College Basketball Calms Down for Finals

Not much happened on Sunday, certainly nothing that would have changed the bracket. Teams won games as they were expected to, letting college basketball fans who are actually in college more time to study for finals. Let's go over the couple of games of note that were played.

Syracuse 68, St. John's 63: Syracuse won today its one and only non-conference road game. If it can beat Villanova on December 28, which should be a battle for a #1 seed at that point, Syracuse will almost definitely enter the ACC season at 13-0. The top of the ACC is crazy good this year, with Syracuse, UNC (who appears to be past its strange woes), and Pittsburgh looking to be the class of the conference. Multiple one-seeds are possible, but the teams will have to figure out how not to beat each other up.

St. John's is a team that could find itself creeping onto the bubble, but given its early-season schedule and a virtual home loss to Penn State, it needs to pick up the pace. Any team looking to get in from the Big East will almost definitely need to be above 0.500, which is a sharp departure from past years.

Drexel 72, Davidson 58: Drexel is a team that may find itself in position for an at-large bid at the end of the year. It has lost only twice, and no one can expect that they would have beaten UCLA in Pauley and Arizona in MSG. But the schedule is weak, and a Preseason NIT win over Alabama will be Drexel's best win no matter what happens. That means trouble for computer numbers. But if Drexel can handle the Colonial with an impressive record, say 14-2, Drexel could theoretically lose in the final (or maybe even semi-final) of the CAA Tournament and still go dancing.

Elsewhere, Villanova and Missouri continued their winning ways today in games where they could not afford a loss. And UCSB won a road game that it probably should have struggled more in, working to build a case that it might deserve a slot should it lose in the conference tournament.

Villanova 73, La Salle 52
Missouri 66, Western Michigan 60
UC Santa Barbara 72, San Diego 61

Monday is a slow day with only a handful of games on the slate, but we'll see Gardner Webb at Duke in a tune up for Thursday night's game against UCLA.