24 hours of basketball, and nobody with a real job or who lives in a real adult world or who has any kind of life could possibly watch it all. I tried to watch as much as I could, which mainly consisted of sneaking peaks at ESPN3 while at work, and here is everything I noticed, read, or had someone tell me:
- Memphis looked very good dismantling Belmont 97-81 in a game they controlled from the start. Being that this is the same Belmont team that took Duke down to the wire earlier this week makes the Tigers win that much more impressive. Memphis's guards were able to penetrate at will (just like when I went out with your sister that one time) and made Belmont look like the low major it is. I don't think they're a very good shooting team and the 50% from 3 and 59% from the floor won't happen very often, but this is the same team that held Duke to just 43%, so who knows. They're going to run away with the C-USA title.
- Kent State scored an upset for the MAC, defeating West Virginia 70-60 in West Virginia. This is the second big win for the league this week after Akron defeated Mississippi State. I don't know if the rest of the league will be good enough to boost the league's overall RPI enough to get an at-large bid, but both Kent State and Akron not only look worthy of a bid so far, but look like they could score an upset in March.
- Despite losing almost everyone from last year, Texas's offense is going to be just fine as they dropped a hunny on Rhode Island. J'Covan Brown answered questions if he can be the main guy for the Longhorns by putting up 35 and that's good because other than Myck Kabongo I haven't heard of anybody else on this team (except Jonathan Holmes but I'm guessing that's a different guy). Of course, not having guys like Tristan Thompson and Dexter Pittman around doesn't exactly help your interior defense because Rhode Island scored 90 in the loss. Looks like Texas will be fun to watch and then get bounced early in the tournament. So that's totally new.
- Baylor's Quincy Miller is the best freshman I've seen so far this year, and that includes Austin Rivers. Rivers might end up being better (he still kind of seems to be adjusting to either college ball, Duke, or both), but right now Miller is better because he is just straight ready to go. Super athletic at 6-9, he can play inside or outside equally well, which is a big key because once Perry Jones comes off his suspension Baylor will need him to move out to the perimeter more often since they have Quincy Acy as well. I'm guessing he can handle it.
- The Spartans managed to make it look like a competitive game, clawing back against Duke from what was at one point an 18-point second half deficit to finish losing by just five (and covering the spread, woo-hoo!). It was basically a one-man show with Keith Appling scoring 14 points in the final six minutes. Two other things I learned from this game: Draymond Green is much better as a distributor/facilitator rather than a first option, and Adreian Payne is going to be a defensive monster. As far as getting a read on the Spartans your guess is as good as mine - so far they've played North Carolina on a freaking battleship and Duke when Andre Dawkins was unconscious. So I dunno.
- Ohio State, however, defended the honor of the B1G by beating Florida 81-74. Of course they were at home and are ranked higher, so they're expected to win but since it's a Big 10 team you never know. One interesting wrinkle was that in the first half the Buckeyes had troubling keeping Florida's guards out of the lane despite having Aaron Craft who might end up going down as the best white defensive guard in history. Of course it's kind of tough to judge because Florida's guards (Erving Walker, Kenny Boynton, Mike Rosario, and Brad Beals) might be the best group in the entire country. And obviously something changed in the second half that I'd love to tell but can't because in a related story I didn't watch the second half because we were watching Harry Potter and I sort of forgot to pull the game up on the computer.
- I did remember to turn on the UK/KU game, so I can tell you Kentucky is easily the most talented, the most athletic, and the most exciting team to watch in college hoops this year. They simply have the most ability and they play a Washington-esque brand of circus ball - it's truly exhilarating. They are also a complete train wreck. I don't know if I've ever seen anything like it. Marquis Teague, Michael Gilchrist, Terrence Jones, and Anthony Davis all have a legitimate claim as the most talented player at their position in college ball, which is why they stomped the crap out of Kansas. Of course, Kansas is going to have a big time down year (this #11 in the country crap is bullshit, I really wish you could bet on over/under season wins for college teams) so that makes this less impressive, as does the myriad of just simple mistakes they made on both sides of the floor, which again is kind of expected when you have a bunch of freshman and also when your coach couldn't game coach his way out of a whorehouse. This paragraph is pretty disjointed, isn't it? Well that's because this team is as confusing as a vagina. They're either going to win the National Championship or become the first #1 seed to lose to a #16. No in between.
- Not part of the marathon, but Iowa State lost to crap-ass Drake, which means the dream of them becoming a sleeper National Title Contender is probably dead, unless of course this is what they want you to think in order to lower spreads and come in under the radar. That's probably it since Royce White was awesome again (21 & 14) and everyone knows he just does the opposite of what he's supposed to. Oh my god that's it. Hoiberg is a genius. Luckily he has some good soldiers who agree to be terrible like Chris Allen and Melvin Ejim, who combined to shoot 3-20 and 0-9 from three. Good job guys! Nobody will see
you us coming now! And we can build this dream together, standing strong together, nothing's gonna stop us now!
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| And if this world runs out of lovers, we'll still have each other, nothing's gonna stop us now |
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- The last game of the thing was Stanford/Colorado State. Here are my thoughts.
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