Thursday, February 5, 2009

This Week in College Hoops

Congrats to Pat Summit after winning her 1,000th career basketball game tonight. Summit has been coaching at Tennessee since she was 22, and at the age of 56 she has many more wins in her future. Considering the fact that 400 of her 1,000 wins have come against ranked teams is unbelievable.

On there way up: UC has won their past two games against Georgetown and Notre Dame. These are both good wins but are now taken with a grain of salt since both the Hoyas and Irish have struggled through their Big East schedules. The Cats have some games remaining on their schedule that are definitely winnable and could be at 20-11 or better come Big East tournament time.

On there way down:
UK has has lost three straight sending their record to 15-7 and a 5th place record in a down year for the SEC. The Wildcats were in the top 25 in one poll this past week and now are a bubble team all a sudden. If they can't find another scoring option outside of Meeks and Patterson they will be sitting pretty in the NIT come March.

Xavier won its 20th game of the season Thursday night and have remained undefeated in the A-10 for what it's worth. Two things stand out to me for Xavier that you don't see in many teams and that is depth and three good 3-point shooters (see below):

Derrick Brown 14.0, 27 of 57 (47%)
B.J. Raymond 13.2, 51 of 118 (43%)
C.J. Anderson 11.0
Jason Love 7.0
Terrell Holloway 6.5, 10 of 25 (40%)
Dante Jackson 6.4
Kenny Frease 6.4
Brad Redford 4.9, 32 of 72 (44%)
Jamel McLean 4.2

2 comments:

Adam said...

I think that the Bearcats are way up right now. They have pulled two huge wins at home over teams that I never thought. Even with both of them mired in a slump right now Georgetown and ND are two huge wins for their program. Didn't think I would say it but the Bearcats Deonte Vaughn is averaging 16 pts a game and Yancy Gates is putting in 10 a game. Nice combo for UC. Lets see how they handle some of these Big East road tests.
The Wildcats however look completely inept right now. I am still unsure of Billy Gillispie. I know I sound like every blow hard Kentucky fan but he looses way too many games that they should win which would indicate to me that he doesn't properly prepare his players for each situation. A great team and great coach is able to adapt to different situations and overcome adversity. This team simply cannot. The streak will more than likely end this season without a Conference tournament title, the Cat's will probably be participating in the NIT.

Matt said...

Another big BE road win over Georgetown for UC today...glad to see them starting to step up...They still may not make the NCAA but i told you guys way back in October this team was better than people thought