Saint Mary’s: It’s Tough Being at the Top

Just recently the Saint Mary’s Gaels men’s basketball team, which plays in the same conference as Gonzaga, made it into the AP Top 25 Poll. They received a No. 24 ranking when the poll came out most recently, the school’s first appearance on the list in almost two decades. However, their stay on top will probably be short lived, as they lost badly to the Southern Illinois Salukis last night on the road. The score at the end was 71-56, an amazing upset for the Salukis. The Gaels were having big troubles on the boards all night long. Even their star player, Patrick Mills, couldn’t help propel the Gaels to a win. I guess when you are a ranked team, the smaller guys just try harder to beat you. Will St. Mary’s get booted from the Top 25? Probably, but something tells me that they will be back before the season is through.

In other news there’s some sweet games tonight on ESPNU, ESPN2 and ESPN Classic. If you don’t already have tickets, you should check out two great rivalry games on TV tonight. UMass at Boston College will pit to cross-town rivals against each other in a heated affair. Two Ivy League powerhouses (at least they have been for most of their history) will go at each other when Princeton plays Penn.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 12, 2007 - Post a comment

Christmas Season Slows Down the Hoops

In case you haven’t been to your local mall or Wal-Mart, the Final Four blog is here to tell you for certain that the holiday season is in full swing. While this is a great time for retailers, small children and the small percentage of people who enjoy the taste of eggnog, the Complete Liars Percentage, this is a bad time for fans of college hoops. You will probably be going home for the holidays, watching NFL football, NBA basketball and NHL hockey, college athletes are allowed to be with their families for large portions of time.

This blogger thinks that that’s a good thing for college athletes. After all, they aren’t getting paid for playing (the vast majority at least- ha!) and they do need a winter break from school work. It would be nice to be able to turn on ESPN before the big Christmas meal to watch Duke or UCLA play on ESPN, but perhaps the absence of hoops will make the heart grow fonder of the action when the kids get back to playing. Two days after Christmas the NCAA basketball games will start back up with Louisville taking on Morehead State. This is the part of the season where we have to be patient. The excitement will be fast and heavy when January and February roll around, so bear with these great athletes as they enjoy the holidays as well.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 11, 2007 - Post a comment

Plenty of College Basketball Teams Still Unbeaten

The ESPN/USA Today Poll is out, and unbeaten teams are definitely in! The North Carolina Tar Heels, who are 8-0 currently, are the top team in the nation, according to the poll. They are followed by Memphis, Kansas, Georgetown and Texas in the top five. UCLA, which had been as high as No.1 a few weeks ago, is No. 8 in the country after falling to Texas last week. There are lots of other unbeaten teams in the poll, including Washington State, Duke, Pittsburgh, Clemson, Vanderbilt and no. 24 Saint Mary’s of California. The Gaels of Saint Mary’s only just made it into the poll for the first time this year.

While there are plenty of great teams that are yet to show themselves, the polls are getting more and more significant as teams get deeper and deeper into the meat and potatoes of their respective seasons. There are all kinds of great, high-level basketball games going on right now, but it’s nothing like what will be happening in a month or two when every team begins playing their conference schedules. You’ll want to get your tickets set for those games.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 10, 2007 - Post a comment

Lute Olsen Will Return to Arizona Sidelines Next Year

Lute Olsen will return to coach the Arizona Wildcats next season. This was the statement that Olen made in a University of Arizona release recently. Olsen sited “personal issues” as the reason for his leave of absence, and as of yet there have only been rumors as to what those specific personal issues are. Arizona basketball will be left in the hands of assistant coach Kevin O’Neill, who has been received well by both the players and fans. O’Neill’s leadership of the team should not adversely affect the team in any meaningful way. It was, however, distracting for Olsen to have taken a shorter leave, and then to return in a diminished role, leaving everyone in doubt as to when Olsen would retake control over the head coaching position.

Now that Olsen has made his decision, it’s time for the Wildcats to focus on basketball and the media to focus on basketball as well. Clearly Olsen would like for this to be as private a matter as possible, and has been careful not to let too much on for the public’s knowledge. When you are as well respected, admired, tenured and loved as Olsen, you have earned the right to have some time off to deal with personal issues without any criticism. Overall, the media has been fairly good about keeping the hype of this story to a minimum. We all wish Coach Olsen the best with his struggles, and we hope that everything turns out all right for him and his loved ones.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 7, 2007 - Post a comment

News and Notre from the College Basketball Elsewhere

If you haven’t yet seen the site BasketballProspectus.com, do so now. This Final Four Blog fully supports the in depth and outside-the-mainstream analysis that the guys at this site put together. It’s all about stats and efficiency and making a case for players and teams based on the numbers. A must-add to the bookmarks of any college basketball fan. That being said, there is a recent article on the site by Ken Pomeroy which details some of the finer points that the NCAA basketball world missed out on in the month of November. If you are a fan of Arizona or Indiana, there are a few notes that you should check out before you get tickets to their upcoming home games.

Not to be missed is the section of the article that talks about the importance of the games that are played in November. Do they really matter? Are they important in the long haul? Are we making too much out of upsets in the first few weeks of college basketball? There are good arguments on both sides of this issue, and Pomeroy explores them both with his statistician’s eye.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 6, 2007 - Post a comment

Memphis-USC Goes into Overtime

The fans who got to see the Memphis-USC game live at Madison Square Garden yesterday were at the same time bored and thrilled. The game, which was part of the Jimmy V Classic, was a slow, turnover-laden affair that eventually went into overtime. The (No.2) Tigers improved to 7-0 after they pulled out a 62-58 win over the (No. 24) USC Trojans, but most people think that it could have been much more exciting. Memphis is a team that thrives in the open court, running and gunning and throwing down highlight-reel dunks. USC has one of the nation’s most talked-about freshman, O.J. Mayo. This game was supposed to be a nice matchup between two outstanding freshmen, O.J. Mayo and Memphis’ Derrick Rose, but neither really got going during the game. Rose ended with 9 points, and May had a game-high 16.

With this ugly win, the Tigers will hold onto their No. 2 spot, barring any UNC meltdowns. Southern California is right on the edge of getting knocked out of the AP Poll, though losing to a team like Memphis in overtime isn’t too bad of a knock against them.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 5, 2007 - Post a comment

The Newest AP Poll Reflects Big Wins, Losses

If you take a look t the latest AP Top 25 Poll, you’ll notice a bit more movement, especially among the top teams. The UCLA Bruins are sliding after having been dealt a loss at the hands of Texas. The Longhorns climbed up to No. 4 (they were No. 8 when they played UCLA) and the Bruins moved down to occupy the No. 7 spot. North Carolina, Memphis, Georgetown and Kansas have all stayed around the top five spots. Duke and Michigan State have both seen huge surges in their national ranking. The Blue Devils are now ranked No. 6 and the Spartans are No. 9.

If you take a look at the bottom of the poll you can see all of the fine print. It has a list of the teams that were just this close from making it into the Top 25. There’s also the list of teams that were dropped from the Poll. Although Wisconsin, Kansas State and North Carolina State were all dropped from the list, they each received substantial votes. They aren’t too far from making the cut just yet. In fact, Kansas State plays Notre Dame tonight so they could potentially start earning back their spot very soon.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 4, 2007 - Post a comment

No. 8 Texas Beats No.1 UCLA

In one of the biggest games of the college basketball season so far the No. 8 Texas Longhorns defeated the No. 1-ranked UCLA Bruins. Texas managed to pull out a dramatic 63-61 win in hostile territory after a dunk by Damion James that you can probably see on every Texas highlight film by the end of the year. You might even get to see it when “One Shining Moment” plays at the end of the NCAA Tournament- if Texas wins the national title game. And with the way they handled their tough early-season game versus the best team in the nation (and a Final Four team last year) they certainly have proved that they should be considered one of the favorites to get to the Final.

If you check out the ESPN recap of the game, you will see a little graphic below the box scores that’s always interesting to study, especially if you watched the full game. It’s a graph that shows the flow of the game with respect to the scoring. You can see where Texas jumped out to a 16-point lead in the first half as the UCLA offense basically stood still for ten minutes. But then you can see how close the teams were almost immediately after halftime.

To get NCAA basketball tickets, go to StubHub.com.

Permalink - Posted in General on December 3, 2007 - Post a comment


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