Thursday’s college basketball action is coming up and while typically I look more at what has happened today I’m going to take a bit of a look ahead. I'll get to Friday's games in the next day or so.
(7) West Virginia – (3) Xavier
I noticed that West Virginia is actually giving points in Vegas to Xavier and I think that’s probably a result of two things. The first is that West Virginia beat Duke and people for some reason think Duke was good enough that the WVU win was really impressive. That’s probably not worded well; it was a nice win for WVU but Duke was a pretty weak 2 seed. The other reason why WVU is favored is probably because Xavier has decided to fall behind by 23625 combined points in their two wins last weekend. I would argue that WVU is better than Xavier’s first two opponents in this tournament but the same is obviously true in reverse. Xavier’s perimeter defense should give WVU trouble on the perimeter and Xavier clearly has more post weapons than Duke. WVU winning would likely take a big effort from Joe Alexander and the fact that he’s awesome means that’s certainly possible (and if you like him enough you might even argue probable). Ultimately Xavier is likely the better team and that should show down the stretch as Xavier wins by about 5.
(12) Western Kentucky – (1) UCLA
UCLA clearly plays some great defense even if they get a bit of help at times. Texas A&M was completely unable to get anything accomplished inside. It seems unlikely that Western Kentucky will try going inside a whole lot as they have two of the active 2008 NCAA tournament scoring leaders in guards Courtney Lee and Tyrone Brazelton. Brazelton has been really terrific and the match-up between him and Darren Collison should be fantastic. Those Western Kentucky guards should be able to hang with UCLA but what is WKU’s answer for Kevin Love? I really have no idea what the answer to that question is. The biggest hope for the Hilltoppers is probably that Love decides to hang around the perimeter and shoot threes and for some reason that even happens on occasion. WKU is good enough to stay around in this game and if Lee and Brazelton are REALLY hot then a win is possible. That still seems like an unlikely scenario and I’d guess UCLA wins by 10 or so.
(4) Washington State – (1) North Carolina
Do you realize Washington State has only given up 81 points total this tournament? In fact, North Carolina has been averaging over 30 points per game more over their first two NCAA tournament games than those 81 points Washington State has given up overall. I think it might be safe to suggest that it’s possible that this game could have a bit of a battle for tempo. Even if Washington State wins the battle of tempo they’re still going to need to score some points. Washington State tends to be pretty efficient offensively and North Carolina occasionally decides to not pay a ton of attention on the defensive side of the floor and that won’t fly against Washington State. Really Washington State is going to need to be sure to get back on defense and force North Carolina to run their offense in the half court. The Tar Heels are not incapable in that type of situation but it would obviously feed right into Washington State’s strength and give them a shot. The problem is that I’m not sure Washington State will win even if they do control tempo. Because of that the pick here is for North Carolina, but I figure it to be in single digits, probably 7-9 points.
(3) Louisville – (2) Tennessee
Louisville is really playing terrific basketball right now. Their wins this past weekend were impressive, particularly the rout of Oklahoma. Even before that, despite entering the tournament on a two game skid, they had been playing real well. Tennessee has not been playing anywhere near that well. In fact, they really haven’t impressed all that much since the Memphis win. While Tennessee is clearly a good team I am becoming more and more convinced that they have been overrated all year and their strong resume is partly due to being in a weak SEC. Even in the non-conference although they beat a lot of good teams (Temple, West Virginia, Gonzaga, Western Kentucky, Xavier, and the aforementioned Memphis game is an impressive collection of scalps) but they won most of these games in close fashion. There is something to be said about winning games; actually, there is a ton to be said about winning games. It is impressive. But maybe they are not the dominant team I kind of assumed they were all year. I think this is a battle of a team trending upwards (Louisville) and a team trending downwards (Tennessee, although maybe they’re hanging steady at a level below what I thought they were all year). This should be a fantastic game but I like Louisville to win by a margin I can count on one hand.
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