NCAA Hoops Wrap-up 12/24/2021: A bad sign...
Well, the week started off pretty good for college basketball and then thing really started to go down hill. In what almost feels like a flashback of 2020, games were being cancelled right and left.
There are no games on the slate for today (I am guessing due to the holidays), but the two games that were supposed to be played yesterday were both cancelled. Earlier in the week, there were some games played, but there were also a few cancellations too.
It has me a bit concerned about where this season is heading. If the NCAA doesn't start taking some percautions soon, we might find ourselves in the lifeless landscape that was college basketball in 2020. I don't think any of us wants that.
Due to the fact that there were so many cancellations, this post is going to be quite a bit shorter than my usual recap. I apologize in advance, but what can you do when Omicron rears its ugly head...
Alright, so Monday gave us four games in the top 25 with one of them being cancelled. My assumption is Covid, so we will leave it at that.
Interestingly enough, all played games on Monday were teams that are in the top 5. Given that fact, they were all blow outs with the closest game having a margin of 20 points.
What I find interesting is the fact that Baylor slipped into the #1 spot. I am not sure when that happened, but it kind of caught me off guard. I guess they were pretty decent last year, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise, but oh well.
Gonzaga and Purdue seem to be back on track after a couple of bad losses earlier in the season.
Tuesday gave us seven games with only four of them being played and the other three getting cancelled.
For me, the most exciting part was the fact that Michigan State was back in action against in state rival Oakland. This is a game that they play every year and like I said in my post on Monday, Oakland usually plays up in this game.
By that I mean they often play better than they usually do because they know it would be a big deal to take down Michigan State.
Bigham had an amazing game and he is starting to be one of my favorite players on the team. He is so strong in the center and he can just do some magical stuff with the basketball when it gets in his hands. I think he had a (record?) 6 alley-oop dunks in the game on Tuesday.
It's honestly hard to pick just one favorite player on the Spartans team because there is so much talent. On top of that, they play so well together, so like I said, it is hard to single just one out.
That being said, Michigan State easily managed Oakland Univeristy. We did have a couple upsets on Tuesday night to keep things exciting.
Unranked Davidson took down #10 Alabama by one point. Equally impressive, #23 Villanova beat #18 Xavier by about 15 points to come away with the underdog win.
Finally, Wednesday brought us ten games with eight being played, one being cancelled and another being postponed.
The lone upset was #19 Tennessee over #6 Arizona. I said last week that I had heard good things about the Arizona team this year. Perhaps this is just a speed bump on their way to the Big Dance this Spring.
Since there are zero college games this weekend you won't be getting an update from me on Monday, but there will be a football post coming your way, so keep an eye out for that.
This is definitely shaping up to be an uncertain year for college basketball. Fingers crossed we get to safely keep things status quo.
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