December is a tease.
Sports buffs get a chance to forget about football for a while as the bowl season inches forward at a glacial pace. In its place is a preview of the finest college sport around–one whose luster will be ignored come New Year's Day, only to jump emphatically back on stage in mid-February, pick up steam and roll all the way through March and the crowning Final Four weekend the first week of April.
But December need not be a mere glimpse of Madness to come. A few things mark the college basketball “preseason”: conference seasons aren't in stride, big men haven't quite shed those summertime pounds, guards have yet to find their touch–and the best teams in the country collide like atoms in the best roundball centrifuge we have till March.
Last winter was a basketball fan's dream, with everybody who was anybody playing everybody who was anybody else. It seemed like a round-robin tournament starting in mid-November between Arizona, Michigan State, Maryland, Illinois, Florida, Duke and Stanford.
All that was before league-rival Spartans and Illini, Wildcats and Cardinals, and Blue Devils and Terps polarized for the conference slate, and well before many of those same schools shook it up in the NCAAs (highlighted by classic Final Four games featuring MSU, "Zona, Duke and Maryland).
It was fantastic. Well, “Non-conference 2001” has been even better, largely because the 327 Divison I schools are more competitive than ever.
The same top names are there, but interrupted by a number of real-deal mid-major teams that want to let the message ring: No longer Cinderellas, we're here to dance all season long.
The Big Boys
Saturday, No. 15 Iowa travels to No. 2 Missouri for one of the best inter-conference games of the year. The Tigers will showcase Travon Bryant and super-guard Kareem Rush against the Hawkeyes' inside-outside connection of Reggie Evans and Luke Recker. It will be one of the most intriguing games thus far.
No question, it already was.
These same squads ran the court on Nov. 21 in the Guardians Classic championship game, with Mizzou edging the Hawkeyes with a free throw in the last second. To stay unbeaten, the Tigers had to claw back from a nine-point deficit, scoring an astonishing 16 points in just over two minutes. The game was brutal, with Evans and the Hawkeyes pounding Missouri inside and dominating the glass, but finesse ultimately won out.
The marquee win has not been the only for the Tigers, who also beat Alabama and Xavier. At 9-0, Quin Snyder's club has climbed to the second spot–just behind his mentor Mike Krzyzewski at No. 1 Duke–and will be tested again with the game against Iowa and another Big Ten foe, No. 10 Illinois, before opening up the Big XII season against undefeated Nebraska.
The Illini have been most notable for losing. Frankie Williams and company took it in the teeth at Maryland in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and have since lost to Arizona. Last year it was Illinois that handed the Cats and Terps early losses, but those teams battled back to make the Final Four.
Maybe this year is Illinois' turn to turn things around, but Maryland and ‘Zona have made possibly the biggest on-court statements of the year.
Arizona beat the Terrapins in the IKON Classic to start the season, surprising many who felt Lute Olsen's bunch would never recover from losing four starters to the NBA. All the Wildcats have done since is beat Florida in New York, Texas in Austin and the Illini in Tuscon to move to No. 6 in the nation.
Maryland has reeled off seven consecutive wins, hallmarked by the decisive 76-63 victory over Illinois in Cole Field House, which is on its farewell lap as the Terrapins' home arena–and it’s seen plenty of action. Maryland's first real road game (the IKON tournament was at neutral Madison Square Garden) is a week from tonight at Oklahoma.
Two of the most impressive of this season's elite teams are ones that were fighting to gain respect at this time last year. Saint Joseph's and Boston College are each in the top 20 and keep getting better and better.
The Hawks just swept their games in the Philadelphia Classic over Drexel and a talented Penn team, planting Phil Martelli's squad firmly atop the Atlantic-10 standings since Temple has struggled against superior competition. St. Joe's backcourt combination of Marvin O'Connor and Jameer Nelson is fast becoming one of the best units in the country.
But the Eagles have a pair of spectacular guards as well. Last year's Big East player of the Year Troy Bell poured in consecutive career-highs while BC beat UMass and Iowa State. In the meantime, Ryan Sidney has exploded as the Eagles' second threat, after spending his freshman season as Al Skinner's sixth man.
Big East play begins at undefeated Miami on Dec. 20, but the real stepping stone for Boston College will be its regular January matchup with Duke. Last season the Blue Devils showed the Eagles what a championship club looks like, handing BC its second loss, 97-75 at Cameron Indoor Arena.
This year BC gets to host, but Duke does not appear ripe for any upsets yet. The Blue Devils have hardly broken a sweat since a chiller against Seton Hall in the opener in Maui, cruising to a 20-point average margin of victory. Despite playing Iowa, Temple and Michigan, Duke's most challenging game yet seems to have been against Ball State in the Maui final. The defending champions have proven everyone else still has a long way to go to catch up …
The Mid-Majors
… but teams like the No. 20 Cardinals show that the margin is narrowing. BSU beat Kansas and UCLA to earn the right to play Duke, and then held their own (with the exception of one run at the end of the first half) against Krzyzewski's bunch.
Ball State and a host of other mid-major schools have begun to earn some respect, partly due to the consistency and success of teams like Gonzaga and Butler in the past few NCAA tournaments. But they have also done it themselves, by proving their competitiveness against top-25 schools–and usually on road courts–in the regular season.
Gonzaga beat Washington on Tuesday and another Washington school, Eastern Washington, knocked off St. Joe's to begin the year. That, alongside Western Kentucky's upset of Kentucky in November, let the rest of college basketball know that these teams are for real. People are listening.
Sports Illustrated ranked the Hilltoppers No. 20 even before they took care of the Wildcats. SI also picked Kent State, which upset Indiana in the NCAAs last March, and Memphis with super-freshman DaJuan Wagner has been respected in all the polls.
People debate about whether Conference-USA isn't really a major conference. Cincinnati has been a consistent contender cross-town rival Xavier (who the Bearcats play Friday), South Florida and St. Louis frequently beat name programs.
But the sudden rise of dormant teams like Memphis and Marquette (No. 14, 9-0) illustrates the trend of second-tier teams on the rise. December is when these teams make names, and when they can make impressions on tournament selectors that last through March and into next year.
