The Saturday before the Super Bowl is one of the busiest single days of the entire college basketball season, since more schools try to avoid playing on Super Sunday.
Which five stories jumped off the page more than any others from 151 games? Here’s the list:
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5 – SEC: CLUTTERED MORE THAN CLEAR
The SEC had been moving toward bubble clarity, but on Saturday, it moved toward the murky middle once again. Arkansas is still in fairly good shape, but a loss at Florida showed the Razorbacks that if they play every game down to the final five seconds of regulation (which they had been doing the past week and a half), they’re not going to win every time. LSU, a noticeably talented team, messed around just long enough to lose at Mississippi State. Georgia, which had moved into the SEC’s top four, lost decisively at South Carolina. These aren’t season-defining losses for Arkansas, LSU or Georgia… but they need to become wake-up calls.
4 – PITTSBURGH AND MEMPHIS MAKE DIFFERENT RESPONSES TO TROUBLE
Teams on the bubble cliff can either choose to climb back from a precipitous fall or… well… die. Pittsburgh climbed back with its win over Notre Dame. A loss at Virginia Tech earlier in the week had put the Panthers on the outside looking in. This win over Notre Dame doesn’t put the Panthers in the field, but it does move them toward the discussion. Jamie Dixon’s team still has a ton of work to do, but it at least has a chance in BubbleWorld.
Memphis, on the other hand, is pretty much toast. The Tigers’ game at Gonzaga was the absolute last chance for Josh Pastner’s team to create a remotely eye-catching non-conference achievement for the committee to look at. Memphis got blown out. It’s auto-bid or bust for this team as far as March Madness participation is concerned. The American doesn’t have enough quality on its own to give the Tigers a fat stack of valuable wins.
3 – BUBBLE SURVIVAL ACTS IN FOUR PARTS
Entering this Saturday, a number of bubble teams needed to shore up their resumes or at least stabilize on a larger overall level. Four of them managed to pull through on Saturday. Seton Hall worked past Xavier to cap an unbeaten week and turn the tide following a rough patch in its season. North Carolina State’s endgame escape at Georgia Tech enabled the Wolfpack to avoid a second terrible setback in a week — the Pack had lost at home to Clemson a few days earlier. St. John’s has very little margin for error, and the Johnnies took care of Providence to begin to move in the right direction. Indiana struggled at home against Rutgers but pulled out the must-have win with a late push on defense. These are not season-making wins, but alternate outcomes would have been season-crippling losses. Tournament teams find ways to avoid awful losses in the middle of this long slog.
2 – NORTHERN IOWA BECOMES THE MISSOURI VALLEY “IT” TEAM
The Northern Iowa Panthers allowed eight points to Wichita State in a 14-minute stretch of Saturday’s game in Cedar Falls, Iowa, bridging the end of the first half with the start of the second half. A commanding defensive performance complemented by superior strength in the paint propelled UNI to a 70-54 win over Wichita in a game that wasn’t even that close. The Panthers are now in first place in the Valley, and while Wichita State gets another crack at UNI a month from now, the Panthers might have established themselves as the favorites in the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, also known as Arch Madness in St. Louis.
1 – DUKE CHANGES THE ACC RACE
The day in the ACC began with Virginia hoping to put four games of distance between itself and Duke. North Carolina and Notre Dame, which entered the day with only one conference loss, also hoped Duke would lose to create a tiered effect in the league.
Instead, Duke’s stunning late rally, written about by TSS staffer Ryan Palencer, brought the Blue Devils within two games of the Hoos. North Carolina and Notre Dame are now just one game ahead of Duke in the loss column, and Louisville is tied for second in the loss column, just one game back of Virginia.
This was a highly significant day in the ACC, with the necessary caveat being that we don’t yet know if it represents a permanent shift in the trajectory of the season. For the time being, however, it does reset expectations (and needs) for several teams in the conference.
