about the NFL, then on Tuesday we had seven games in the top 25.
Villanova took down (14) Cincinnati 68 to 60, and Michigan upset (11) Wisconsin 67 to 64. Probably the biggest upset of the day though was Clemson beating (4) Kentucky 70 to 66.
Wednesday night there were ten games in the top 25. (25) UConn rebounded from their recent slide with a 76 to 72 win over (15) Baylor. (6) Iowa State took the victory over (5) Marquette 81 to 70, and my new favorite Creighton upset those (1) Kansas jerks 76 to 63. So awesome!
(9) Duke really wanted to see things get shaken up, so they decided to beat (2) Auburn 84 to 78. Mississippi State continues to have a good run beating (18) Pittsburgh 90 to 57.
Michigan State also played last night and they had a commanding victory over Minnesota. The game didn't start until 8:30 PM EST so I was already in bed, but I watched a quick recap of it while I was on the treadmill this morning. It looked like they played really well and I have been impressed by the few number of fouls they have seemed to draw so far this season. If they can keep doing that and keep their turnovers down, I think it will be a good year.
As you can see from the number of upsets over the past week, teams are still working on shaking off the dust and getting into the groove of things. I expect we are going to have a lot more excitement in store before the dust settles in March of next year!
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