Conference play means March Madness on horizon
January 3rd, 2009 Posted in NCAA basketball news, NCAA college basketballThe start of a new year means a couple of big things as far as college basketball is concerned with conference play getting under way in earnest and the talk of who’s in and who’s out of the NCAA tournament just around the calendar corner.
When talk of a team being a lock or on the bubble starts, the RPI, for good or bad, becomes part of the sport’s language.
Through last Sunday’s games, there were quite a few differences between The Associated Press’ Top 25, which is selected by a national media panel, and the top of the Ratings Percentage Index, which feeds numbers into a computer to get its list.
Eleven of the schools in the AP rankings weren’t in the RPI’s first 25 and five weren’t even close as No. 7 Notre Dame was 78th, No. 9 Purdue was 68th, No. 12 UCLA was 50th, No. 17 Arizona State was 44th and No. 19 Baylor was 70th.
The big differences are almost always caused by a weak early strength of schedule and that irons out as conference play goes along.
There were 11 schools in the computer’s first 25 that didn’t crack the weekly poll led by Florida State at ninth and Northwestern at 10th. The others were: West Virginia (11), Saint Mary’s (12), Stanford (13), Miami, Fla. (14), Evansville (15), Miami, Ohio (18), UAB (20), Illinois (22) and Temple (23).
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ANYTHING ELSE? Stefon Jackson scored 44 points, including a banked 3 with less than a second remaining in regulation to tie the game, and became Texas-El Paso’s all-time leading scorer in the championship game of the Cable Car Classic last week.
Unfortunately for the senior guard, who eclipsed Brandon Wolfram’s record of 1,831 points by 10, none of his feats drew much attention after the Miners’ 89-88 loss to host Santa Clara.
John Bryant’s layup with less than a second remaining gave the Broncos the win after a controversial finish.
The Miners had the lead and the ball with just under 3 seconds remaining before Santa Clara’s James Rahon stole an inbounds pass. One of the officials thought a timeout was called and blew his whistle. He took responsibility for the mistake and awarded the Broncos, who didn’t have any timeouts left, the ball underneath their own basket, leading to the winning score.
“Our team knew we had no timeouts,” Santa Clara coach Kerry Keating said. “It was just human error and unfortunately it happened. I’m not going to justify why it happened, it just happened. You’d rather have it left on the court for the players to decide but weird things happen.”
Miners coach Tony Barbee saw it differently.
“It’s disappointing to feel robbed,” he said. “I know what we saw and we saw the coach and the kid call time out. I’ve never felt so violated in my life. We won this game but it was taken away from us.”
It was the first overtime game in the 42 years the tournament has been played.
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TRIPLE-DOUBLE: Junior guard Orlando Mendez-Valdez had 18 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists in Western Kentucky’s 99-76 victory over Troy on New Year’s Day.
It was the first triple-double in the 90-year history of the program that stands 14th on the all-time victory list.
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SEATTLE’S BACK: Seattle University has quite a basketball history with a Final Four appearance, some top-10 rankings and one of the sport’s greatest players in Elgin Baylor.
The program is making the transition back to Division I and it seems the people around the program are ready.
Playing before a crowd of 4,835 at KeyArena, the Redhawks won their first home against another Division I program since dropping from Division I following the 1980 season, a 49-39 victory over Loyola Marymount this week. That gave Seattle four wins over Division I schools this season, but this was the game the school was looking at to make an impression as it begins the move back.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time. They’ve been advertising this for months, this was the day we’ve been waiting for the whole year,” Seattle’s Austen Powers said. “It finally came and we were ready.”
The school’s administration heavily promoted the New Year’s night game at the former home of the Seattle SuperSonics, a building the Redhawks would like to call home once the move is complete.
“I could feel the tension in our players, their desire to perform well,” Seattle coach Joe Callero said. “Here is the biggest stage we’ve been on locally for our guys.”
Among the program’s former stars in attendance that night was Johnny O’Brien, who scored 2,733 points for Seattle in the early 1950s.
“We understand that it’s not going to happen overnight. We know it takes time, but I’m impressed by what they’ve done so far,” O’Brien said. “I didn’t think they’d be anywhere near what they are this year, and that’s a good tribute to what’s going on.”
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ROAD WARRIORS: St. Bonaventure hasn’t played this well on the road in four decades.
The Bonnies’ 90-82 double-overtime victory at Bucknell this week made them 4-0 on the road this season, their longest winning streak away from home since 1967-68 when sophomore Bob Lanier led them to a 5-0 road mark. St. Bonaventure finished 23-2 that season, which ended in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Two years later the Bonnies reached their only Final Four.
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OLIVER’S TRAVELS: Adrian Oliver has made quite an impression since recently becoming eligible for San Jose State. NBA scouts are beginning to show up and the Spartans suddenly have higher hopes of a strong showing in the Western Athletic Conference.
The 6-foot-4 Oliver, a transfer from the University of Washington, scored 80 points in his first three games for the Spartans.
He struggled for the first time last Sunday, going 0-for-5 without a point in 11 minutes of the first half against William Jessup before coach George Nessman opted to rest Oliver, who had been sore from a fall the previous night against Saint Mary’s.
Nessman wanted his top player fresh for the conference season.
“You fall asleep for a couple of minutes and he’ll string them up pretty quick,” Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett said after Oliver’s 22-point performance in the loss to the Gaels.
Oliver, from nearby Modesto, is ready to help San Jose State get back in the conference hunt. He realizes there’s plenty of hype about his game, too.
“It’s all come pretty fast but it’s just a game,” Oliver said. “It’s basketball. I’ve played it my whole life. I’ve never had an 18-month layoff. It’s getting easier game by game. I feel if we don’t finish in the top three in our conference it’s going to be a letdown.”
Nessman wants people to be patient with Oliver as he gets back in full-time game mode.
“Adrian will be an elite player. Let’s give him some time,” Nessman said. “He sat out a calendar year. He’s even better than this. Let’s give him time. He’ll do more than he’s doing.”
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INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMING: College basketball fans around the world will get to see nearly two dozen West Coast Conference games this season as the league expands its TV coverage beyond North America for the first time.
The WCC, partnered with ESPN, has launched an international television package that is scheduled to broadcast 23 games on ESPN Australia, ESPN HD Australia, ESPN Pacific Rim, and ESPN New Zealand.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that there are seven Australian players on WCC rosters, including five on Saint Mary’s led by Olympian Patty Mills. All eight schools in the conference will be represented in the package, but the Gaels will make 16 appearances. The Moraga, Calif., school has three more Aussies coming in next season.
“The fact that we have such considerable Australian representation in WCC men’s basketball makes this international television schedule even more meaningful,” first-year WCC commissioner Jamie Zaninovich said.
