NCAA Basketball takeaways: ACC title race, SEC bad night and Big East drama
By Joey Loose
Christmas is on the horizon which means we’re more than a month into an NCAA basketball season that will take a bit of a break over the next week. Today’s latest edition of Loose Change, my own two cents on recent happenings in the sport, will look again at a number of different topics.
Today we’re looking closely at a few conference races, scolding some disappointing teams, figuring out what we learned from some recent marquee matchups, and wondering about new timeout rules one conference is trying this year. All that and more ahead!
1. What we learned on Saturday
This past Saturday gave us an unprecedented slate of high-profile matchups, especially for a December 17th still a few weeks shy of conference play beginning. There were five different matchups between ranked teams, and even more intriguing was the fact that all ten teams were ranked in the Top 16 in the nation at the time. So what exactly did we learn?
We learned that Houston is for real, going to Virginia and coming away with an 8-point win that helps dull the sting of last week’s loss to Alabama. We also learned that Kansas is real, dismissing Indiana with a 22-point drubbing, with a nice performance from freshman standout Gradey Dick in the process. We also saw that Gonzaga’s not going anywhere, earning a double-digit win against Alabama in Birmingham in one of their finest performances of the season.
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On the other hand, those games leave us with questions about Indiana in particular, who haven’t really stepped up against the higher profile teams on their schedule. We know Trayce Jackson-Davis is an elite-level talent, but can the Hoosiers win consistently in a tough Big Ten? Additionally, Virginia couldn’t quite limit the Cougars despite one of their offense’s most efficient games; perhaps we should’ve listened to the metrics that had Virginia nowhere near their early #2 ranking.
Let’s not forget the other two games, which featured Connecticut taking care of business in Indianapolis against Butler, getting Big East play off to an impressive start. The Huskies look like a force and the Bulldogs didn’t have the answer on the offensive end. The final game featured the best offense and best defense in the nation taking each other on, with offensive Arizona earning the tough 5-point win home win over Tennessee. Both teams played well and this was an Elite Eight (or later) level game, with both teams definitely belonging in the Top 10.