NCAA Basketball: It's officially conference play season!

5 months ago

With the college football season slowly coming to a close, we finally have some time to dedicate our full attention to college basketball. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that in just a few short days we will have a new champion in college football. As much as I hate them, Michigan has a good team, so I expect they will come out on top. I'd love to see Washington prove me wrong though.

I was really excited about watching the Michigan State basketball game last night. Then I got a text from my father in law and I realized you could only watch it via the Peacock streaming service. I've been considering trying out Peacock, but I haven't gotten around to pulling the trigger yet.

It's getting a bit ridiculous the number of streaming services you have to pay for to be able to watch all the things you want to. It's gotten to the point where you are almost better sticking with the cable company for your TV needs.

Almost...

Anyway, I had to keep up with the MSU game the old fashioned way last night. I was pleasantly surprised to read on the Score app that they handily beat Penn State by something like 30 points. Quite impressive!

My niece was supposed to play a high school game earlier this week, but that got pushed into February. Despite that, she does have a game tonight and I am really looking forward to seeing how well she does. Will she get a decent amount of play time or will he leave her on the bench?

One of the frustrations I have heard about this coach is that he has fixed points in the game where he wants to make substitutions. No matter what he sticks to it. So if you have a young lady with a hot hand, he still hits her when it gets to his predetermined point. I get giving everyone a chance to have some time on the court, but if you want to win games, you have to play smarter than that.

There was one game in the men's college top 25 on Monday night and that was #20 Texas over Texas-Arlington.

Things picked up a bit more on the second day of the year with 11 games in the top 25. Conference play has officially begun, so we are going to see a lot of interesting match ups from here on out. There were zero upsets on Tuesday, in fact, there were very few close games. It looks like the average spread between the winning team and the losing team was about 20 points. That's kind of nuts!

Wednesday night gave us two games in the top 25 and things got hot as usual in the Big East with Seton Hall upsetting #23 Providence 61 to 57. Meanwhile, Miami took down #16 Clemson 95 to 82.

Wednesday was all about the upsets!

Thursday we had four games in the top 25. James Madison continued their great season with a win over Louisiana 68 to 61. #15 Memphis had a close one against Tulsa, but came away with a 78 to 75 win. #24 Gonzaga and #10 Arizona blew away Pepperdine and Colorado respectively.

Tonight we have a couple of really good games on the books. #4 UConn takes on Butler at Butler. I might have to put some money on Butler to win that one. Also, #9 Illinois is facing off against #1 Purdue. This is a game I think Illinois has a chance at even though it is at Purdue. The Illini had a really good game against Northwestern earlier in the week. I would expect the score to be close in this one.

We have a massive 19 top 25 games on Saturday, so you really can't go wrong with that. Just pick a channel and settle in for the afternoon!

The only games with two ranked teams is #8 North Carolina at #16 Clemson and #22 Ole Miss at #5 Tennessee, so you might want to keep an eye on those two games.

Finally, on Sunday SMU takes on #15 Memphis at Memphis. Most people are probably going to be watching NFL football though.