The ACC-Big Ten Challenge, Day Two, and More

The ACC-Big Ten challenge finished up its final night tonight, ending in a tie for the second year in a row, but not before Michigan State and North Carolina decided to shake everything up. Unfortunately, the rest of Wednesday night's Challenge games had little effect. Ohio State and Wisconsin took care of business, and the other three games were filled with teams who aren't yet in the running. Let's take a look at tonight's action.

Ohio State 76, Maryland 60: This game was important for all the things it was not. Since Maryland was on the road and not at home, this will not be a bad loss, and it will only serve to strengthen its schedule rating. Ohio State does not get much out of this win, as Maryland is near the bottom of the ACC's tournament teams, and a home win was surely expected.

Wisconsin 48, Virginia 38: The bracket consequences were few on this game as well, but one has to think some negative things about a team that can only muster 38 points on its own home floor. At least UVA pulled a game like this against a top team. It will surely go down as one of the ugliest games of the season. Wisconsin shot 15/52, or .288, which was still far better than Virginia's 11/47, or .234. Like I said: ugly.

Drexel 85, Cleveland State 82 (3OT): Drexel is going to end up being one of the most interesting teams in the country this year. They come from the Colonial, which has had some strong years recently, but which is definitely down this year. It has now played two consecutive triple-overtime games, which, as you can guess, doesn't happen very often.

Drexel played (and won) its 2nd straight 3OT game, the 1st team to play 2 straight 3OT games since Ball State in January 2000.

— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) December 5, 2013

Drexel went to Pauley and played UCLA down to the wire, and they played Arizona extremely tough at MSG. But then they needed three overtimes to beat a pedestrian Cleveland State team. Then again, Drexel is 5-2 despite playing only one road game so far, and they have a very strong strength of schedule. Drexel is looking like an at-large team so far.

North Carolina 79, Michigan State 65: Twitter went all ablaze of comments about North Carolina's unpredictability after this win. But it is correct to ask how a team that lost to Belmont at home and to UAB could beat Michigan State on the road and Louisville. When UNC is firing, it is good, damn good. But will the Tar Heels follow this win up with a loss to UNC-Greensboro? As for Michigan State, this loss hurts. You never want to lose at home, but you never want to lose at home to a schizo team like UNC. This would definitely mess with the top seed line, and it puts Arizona into the #1 overall seed.

New Mexico 79, New Mexico State 70: NMSU is pretty clearly the best team in the WAC, but that doesn't mean they can make the tournament without winning their conference tournament. Home losses to a tournament team like New Mexico will hurt NMSU's chances.