NCAA Basketball: TCU’s struggles, Maui breakdown among biggest takeaways
By Joey Loose
3. What we’ve learned from Maui’s first two rounds
The Maui Invitational remains one of the sport’s finest holiday tournaments, happening over in Hawaii the three days before Thanksgiving. Eight teams headed across the Pacific and have each played two games already. The field involved five ranked teams, a sixth team just on the outside, and two teams in the midst of rebuilding their programs, meaning we have been in for quite the action.
Creighton and Texas Tech gave us quite the battle of ranked teams on day one, with the Bluejays pulling away for a 76-65 win in a solid offense effort against that top-level defense. Fellow ranked teams Arizona and Arkansas held serve against Cincinnati and Louisville respectively while San Diego State impressed many with their 88-77 win over Ohio State. This set up a few more intriguing matchups on Tuesday and it did not disappoint.
The battle between Arkansas and Creighton came down to the wire and has been the best game of this year’s Maui Invitational so far. Ryan Nembhard had 25 points in the win for Creighton while Anthony Black looked fantastic in a 26-point effort. In the final game of the night, Arizona shot the cover off the ball against a typically stout San Diego State defense to advance to the title game.
Louisville has been an absolute mess and has been destined to lose all three games seemingly since they boarded the flight to Maui. Arkansas and San Diego State fell just short on Tuesday night but look like a very exciting matchup in the 3rd place game; a battle of two deep and talented roster. The title game is going to be much-watch television, pitting Arizona’s really hot offense against a Creighton team that’s now playing about as good as anyone two weeks into the season. Who grabs the title?