The Pac-12 won’t have as many national title contenders as say the Big Ten or ACC, but with 8 teams likely to be competitive for an NCAA bid, the Pac-12 will be plenty relevant next year.                                                                                                                                                              

For a description of the lineup-based model that generated these results, click here. For a description of column headings, click here.

Arizona: I love what NBC’s Rob Dauster wrote here. For Arizona to reach its full potential, elite recruit Aaron Gordon has to play the power forward position. Arizona doesn’t need a repeat of what we saw with Baylor’s Perry Jones who floated too much on the perimeter and fell from the 8th ranked prospect out of high school to the 28th pick in the NBA draft.

Arizona’s ideal forward rotation would be a three man split between Kaleb Tarczewski, Brandon Ashley and Gordon. To reach its full potential, the team doesn’t want to have to rely on Matt Korchek or Zach Peters for major minutes next year.

That doesn’t mean Gordon cannot display his perimeter skills. He can draw opposing bigs out by shooting threes and then blow by them to the hoop. That doesn’t mean Gordon might not start at the small forward position. A starting lineup of transfer PG TJ McConnell, returning star Nick Johnson, Gordon, Ashley, and Tarczweski is certainly a possibility. But the team would be better off getting Rondae Hollis-Jefferson on the court at the SF position as much as possible, and if that means playing Gordon at the PF position, so be it.

UCLA: UCLA recently added forward Wannah Bail to provide more depth in the front court. Prior to Bail joining the team, the model had no choice but to assume all the post minutes were going to go to The Wear twins and Tony Parker who are all talented high potential athletes. But if Alford plays Bail some minutes, because Bail wasn’t rated as highly out of high school, the model thinks Bail is only going to be a drag on the offense. Thus UCLA slipped a few spots in the Top 25 since my last projection.

This is one of the things I plan to tweak in the model going forward. I think players should generally only have positive option value. If Bail isn’t very good, Alford doesn’t have to play him. There really is no downside risk to having another post option.

On the other hand, there probably is something to be said about having a tight lineup. Part of why Missouri’s offense was so crisp two years ago is that they literally only had seven guys to play. If Alford sticks to playing his seven highly rated athletes (Kyle Anderson, Jordan Adams, Norman Powell, freshman Zach LaVine, Parker, and the Wear twins), that seven man rotation may be able to develop incredible chemistry with one another. But the fear of foul trouble, exhaustion, and the desire to prepare players for the future will probably lead Alford to give some minutes to the less highly rated freshmen in his incoming class.

Colorado: I was a little surprised that Colorado didn’t fall out of more people’s Top 25 rankings with the loss of Andre Roberson. Part of that may be Roberson’s offensive regression last year. Roberson’s shooting percentage was down across the board, and he had a career worst turnover rate. But Roberson wasn’t just valuable because of his offense; Roberson was a truly elite defensive player. Roberson had a ridiculous 27 percent defensive rebounding rate and was the only Colorado player with a defensive rebounding rate above 15 percent last year. He was also an incredible shot-blocker and ball-thief. And he posted great numbers in defensive boards, blocks, and steals throughout his career. My model is predicting that Colorado will take a step back on defense this year without Roberson in the lineup.

Offensively, I expect a big jump. Xavier Johnson, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Josh Scott are young and talented players who are only going to get better. And while Askia Booker really struggled with his three point shooting last year, he is still an asset. Top 100 recruit TreShaun Fletcher will be too. That starting lineup has a lot of people excited.

But there are questions about offensive depth. Last year Colorado’s bench was dreadful. Despite being low volume shooters, Jeremy Adams, Shane Harris-Tunks, Xavier Talton, and Eli Stalzer were not Pac-12 caliber players. Two of those players have transferred. The result is that Colorado is probably going to end up giving a bunch of bench minutes to freshmen again this year.  Expect Colorado to have a lot of games where they win the first five minutes, but then fall behind once some of the reserves take the court.

Now that doesn’t mean Colorado won’t be good. Tad Boyle has been remarkably good at developing offensive players and playing the best basketball at the end of the season. That should continue and Colorado’s offense should take a big step up from last year. But in the final evaluation, my model places them 27th nationally, not in the Top 25.

Final note: The Buffaloes have a chance to be truly elite in 2014 because none of their key players are seniors.

Stanford: No team vexes me more than Stanford. The Cardinal show up as 28th in my model nationally, which seems way too high to me. Stanford struggled mightily down the stretch last year, and even if they return 88 percent of their offensive possessions from last year, I wasn’t in love with last year’s lineup. Johnny Dawkins has been at Stanford for five years and while his teams have generally been competitive, they have never been to the NCAA tournament yet. In fact, they’ve never finished better than 6th in the conference. To project them at 28th suggests this team is close to a tournament lock.

But I’m not the only one to see some value in this team. Jason King slotted the Cardinal in his initial Top 25. And I do understand where the numbers are coming from. Stanford actually had solid margin of victory numbers last year, finishing 50th in the country. They simply lost a ton of close games. In fact, they were 323rd in terms of luck according to kenpom.com.

And next year’s team should be very experienced. They will likely put together a solid 10-player rotation without a single freshman. They won’t have the growing pains of other teams and that will help them tremendously early in the season. They may be able to pull off a few non-conference upsets based on experience alone. And yet, I still can’t get that excited about this team.

Washington: When UCLA was looking for a new coach, Lorenzo Romar’s name came up a few times as a possibility. I get the feeling Washington fans weren’t terribly worried about losing him. It isn’t that they don’t respect what Romar has done with the team. But with just three NCAA appearances in the last seven years, and three more key seniors starters departing, it feels like the program isn’t trending in the right direction.

But the model is way more optimistic. First, the team returns its best player (by far) in CJ Wilcox.

Second, the team adds Nigel Williams-Goss at PG. Williams-Goss might be the best recruit anyone picks up this year. He is an incredibly intelligent and hard-working player, the kind of player that improves the character of a basketball team. And while he is good enough to lead his team from Day 1, he isn’t a super-athlete. He doesn’t have NBA teams salivating over him for next year. To get an instant impact player who might stick around for several years is the ideal situation.

Third, the team adds San Francisco transfer Perris Blackwell, a forward who dominated in the WCC. While the WCC isn’t quite at the Pac-12 level, Blackwell has played against NCAA tournament caliber teams like Gonzaga, St. Mary’s, and BYU on a regular a basis. The team also adds JUCO small forward Mike Anderson.

Fourth, Shawn Kemp Jr. will be healthy from the start of the year and that should help his development.

Finally, while many of the backups on last year’s team weren’t stars, they were still solid. Players like Andrew Andrews should be ready for an expanded role.

Overall, Washington can go a solid eight players deep without needing to depend on any unranked freshmen recruits. Saying this team returns just 55 percent of its minutes is deceiving. The combination of experience and talent at the top should put Washington back in the tournament.

California: If you want to be pessimistic, let me hand you some ammunition.

-California was lucky to make the NCAA tournament last year. They had the 56th best margin-of-victory numbers nationally which normally wouldn’t make the cut.

-The team’s best offensive player, Allen Crabbe, declared for the draft.

-Last year was Montgomery’s worst offensive team in his five years at California. And Tyrone Wallace was Montgomery’s personal kryptonite. Montgomery stuck by the shooting guard and Top 100 recruit even though he couldn’t make a perimeter shot to save his life (22 of 98 on the year). And Wallace is expected to return and play a similarly large role in the offense this year.

-The team gave tons of rotation time to Brandon Smith even though over four years he proved his idea of offense was dribbling into traffic and losing the ball. If he was good enough to play major minutes after four years of struggles, that suggests the players sitting on the bench aren’t ready.

-That means the team is probably going to rely a lot on a group of three-star freshmen. There will be some growing pains with that endeavor.

Still, let’s not get overly pessimistic. With four quality starters (Justin Cobbs, David Kravish, Richard Solomon, and instant impact recruit Jabari Bird), and a coach who has dominated the Pac-12 for most of his career, there is plenty to work with. California may not be a lock for the tournament, but they’ll be in the hunt.

Click here for a discussion of Arizona St., Oregon, and the rest of the league.

Harvard's Upset

There is something about Ivy League schools in the NCAA tournament. In 1995, UCLA won the NCAA title. In 1996, much of the roster had turned over, but UCLA still earned a 4-seed and the Bruins were heavily favored in their first round against Princeton. Pete Carril, the legendary Princeton coach had announced his retirement prior to the game, and the Tigers pulled off a perfect game plan. They worked the clock. They played solid defense. They executed Carril’s classic back-cuts on offense. And in the final seconds, a back-cut led to a lay-up by Gabe Lewullis that finished off the epic win.

At the time it didn’t feel like just another win. I know that victories by 13-seeds hardly qualify as stunners these days. This wasn’t as big a seed upset as 15-seed Norfolk St. beating Missouri last year. The novelty of a defending champion losing is also a lot less special these days. With so many quality players leaving for the NBA, it hardly felt earth-shattering when Robert Morris defeated defending champion Kentucky in the NIT this week.

But at the time, the contrast in basketball power made this one of the biggest NCAA upsets of all time. Here was UCLA with all its legacy and all its resources, losing to a school that didn’t even offer athletic scholarships. It proved that basketball, when played right, and coached right, could be won by any team on any given day.

Thursday’s win by Harvard over New Mexico didn’t have that same dramatic feel. The ending wasn’t close. New Mexico doesn’t have the history or tradition of many power conference schools. (In fact, in many ways it was disappointing that New Mexico wouldn’t get a chance to extend one of the most dominant seasons in school history.)

But there was still something special about this win. Harvard is the quintessential academic school. It ranks in the Top 10 in just about every possible educational category from endowments, to department ratings, to future job earnings of graduates. Harvard students aren’t supposed to win in the NCAA tournament. And yet they did. And not only did they win, it didn’t require a buzzer beater.

Harvard didn’t have to execute some unorthodox strategy. This wasn’t Cornell executing yet another version of Carill’s back-cutting offense in their NCAA win. This wasn’t some completely perimeter focused-team. Tommy Amaker is a more traditional coach. And his team won playing basic basketball. They threw the ball into the paint to Kenyatta Smith and he scored over Alex Kirk and Cameron Bairstow. They attacked the paint and kicked the ball out for three. And most importantly, while they ran clock, they mostly moved the ball with the intention of scoring. Running a traditional based-attack, Harvard beat one of the big boys.

Some will say this is not your vintage Harvard team. Tommy Amaker encouraged the school to relax some of its admission standards to upgrade the basketball program. And those relaxed standards led to a horrific cheating scandal last year that caused the team’s co-captains to be dismissed before the season. But in many ways, that made Thursday’s outcome even more remarkable. Harvard had just one senior in the rotation this year. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year until the suspended players re-enrolled next season. But instead, one of the youngest teams in the nation, playing in a conference without athletic scholarships just defeated the regular season and post-season champion from one of the top conferences in the nation. By any measure, this is a special win. And the image of Wesley Saunders stealing the ball and clinching the victory is the tournament’s signature moment to date.

No Other Slippers

For most of the day, we didn’t seem to be heading towards any Cinderella team.

1pm: “I feel sorry for Bryce Drew, but this game is over.” – Charles Barkley at half-time of Michigan St. vs Valparaiso.

11pm: “Hey, I love 38 point games as much as the next guy…” – Ernie Johnson on Syracuse’s second half-lead against Montana.

And those weren’t the only small conference teams to struggle. A lot of people picked Belmont to upset Arizona based on their ability to knock down three point shots. But given Arizona’s size across the board, Belmont struggled to even get open looks. South Dakota St.’s Nate Wolters was an NCAA hero in his four year career, but Trey Burke hounded him defensively, and Wolters managed only a 3 of 14 shooting night while his team lost convincingly. If that shooting percentage sounds bad enough, New Mexico St. shot 28% as a team against St. Louis. And we’re not even going to talk about how much the basketball gods must hate Akron. Not only did Akron lose its point-guard prior to the game against full-court pressing VCU, then Akron was stricken with the flu this week. The game was ugly from the start. (If anyone picked Akron to win in your pool you should thank them for their donation. But wait, that’s probably the person who will win the whole thing.)

That isn’t to say there wasn’t some Cinderella drama throughout the day. It started with Bucknell-Butler. There was the brief moment when Bucknell took a 37 to 31 lead in the second half. We got a chance to learn about Bucknell’s 6’7” Joe Willman. He was the perfect example of a small conference senior forward playing his best game in the NCAA tournament. He knocked down the jump shots that gave his team the lead, and he even chipped in with three blocks. Willman certainly was not an outstanding athlete. But those blocks really showed that a lot of playing the post is experience and positioning. It isn’t always raw athleticism.

The close game was short lived however.  Butler had started 0-14 from three, but when Butler’s Andrew Smith and Rotnei Clarke finally nailed a pair of outside shots, Butler got on a run and somehow made the final margin a blowout.

Memphis vs St. Mary’s was closer in the final margin, but it wasn’t necessarily a more compelling upset possibility. Memphis has been one of the most fun teams to watch this year because of their fast-pace and the explosive dunking and shot-blocking of DJ Stephens. But while Stephens got his blocks, I only caught one that really showed his explosive leaping ability. And St. Mary’s slowed the game down enough that we didn’t really get to see Memphis’ exciting athleticism in action. At least the ending was a signature moment, and the sheer excitement in Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery’s voice had to make everyone smile.  They both were amazed as St. Mary’s banked in a three to pull within two points. And they were down-right giddy at the subsequent turnover on the inbounds. Mathew Dellavedova’s attempt at a game-winning three was off-the mark, but these two brilliant announcers made it worth all the replays they gave it later in the day.

Gonzaga vs Southern also had its share of close moments. At one point Southern’s Madut Bol’s and Derick Beltran hit back-to-back threes to cut the lead to 41 to 40, and Doug Gottlieb noted that the crowd was starting to get behind the 16 seed. The smell of a historical upset was in the air. And after a pair of Brandon Moore free throws made it 54-54, you could just sense the people getting home from work, turning on their TVs, and getting glued to the action. But that is when Kevin Pangos took over. Pangos hit a three pointer, a dish for a three, and a ridiculous fake-drive, step-back three pointer that put Gonzaga ahead for good.

Davidson vs Marquette was even better, but again the underdog came up short. I loved this game because it showed that sometimes you have to throw logic out the window and realize that anything can happen. The announcers kept harping on the fact that Marquette was the worst outside shooting team in the NCAA tournament and that if they fell behind, Marquette had no chance of winning. The Golden Eagles simply couldn’t hit the threes they would need to complete a comeback. Meanwhile Davidson was the best free throw shooting team in the country and could easily close out any win late. And yet Davidson somehow squandered a 9 point lead. Marquette’s Vander Blue bucked the team stats and hit a pair of late threes, and Jamil Wilson chipped in one of his own. And a turnover with 6 seconds left allowed Marquette to win it with a Vander Blue lay-up at the end of regulation. It was a dramatic win, but it meant that Cinderella was denied once again. The night would have to wait for Harvard.

Dixon Falls Again

Some fans may view Wichita St.’s dominating win over Pittsburgh as another win for Cinderella. But this was far from an epic mismatch. Rather, it was a contrast of two similar teams. Both teams don’t shoot the ball particularly well, but rely on dominating offensive rebounding and physical play to win games. And for most of the game, Wichita St. was simply the better offensive rebounding team. (Pittsburgh chipped in with some late offensive rebounds to make the numbers look more even, but by then the game was out of hand.) It also hurt that 5^th year Pitt senior Tray Woodall had a 1 for 12, five turnover performance in his final game. Woodall was playing so poorly that Jamie Dixon couldn’t even afford to play him in the last five minutes when the team was trying to come back. No one wants to see a senior go out like that. But this certainly didn’t feel like a fluke.

And it brings up more questions about whether there really is an NCAA curse associated with Jamie Dixon. Once again, his team had some of the best points-per-possession numbers in the country in the regular season. And once again Pitt lost earlier than expected. You can say that you need to have elite talent to win in the NCAA tournament, and Dixon relies more on experience and depth. And yet once again Dixon has not lost to a major conference blue blood. It wasn’t North Carolina or Kansas that took Dixon down. It was another mid-major squad. Will Dixon ever avoid NCAA disappointment at this point? You have to wonder if Dixon left for USC (which is a big rumor) whether the Pitt fans would even be disappointed.

Meanwhile, I don’t understand why Gregg Marshall isn’t on more lists for a power conference head coaching job. He took Winthrop to the NCAA tournament 7 times and finally won a tournament game at that small school. And now he has built Wichita St. into a two-year tournament team. Marshall should be on everyone’s short-list.

But even if there were no small conference Cinderalla’s, there were two major seeding upsets. And both suggested that the Pac-12 may finally be back. Early in the season I talked about all the prized freshmen and key transfers on Pac-12 teams. But they weren’t quite ready in November and December to display the conference’s improvement. Through at least one day of the NCAA tournament, the Pac-12 has made a statement.

I thought for sure Oklahoma St. would handle 12-seeded Oregon. Oklahoma St. has been very good at forcing turnovers this year, particularly star freshman Marcus Smart. And I thought with Dominic Artis still limited by injuries, and the fact that Oregon was not great at hanging onto the ball generally, that turnovers would be the difference in the game. Indeed turnovers were the difference, but it was Oregon that forced those turnovers in the first half and built a big lead. And the combination of turnovers and offensive rebounds had Oklahoma St. head coach Travis Ford fuming in his halftime interview. “We aren’t going to win if they get 21 more opportunities!” Oklahoma St. somehow flipped the turnover margin in the second half, but it was too little too late as Oregon kept the game at a manageable margin and pulled the seeding upset. I say seeding upset, because this was really just one good power conference team beating another.

12-seed Cal’s win over UNLV was a little more exciting. Cal’s never-ending string of missed free throws at the end nearly gave UNLV a chance to win in regulation. But Cal eventually hung on while playing in front of a favorable home crowd in San Jose.

Where is the NBA Talent?

At one point in the day, Charles Barkley was reciting his normal line. “Team X has the best player on the floor. He has to play well and then they should win.” But today basically showed that this is a dumb philosophy in this year’s tournament.

First, there aren’t any can’t miss NBA stars in college this year. There’s a reason no one in the NBA is tanking to win the draft this year. It isn’t clear that the top pick is really much better than the 11^th pick. Trey Burke is my personal favorite player because of his all-around ability to manage the game as a point guard, but Burke was a surprising 2 of 12 from the field against South Dakota St. Meanwhile, UNLV’s Anthony Bennett was completely kept under wraps in one of the night games. Bennett did get to 15 points thanks to the free throw line and did grab 11 rebounds, but he wasn’t impacting the game like he sometimes does. That was because California played a very smart zone defense for most of the game. It led to far too many outside shots for UNLV and far too little utilization of UNLV’s future pro.

But that is the other reason Barkley’s philosophy is wrong. In college, the rules aren’t designed for one-on-one basketball. You can always take one player away. And since no one has Kentucky type talent across the board this year, there is no star you can count on to dominate the game. College basketball is a team game, not a star game.

Expected Win in Field of 64

Finally, I end with my traditional table on each day’s winners and losers. The table lists the expected wins in the field of 64 using the Pomeroy Rankings. Arizona was expected to win 1.17 games before Thursday and their own win increased their expectation to 1.87. New Mexico’s loss (and other adjustments in team rankings based on game margins) further increased that expectation to 2.37.

Contrast that to Michigan. The Wolverines won which increased their expected wins by 0.29, but because VCU won (and won in dominant fashion), Michigan’s win expectations decreased by 0.22.

Indiana didn’t play but their expectation fell slightly because Syracuse won and won in impressive fashion.

Oregon, North Dakota St., Florida and Duke all got key players back recently and given how these teams performed without these players, the returns could not have come at a better time. In the following splits, I replicate the formula used on Ken Pomeroy’s website, adjusting for opponent and venue. 

Oregon’s 17-2 record with Dominic Artis sounds a little better than it actually is. The Ducks played a relatively weak non-conference schedule, and even with Artis in the lineup, Oregon was not blowing teams out like some of the other elite teams. But there is no question Oregon has been a better team with Artis healthy. This Pythagorean rating suggests the Ducks have been the 19th best team in the nation with Artis in the lineup.

North Dakota St. should be one of the most fascinating teams to watch in the smaller conference tournaments. With Taylor Braun healthy, the Bison were a legitimate challenger to Nate Wolters South Dakota St. team and Western Illinois for the Summit league title. Without him, they simply lacked the offensive punch to compete with quality teams.

Florida’s defense did sag with Will Yeguete out, but Michael Frazier was also out in the Tennessee game, so it might not have been all Yeguete. 

Finally, according to these numbers, when Duke has been healthy, only a healthy Florida has been more capable of blowing teams out. And given that Duke is undefeated with a healthy Ryan Kelly (against a quality non-conference schedule), you can expect a lot of people to start saying that Duke is now the favorite to cut down the nets in March. 

But before we get completely on the Duke bandwagon, I want to express a word of caution by pointing to the following teams. All of these teams have integrated key pieces back into the lineup, and it has not always worked according to plan:

First, one of my big concerns is that injured players do not always return and play at their former level. Mike Moser has clearly been a shell of himself since returning to the UNLV lineup full-time. He showed signs of life in his last game against Nevada, but the reality is that sometimes injuries can take away a player’s explosiveness.

The fact that Ryan Kelly scored 36 points in his return should alleviate some of those concerns, but not all of them. I think Robbie Hummel is the ideal example. Hummel came back and continued to be an explosive scorer for Purdue last season. But I don’t think he ever regained the defensive form he showed as a junior.

The differences are pretty small here, but Wichita St. may also be informative in this regard. The Shockers lost 3 players to injury mid-season and remarkably kept their same level of performance. But since Carl Hall has returned the defense has slipped slightly. 

And sometimes it has nothing to do with an injury at all. Sometimes teams simply struggle to regain chemistry after an absence. I think we are all shocked that James Southerland’s return has not been a boost for Syracuse. But the Orange have played their worst basketball of the season since Southerland has returned. Sure, a lot of that came against quality competition. But I don’t think anyone expected Syracuse to lose two straight games at home.

And it can take time to build that chemistry. Providence was a depleted team early in the year with Vincent Council, Kris Dunn, and Bryce Cotton all missing games for various reasons. But the early season team was committed to playing lock-down defense to stay competitive. When the offensive stars returned, the defensive intensity just wasn’t the same. Only after a disastrous January did Providence players realize that they needed talent on offense and effort on defense in order to be a quality Big East squad. And for the last month, Providence has been playing like the 40th best team in the nation. That’s still the level of play of a bubble team, and based on the overall resume, Providence isn’t a legitimate at-large team at this point. But watch out for the Friars in the Big East tournament this year.

Boise St. has been climbing into brackets this week, and you might look at their ranking of 51 on kenpom.com and think they are not all that deserving. But Jeff Elorriaga, Mikey Thompson, Igor Hadziomerovic, Derrick Marks, and Kenny Buckner have all missed games this year including some key losses for the Broncos. When fully healthy, Boise St. has been the 33rd best team in the nation.

I’ve made the point about Miami and Missouri before (as those absences happened early in the year), but those teams have clearly been better when fully healthy. But don’t forget that San Diego St.’s Xavier Thames has also been absent (with back problems) at times this season. All of these teams have looked better when at full strength.

Finally, Michigan’s loss to Penn St. occurred even with Jordan Morgan playing significant minutes. So the Wolverines aren’t a perfect team with him. But he can be a difference maker on defense, and when Michigan had to play him sparingly (or not at all) for seven games, the Wolverines were clearly playing less impressive basketball. 

Lineup changes have not made a huge difference for every team. UCLA has been missing Shabazz Muhammad, David Wear, and Travis Wear at times this season, but managed to fill in when those players were absent. UCLA’s middling margin-of-victory stats are not the result of injuries.

Notre Dame lost Scott Martin, but it was a mixed bag. Martin’s scoring has clearly been missed, but an injured Martin was a defensive liability, and Notre Dame has compensated by playing better defense since Martin went down.

Finally, Texas has clearly been a much more explosive offensive team since Myck Kabongo joined the team. But the team has completely let up defensively now that Kabongo has returned. If Texas wants to have any chance of making a run in the Big 12 tournament, they have to combine the defensive intensity they had for most of the year, with the more efficient offense now that the team has a point guard.

It is easy to look at Kwamain Mitchell’s and Jontel Evan’s poor ORtg and claim that these players could not be responsible for their team’s turnaround. But keep in mind that these players did not get to pad their own stats against weak non-conference competition. And also keep in mind that having a quality point-guard can be vital to an offense even if that player doesn’t shoot all that well.

Virginia Tech transfer Tyrone Garland is not getting enough publicity nationally. Since he has joined La Salle, the team has started playing like a true NCAA tournament contender. 

I’m not quite sure I buy Georgetown as a 1-seed in the NCAA tournament. But they have played like the 5^th best team in the nation since Greg Whittington went down. Once the Hoyas realized that they needed to run the offense through Otto Porter, the offense has been substantially better.

I don’t quite think Kentucky is this bad without Nerlens Noel. They did pick up a quality win against Missouri without him. But the margin-of-victory numbers aren’t convinced because even the Missouri victory was by a small margin at home. 

And I want to end by talking about North Carolina. In the preseason I wrote, “If they choose to go four-guards around James McAdoo, they could attempt to replicate what Missouri did last year, and be plenty effective.” And starting with the Duke game, Roy Williams finally committed to that strategy. For the last six games, North Carolina has gone with a smaller lineup and started playing like the 5^th best team in the country. The amazing part is that their defense hasn’t even dropped off with the smaller lineup. Perhaps this isn’t sustainable. Teams may be able to adjust to North Carolina’s new strategy and attack the Tar Heels more effectively. But if North Carolina keeps this up, they may be a legitimate Final Four threat after all. 

Final Notes:

I discussed some injuries earlier this season. Click here for more details. A few recent notes on players:

-Steven Adams missed Pittsburgh's narrow OT win over Villanova. His sprained left ankle is worth watching.

-UConn’s Shabazz Napier was injured in the OT loss at Georgetown and missed UConn's loss against Cincinnati.

-Iowa’s Mike Gesell injured his ankle and missed the end of the Nebraska loss, and has now missed the last two games. If Iowa wants to make a late season run, they need him in the lineup.

Other minor injury points

-Rodney Williams was out in Minnesota's home loss to Illinois.

-Lorenzo Brown missed NC State's February losses to Miami and Duke.

-Nick Williams missed Mississippi's loss to Florida.

-Andrew Smith missed Butler's loss at Charlotte.

-Pe'Shon Howard missed one of Maryland's losses to Florida St.

-Trae Golden was out in Tennessee's losses at Arkansas and vs Georgia.

-Juwan Hoard Jr. missed Detroit's loss at Wichita St.

-Finally, Stony Brook’s Anthony Jackson did not play in the loss against Vermont.

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