College Basketball: Quick Hits March 7th 2015

The last Saturday of the college basketball regular season has came and went, and there’s too much going on to give every storyline 500 words and a pretty picture. Instead, here’s a recap of the day’s action, summed up with 35 ticks of the Busting Brackets shot clock.

• It was very sad to see Syracuse’s season end today due to self-imposed sanctions. The brilliance of the Orange’s Rakeem Christmas has been underappreciated all season long, and it’s almost criminal that he won’t be able to show the strides he has made during the NCAA Tournament. The Orange would have been a scary team to face if they were eligible for the madness.

• How impressive has Butler been this season? Less than five years removed from playing in the Horizon League, the Bulldogs have the look of a program that will be in the top 25 perennially. No matter the hardship, the Butler Way cannot be broken. Their win over Providence wraps up an impressive season that has seen them emerge as the top challenger to Villanova at next weekend’s Big East Tournament.

• Tyler Adams returned to action today for Georgetown. It was his first game action since 2011 when he was diagnosed with a heart ailment. He opened the game with a dunk before leaving to a standing ovation. Props to Georgetown, Seton Hall, and the NCAA (who granted Adams a waiver to play) for making this happen.

• This was impressive…

• Tom Crean should not be fired, and anyone who thinks as much is either delusional or hasn’t been watching the games. It was a classy move by Tom Izzo to offer a his own vote of confidence to the embattled IU coach.

• What the hell was Denzel Valentine thinking at the end of the game? Am I allowed to write hell on this site? I think that foul deserves a hell. I will never understand how college basketball players are not aware of time and score at the end of the game.

• No SEC team will win an NCAA Tournament game except for Kentucky. I’m certain of this. The rest of the SEC is awful.

• Kentucky wins again, capping off a 31-0 regular season. Congrats to them, but let’s be real. The Wildcats haven’t played a really good basketball team since December. Teams like Duke, Virginia, and Louisville have been challenged immensely during the conference season. Kentucky has no such marks on their conference resumé. Even Wichita State and Northern Iowa have played more ranked opponents in 2015 than Kentucky.

• Nobody is beating Kentucky.

• Don’t read too much into Villanova drubbing St. John’s. The Red Storm rested two key players and are clearly looking ahead to the Big East Tournament. Steve Lavin’s team is safely in the field, and their seed for the conference tournament was set before the game. There was no reason to risk injury against Nova.

• Dunk of the Day — Rysheed Jordan. Good. Gracious.

• Big win for LSU in the SEC. There’s nothing quite like a walk off buzzer beater on the road. If there’s a team that can prove me wrong and advance in the Big Dance, I believe it will be LSU, not Arkansas.

• Georgia Southern vs Georgia State is the most underrated rivalry in college sports right now. These schools HATE each other and it is beautiful to watch. Hopefully these two teams get a rubber match in the Sun Belt Championship game. The atmosphere would be electric. On Saturday it was #StateNotSouthern, but earlier this season it was #SouthernNotState. This debate must be settled.

• Injuries and inconsistency derailed the Michigan Wolverines this season, but John Beilein may have found a player in the midst of the rubble. Freshman forward Aubrey Dawkins (son of Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins) scored 31 points for the Wolverines on Saturday against Rutgers. Dawkins has shown flashes of being a big scorer. Much will be expected of him next year when he settles into a sixth man role for a revitalized Michigan team.

• The entire bubble is collectively holding their breath. Illinois State upset Wichita State on Saturday, and has a chance to steal a tournament bid by beating Northern Iowa in the Missouri Valley title game. Indiana could be the team that gets pushed out with an Illinois State win.

• For consolation, one potential bid thief went down. St. Mary’s was knocked off by Portland in Vegas. They won’t have a chance to challenge Gonzaga in the championship game as bubble teams feared.

• Oklahoma missed out on a chance to make this win mean something in terms of the Big 12 regular season conference title, but beating Kansas at the buzzer is never a bad thing.

• Did Utah not know they had a game today? Strange loss to Washington to end their regular season.

• Yale has to be heartbroken after losing at the buzzer to Dartmouth and giving new life to Harvard in the Ivy League. The Bulldogs played a nearly perfect game to beat a superior Harvard team and control their own destiny, but they had to be spent mentally and possibly physically going into their second game of the weekend.

• I love how the Ivy league eschews a conference tournament in lieu of sending the regular season champ to the Big Dance. In the event of a tie at the top of the standings and a split in head to head meetings, the top two teams settle it on a neutral court. Leave it to the Ivy League to figure out a way to make sure there best team always get to the tournament. The OVC can’t be happy about the fact that their best team, Murray State, won’t be representing them in March.

• I’m not sure what to make of Louisville beating Virginia with Justin Anderson sidelined and the regular season title already sewed up for the Cavs. I’ll be more impressed if a team can knock off UVA in the ACC Tournament. Tony Bennett‘s bunch have won the last three trophy’s the ACC has handed out (regular season and postseason last year, and the regular season title this year).

• Duke and North Carolina have the classiest rivalry in sports right now. Their pregame ceremony honoring a visiting Coach K shows that the Tar Heels have an understanding of what Krzyzewski means to the game of college basketball, not just to Duke.

Next: Syracuse Orange: Jim Boeheim Lucky To Only Be Suspended By NCAA