Ten takeaways from a pivotal day in college basketball:
1. Every year we say the NCAA tournament bubble is terrible. But this really is the worst.
A lot of bracketologists believe Vanderbilt (17-14, 10-8 in the utterly mediocre Southeastern Conference) is in the field for now after beating Florida. If the Commodores are in with 14 defeats, including five losses to SEC teams not making the Big Dance (Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi and Missouri), it’s a lousy bubble.
With mid-major teams in danger of receiving very few at-large bids, I’ll renew my call to just say no to mediocre high-major teams with all the scheduling and budgetary advantages. Say yes to Middle Tennessee State, Illinois State, Monmouth, UNC-Wilmington and Texas-Arlington, if they don’t win their league tournaments.
2. From No. 1 to the fifth seed for the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. It’s been that kind of season for Duke.
With the Blue Devils’ loss at North Carolina Saturday night, the preseason favorite to win it all will start play in the ACC tourney on Wednesday afternoon against either Clemson or North Carolina State. Duke would need to win four games to win the tournament.
It’s just one more jarring plot twist in a season full of them for the Blue Devils. Injuries, a trip, a suspension, a missing coach, a resurrection, and now a late slide heading into the postseason – Duke has been all over the map this year.
After appearing to have it all together during a seven-game winning streak, Mike Krzyzewski’s team has lost three of its past four. Taken individually, there wasn’t anything overly alarming in any loss – all were on the road, all were competitive games. But taken as a whole, this is a team heading into the postseason on the wrong note and not much resembling the national title contender it was supposed to be in November.
3. The officials in the Duke-North Carolina game walked the Grayson Allen tightrope correctly.
A common foul was assessed to Robinson and then a technical called on Allen upon video review for the high elbow from the Duke guard to Robinson’s face. Every borderline play involving Allen becomes a tempest in its own right, and the refs navigated this one well.
Here is the question going forward: In the heat of postseason play, will college basketball’s most combustible player keep his cool?
4. Ray Harper has become the king of the conference tournament.
Harper’s Jacksonville State Gamecocks secured the first automatic bid for the NCAA tournament Saturday night in the Ohio Valley Conference tourney title game. It also was the first NCAA bid in school history. And fittingly for Harper, Jax State did it as a No. 4 seed.
In both 2012 and ’13, Harper took Western Kentucky teams to the NCAA tournament by winning four games in four days, pulling upset after upset. The first WKU team was 11-18 entering the postseason; the second was 16-15.
This Jacksonville State team was 17-14 heading to Nashville for the OVC tourney. The Gamecocks routed Southeast Missouri State in the quarterfinals, then upset regular-season titlist Belmont – a team that previously had beaten Jax State twice by double digits. In the title game, Jax State easily handled Tennessee-Martin to go dancing.
Harper, who compiled a gaudy record as a small-college coach, is now 14-3 in conference tournaments as a Division I head coach.
5. Two bubble teams lost games they had to win Saturday, and the fates of their coaches may be intertwined.
Illinois (18-13) had a 10-point lead with 14:44 to play at Rutgers, then scored 15 points the rest of the way and was beaten by the last-place team in the Big Ten. California (19-11) took its first road trip east of Tucson all season and it didn’t go well – there was a 30-point wipeout at Utah Thursday and then a loss at Colorado Saturday.
As of today, I wouldn’t put either in my field of 68. And that could have some ramifications.
Illinois coach John Groce has never had a winning Big Ten record in five seasons, and without a strong run in the conference tourney the Illini will miss the NCAA tournament for the fourth straight season. That would probably cost Groce his job.
The name that has come up often within the industry as a replacement for Groce is Cal coach Cuonzo Martin. He’s believed to want out of Berkeley, and could be a candidate at both Illinois and Missouri. Illini connections have explored some NBA options, most notably Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg and former Pelicans coach Monty Williams, but neither may be interested.
6. Another place where a coaching change is needed: Georgetown. But don’t hold your breath waiting for it.
The Hoyas lost to Villanova by 26 points Saturday – their worst home loss to the rival Wildcats since the 1949-50 season, and it happened at home. That’s five straight losses to end the regular season at 14-17, all but cinching Georgetown’s second straight losing season. Last time the school had consecutive losing seasons: 1971-72 and 1972-73, which happened to be the last season under John Magee and the first season under a guy named John Thompson.
Thompson’s son, John Thompson III, is the current coach of the Hoyas. He’s had a good run, but repeated postseason pratfalls plus the current malaise should spell the end of his tenure. Firing the son of the program patriarch isn’t easy, however. Georgetown might be stuck with JTIII.
7. Aside from the mess at Georgetown, Saturday was a very good day for the Big East.
All four of the league’s bubble teams got needed victories: Seton Hall at Butler, Providence at St. John’s, Xavier at DePaul and Marquette at home over Creighton. That makes the Pirates, Friars and Eagles 10-8 in league play, and boosts the Musketeers to 9-9.
8. If you aren’t watching (and loving) the low-major and mid-major conference tournaments, you’re doing it wrong.
These are annually some of the best moments of March, as teams battle their guts out for the chance to simply claim 1/68th of the joy that is the Big Dance.
If you aren’t paying attention to the Little Dance, you’ve missed the revelation that is Chris Clemons. He’s Campbell’s 5-foot-9 sophomore guard, and he’s lit up the Big South tournament. Clemons opened the tourney by scoring 27 points in a victory over Presbyterian, then dropped a 51-point bomb on regular-season co-champ North Carolina-Asheville, and then followed that up with 33 in a semifinal win over Radford. That’s an average of 37 points a game to lead the Camels (17-16) into the title game Sunday against Winthrop.
And if you aren’t paying attention to the Little Dance, you’ve missed the handiwork by Saint Francis (Pa.) guard Keith Braxton. In the Northeast Conference quarterfinals, Braxton dropped 22 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists on Bryant. And then Saturday in the semis against Wagner, Braxton heaved a heavily contested prayer that spun all the way around the rim, kissed the backboard and then dropped through the net after the buzzer for a 71-70 victory.
Which player we’ve never heard of is next?
9. Wasn’t sure there would ever be a day when SMU beat Memphis by 41 points in basketball, but Saturday was that day.
The Mustangs are very good – 27-4 and regular-season champions of the American Athletic Conference. Tim Jankovich deserves serious consideration for national Coach of the Year honors. SMU has won 13 straight games, six of them by 20 or more points. The Ponies might be the hottest team in the nation.
But Memphis really shouldn’t lose like that to anyone. The first season of the Tubby Smith Era has not been pretty: The Tigers are 19-12, 9-9 in the AAC, and have lost five of their past six games. It gets worse when you consider the fact that Memphis paid its previous coach, Josh Pastner, to go away after last season – and Pastner has gotten some backing for ACC Coach of the Year at Georgia Tech.
10. Kentucky now has won eight in a row. But what exactly does that signify?
A maximum of two of those victories are over NCAA tournament teams – Florida and maybe Vanderbilt. Both of those games were at home. The other six are against teams that enter the SEC tourney seeded fifth (Alabama), eighth (Georgia), ninth (Tennessee), 10th (Texas A&M), 13th (LSU) and 14th (Missouri). Only the Gators and Commodores rank among Ken Pomeroy’s top 55.
Despite that rather soft run of competition, seven of UK’s eight victories have been by 10 points or less. Winning games is good, of course, and margin of victory is the most overrated of all statistics when it comes to elimination basketball. But Kentucky still isn’t functioning on a level commensurate to its talent.
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