With three marquee basketball games staggered throughout the day, #10 Northern Iowa at #11 Wichita St., #18 Arkansas at #1 Kentucky, and #7 Arizona at #13 Utah, Saturday seemed like the perfect day to write a noon to midnight recap.
Noon Session
The day’s opening games were blowouts until Georgia Tech at Clemson became sneaky-interesting. In the preseason, I said that Georgia Tech’s Brian Gregory appeared to be the worst coach in the ACC. Looking at 12 years of historic data at Dayton and Georgia Tech, his players haven’t improved year-to-year, his transfers haven’t become efficient players, and even mid-level recruits have performed slightly worse than expected, at least offensively.
This season has been a bit confusing. Georgia Tech has had much better margin-of-victory numbers than I expected. But they have lost a ton of close games. And their offense is as bad as ever. Saturday was just more of the season’s enigma.
Georgia Tech fell behind by 23 points early in the game at Clemson. They simply weren’t competitive. And they were still down 9 points with 1:30 left. That’s when Georgia Tech’s Josh Heath, an 18% three point shooter nailed a three. Then Georgia Tech stole the inbounds pass and put in a lay-up to cut the lead to four points.
After two Clemson free throws, the lead was back to six, but that’s when Georgia Tech’s Marcus Georges-Hunt added to his already impressive highlight reel. First the 6’5” Georges-Hunt dove into the lane and grabbed an offensive rebound and put-back. Then he fell to the floor, tripping over a Clemson defender. But Georges-Hunt somehow jumped up from the ground, stole the inbound pass, and made another lay-up to cut the lead to two points. Then after another forced turnover, Georgia Tech made a couple of foul shots to tie the game and send it into overtime.
But then in OT, Georgia Tech couldn’t score for the first four minutes, and Clemson hung on for the win. We’re going to hear again about how Georgia Tech is snake-bitten. They just can’t catch a break to win a close game. But really, this game was the opposite of this. If they hadn’t caught a ton of breaks, this game would have never gone in to overtime. The defense has been phenomenal, but at some point, the inability to execute offensively just means you are a bad team, close losses or not.
2:00 PM Session
Time for our first of three main events, Northern Iowa at Wichita St.
11:00 left first half: Northern Iowa takes the lead on a Wes Washpun three. Fred Van Vleet helped off Washpun, and he got burned. Given that Washpun has only made three threes since January 1st, it is hard to conclude that this was terrible strategy. But this is actually a pretty tough decision for a defensive team. If you are playing a guard that rarely shoots threes, but makes most of the ones he takes, can you afford to leave him wide-open? Is reluctance the same thing as inability? Sometimes it is, but sometimes it is just playing style.
6:00: Wichita St.’s Bush Wamukota gets a put-back on a missed Ron Baker three. The next possession Wamukota sets a screen and rolls to the basket, Seth Tuttle doesn’t rotate over, and Wichita St. leads by four. Northern Iowa’s interior defense is one of the most improved in the country. The team was 186th last year and is 37th this year with similar personnel. But anytime a team improves dramatically in one category, you wonder if it might be a bit of a fluke. Tuttle has to be on the floor for offense, so if an opponent consistently challenges him in the paint, is he going to contest, or is he just going to let the opponent get the lay-ups? We have seen a lot of positive results this season, from Northern Iowa smothering Iowa’s frontline in December, to the team’s complete domination of the MVC. But I’m not sure the MVC has the kind of big men to really challenge Seth Tuttle consistently. Until the NCAA tournament, I’m not sure we’re going to get the real answer of whether Tuttle can be a defensive as well as an offensive force.
18:30 second half: Ron Baker hits a three to give Wichita St. a 16-point lead. It is still hard to believe Baker started out his career as a walk-on. Too bad for the MVC that both of these match-ups have largely been blowouts this year.
10:30: Not so fast, Northern Iowa’s Matt Bohannon and Paul Jesperson try to make the game competitive knocking down jumpers to cut the lead to seven.
8:50: Then Wichita St.’s Darius Carter backs Seth Tuttle down in the paint. Again, when a team’s best offensive players is a post-player who doesn’t want to pick up fouls, you have to attack him. Wichita St. is a well-coached team.
8:30: Seth Tuttle backs his defender down and spins left to cut the lead to four. Beautiful execution, Tuttle didn’t have his best game, but there is a reason Ken Pomeroy’s formula labels Tuttle as one of the Top 10 college players in the nation.
8:00 Wichita St.’s Ron Baker answers on the other end, and then the threes start falling for Wichita St. The Shockers win the game and the regular season conference title. Here is hoping both teams make it to the MVC tournament final. With the teams tied 1-1 on the year, they need to settle the score on a neutral floor.
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Meanwhile, VCU and Dayton is coming down to the wire. You know, for everything we said about Dayton’s interior defense with a shorter lineup, teams just haven’t taken advantage. Dayton’s 2PT% defense is only 148th in the nation, but VCU can’t get it into the paint to even attempt a close look. Dayton leads by two, but VCU’s Traevon Graham takes a deep three rather than take the ball to the basket. And when his shot misses, Dayton holds on to win. Dayton, Davidson, and Rhode Island end the day with a three way tie for first place in the A10. VCU sits a game back, and for the first time all season, VCU is now an underdog to share the A10 title.
4pm/5pm Session
Main Event #2: Arkansas at Kentucky
Bill Raftery (rarely critical) on the game-opening alley-oop by Kentucky. “That is just bad preparation by Arkansas.”
Bill Raftery (back to being effusive): “Kentucky may lead the country in ‘That’s out of bounds – oh my god – he saved it – plays.’”
Will-Cauley Stein gets two absolutely back-breaking offensive rebounds in the first half. The crazy thing is he’s only the third best offensive rebounder on the Wildcats. Despite his injury, I wondered if he was making the right decision to come back this year. But with an undefeated team, and those NBA scouts still looking on, I think he is going to be fine.
Uggh, try as I might to make this interesting, Kentucky is playing at such a high level right now, this one gets out-of-hand immediately. Various commentators keep bringing up the fact that if Kentucky is focused, they are almost unbeatable. And the splits are at least somewhat convincing. North Carolina is the only Top 25 team that Kentucky has played this year that has been able to score over 1 point per possession against them.
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And so I switch to Creighton at Seton Hall. The Pirates fall behind by 10 in the second half. I’ve been arguing that Seton Hall has a young team and they deserve a little more time to develop before Seton Hall gives up on Kevin Willard. But even a young team has to show some signs of progress. Losing at home to an under-manned Creighton team would be devastating.
Trailing by five with three minutes left, Seton Hall freshmen Khadeem Carrington basically decides to put the team on his back. He scores six straight points to give Seton Hall the lead, and Angel Delgado seals the win on the next possession.
Say what you will about the in-fighting and chemistry issues for Seton Hall, that wasn’t what I saw down the stretch. Sterling Gibbs, suspended for his forearm strike a couple of games ago was one of the biggest cheerleaders on the sideline. It is amazing how the chemistry suddenly returns when a team wins.
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In a tight game between Kansas St. and Iowa St., Georges Niang takes a jumper that looks good, but Jameel McKay can’t stop himself from giving it an extra tap. His touch leads to an offensive goaltend that cost his team two critical points. Minutes later, Kansas St. somehow escapes with a one point win.
Give Kansas St. credit for the upset. First, Maine transfer Justin Edwards, who I have maligned all year as one of the biggest transfer busts in the nation, had a season high 16 points. Second, Wesley Iwundu’s defense down the stretch was amazing. Iwundu blocked a Niang three point attempt leading to a fast-break late in regulation. And with Iowa St. holding the ball up one point, Iwundu’s late steal provided the final margin. Bruce Weber is somehow 11-3 against ranked teams at home at Kansas St.
Like Brian Gregory, I’m at a total loss to evaluate Kansas St.’s season. On the one hand, given the transfers they had coming in, their start to the season was exceedingly disappointing. On the other hand, Bruce Weber took a team that was playing very poorly early in the year, and somehow earned eight conference wins in the toughest conference in the nation. To put it another way: How does a team have five losses to teams below 100 in the RPI, and 7 wins against the RPI Top 50? That’s a very unusual season.
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More Big 12 drama, as Oklahoma St. at Texas Tech has an NCAA tournament quality ending. First Oklahoma St.’s Jeff Carroll hits a three to give his team a two point lead with 18 seconds left. Then Texas Tech’s Devaughntah Williams hits a three to give Texas Tech the lead back with 10 seconds left. Carroll then misses a three and Texas Tech holds on for the upset. Wow.
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And the Big 12 is the gift that never stops giving; we jump to Texas at Kansas. First, has Kansas been anticipating something with Cliff Alexander before this weekend? His playing time has mysteriously been decreasing in recent games and now he is being held out because the team suspects he may have eligibility issues. How long have they known?
Then again, I truly believe Rick Pitino never knew about the off-court criminal actions of Chris Jones. But Pitino could see Jones was acting erratically and not fulfilling his responsibilities as a teammate. Sometimes a player gets benched because his head just isn’t in the game. If a player has off-court issues, he may effectively bench himself, even if the coach knows nothing about what is going on.
The story here is how once again Texas blew a lead and blew a chance to beat a Top 50 RPI team. Ever since Jonathan Holmes missed a couple of games with a concussion, he just hasn’t been the same player. He’s just 7 for 29 in his last five games, and I thought he had a couple of particularly poor defensive possessions in the stretch of the game where Kansas took the lead. It is tough to see a senior struggle like this after such a stellar career.
Kansas maintains a slim one-game lead on Oklahoma in the Big 12 standings, with the game at Oklahoma still scheduled for next weekend.
6pm/7pm Session
Penn St. took Iowa to overtime, but with Syracuse and Duke being a bit of a bore, let’s move on.
9pm/10pm Session
Main Event #3, Arizona at Utah
Holly Rowe points out that Utah head coach Larry Krystkowiak lights sweet grass in the locker room before the game and walks it around the locker-room in some sort of prayer. Then Holly lights some to show us what it looks like. First, if this really is done in some sort of prayer framework, I’m not sure Holly should just be doing it for demonstration purposes. Second, why isn’t Bill Walton on commentary to give us more insight into this?
Utah throws the ball off the foot of an Arizona player. The crowd wants a kicked ball, but if the defender’s foot doesn’t move, and the ball is thrown by the offensive player, that’s the offensive player’s fault right? The crowd seemed to think that contact with a foot was an automatic kick.
Great Utah crowd tonight by the way. I’ve been watching basketball all day, and this feels like the loudest building. They seem to be booing the refs way too much, but that’s how you create bias, right?
Utah’s offense is really struggling in the first 10 minutes, which isn’t a big surprise. I expect more droughts in this game. But Utah senior Dallin Bachynski, at 7 feet tall, can’t be blowing lay-ups like this.
I’ve wanted to see more of Arizona’s Parker Jackson-Cartwright this year, but now I’m not so sure. He drives and throws a crazy cross-court pass to no one. And then Utah goes down and throws up a terrible wild-shot in transition. Yes, the defense is good, but there’s some sloppy play tonight too.
Utah is 2-for-12 inside the arc and 4-for-8 outside the arc, but those threes force the Wildcats to call timeout. We see a shot of a “Here Kitty, Kitty” sign in the crowd.
Dallin Bachynski dribbles into the lane, gets double-teamed, and somehow throws the pass directly into the double team. Jakob Poeltl has been having a terrible game, riding the pine in foul trouble, but Bachynski has a pretty rough start to his night too. Then halfway through the first half, something changes. Bachynski draws the charge, then Delon Wright finds him rolling to the basket on a pick-and-roll to give Utah the one point lead. Criticism momentarily rescinded.
Utah’s Delon Wright in transition has been the best offensive for either team in this game.
Early in the second half, Kaleb Tarczewski gets called for a technical for swinging his elbow and hitting Bachynski in the head. It didn’t look vicious, but what made it particularly unusual is that Bachynski was actually leaning backward and Tarczewski still managed to hit him.
Fran Fraschilla has been respectively critical of these teams. His commentary reveals he doesn’t think either team has the outside shooting to be elite, or to really compete with Kentucky. That said, I’d still like to see one of these teams match-up against the Wildcats, simply to see if Kentucky could score on these teams.
Arizona is really struggling in the second half, down six. I think at this point, Gabe York was 0-4 from three point range, and when a shooter isn’t making shots it is hard to play him. But all of a sudden things start to click for York. First, he nails a three. Then York blocks a three on the other end leading to a run out to Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. That was a huge momentum swinging play. Then in the final minutes, York gets his own offensive rebound on his missed free throw.
How did no one on Utah block him out? Rebounds on free throws are hard, and I think announcers pull the “didn’t block out” card far too often on free throw misses with crazy bounces. But that was blatant. No one covered York.
Arizona wins at least a share of the Pac-12 title and moves into second place in the Pomeroy rankings.
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We end the day with BYU at Gonzaga. A week after falling behind St. Mary’s and coming back to win, Gonzaga dug itself a hole it couldn’t climb out of. Gonzaga was down three with seconds left. After a BYU foul and a FT make, Gonzaga needed to intentionally miss the second FT and hope for an offensive rebound. But Eric McClellan, a career 68% FT shooter made the FT, and Gonzaga’s 22 game winning streak comes to an end. Not bad for the final day of February.