I think it’s good that Tom Brady’s second retirement isn’t being treated the same as his first, and not to discourage him from reneging or anything like that. I’d imagine it’s a hard decision to make, and if a team wants him, hell yeah. The problem with Brett Favre’s waffling, back in the day, was that it cornered people. There was an element of that with Brady last offseason, but this one? Go ahead and waffle, my dude, if that’s what you’re led to do.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that we didn’t react as loudly to Brady’s retirement this second time around. There are some tributes, but it’s quieter, and a lot of it is recycled. If Brady’s career through the 2021-22 season was the Harry Potter series, this last year was one of those new sequels and prequels. You could add it to the canon, but it’s also ok to say no, to say that you got the goodbye out of your system and let others enjoy it.
So, if we hear anything like last season’s Dolphins scoop, we’ll be sure to share it, but there won’t be much Tom Brady content from us today. Instead, we’re going to talk through college basketball’s eight most noteworthy conference races, acknowledging that Houston has the AAC locked up until further notice.
The Big One
Favorites: Texas, Kansas
Contenders: TCU, Iowa State, Kansas State, Baylor
Texas is 7-2. Kansas is 6-3. TCU, Iowa State, and Kansas State are all also 6-3. Baylor is 5-4. West Virginia’s good enough to be in the mix, but they’ve been practically eliminated. The Big 12 is a six-team race, and it’s believable for any of the six to win it.
TCU won last night without Mike Miles, but they’re in a tough spot without their guy. If they could get him back next week, they could remain in the mix, but otherwise they look a lot like Iowa State, Kansas State, and Baylor, which is to say it’s believable they could win a share of the league crown, but they probably won’t win it outright. That would be asking too much. Iowa State and Kansas State? They just aren’t good enough. Baylor? They dug too big a hole. It’s possible, yes, it’s very possible, but this is a Texas vs. Kansas race, especially if it’s going to be won outright.
The Longhorns and the Jayhawks have yet to play one another, their first meeting coming Monday in Lawrence and their last coming in the regular season finale down in Austin. In between, KU has to pick up a game on their rival, but the stage is set for that to be what goes down. While KenPom has Kansas’s projected final Big 12 mark at 11-7, Kansas is favored in six of its remaining nine games, meaning just taking care of business would leave them 12-6. Texas, meanwhile, is projected to land at 12-6 both if you sum all the probabilities (which is what KenPom does) and if you pencil in the likeliest outcome for each individual game. Get past K-State in Manhattan on Saturday and Texas can still hold serve going to Lawrence, but if that doesn’t happen, they’re facing deuce at best (Kansas is projected to be a narrow underdog in Ames).
With a K-State takedown of the Horns, yes, they’ll still be on the table, and the same is probably true of Iowa State if they beat Kansas on Saturday in Ames. Baylor could surge. TCU’s fate, again, will be highly impacted by Mike Miles. With him, they’re a great team. Without him, the results aren’t yet in.
The Simple One
Favorite: Purdue
Contenders: (None)
Purdue doesn’t have the Big Ten fully wrapped up, but a win tonight over Penn State (as a 10-point KenPom favorite) would leave the Boilers still three games ahead in the loss column with just eight conference contests to play. Seven of those come against projected tournament teams, but Purdue’s favored in every single one of them. This team is so much better than the rest of the league.
If someone is going to step up and challenge Purdue, Illinois is the most logical possibility. They have the highest upside, they have the best record, and they haven’t played their likely vanquishers yet, scheduled to go to West Lafayette on the last day of the Big Ten campaign. At the moment, though, Brad Underwood’s team is projected to finish four games back, and that projection has Purdue losing three more times from here. Illinois might need to win out if anyone is going to top this team.
The concern with Purdue is consistency, which is a weird thing to say about a team that’s 20-1 and has only lost to Rutgers, that loss coming by a point. It’s partially a reversion to last year’s question, which proved prescient when these guys ultimately fell to Saint Peter’s. But, it holds, because a team with a young, questionable backcourt is not one to count on to show up every night. The thing is: This might make Purdue harder to beat in the conference race. They might drop a stinker here or there, but they’re so frequently so good that they’re not a team someone like Iowa will automatically beat if Iowa plays the best game possible. Iowa’s best game possible won’t necessarily be better than a Purdue game. That’s where the inconsistency can help.
The Wild One
Favorites: Marquette, Xavier, Providence
Contender: Creighton
UConn’s relegated to playing spoiler in the Big East, projected to finish four games back of Marquette and in fifth place overall in the league. If that comes to pass, they’ll at least avoid playing on Day One in Madison Square Garden, but the Huskies’ eyes are on Madison Square Garden, not on tracking down this league title.
Instead, Marquette, Xavier, and Providence are the current focuses, with the latter two of those squaring off tonight in Cincinnati. Marquette’s the best of the three on paper and has a favorable enough remaining schedule to be favored to win the league by a game, but that gap could be erased tonight by the Friars with an upset (which is more possible than we’d think, with Zach Freemantle out), and regardless, it’s not large.
Meanwhile, Creighton lurks, having surged to 7-3 and playing like a team that might have a clear Elite Eight path when final brackets come out. They’re not as one-dimensional as they sound, either: Through defensive rebounding and an ability to avoid committing fouls, the Jays have posted the most efficient defense so far in Big East play (credit to KenPom for all our stats in this post, by the way). They’ve already played and lost at all three of Marquette, UConn, and Xavier, so their only remaining chance to steal a surprise road win will come at Providence, but should they run the table, it won’t be the world’s biggest surprise, and their stretch before that Providence game—Georgetown (A), Villanova (H), Seton Hall (A), UConn (H)—is a dominatable stretch.
The favorite? It’s probably Marquette, but things could get a little bit nuts.
The Football One
Favorites: Alabama, Tennessee
Contenders: (None)
We’ve got a two-horse race down south. Alabama leads the league at 9-0, Tennessee’s in second at 7-1, trying to win in Gainesville tonight and make that 8-1. The Tide are projected to finish with a 16-2 mark, the Vols are aimed at 15-3, the teams have not played and will only play in Knoxville, giving Rick Barnes a chance to even the score without facing road game payback.
Alabama’s loss on Saturday wasn’t the most concerning loss in the world, as yesterday’s blowout of Vanderbilt reminded. This team is very good. But it, combined with the narrow avoidance of disaster against Mississippi State last week, showed some vulnerability. Alabama’s problem is youth and guard play, just like Purdue, and it has a better defense but that defense has some issues on the glass and around the topic of fouls. Thankfully for Nate Oats, Tennessee shares the vulnerable tendency, having a more experienced backcourt that’s still shaky and no reliable go-to star on the offensive end. Tennessee is one-dimensional. That’s bit them once already in SEC play. It could prove decisive by the time all’s said and done.
The Rivalry One
Favorites: UCLA, Arizona
Contenders: USC
USC could still steal this, having split with UCLA and still getting to even the score with Arizona at home. The Trojans are 7-3 in Pac-12 play, and their only other loss came to Washington State, a verified tough out who also beat Arizona.
The real race, though?
It’s the Bruins and the Wildcats.
Arizona sits at 8-3, having beaten UCLA and USC both head to head but lost to all three of Wazzu, Oregon, and Utah already. Those wins over the Los Angeles schools came at home, too, so the final-weekend SoCal trip would put even an outright conference lead squarely on the line, should Arizona be in that position. UCLA is at 8-2, they’ve avoided losing to anyone outside of the race, but they do still have to take care of business from here. Their next three weeks are manageable: They host the Washington schools, visit the Oregon schools, and host the Bay Area schools. That’s a stretch where they could put this away. If they don’t, though, Arizona—and USC—have the capacity to pounce. It’s UCLA’s to lose, but losing it is possible.
The Weird One
Favorite: Virginia
Contender: Clemson??
Clemson losing to Boston College last night pulled the Tigers back even with Virginia in the loss column, and with the two yet to play—in Charlottesville—Tony Bennett now holds serve, so this should be straightforward. Still, Clemson’s made it this far, and UVA has four losable games left in addition to the Tigers’ visit. Clemson’s gotten this far on magic. There’s no guarantee that it’ll run out.
The Busy One
Favorites: Boise State, San Diego State
Contenders: Nevada, New Mexico, Utah State
There are five teams in the Mountain West who sit with just two or three conference losses, and there are five teams in the Mountain West who KenPom projects to finish with five or six conference losses. New Mexico goes to Logan tonight, so one of UNM and Utah State will be in a tough hole, but considering the Lobos already won in San Diego and took the front end of the Boise State set, we could also have a third favorite.
The thing about this race is that it’s also a series of bubble battles. None of these five are safely in the tournament, especially not with teams like Fresno State and Air Force lurking as conceivable terrible losses. Boise and SDSU have the edge—and have yet to play, their first matchup is Friday in San Diego—but even they are far from tournament locks. This is a series of haymakers, and it’s looking like a lot of fun.
The Power Struggle One
Favorites: Saint Mary’s, Gonzaga
Contenders: (None)
Gonzaga’s won the WCC outright every year since 2016, and they haven’t lost it since 2012. That was the last time Saint Mary’s won outright, but the Gaels are poised to reset the clock in a few weeks. Saint Mary’s has yet to lose in league play, Gonzaga dropped a home game to Loyola Marymount, if Saint Mary’s wins this Saturday in Moraga they should have a two-game lead with only six to play. What’s more? Saint Mary’s is the better team. They’re favored on Saturday. And not by nothing.
The WCC has this set up for a season finale in Spokane, but that could be a game for tournament seeding and nothing more if SMC can handle things from here ‘til there.
**
What’s happening tonight:
College Basketball (the big one)
- 6:30 PM EST: Providence @ Xavier (FS1)
College Basketball (the good ones)
- 9:00 PM EST: Oklahoma State @ Oklahoma (ESPN2)
- 10:30 PM EST: New Mexico @ Utah State (FS1)
College Basketball (the interesting ones)
- 6:30 PM EST: Penn State @ Purdue (BTN)
- 7:00 PM EST: Tennessee @ Florida (ESPN2)
NBA (the best game)
- 7:30 PM EST: Brooklyn @ Boston (ESPN)
NHL (the best game)
- 7:30 PM EST: Boston @ Toronto (ESPN+)
