When 19- and 20-year-old athletes are thrown into the fires of midseason pressure, with every game potentially pointing the way toward the NCAA tournament, volatility will emerge. This is just a fact of life. Some teams will win more consistently than others — think of Florida and Wichita State last season, Kentucky and Virginia this season — but levels of performance will almost unavoidably fluctuate.
Last night, a wild Wednesday in college basketball underscored how much of a challenge it is for coaches to get their teams to play the same way every time the lights go on.
“The ball is tipped… theeeeeeere you are.
You’re running for your life…”
And you have no idea what to do.
No, Wednesday did not provide “One Shining Moment” for bubble teams and other squads in the middle or lower tiers of the at-large pool. What could have been another step toward securing a March Madness ticket instead became a nightmare, underscoring the volatility of a season and the centrality of February in defining a team’s identity.
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It’s true that March is what people remember when a college basketball season enters the history books, but in terms of the journey from November to early April, February looms as a decisive and meaningful month for a few basic reasons.
For one thing, February marks the point in time when freshmen can so easily hit a wall — mentally as much as physically if not more so. February is also the point in the season when teams with soft conference schedules in January finally have to play somebody. (Think of Syracuse as an example of this in 2015.)
February is, furthermore, the point in the season when coaches have been able to see their teams in an appreciably wide range of situations. If there are lingering flaws, February is the point in time when coaches have to cope with them, either by making a final bid to expunge them or — on the other hand — disguise them with the use of junk defenses or adjusted floor combinations and substitution patterns. Teams don’t have to dominate in February, but when they leave the month and enter March, they need to have a clear plan and an empowering sense of what they are, what they can do each night.
As we move toward February, it’s nakedly apparent how flawed several teams are. These are the Wednesday night victims that demand a little more examination in one way or another.
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The foremost victim of Wednesday night’s chaos was North Carolina State. The Wolfpack did nothing of note in non-conference competition. Wins over Tennessee and Boise State — two NIT-level teams at the moment — were all NCSU could muster. A Jan. 11 drubbing of Duke pushed North Carolina State in the right direction, but it’s well worth remembering that in a 30-game season (not counting the conference tournament), one big victory does not a resume make. One big win can serve as the centerpiece of an otherwise-sketchy resume, but the other 29 or more results do have to be good enough to support that centerpiece.
North Carolina State entered Wednesday night’s home game against Clemson needing to add to that dumping of Duke… and to avoid a bad loss which would pull down the quality of the Pack’s profile.
Scoring 16 points in a body-snatched first half and losing at home by double figures to Clemson? That’s the exact antithesis of what NCSU needed to do. If the Wolfpack are going to go Dancing, their upcoming sequence of games against Virginia-Louisville-Virginia Tech-North Carolina (Feb. 11 through 24) just became even more important. If North Carolina State entered Wednesday night thinking that it needed to go 2-2 in that just-mentioned four-game stretch, Mark Gottfried’s team might now have to go 3-1 if it wants to breathe a little more easily on Selection Sunday.
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Speaking of teams that can’t rely on one win to make their whole resume, what about Oregon State?
The Beavers have lost to Auburn and Quinnipiac, two big black marks against them. Losses at Oregon and Washington in Pac-12 play aren’t bad, but they point to a less-than-airtight profile. The Selection Committee needs to see a team handle itself reasonably well in road or neutral games, so with a 1-2 record in conference road games heading into this week, the Beavers — sitting in position to gain a first-round bye in the Pac-12 tournament — knew they had to at least take care of business in the more winnnable road games on their slate.
A visit to Tempe to take on 2-5 Arizona State was — and is — one such road game. An NCAA-level team has to bag that ballgame, especially with a road visit to Arizona later in the week.
Speaking of Arizona, Oregon State upended the Wildcats on Jan. 11, the gleaming diamond on OSU’s generally subpar resume. Much as North Carolina State had to supplement its win over Duke with consistently good results elsewhere, Oregon State needed to reinforce that win over Arizona with more Pac-12 scalps. Sweeping UCLA and USC last week in Corvallis was a start, but again, picking off winnnable roadies was a must for OSU.
Oregon State head coach Wayne Tinkle has done a remarkable job with his roster this season, but if he’s going to make the NCAA tournament, he’ll have to get his team to win on the road, something it manifestly failed to do on Wednesday night against Arizona State.
Wednesday, the dam burst for the Beavers against Arizona State. OSU’s timidity led to a minus-15 point differential at the foul line in a 73-55 setback against the Sun Devils. Now comes the reunion with Arizona, and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the Wildcats are very likely going to drum the Beavers out of Tucson. Barring an upset that would be far more remarkable than what Oregon State achieved nearly three weeks ago, the Beavers will enter February with only one road win in the conference and two road wins overall.
After a loss like this one against Arizona State, Oregon State has put itself in a position where it has very little margin for error in February, and will almost certainly have to defeat Utah at home on Feb. 19.
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Next on the list of Wednesday’s victims is Indiana. It’s not necessarily news that Indiana lost at Purdue, but it’s certainly noteworthy that the Hoosiers got blown out by the Boilermakers.
It’s no secret to anyone who has followed college basketball fairly closely over the past few years: Tom Crean’s Indiana teams are markedly different at home and on the road. The version of IU seen in Assembly Hall is vibrant, effective, and lethally accurate in its long-distance shooting. The team which dons road red uniforms is roadkill for remotely decent teams, and highly vulnerable against relatively mediocre competition. As long as you’re not awful, you have a very good chance at home against the Hoosiers. Purdue’s not awful, and it was able to not merely defeat IU, but humiliate Crean’s crew. It’s a lingering issue for the Hoosier program that the difference between “Home Indiana” and “Road Indiana” seems to be increasing rather than shrinking as the season continues. This is what Crean has to get a handle on more than anything else.
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The final instance of Wednesday night wackiness comes from South Florida, where Miami — a team in better NCAA tournament shape than any of the other three teams mentioned above — nevertheless produced the second huge stinkbomb of its season.
You might recall that Miami lost at home by 28 points to Eastern Kentucky earlier in the season, 72-44. The Hurricanes are, improbably enough, an inverted Indiana. They have managed to do their best work on the road — winning at Florida, at Duke, and at Syracuse — while falling flat on their home floor.
If The U thought losing to Eastern Kentucky at home was bad, Wednesday offered an equal if not greater dose of embarrassment. Coach Jim Larranaga’s team became the first one to lose to Georgia Tech in ACC play this season. The Yellow Jackets not only won, they dominated, roaring to a 70-50 win that was never particularly close.
Larranaga has to get to the bottom of why his team simply cannot attain a reasonable degree of focus against plainly inferior opponents at home. If Miami coughs up another hairball of a homecourt loss in the coming weeks without offsetting it with a high-value road win, the Hurricanes are going to move toward the wrong side of the bubble.
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Wednesday night in college basketball was so wild that TCU almost beat Kansas for the second time in three seasons, and would have done so had the Horned Frogs been able to make foul shots. Kansas won, 64-61, on a night when TCU hit just 15 of 29 charity pitches. North Carolina State, Oregon State, Indiana, Miami — these teams are not in Kansas’s league. Those four teams, unlike the Jayhawks, lost. Yet, the reality that Kansas also played body-snatched basketball only amplifies why the upcoming month of February will show us which coaches truly earn their bones in college basketball.
This next month on the calendar always does manage to separate the wheat from the chaff in the sport. Wednesday night’s volatility is just the beginning of a deepening and more dramatic journey on the road to the Final Four.
