Tough Weekend

We are glad to see this week go away. While we started out strong, we were not as adept over this weekend. Don't count us out, though. We are good.

So how did we do today? Well, let's review:

2. UCLA: at Stanford. The Pac-10 will put 6 teams in the NCAA Tourney. Tough. Stanford will win at home. We still say UCLA is not the #2 team in the country. We hate to tell you we told you so, but Stanford scored a mind-boggling 50 in the second half to beat UCLA into submission. Granted, the Pac-10 is tough, but a team cannot be ranked #2 and allow an unranked team to score 50 points on them in a half. UCLA falls hard in the rankings.

3. Wisconsin: at Iowa. The Hawkeyes are up-and-down this season, and Win-consin is too tough for them. The Badgers are the best team in the nation, and they will prove it as they take down Steve Alford and Iowa. Another win for Wisconsin, who will certainly advance to the Great Eight, and, more than likely, the Final Four, in the Big Dance.

10. Duke: play Boston College at home. B-C is the better team, and they take care of the basketball better than the Blue Devils (Greg Paulus is Mister Turnover). They also rebound better than Duke. But, when you are playing at Cameron Indoor you have to be poised, and the Eagles are not experienced enough to handle all the "classy" comments and ruckus they will get from 9,314 students from New Jersey. Dook wins. B-C shoots 34% from the field as they go down. One big surprise to us was the rebounding margin. Duke actually won the battle of the boards 41-29. Greg Paulus continues to struggle. He will not be factor in March, and McRoberts cannot carry this team without a guard that can score. However, Paulus did a great job limiting his turnovers this game. We think Duke has played their best game of the season, and it will be downhill for them as they will lose 5-6 more ACC games before it is all said and done. One note: David McClure, the freshman who was red-shirted last year with surgery on his left knee, went down with 6 minutes to go clutching the same knee. Duke's depth is shallow, so they cannot afford to lose a player averaging 22 minutes per game. We'll see how that turns out.

17. Clemson: host Virginia. Another ACC matchup as the Tigers shut down Sean Singletary and beat the Cavaliers. Clemson was able to prevent Singletary from scoring, but the Virginia guard decided to make his mark rebounding as Virginia stuns us, and the Tigers, to win by 1 at Littlejohn. Fair to say that Clemson falls from the top-25 with two straight losses. The Tigers peaked in December. Bye-bye IPTAY.

20. Marquette: at South Florida. Marquette is glad to see: 1. warm weather, and 2. a very bad team, to win this game away. Obviously the Marquette players spent too much tome soaking up the Gulf Coast sun and fun and they BARELY beat a terrible South Florida team. Let's face it, they we lucky to win. Perhaps several of the Golden Eagles were hung-over and sunburned. That's all we can figure.

22. LSU: plays at Georgia. LSU, battered from 2-straight losses to unranked teams, will struggle again at Georgia. The Bulldogs win. LSU makes an exit from the top-25 by losing their third-straight at Athens. We called this upset. We may never speak of LSU again.

23. Virginia Tech: play at Georgia Tech. Can the Georgia Tech toddlers beat an experienced Virginia Tech team?? No. Both teams suck on the boards, but the Hokies' (please, for the love, tell me what in the world a Hokie is!!!) depth helps Va. Tech eke out a win. The Hokies did win, as we said, BUT Georgia Tech's bench outscored Va. Tech's bench 25-9. Tech is young, though.

25. Kentucky: play Tennessee at home. Ashley Judd will have her day cut out for her as UT keeps up with the sub-par Wildcats. Neither team is good, so we have to flip a coin on this one. Give the win to the Volunteers. Sorry to the Judd family. Let's face it, Kentucky got lucky. UT's top-scorer, Chris Lofton, was out with an ankle injury. No coincidence that UK won by 19 and Lofton averages 21 points a game. Not to take away from the Wildcats who dominated the boards. UT will have to regroup and find another scorer if Lofton is out for a while.

So we went 6-2 today. Not too bad, as we called a couple of upsets; most notably the UCLA at Stanford game. We are a dependable source, so keep on checking with us. No doubt we have not yet reached our peak (like Clemson has) and we will shine come NCAA Tourney time.

Three top-25 games on Monday:

8. Kansas: at Nebraska. The Cornhuskers will be no match for the Jayhawks. Kansas wins. We guess that the worst part about playing in the Big-12 is that you never get to play in a place that is even close to being warm in the winter. Gametime temps in Lincoln will be in the single digits. A few snow flurries as well.

9. Pitt: at Villanova. Villanova is coming off a close loss at Notre Dame, and they are pretty tough at home (see: January 17 trouncing of Notre Dame and January 20 upset of Texas). We think the Wilcats will beat Pitt.

11. Butler: at home against Illinois-Chicago. While the Bulldogs lost to Ill-Chicago earlier this month, they will not lose again. Butler wins. And they need to.

We're not going to predict the Coaches ranking for tomorrow, but we will note that UNC will jump up to #2 as Win-consin stays at #3. UCLA? They fall to the middle of the top-10. Duke rises to 7.

Carry-on.