LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Do you realize that if college basketball would've used a computer formula -- like the RPI, for instance -- to pick teams for the national championship game last season then we would've watched No. 1 Tennessee vs. No. 2 North Carolina on the first Monday night in April?
I'm not saying, I'm just saying.
And here's the Monday Look Back.
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| Coach Matt Painter's Boilermakers won't get punished for a loss to Oklahoma. (Getty Images) |
Worst game of the weekend: Tyler Hansbrough was held out against UNC-Asheville on Sunday for what was described as a "precautionary" reason, and I can only imagine the precautionary reason was because Roy Williams was scared if he played his All-American that North Carolina might beat the Bulldogs by 700 points and make their coach, Eddie Biedenbach, quit at halftime. As it was, UNC only beat UNC-Asheville 116-48, and everybody remained employed. So it was a good day.
Win to brag about: Steffphon Pettigrew -- who takes advantage of the "ff" and "ph" sound in one name better than anybody I know -- summarized Western Kentucky's shocking upset of Louisville pretty well on Sunday. "They probably underestimated us because we're Western Kentucky and they're the No. 3 team in the country," he said, and I think he's probably right. How else to explain WKU's victory, other than Ken McDonald might be the best young turn-it-around coach in history considering he went from losing to Murray State by an 89-61 margin to beating Louisville by a 68-54 margin in a span of eight days. "It's amazing how much better you can feel from one week to the next," McDonald told me by phone Monday morning.
Loss(es) to hide from: The bad thing about hosting your own tournament is that you don't get to travel to a place like Hawaii or Puerto Rico or Orlando. But the positive is that you are pretty much guaranteed to secure victories because of the home-court advantage ... unless you're UNLV. The Rebels lost at home both Friday and Saturday, first to California by 18 points and then to Cincinnati by two, and though Wink Adams doesn't deserve all the blame, it's certainly fair to pin some of it on him considering the senior leader was just 5-of-26 from the field -- including 0-of-5 from 3-point range -- with a total of three assists and three turnovers in the two losses. That's not the Wink Adams I know.
Player who deserves improper benefits: Marcus Johnson is to be recognized, not for what he did as much as what he didn't do. You see, Friday, Johnson launched five 3-point attempts, missed all five and helped Dayton set the record for most 3-point attempts without a make in a 60-59 overtime win against Auburn. Then on Saturday he adjusted, took zero 3-pointers and helped the Flyers to an 89-75 upset of Marquette while proving that less can be more, particularly when less means less misses and records for futility.
Player who should lose his scholarship: Mark Fox is off to a rough start, and I'm blaming Brandon Fields. Yes, the Nevada guard was cleared of all charges in a larceny case, but that doesn't make him not guilty of putting himself and his team in a bad spot. While suspended, Fields missed a substantial amount of practice, and it's showing. The junior guard is shooting 38.5 percent from the field (5-of-13) and 0.0 percent from 3-point range (0-of-7) with no assists and 12 turnovers through four games (after missing the first game because of a suspension). Consequently, Nevada is 2-3 following Saturday's 63-61 loss to Portland, and Fields is doing his best to waste Luke Babbitt's freshman season because he couldn't avoid being a knucklehead in the preseason.
Why I'm smarter than you think: The following is a sentence I wrote in October, two weeks before the season began: "I'd like to go on record and predict Syracuse will be the biggest surprise of any team in America." Case you missed it, the unranked Orange beat Florida last Tuesday, Kansas last Wednesday and then Virginia on Saturday to improve to 6-0, which I'm pretty sure proves once and for all that I am a genius.
Why I'm dumber than I think: I actually believed Providence would compete for an at-large bid in Keno Davis' first year based on the return of Sharaud Curry, but the junior guard just isn't the same player after foot surgery. He's shooting 31.3 percent from the field and averaging only 6.7 points per game after averaging 15.3 as a sophomore. Consequently, the Friars are off to a 4-3 start thanks to Sunday's loss to Saint Mary's, and if there's one thing you don't want to be, it's a middle-of-the-pack Big East team hovering around .500 before conference play, because trying to string together wins in the league is not a reasonable goal.
Three things you should know before you go
1. Just in case Indiana coach Tom Crean needed another dose of adversity, he got it when Verdell Jones III was removed from the court by a stretcher after running full speed into a screen in Sunday's 72-57 win over Cornell. Jones was taken to the hospital for an evaluation, cleared and released. But his status for this week's game against Wake Forest remains undetermined.
