NCAA Basketball Recap: Tis the season!
It's been a flurry of activity this week as college basketball teams try to get their games in before the holiday break. Meanwhile, those who have made it to a football bowl game are enjoying the excitement that surrounds that whole experience. I'm going to keep this pretty concise as I am sure you have much better things to be doing on the Friday before Christmas than read my recap.
Monday gave us four games in the top 25 college basketball standings.
#20 James Madison continues to have an impressive start to the season. Meanwhile, #23 Memphis kept doing what they do and took down #22 Virgina 77 to 54. While it wasn't huge upset ranking-wise, I think the score shows that Memphis is no joke this year.
The big shocker on Monday was Providence handing a 72 to 57 loss to #6 Marquette. While I don't doubt Marquette is a good team, I would have suggested a #6 ranking was a little high anyway. This feels more accurate.
Tuesday gave us six games in the top 25. #10 Baylor continues their slide after the huge loss to Michigan State. They were toppled by #21 Duke 78 to 70. Seton Hall also had an upset in their sights besting #5 UCoon 75 to 60. In case you are keeping track, that's the #5, #6, and #10 teams that have all lost so far this week.
Villanova didn't want to be left out, so they took down #12 Creighton 68 to 66 in overtime. Things are looking rough in the Big East right now. It's been a bit of a bloodbath for them this week.
The final upset of the day on Tuesday came in Tar Heels/Sooners game with #11 North Carolina beating #7 Oklahoma 81 to 69. Add #7 to that list above!
Thursday night gave us four games in the top 25. Personally though, I was wanted to watch the Michigan State Spartans. Unfortunately, they were not available on on of the channels I get. You could only see them via streaming on the Big10+ app. It's kind of annoying how they do that these days. It was a pretty quiet night for the Spartans as well as the top 25 teams with a majority of the games being cupcake matches.
Michigan State beat Stony Brook 99 to 55 or something like that and most of the other games were runaway victories as well. It's definitely interesting to note how many teams in the Big 10 have already fallen out of the top 25.
If you are able to tear yourself away from all the Holly Jolliness this weekend, I would suggest you checkout the Florida Atlantic vs. Arizona game on Saturday. That's really it. Most of other games shouldn't be too surprising.
As far as college football goes, we have seen a handful of bowl games played so far. Some of them have been offensive showcases, the others have relied heavily on defense. We even had two that went into overtime. All that being said, this weekend is when we should really start to see the bowl season pick up with a couple power conference teams playing their games.
Don't sleep on that Utah Northwestern game and also keep an eye on James Madison as they take on Air Force. James Madison is lucky to be in a bowl this season even though they totally deserve to be there. It's simply by chance that the FBS didn't have enough 6-6 teams to fill the schedule.
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