Apologies for not getting this out before the Loyola/San Francisco game tipped. If you’re looking for tournament implications there, they’re actually kind of big—Loyola’s currently lacking a win over a tournament team, and this is the last good opportunity on their schedule. San Francisco’s playing its toughest opponent of the year two days before it begins WCC play, with all the ups and downs WCC play entails. These are also two of the best handful of mid-majors in the country, giving this a bracketbusters feel except, well, it’s only available on impromptu internet streams. Still, awesome that these programs made this game happen. Something to admire in that.
Iowa State Survived
It wasn’t pretty, and in fact I’d call it extremely ugly, but Iowa State welcomed a very shorthanded Texas Tech to Ames, scored just 51 points, and walked away with a conference win. Is it as good a win as one would be over full-strength Texas Tech? No. But the truth is, enough teams are going to be playing these shorthanded games that the committee is not going to parse them all. This is a good win on the team sheet, and Iowa State has enough of those already, with presumably more still to come (thanks to the sheer magnitude of opportunities if nothing else), that this helps a lot with the tournament case. Credit to Aljaž Kunc for providing what points there were.
The victory also helps Iowa State’s Big 12 standing. Nobody should be hoping on this team to win the conference, but finishing in the top half is a worthy goal and a strong challenge, and to do that, Iowa State’s in all likelihood going to have to edge out two of Texas Tech, Texas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Handling the first of those four at home is a good start.
Iowa State’s offense, of course, was dreadful. You never want to be shooting more threes than twos, and you never want to be shooting 33% on twos. You never want twice as many turnovers as you record assists. Yet Iowa State did all these things, and they managed to beat a team that, with that roster, might be of tournament quality. Again, it was a rough night, but it’s a good result, and now it’s on to Norman on Saturday to try to steal one.
Going back to that “Big 12 standing” piece: There’s a conception of the Big 12 in which Baylor and Kansas are great, Texas and Texas Tech are good, Iowa State and Oklahoma and West Virginia are decent, and Oklahoma State and TCU and Kansas State are fine. In that breakdown, if you lose all four to the great teams, split with the other good and decent teams, and win five of six against the fine teams, you’ll finish at .500 in league play, with the simplest route a 7-2 home record against a 2-7 mark on the road. That’s mostly a psychological mark, but it would almost certainly guarantee tournament admittance, and it would probably leave the Cyclones a first-round favorite. So, if you like benchmarks, those are benchmarks, and so far, Iowa State’s hit them just fine (and they only need to win one of the next four to stay on track). Meanwhile…first round favorite? Wow. How far expectations have come.
Not Northwestern’s Year?
This was supposed to be a tournament season for Northwestern as recently as, well, it still could be. But losing to Penn State at home is not what you want to do if you want to play basketball at a high level in March. Rough one there for the Wildcats in a league in which you face especial risk when it comes to rough ones (because of the overall win-loss thing).
Villanova Paid It Back
Villanova throttled Creighton, holding the Jays to 41 points and moving to the top of the Big East ledger. It was Villanova’s first win by thirty or more since opening night, when they beat Mount St. Mary’s by forty, and it might not have fully made up for the twenty-point loss in Omaha a few weeks ago, but one would imagine it felt pretty darn good.
Florida to the Bubble?
Florida didn’t rise to the occasion against Alabama, and while they’re probably not in any actual danger yet of missing the tournament (they have a great win over Ohio State, and probably a few great wins to come), they’re far from comfortable.
***
Today, beyond the Loyola/San Francisco game, we get Ohio State/Indiana and Iowa/Wisconsin in the Big Ten (7:00 PM EST and 9:00 PM EST respectively, both on FS1), with bubble teams playing tough conference road games as Washington State goes to Colorado (9:00 PM EST, ESPN2) and UAB goes to North Texas (8:00 PM EST, CBSSN). Enjoy.
