We’ll talk about Duke more tomorrow, when we’ve seen what the loss at Miami does to their projected NIT seeding (check out our NIT Bracketology if you’d like to see where everyone entered yesterday).
For now, let’s talk about Memphis.
Those beautiful boys from Memphis.
The Penny Hardaway era at Memphis has been nothing short of wonderful. An NIT appearance. James Wiseman being really really good for a really really short amount of time. A promised national championship followed by what would likely have been an NIT appearance.
And that’s before we get to this year.
This year, Memphis has tightroped their way to having no real good wins (Saint Mary’s in Sioux Falls was probably the best one) and no real bad losses (the home loss to Tulsa was probably the worst). And last night, after beating the pants off UCF, they’re suddenly looking like an NITitle contender.
When Penny Hardaway made that promise, he wasn’t messing around.
Other notes for today:
- Georgia Tech stayed on Planet Earth (lot of capitalization questions here), declining to beat Louisville on the road.
- Loyola and Drake continue to march towards something. What it is, we must not say.
- Notre Dame snuck into the NITuation over the weekend while Marquette snuck out. Each is a home favorite this evening, and each tipped off just a short while ago. Weird day at headquarters. I drove Stuber Eats in the morning, read the synopsis of American Psycho to start the afternoon because I was curious, went for a walk after that and didn’t see my favorite neighborhood cat (haven’t seen that cat for a while now). Weird day. This is me apologizing for my tardiness.
- Is UNC/Clemson a bubble matchup? I kind of think it is.
- Stanford and Maryland have risky ones at home against good-not-great foes. USC. Purdue. Nagging memories from childhood.
- Michigan State might be bad enough that they can afford beating Iowa at Iowa. We probably won’t find out, but it’d be an interesting experiment.
- Dayton visits Duquesne, and they probably want to grab a win here. Or so we think. They might be the experts, though.
- Other peripherally interesting NIT games: Tennessee at Mississippi, Mississippi State at Arkansas, Akron at Toledo, BYU at San Diego, Kansas State at Kansas but likely only in our dreams.
