Monday, January 12, 2004
America’s Team
Air Force is off to its best start (9-2) in 49 seasons of playing basketball. Their last winning season was 1965-66. Tonight at Colorado State they look to match their longest winning streak ever of 8 set in 1958.
Coincidentally, the style the Falcons play is reminiscent of 1958. Their games average less than 100 points for the two teams combined. Against Belmont, the halftime score was 15-12! They don't have history on their side tonight - they've lost 27 consecutive Mountain West road games.
Sunday, January 11, 2004
Test
Which conference's teams have more non-conference wins vs. the RPI top 50...Big XII or Big West?
You're wrong. OK, it's a trick question, each one has only 3 top 50 wins to their credit. But the Big West has had just 35 non-conference wins overall vs. 94 for the Big XII (do they really deserve to use roman numerals?). For reference the WAC has 5 top 50 wins, the Big 10 has 7, and the ACC has 11.
Oklahoma provided the latest dissapointment today against Connecticut. This conference will still scrape together 6 bids - Missouri and Oklahoma are bound to start doing something remotely close to pre-season expectations - but it's possible only 1 or 2 teams will get a top 4 seed.
This says it all
Jorge L. Ortiz, San Francisco Chronicle on the Stanford win over Arizona....
Salim Stoudamire, a 6-foot-1 shooting guard who was one of five Wildcats averaging at least 12 points coming in, probably had images of Childress' Afro blocking his view in his sleep Saturday night.
Friday, January 09, 2004
Big 10 + Pac 10 < 10
Nice piece by regular ESPN.com contributor and all-around nice guy Pat Forde in today's Courier-Journal. It's even better since he makes prominent mention of my site.
His point is one that will gain more steam nationally in the coming weeks. The demise of the Pac 10 and Big 10 is going to help a team from a non-BCS conference get more consideration than they would 2 or 3 years ago. It's possible the two conferences will only get a combined 9 bids this year.
NCAA Bids for the Pac-10 and Big 10
2001...12 2002...11 2003...10 2004....9 (??)
Fantastic Four
The ACC is at the end of its golden age this year. This is the last year that all members will play each other twice. Fans can savor this last year of double round-robin play because 4 teams have a claim to be among the top 10 in America. Duke, UNC, Georgia Tech, and Wake Forest will most likely finish 1-4 in the ACC in some order. But in the process of beating each other up, they won't all stay in the top 10.
Once a week - and sometimes twice - for the rest of the year one of these teams will play another, providing a potential insant classic. One of these 12 matchups has already occurred: December 20th, 2003. Wake Forest 119, North Carolina 114, triple overtime. It was the game of the year so far, but it may not hold up. Next up on Sunday, it will be Georgia Tech at UNC.