Running 2011-12 College Basketball thread

Hell, that was nothing. They beat Mercer by 86 on Dec. 30.

http://www.und.com/sports/w-baskbl/stats/2011-2012/ndmer-w.html

 

Gunner Kiel says LSU can't score that many points in a week.

 

Ga Tech scored a whopping 38 points tonight against Uva.

In both halves combined.

 

MENS?

 

The added bonus is Self has won seven Big 12 titles, five Big 12 Tournament titles and a national championship in eight seasons.

I'll never forget what my dad said the day Bill Self was hired. "Bill Self will make us forget about Roy Williams."

Forget? A stretch, obviously. Upgrade? Who would have thought that?

 

Yep. Lowest-scoring game for the Jackets since (I think) 1982.

As a UVa fan, obviously I'll take a 30-point ACC road win any time. But while the Hoos can play some defense, GT looked awful. I'm not sure how much this says about UVa. Also, they lost their starting center to an ankle injury, and there's no word yet on how long he'll be out. That leaves eight scholarship guys and three post players. Not a whole lot in the way of depth.

 

If Murray State runs the table and assuming nothing super-crazy happens in the major conferences (like everyone has five losses by the conference tournaments), where do you seed them?

 

In an 8/9 . . . or a hair better.

 

They'll get the dreaded 5 seed if they go unbeaten.

 

Every time I've seen Virginia play, which is three times this season if I recall (I did not watch last night), their defense has been outstanding, if boring. I fell asleep at halftime of the Duke game. Duke put some points on them in the first part of the second half (the third quarter, if they used quarters) and built a big lead. I slept through it. So I missed the one instance where somebody successfully dissected that Bennett defense.

Of course, after I woke up Virginia rallied back and ended up missing a 3 at the buzzer that would have sent that one to overtime.

 

Shoot me your address and I'll send you a case of 5-Hour Energy and a copy of the UVa schedule.

Duke basically pounded it inside in their rally, IIRC. Part of that was probably because Rivers and Curry had unspectacular games (both finished in low double figures). My lasting image from that rally is Mason Plumlee scoring a few big baskets (not from the line, where he went 2-of-10) and Andre Dawkins hitting a couple of timely contested 3s.

To sum up, Duke won by getting the ball into the post, taking Mike Scott out of the game and hitting shots in the second half that they weren't in the first. That and holding UVa's starting backcourt scoreless.

 

Virginia has the one 7-footer inside who isn't very mobile, so if you have good bigs, you certainly can attack him. And Scott's not that big, though he is very mobile.

But the thing they generally do well is double or play man-and-a-half. Their philosophy on perimeter defense is not to deny, but to have good, controlled close-outs to contest shots. So generally speaking, their post defense is usually pretty good but not necessarily because of great individual interior defense.