There Will Be Blood: The UConn Preview

In between last week's Northeastern game and today's UConn game was a game against Harvard that occurred precisely in the middle my holiday travel, hence the lack of preview/wrap-up. Yes, as a devoted fan of BU hoops I demanded of a very understanding girlfriend that we pull the car off the highway and find a bar with free WiFi, but the game was also precisely in the middle of my other favorite team, the Tennessee Titans, producing one of the more improbable comebacks in NFL history.

So, in the middle of The Office Beer Bar & Grill in Morristown, NJ, I had one eye (but no ears) on the Terriers's game against the Smarties. First the Titans were up and the Terriers were down big in the first half. Then the Titans gave up the lead but BU streaked to a double-digit lead in the second half. Finally, as the Titans made history BU ran out of gas and left Case Gym with an uninspiring 78-70 loss to an admittedly decent Harvard Crimson squadron.

It's harder than you think to watch your two favorite teams at once, but I did pick up a few things about the Terriers game. One was that Corey had a rough game - not only did he go 0-7 but had bad turnovers on two consecutive possessions in the final minutes that led to fast break dunks and thwarted any possibly comeback. Real daggers in the heart.

Another thing that I noticed is we are really hurting for bodies. BJ and Valdas were not playing due to various ailments. Tunde even got into the game, and made a nice steal and basket before the end of the first half.

This is going to be the big story going into tonight's matchup against UConn. In addition to those two guys plus Scott Brittain, the Hot Dog says Corey will now be sidelined with an injury.

Are you kidding me??? We will barely have enough guys to field a starting five. Forget that this is on TV against the #13 team in the country... we couldn't beat Binghamton with this many injuries.

OK, that isn't true. But this will be a slaughter. I am afraid to admit that I am hosting a BU Alumni in DC Club game-watch at a bar tonight. There are casual BU alums who are almost never exposed to BU basketball and will be turned off from the team because of tonight! We lost to #21 Georgia Tech by 18... we'll be lucky to lose to UConn by twice that.

How Bout Some Icing on the Cake: The Georgia Tech Preview

We all know this tournament is already "Mission Accomplished" - the win over Indiana was awesome and that's as much as any of us could ask for.

I'm guessing Coach Pat Chambers is not satisfied however. He'd like to finish off this trip to San Juan with a stunner over the #21 ranked Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. BU last played a ranked team when they almost knocked off Notre Dame on the road last year. The Terriers led almost the entire game.

Tech has looked pretty good. They were upset by Dayton on Thursday, but disposed of George Mason on Friday. We saw the Mason game, and Derrick Favors is the real deal - one of the best frosh in the country. And Gani Lawal could have been a 1st round NBA pick last year, if he didn't return to school. We ran into some George Mason fans in Old San Juan on Friday night, and all they could talk about was how "Georgia Tech's got some biiiig boys."

So can we do it? You've got to wonder how well we will do inside. We won the Indiana game by rebounding. We've got to crash the boards at least as well to have a chance in this one, or the shooting has got to be lights out.

Basking in The Prestige

When ESPN is bored, it loves to rank things... mascots, titletowns, whatever. Since there's nothing college basketball-y going on now, they decided to rank the "prestige" of every D-I college basketball team.

Nobody knows what the hell this means. It might mean how successful the team has been over the past couple decades, but then why don't they just say that?

Anyway I'm not gonna complain about it because BU somehow scored startlingly high on the prestige scale.

America East:
108. Boston University
159. Vermont
T-256. UMBC
270. Hartford
T-278. Maine
297. New Hampshire

Others of note:
69. Siena
T-70. Boston College
93. Drexel
100. George Mason
T-111. Providence
T-115. Holy Cross
T-118. Northeastern
123. George Washington
T-145. Delaware
T-183. Hofstra
T-210. Towson
T-284. Harvard

Highest of the America East (Albany, Bing and Stony Brook haven't been D-I long enough to qualify), higher than 4 out of the 5 teams that left AE for the Colonial, higher than all but 1 team from the MAAC, higher than most of the A-10, Pac-10 and Conference USA.

Most importantly, higher than our main rivals NORTHEASTERN and VERMONT.

How did they come up with this? Well, the system put a high premium on winning the regular season title (higher than winning the conference tournament even). And it gave just as many points for an NIT berth as it did for an NCAA berth. That means those 3 years in a row where BU finished #1 in the regular season but lost in the tourney were BETTER than winning the tourney and going to the NCAA. It also subtracted points for losing seasons, of which BU has not had many.

So, all hail BU, the most prestigious team in the America East (AKA the tallest midget in the world).