2019-2020 College Basketball Discussion and Pick 'em Thread

[DINGO Joe]

Northwestern lost by 10 at home to Merrimack College, which is in its first D1 season and lost by 20 to Maine in their previous game.

Most exciting thing about this time of the season is that you learn about schools that you never knew existed.

Also, did you see Utah beat Mississippi Valley State 143-49?  that's just cold.

[DINGO Joe]

You got this, Evansville!

Obviously clears the way for DePaul to move up to #1.

[DINGO Joe]

At halftime, Northern Arizona 64 American Indian College 9.  AIC is actually run by the Assembly of God and is in Phoenix and if Wikipedia is right only has 79 students, so I really don't know what the point of this game was.

[DINGO Joe]

Turn on ESPN2.  Kentucky leads Utah Valley by one point with about 3 minutes left.

Clearly Kentucky doesn't do well when they are a 25 point favorite.

[DINGO Joe]

DePaul is getting pretty cocky, played the first half against Central Michigan blindfolded and still won.

[DINGO Joe]

DePaul wins. Duke loses in Cameron to Some Dead Guy.

God is great.

In my bracket, three schools played their way out today, and DePaul is now the last team in.

The player who hit the winning shot for Stephen F. Austin, Nathan Bain, is from the Bahamas and he and his family lost everything to Hurricane Dorian.  A Go Fund Me had been set up by Stephen F. Austin (which can be done under NCAA rules) to help his family and had a kind of paltry $2,000 before the winning shot, it now has $132,000+, mainly driven by people who like seeing Duke lose. 

[DINGO Joe]

#1 Louisville just lost by 13 to 5-3 Texas Tech, which was without its leading scorer.  Meanwhile, #4 Maryland lost to Penn State.  Fun season so far!

Penn St was actually a 2 pt favorite, shows how even it is this year.

[DINGO Joe]

A hilarious look at the Big Ten standings right now (after conference record, I sorted by AP ranking, overall record and then alphabetically):

#15 Michigan State: 1-0 (7-3)

#5 Ohio State: 1-1 (9-1)
#7 Maryland: 1-1 (10-1)
#14 Michigan: 1-1 (8-3)
#23 Penn State: 1-1 (9-2)
Indiana: 1-1 (10-1)
Illinois: 1-1 (8-3)
Iowa: 1-1 (8-3)
Rutgers: 1-1 (8-3)
Purdue: 1-1 (6-4)
Minnesota: 1-1 (5-5)
Wisconsin: 1-1 (5-5)
Nebraska: 1-1 (5-6)

Northwestern: 0-1 (5-4)

No home team has lost a game yet, though I predict that streak to come to an end on Wednesday when MSU visits Northwestern, but ... honestly, who knows??  That game wraps up Big Ten play until the new year, and it would be absolutely hilarious to have every single team tied at 1-1, haha.

A 14 way tie for first in the Big Ten

[DINGO Joe]

Alonzo Verge in his first season at ASU had a career night, scoring 43 points, as ASU proceeded to lose to St. Mary's 96-56.  Only two other players scored for ASU and ASU had their full roster available.

[DINGO Joe]

Will San Diego State jump to #1 next week?

[DINGO Joe]

Clemson-North Carolina in OT.

And NC loses.  Hello, NIT.

Would UNC even agree to play the NIT?

[DINGO Joe]

Duke loses at Clemson, while Louisville is in OT at Pitt.

Clemson beats UNC and Duke back to back and they aren't anywhere near a tourney team.  Though in the ACC this year, who knows?

[DINGO Joe]

It's time to accept that, one year after making history as the first SEC team in more than half a century to go winless in conference, we're going to do just that again.

The SEC losing streak stands at 23 and counting, back to the 2018 SEC Tournament.

LOL! You are actually favoured in the final game of the season by 0.1 vs. South Carolina! Apparently 3% chance of one win or less. 0-18 would be an incredible accomplishment given the (terrible) quality of the SEC this year. You have four home opportunities against terrible teams to avoid it.

Does that take into account Nesmith being shutdown?  Between that and SC beating UK I can't imagine Vandy being a favorite in any system.

[DINGO Joe]

Wut Memphis?

[DINGO Joe]

Friday, January 24th
Kent State @ Buffalo – 5:30pm – CBSSN
Northern Kentucky @ Wright State – 8pm  – ESPNU

Saturday, January 25th
Miami @ UNC – 11am
#9 Villanova @ Providence – 12pm – CBS
LSU @ Texas – 1pm – ESPN
Temple @ Penn – 1pm – ESPN+ - There is no predicting either one of these teams, especially the Owls
Mississippi State @ Oklahoma – 1pm - meh, Go State
St. John’s @ DePaul  – 1pm – FS1
Bradley @ Indiana State – 1pm – ESPN+
Rhode Island @ St. Bonaventure – 2pm
Louisiana Tech @ UAB – 2pm – ESPN+
SMU @ #20 Memphis – 3pm – CBSSN
Towson @ William & Mary – 3pm
NC State @ Georgia Tech – 3pm – ACCNX
Belmont @ Austin Peay – 3:30pm – ESPN+
BYU @ San Francisco – 4pm
Georgia State @ Georgia Southern – 4pm – ESPN+
Southern Utah @ Eastern Washington – 4:05pm
#15 Kentucky @ #18 Texas Tech – 5pm – ESPN
Wofford @ Western Carolina – 6pm – ESPN3
#1 Baylor @ Florida – 7pm – ESPN
#22 Arizona @ Arizona State – 8:30pm – Pac-12
Colorado State @ Utah State – 9pm – ESPNU

Sunday, January 26th
#17 Maryland @ Indiana – 12pm – CBS
#11 Michigan State @ Minnesota – 2pm – FOX

You forgot to pick Bradley

[DINGO Joe]

So, how many bids will the Big 10 get?  I've seen brackets that have them with 12 right now.  I think by law a conference with "10" in the conference name should only be able to get 10 bids max.  Ohio St. is fading badly but it's hard to tell the rest apart.

[DINGO Joe]

Memphis led SMU 70-59 with about 5 minutes left, and never scored again.  They lost 74-70.

Game like that hurts way more than losing one by 40

[DINGO Joe]

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON??

nothing

[DINGO Joe]

As if this season couldn't get any worse, against our biggest rivals tonight, we lost our 1,080 game streak of making a 3-pointer, dating back to the introduction of the 3 point line.  We went 0-25 from the line and have now lost 24 straight SEC games, including the SEC Tournament.

Now, UNLV and Princeton are the last two schools that have made at least one 3 in every game since the introduction of the 3 point line.

Somebody named Maxwell Evans went 5-7 from 3pt line in the first half and has scored 25 pts as Vandy leads LSU 52-47 at the half.  Still wouldn't get too excited yet.

[DINGO Joe]

As if this season couldn't get any worse, against our biggest rivals tonight, we lost our 1,080 game streak of making a 3-pointer, dating back to the introduction of the 3 point line.  We went 0-25 from the line and have now lost 24 straight SEC games, including the SEC Tournament.

Now, UNLV and Princeton are the last two schools that have made at least one 3 in every game since the introduction of the 3 point line.

Somebody named Maxwell Evans went 5-7 from 3pt line in the first half and has scored 25 pts as Vandy leads LSU 52-47 at the half.  Still wouldn't get too excited yet.

Now you can get excited

[DINGO Joe]

Can't decide if Auburn's many close wins means it's battle ready for the tourney or that it's wildly overrated.

[DINGO Joe]

Florida St and Baylor both in big trouble on the road.  Kind of funny if Clemson beats Duke, Louisville and FSU, but has no chance at a bid unless they run the tourney (meaning probably beating two of them again).

[DINGO Joe]

It's extremely hard to pay attention to an election cycle and basketball and have a day job this time of year.  I gotta remember to just take March off every 4 years.

[DINGO Joe]

And 1,2 and 3 are out in the Valley tourney(UNI, Loyola and ISU).  Don't think UNI gets an at large. Final 4 are Bradley, Valpo, Mo St. and Drake.

[DINGO Joe]

And 1,2 and 3 are out in the Valley tourney(UNI, Loyola and ISU).  Don't think UNI gets an at large. Final 4 are Bradley, Valpo, Mo St. and Drake.

I wanted to sit down and pick which conferences would have outsiders (of the tourney) win them and the Valley was high on my list.  The American is on the list too, but it hard to tell who's in and out on a daily basis in that conference, plus i was shocked  to realize Tulsa was still the 1st place team in the league, and they would be an outsider if they actually won the conference tourney, which i would be double shocked if they did. Super Tuesday pretty much dissolved my efforts.