Precap 2/1-2/2 - Pitt's easy road to March, plus FAU's final challenge at UAB

 2/1-2/2

Recap

ACC:

We learned a lot in the ACC today, as Louisville picked up their first ACC win of the year against Georgia Tech and Pitt picked up another marquee win against North Carolina. Other than that, NC State looked incredible in a 38-point win against Florida State. This is an especially important win for Pitt because they now are in a prime position to make the tournament. With this win, they’re decently secure in the bubble and only play one other team in the top half of the ACC standings, that team being Miami. Transfer Nelly Cummings seems to have gotten used to ACC play, as he had an impressive 21 points in a tough environment, and this resilience will prove important for Pitt in March.

Big East:

In a big night in the Big East, Providence played Xavier in order to stay tied with Marquette for first place in the conference. And in OT, Xavier won by 2. Providence is now 1 game behind from first, but they’ll get another shot at home against Xavier later in the season. Seton Hall also made a big statement, securing themselves further inside of the bubble after beating St. John’s. They have some tough games coming up and have only beaten one ranked team, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can get some different results than they did in the past.

SEC:

LSU, Georgia, and Florida all had chances to prove themselves against good teams to get them back in bubble talk last night. We can start with LSU. Against Missouri, LSU lost by 10. I don’t think they’ll turn it around in the regular season, but they definitely have the talent to win the SEC tournament and earn an AQ. They have most of last year’s Murray State tournament team’s best players, as well as some high-major talent around them. Georgia got trounced despite another 20 point game from Mardrez McBride, and though Georgia may have 1 more loss to spare in terms of a March Madness berth, they still have to get past Kentucky, Alabama, and Missouri. Lastly, Florida got one of the best wins of the year over #2 Tennessee, who has recently been looking unstoppable, and solidified themselves as a tournament team for now. They held Tennessee to 54 points on 28% shooting, and for the Vols, they need to be more consistent at 3pt shooting. In all 4 of their losses this season, Tennessee shot below 30% from the 3, and they need to figure this out before the tournament if they want to avoid another early exit. 

MVC:

In the second day of games in a row, the MVC got even MORE close in terms of first place. If you can remember, there were two groups of teams that were either 2 games from first or one game from first. And, to nobody’s surprise, ALL of the teams that were two games away won, so now, we have a 4 way tie for first and a 4 way tie for second. It’s insane how this could even happen, but we’re gonna have to wait even longer for some separation.

A10:

Outside of the A10’s “Big 4”, it’s just a ton of middling teams that can’t seem to gain any momentum and stay in the middle of the conference. That is true for every non-top 4 team OTHER than St. Bonaventure. After being picked to finish 10th in the conference, the Bonnies are now 5th and half a game behind of 4th after losing nearly their entire roster from last season. They get a shot at Dayton this Saturday and play Fordham on the 15th. Other than them, St. Joe’s and GMU both won to move into the top half of the conference and La Salle picked up an upset win over George Washington.

Other notables:

Other than what I had already gone over, we have a bit of standing shuffle games in the AmEast, WAC, and Patriot. As I have mentioned before, the American East has 4 extremely talented teams that had struggled so far in conference play, but all of them won as Bryant beat Maine, UMBC beat former #2 place Binghampton, and UMass Lowell beat Albany. In the WAC, former king New Mexico State picked up their first WAC win of the year, upsetting Stephen F. Austin and improving to 1-9. Abilene Christian also upset Seattle, who many have picked to be the favorite of the conference, and this just shows how deep this conference is and how wild the conference tournament will be. Lastly, there were some huge changes in Patriot League standings. In the #2 vs. #3 game, #3 Army beat Lehigh. They still are a good distance away from #1 Colgate, but with a couple more wins, could still overtake Lehigh for second place. Last place Bucknell also picked up their first win of the season, upsetting #4 American. This is concerning for American, but it shows that nobody, other than Colgate, is safe in this conference.

Preview

I mentioned this a couple of days ago, but Northwestern REALLY needs to bounce back fast after getting obliterated by Iowa. I usually don’t worry about this from most teams, but for a Northwestern team that was really bad last year, they need to be careful to not go cold for a long time. They play a talented Michigan team today, so this is a big opportunity to get back on track. We also have a huge bubble matchup in Ohio State - Wisconsin today, as these two teams both don’t get a lot of winning opportunities and could both use this win today.

It’s a big but boring day in the Pac-12, but unfortunately, none of the good teams play each other outside of Arizona-Oregon. That’ll be a good game, and there are some other potential upset games in Washington State - USC and Washington - UCLA.

Outside of the MVC, the Sun Belt may be the second deepest conference, with 8 teams within 3 games of first. We have a potential tournament semifinal matchup in Marshall - App St, which will be one of the more interesting games of the day and one that everyone should definitely catch. Talented Troy also looks to upset #2 Southern Miss, who is making a case for one of the best mid-majors in the country. Other than that, we have some standing shake-up games as Louisiana and James Madison look to avoid bad losses.

We have the game of the day in FAU-UAB. This is #19-ranked FAU’s potential last opportunity for a loss as they visit preseason #1 UAB. The Blazers have been disappointing so far this season, as they’re 6-5 in the C-USA and out of at-large conversations, but could make a huge statement today with a win. We have a lot of other standing-shake up games, so I’ll go over those in tomorrow’s recap if anything crazy happens.

All of the top-4 teams play today in the Horizon League, but other than that, there isn’t much to note. All of these teams are tied for first, so they’ll look to get their jobs done against worse teams to stay in that top group. If an upset happens, I’ll go over it tomorrow. Oakland also plays Purdue Fort Wayne, which is an interesting matchup between two middle of the road teams, but Oakland is the next team after the top group of 4 and could move between one game with a win today.

It’s a massive day in the CAA, as there’s a two way tie for second in the conference and those two teams play each other today. Hofstra is visited by Towson, and this could determine who is next up to challenge Charleston. Speaking of Charleston, they were pushed out of the Top-25 and back into bubble conversations after losing to Hofstra, but they could be ranked again by the end of the season if they win out. They have a tough game today against #5 Drexel, but could get a nice win streak going again starting today.

There are a few other nice games in the Big West and WCC, but this article is too long already so I’ll go over them as well in tomorrow’s recap.