By Aidan Joly
Less than two weeks to go until Selection Sunday, conference tournament brackets are starting to set up and some postseason play begins Monday night. Much to discuss from a busy weekend.
We might have had the game of the year at Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Saturday, with Iowa coming back from a double-digit deficit in the final 40 seconds of the game, hitting five three pointers in the final 40 seconds of regulation to force overtime and ended up walking away with a 112-106 win against Michigan State.
Was this the game of the year? It’s tough to come up with a better game that happened this season and it was good the whole way – not just the final minute. It was a competitive, offense-friendly game which was a welcome difference from a lot of Big Ten games this season. Iowa had three players with 22 or more points, while Spartans guard Tyson Walker put together one of the better individual performances of the season in the losing effort, 31 points on 11-15 shooting.
The game brought back memories of Texas A&M’s comeback against Northern Iowa from the 2016 NCAA tournament when the Aggies came back from a 12-point deficit in 45 seconds to win.
Elsewhere in the Big Ten, another big result from Saturday was Indiana’s 79-71 victory against Purdue as the Hoosiers finished off a season sweep of the Boilermakers. Purdue has now suddenly lost four of six games and the margin for error to stay on the 1-line is getting smaller and smaller. Now, it probably needs to win the Big Ten tournament to stay on that line. It leaves a real opportunity for a PAC-12 team like UCLA or Arizona to sneak a 1-seed.
In Sunday’s Big Ten results, Maryland was the big winner with a 75-59 win against Northwestern. That win improved the Terps to 11-7 in the league with two games to go, both of those games winnable against Ohio State and Penn State.
The win puts Maryland to earn a double bye in the Big Ten tournament, which would be huge for a potential Big Ten title if Indiana or Purdue doesn’t end up winning it. That being said, Kevin Willard inherited a not great roster when he took this job last spring and has it to well over .500 in the league and 20 overall wins so far. Willard should get consideration in the national coach of the year ballot, which is pretty wide-open still.
Moving over to the ACC, Pittsburgh is the talk of the league with a 99-82 win against Syracuse on Saturday, propelling the Panthers to first place in the ACC at 14-4, a number the program has not reached since it joined the ACC in 2013. Who would have thought? Saturday’s win solidified Pitt’s place in the NCAA tournament and it should make a run in the ACC tournament. Jeff Capel’s job was in serious jeopardy coming into this season and an argument could have been made that he should have lost his job after last season, but he should be an easy pick for ACC coach of the year and is another to be in the conversation for national coach of the year.
A quick shoutout to Florida State elsewhere in the ACC, which stunned Miami on a buzzer-beating three from Matthew Cleveland. A nice moment in what has been a tough season in Tallahassee.
In a day that saw multiple buzzer-beaters, the wildest one came in Tucson as Arizona State’s Desmond Cambridge nailed one from 50-plus feet to stun Arizona, 89-88. It was a massive win for the Sun Devils and one that may propel them into bubble talk. A win against UCLA on Thursday would help, as would a win in the final regular season game of the year, which we’ll get into in a minute.
The Sun Devils will be facing USC in that last regular season game, the Trojans coming off a weekend that saw them pick up two Quad 1 wins, road victories against Colorado and Utah. In a span of three days, USC went from two Quad 1 wins to four and is on a four-game winning streak. That game on Saturday between the Trojans and Sun Devils will have massive bubble implications as the PAC-12 looks to send a third team to the tournament.
Unfortunately, the Brandon Miller saga at Alabama continued this weekend and it happened during pregame introductions as he was patted down by a walk-on when he was introduced. Apparently this has happened all season when he is introduced, but it is still a really bad look when it has shown in recent weeks that he brought a gun to a former teammate that was used in a murder, even if he has been cleared of any criminal activity.
Coach Nate Oats said that it wouldn’t happen again, but at this point after all of this, how is a suspension not in order? It’s totally mind-boggling. Alabama has been so careless in handling this tragedy and as much as the program is trying to distance itself from it, that’s simply not going to happen. It’s a depressing and horrifying backdrop to this Alabama season.
Some postseason games on Monday in the Atlantic Sun. Bellarmine will face North Florida and Florida Gulf Coast will play Queens in the first round.
AJ Hoops 