CBB Daily

 These updates should probably be changed to “CBB When I Feel Like It,” or “CBB When I Have Time.” Unfortunately, I was very busy yesterday, and could not type up my thoughts on Baylor/West Virginia (Game Of The Year), Arkansas/South Carolina (ANOTHER 100 point game in the SEC. They’re almost getting old, where I hardly look up when I see three digits), and Illinois/Michigan (one of the greatest upsets ever of the #4 team in the nation beating the #2). Yesterday, even with smaller doses of high quality matchups, still brought some thrills:

BIG EAST HOME COURT ADVANTAGE

Whether the matchup involves evenly matched teams or Depaul and Villanova, one thing holds true: Big East basketball revolves around whose building it is. Despite the fact that some places, like Butler host limited fans, while the vast majority, such as St Johns, do not let any supporters into the building, home court advantage has been more influential than Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean. This year, in the conference, home teams win about ⅔ of their games.

There is no better example of this than the season series between Creighton and Villanova, the lone Top 25 teams in the conference, with ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology viewing the Omaha (in a conference called the Big EAST) and Philadelphia schools as the only Big East teams worthy of a Top 8 seed, with the Wildcats currently a 3 and the Bluejays a 5. 

Both games looked like drubbings, with Creighton winning by 16 in Nebraska, and Villanova by 12 in Pennsylvania. The location might be the key there - it wasn’t as though Jay Wright enacted a major change from their first matchup to the second. Instead, their comfort in their home gyms allowed the squads to split the series. 

Villanova got one of their best wins of the season, second only to their December win at the Erwin Center in Austin against a touted Texas Longhorns bunch. However, if the Wildcats could hop in a DeLorean and re-do yesterday’s game, I’d bet as much money as Marty McFly won wagering on the Cubs that they would. Why? Collin Gillespie, star point guard for Villy, went out with a knee injury that Coach Wright (throwback to the Coach Saban guy) could only describe as “serious,” a term he used multiple times in his postgame press conference. UPDATE: Gillespie tore his MCL. That’s it for his season, and maybe with it, Villanova’s national championship hopes.

Gillespie’s 14-5 per game isn't the flashiest figure, but he carries so much of the load offensively. Even when it doesn’t count as an assist, he does SO MUCH of the facilitation and dribble drive to create open looks for teammates, like this swing. His shooting is one of the best weapons in the Villanova arsenal. When they were upset by Butler on Sunday, Gillespie could be credited as the only reason the Wildcats were in it. In their first half without him, they showed how tough it's going to be not having an elite point guard, failing to score a POINT for 7 minutes, with the team lacking any facade of ball movement and teamwork.

AZTECS SLOWLY MARCH UP RANKINGS

Early in the season, San Diego State drove in an entire Amtrak fleet of hype, following their breakout 19-20 campaign. Malachi Flynn left, but last year’s #2, Matt Mitchell, did a marvelous job subtracting 1 from that to become the new leader for the Aztecs.

The bandwagon began HOT, after wins over UCLA, Pepperdine and Arizona State. Soon after, the wagon repeated the Sooner Schooner’s 2019 accomplishment, with two losses in three games, at the hands of BYU and Colorado State. A few weeks later, the Aztecs obtained back-to-back Ls at the hands of the Utah State team that defeated them in the Mountain West Tournament last year. (Sam Merrill, artist of that game-winner, playing legitimate minutes in the NBA for the Bucks!)

Since, they’ve won 11 consecutive, including a set against a scrappy Boise State team. Part of it is CLEVER plays like this one by Matt Mitchell. Part of it is the emergence of Jordan Schakel, with 3 20 point games during the streak. Most of all, I think it’s about avoiding cold air. All four of SDSU’s losses have come against teams from Colorado or Utah. Regardless of whether it’s in their buildings or Viejas Arena, my current scientific guess is that Brian Dutcher and Co. do not enjoy facing players with a cold breath, with icy skin, with chilly hands. My advice to teams that run into the Aztecs in the Mountain West or NCAA Tournament? Bring hundreds of coolers with snow in them, and apply it throughout the game.

SYRACUSE?!

I can’t explain Syracuse. A team I thought was lackluster. A team which only had highlights starting with the word Boeheim, be it Buddy putting basketballs in nets or Jim putting boogers in mouths. A team who, despite no cataclysmic losses, always held an “afterthought” position in my brain. A team that is currently in Joe Lunardi’s “Next Four Out,” entering the ACC Tournament.

JIm Boeheim has infuriated me many times this year. Yet, his coaching may have helped get an Orange team without significant talent set foot in the national discussion. Win a few games in Greensboro next week, and Syracuse emerges out of nowhere to steal a precious at-large bid.

THIS LEAGUE

*This happened Tuesday, but it’s just too cool to not talk about.

Before the season even started, I fell in love with the Atlantic 10. From the great mascots to the high quality play, it was an awesome top-to-bottom conference, leading me to affectionately call it the “Yay-10” and a “Power 7 Conference.”

Now, I’m realizing that married life with a mid-major conference might not be for me, with all the incredible options out there. This week, the Horizon League caught my eye, with, no hyperbole, the most amazing quarterfinal round ever, with 4 nail-biters. One ended in a buzzer beater. Two more went into OT, with Milwaukee making one of the comebacks of the year vs Wright State, roaring back from an 18 point deficit with under 10 to go, and a 12 point deficit with less than 3 minutes on the clock. They didn’t pull a New Orleans Saints either - they clutched up in OT to close it out. Finally, if that wasn’t enough for you to hop on the Horizon League bandwagon (at this point, they’re at full rom-com mode, trying to do everything to convince you that you two belong together), the fourth game goes into THREE OVERTIMES, with this bank triple sending it into the triple OT. If you aren’t soaking up every second of THIS (Horizon) LEAGUE, I’m not sure we can be friends. Goodbye, hypothetical reader who may or may not have consumed the Horizon League quarterfinals