By Aidan Joly
Another week of college hoops is in the books. We are now less than two months away from Selection Sunday. Here’s a recap of the highlights over the weekend.
Kentucky’s Big Z introduces himself
It was revealed on Saturday morning that Kentucky freshman Zvonimir Ivisic would finally be eligible after a three-month battle to get him in the game for the Wildcats.
Ivisic was a highly regarded international prospect from Croatia, but nobody really knew what to expect of him. Opinions definitely varied on if he would be ready to play at this level.
Boy, did he deliver. In his collegiate debut, he scored 13 points, grabbed five rebounds, recorded two assists, three blocks and two steals in just 16 minutes as Kentucky cruised to a 105-96 win against Georgia.
He shot 5-7 from the field and 3-4 from three during the game, too. He was great on defense, too. He stands at 7-foot-2 and was a real interior presence on defense. Five rebounds in 16 minutes isn’t too shabby, either.
It’s unlikely that he will keep up this pace from the field or even be Kentucky’s best player. However, it is clear that this is a massive addition for a Kentucky team that was already humming. He makes a very good team even better. It may lay with him to figure out how far Kentucky makes it in the NCAA tournament.
Kansas gets exposed in loss
The depth of the Kansas Jayhawks coming into the season was going to be depth. It has four good players with Kevin McCullar, Jr., Hunter Dickinson, KJ Adams, Jr. and Dajuan Harris, Jr., but who else will step up?
So far, it has been nobody. And now that we are in the thick of Big 12 play, we are really beginning to see that be exposed. It came to something of a head on Saturday with the Jayhawks losing 91-85 to West Virginia, which came into the day ranked 139th in KenPom.
Sure, Kansas is 15-3, but it now falls to 3-2 in conference play (Kansas leads Cincinnati in the first half as I write this). It ranks 26th in the country in both offense and defense in KenPom, and no other real statistics stand out.
This is not one of the better Kansas teams in recent memory. It is fair to say that Kansas is not the best team in the Big 12, and may not be even in the top three or four. It needs someone to step up down the stretch, or else it may end up in an early exit in March.
Creighton wins triple overtime thriller
The best game of the day happened in Newark, N.J., with Creighton and Seton Hall going three overtimes and Creighton ending up on top, 97-94.
This was a game that was all over the place and both teams had several opportunities to win the game late in regulation and the first two overtimes, but it just never happened. Creighton led by four with 13 seconds to go in the second overtime, but Al-Amir Dawes was fouled while shooting a three, made all three from the charity stripe to make it a one-point game. From there, Seton Hall drew a foul just on a steal off the inbound and Kadary Richmond made 1/2 to tie it up before the game went to a third OT, where Creighton did eventually win it.
Overall, it was one of the best college basketball games of the season so far. Seton Hall had three players with 20+ points, while Richmond had a triple-double. Ryan Kalkbrenner scored 28 points for Creighton, while Trey Alexander had 23, including a three with 29 seconds left in the third OT to give Creighton the lead for good.
A quessential Big East game, it was a lot of fun.
Texas gets much-needed win
After back-to-back losses to West Virginia and UCF, it seemed that the Longhorns’ season was teetering on going off the rails.
However, Texas came up with its biggest win of the season on Saturday, with Tyrese Hunter hitting a layup at the buzzer to knock off Baylor 75-73.
It’s a type of win that can change the momentum of the season. Now, Texas is 2-3 in the Big 12 instead of 1-4, which would have spelled doom in Austin. It was also the team’s first real quality win of the season. It had a conference win against Cincinnati but outside of that the only power conference teams it had beaten were Louisville (does this count?) and LSU.
Texas has Oklahoma on the road on Tuesday and then BYU on the road on Saturday before a home game against Houston on Jan. 29. Work is not done for Texas, it needs to continue getting more wins.
South Carolina keeps rolling
South Carolina is one of the most surprising teams in college basketball this season. It currently sits at 15-3 and 3-2 in SEC play after a convincing 77-64 win against Arkansas on Saturday.
The jury is still somewhat out in SEC play, though. But Meechie Johnson has been one of the bigger revelations in the country this season to the tune of 16.7 PPG, while B.J. Mack has been much better than expected. Myles Stute and Ta’Lon Cooper both have been good as well.
Lamont Paris is doing a heck of a job in year two at the helm in Columbia. South Carolina has not been to the NCAA tournament since its surprising run to the Final Four in 2017 (South Carolina has only been to the tournament twice this century!?), that drought may end in a handful of weeks.
We have a coaching change
The first domino fell in the high major coaching carousel on Monday, with DePaul firing Tony Stubblefield in the middle of his third season the helm. Former Marist and James Madison head coach Matt Brady will run the Blue Demons the rest of the way this year.
DePaul is 3-15 this season and fell to 0-7 in Big East play after a 74-60 loss to Butler on Saturday. Its last win came against Chicago State on Dec. 30. Stubblefield went 28-54 in his time with the program.
There may be some interesting candidates for the job – more on that tomorrow though.
AJ Hoops 