NCAA Basketball 2012-2013 Season Catch-All

Charleston beat Baylor in Waco yesterday. 3-2 on the year, with a win against BC and two competitive losses to St. Johns and Auburn.

What luck. 15 hours apart Louisville loses its best basketball player and football player to broken wrists.

Gorgui Dieng is having surgery tomorrow on his left (non-shooting) hand, and is expected to be out 4-6 weeks.

At least he'll be back for conference play and have time to get sharp again for the tournament. And if he comes back healthy, our seeding won't be affected too badly by any games we lose without him (like Duke Sat). And maybe our freshman Montrezl Harrell will get some valuable minutes and experience the next month or so.

So as bad as it is, it could be worse (shooting hand, or out for season), and maybe in the end it will help us make a deep tournament run in the spring.

I'll admit I haven't followed Cal basketball as closely in recent years, but we're looking good at 6-0 against some mediocre competition. We have some better competition coming our way in the form of Creighton, Wisconsin and UNLV. We have 2 senior guards in former Pac-10 frosh of the year Allen Crabbe, and senior PG Justin Cobbe. I don't really pay attention until conference games start, but with UCLA not looking as good as advertised, Cal looks like they can be top 3 or 4 in the Pac, and hopefully Tournament bound. We'll see how things go.

Hey at least you didn't lose to the California Polytechnic State University Mustangs right?

Maybe UCLA should renovate Pauley again eh?

Ah ESPN is showing the Jim Valvano speech again, as they do every year at this time.

Wow Georgetown and Tennessee in a 37-36 barn burner with 20 seconds left in the game.

Also... a boring tie in the Big 10-ACC challenge this week.

Kansas is beating up on Oregon State, which was to be expected.

But Ben McClemore just made an amazing leaping jump for a steal and followed it with an even more impressive dunk that started way out from the basket, allowing him to somehow weave in midair around set post player. Pretty amazing for a redshirt freshman, who already has 15 with 8 minutes left in the 1st half.

NCAA lost a great one yesterday.

Majerus lived his life to help others

We were pretty lucky to have him in St. Louis the last few years.

Yeah by all accounts a good coach and more importantly a good person who really cared about his kids.

Wow. 80-38 road win tonight for Louisville at College of Charleston.

It was over 2 minutes into it but we never let up the pressure, even with the bench guys in finishing things. Wow.

Ugh.

Sports Illustrated Power Rankings

There's an awesome Turnometer (turnover meter) for Russ Smith of Louisville vs Aaron Craft of Ohio St.

Also there's a block chart for Withey at Kansas that I think Jayhawker will appreciate.

EDIT: Also the NCAA is doing stuff for the 75th March Madness this year, so here's a list of 75 all-time tournament players, teams, and moments.

Yeah, Withey is in the process of putting together a historic year. He actually gets more blocks against better teams, because they actually have bigs that try to score inside. The real key is the % of blocks in which KU keeps the ball. It was something Cole Aldrich had worked on pretty hard, because swatting the ball out of bounds just gives your opponent another shot.

But Withey grew up playing volleyball in San Diego, so he already had a long history with directing his swats.

Wit the way McLemore is playing, this may end up being Bill Self's best team by the time March rolls around. Part of it is that Withey has really become dominant offensively, too. McLemore can score from anywhere, and Relaford can shut down anyone. But they have a lot of new pieces and young players, so they are nowhere near as good as they will be.

I hope McLemore sticks around for his sophomore year, but that loks doubtful already.

Stele wrote:

Also the NCAA is doing stuff for the 75th March Madness this year, so here's a list of 75 all-time tournament players, teams, and moments.

"Hampton's 58-57 win against Iowa State." Ugh, I was afraid that would be on the list.

Somehow they left off the 1983 Dream Game between Louisville and Kentucky.

Can't wait to watch Indiana and Butler play tomorrow at the fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Butler has been a darling the last few years but many here in the Hoosier state believe that the Bulldogs were just a 'nice story' while the team from Bloomington got's it house back in order. Should be a fun game.

MacBrave wrote:

Can't wait to watch Indiana and Butler play tomorrow at the fieldhouse in Indianapolis. Butler has been a darling the last few years but many here in the Hoosier state believe that the Bulldogs were just a 'nice story' while the team from Bloomington got's it house back in order. Should be a fun game.

So that didn't go quite as planned. It was a hell of an ending. When Indiana erased a 5 point deficit to force OT, O figured it was in the bad for the Hoosiers.

I expect Belmont to give Kansas just as much fight this evening.

Jayhawker wrote:

So that didn't go quite as planned.

No it didn't. Great game all around, congrats to the Bulldogs. Hoosiers better work on their free throws. The grueling Big 10 season awaits.

Too bad the 2nd game, Purdue vs. Notre Dame, is a snoozer.

Nothing like beating Memphis in Memphis. Go Cards! And after being down 16 in the first half and cutting it to 1, and then going back down 10 in the second half. Cardiac Cardinals still. Nothing is ever easy. Whew.

And all of their fans crying about the FT disparity, but honestly I thought they could have called more fouls on Memphis. They were rough physically the entire game, and also running their mouths, and arguing with the refs. Really should have been a couple Ts thrown in to the mix as well. About the level of class I've come to expect from Memphis, in Memphis, over the last 30 years... and even more from before then I've heard about. :p

Anyway, nice to see Indiana and Florida both go down tonight. Louisville should move up a couple spots.

Arizona comeback over Florida was pretty ridiculous. Just caught a little bit of Butler-IU OT as the Louisville game was on at the same time. But some clutch shots by Butler. And one by Indiana to send it to OT.

Well, Cal is who we thought they were. After starting 6-0 against some mediocre opponents, Cal played 3 ranked teams and lost all 3. We took UNLV to the wire, but lost huge against Wisconsin, and just got beat by Creighton.

I'm starting to feel like the Jayhawks have flipped a switch. Belmont was supposed to present solid challenge to Kansas, as Pomeroy has them ranked even higher than Butler (#33-#44). And Kansas just blew them out of the water from the get-go, dominating them for the entre 40 minutes.

They take on another tough mid-major Tuesday night when Richmond comes to town. The real test of how good the team is will come next Saturday when they travel to Ohio St.

But right now, the Jayhawks are strong everywhere, and McLemore has superstar written all over his performances so far. Another freshman, Perry Ellis, who was supposed to be the best of the bunch, is now starting to come along, and could return to the starting line-up before long. And another, Andrew White III, has started to make a good case for more minutes.

My belief is that this team will stay on this hot streak long enough to get to #1 or #2 in the country.

Today is certainly the big day for Kansas. How they handle Ohio State on the road will say a lot about how good they really are. They've been on a crazy good streak.

Yeah I'm pulling for you.

Mostly I'm just excited to watch two top 10 teams play. Get a taste of tournament atmosphere.

Rock Chalk Jayhawks! Great game!

Jayhawker wrote:

Rock Chalk Jayhawks! Great game!

Yes, except for a couple minutes in the first half where OSU made a run, you guys were dominating.

Missouri ran away from Illinois tonight in a neutral site battle, winning by 10. Funny how great Pressey looked against them but how Louisville completely shut him down earlier this year. Good for our RPI/SoS I guess.

Also Temple upset Syracuse today. Caught almost the entirety of these games, and it has been a fun day to watch.

Now settling in for UL-WKU rivalry. And sadly I'm in Nashville visiting in-laws but not at the game... Happy Holidays indeed. :p

Great OT game with UCLA-Mizz tonight. Bad possession by the Tigers to end regulation. Pressey had a monster game and he inbounded the ball instead of taking the last shot or at least dishing it off.

Was kinda pulling for them to win since that keeps boosting Louisville's RPI and making us look that much better for blowing them out last month. Oh well.

Dream Game tomorrow. I'm sure I'll post again before it happens. So much going on. Dieng starting for the first time in a month since breaking his wrist in that Mizz game. His parents flying in from Africa to watch him play in person for the first time ever. Lots of great storylines as usual with Louisville vs Kentucky. Can't hardly sleep tonight!

Whew. Louisville wins, but didn't cover.

An extreme amount of fouls called. Mostly in the 2nd half, after Calipari got a Technical. :p Aided in UK making it close. Peyton Siva fouled out. Gorgui Dieng and Russ Smith both had 4 and had to sit for extended periods.

Louisville was up 17 but only won by 3. UK hit a 3 with 2 sec left to cut it from 6. So not really in danger of losing, but still a bit closer than it should have been. A win is a win so I can't be too upset. Hopefully we learned a lesson about ticky tack fouls, but I doubt it. The refs just tightened up and made the game close there for a while. Oh well.

Ugh... Cal may not have been a tournament team, but a loss at home to Harvard definitely ruins our RPI. We'll need a pretty good Pac-12 record and probably make some noise in the Pac-12 tournament to get us in this year.

The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing that today's Minnesota-Michigan State game is a huge game for the history of the program. The state of Minnesota has number 1, 10 and 29 on ESPN's 2014 recruiting rankings. All three are being heavily recruited by both schools (and many others). All three of those recruits and some other highly recruited players are going to be at the game. Winning isn't going to secure any commitments for Minnesota but losing sure as hell could lose some. So, given all that, I'm sure they're going to lose.

This is actually the first time I can remember that the Gophers are going to be favored against MSU. The last time would have either been in the mid-'90s during the years that don't officially exist anymore or in the late-'70s.

I like Tubby. Good luck.

Cincy-Pitt game is pretty entertaining so far. Got to enjoy all these ranked vs ranked games in the BE this year. This will be the last great year of one of the greatest conferences ever to exist.