Products You May Like
Only 11 days before the first conference tournament begins — that means you, ASUN — and you can tell the grind of the regular season is starting to take its toll. Now is the winter of their discontent in . . . well, lots of unusual places.
RANKINGS: AP Top 25 Poll | NET rankings
Consider this quirk of the 2024-25 season: The No. 1 team by general acclimation, Auburn, has been to one Final Four. Meanwhile, the teams responsible for the past eight national championships — Connecticut, Kansas, Baylor, Virginia, Villanova and North Carolina — are a combined 48-42 in conference play and none are higher than fourth place. The last three might never hear their name on Selection Sunday.
So it’s a restless world out there with March coming.
At Kansas . . .
The Jayhawks started the season 7-0 and ranked No. 1. Now they’re 17-9 and 8-7 in the Big 12 and were just thrashed by BYU 91-57, matching Bill Self’s worst defeat and the first time they’ve lost by 30-plus points to an unranked opponent in the regular season since the Associated Press poll was introduced in 1948. It completed a two-game belly flop of a trip to the Beehive State. Kansas never led once in 80 minutes against Utah and BYU.
The trouble really began in late January when the mistake-prone Jayhawks let a six-point lead get away in the final 1:10 of regulation and a six-point lead get away in the last nine seconds of the first overtime at home against Houston. From that moment on, they have gone 3-5. Two more Big 12 defeats and Kansas will have its most conference losses in 42 years. Three more of any kind and it will be the most season losses since 1989. That’s the former No. 1 we’re discussing.
“We need to get away from each other. I’ll tell you that point blank,” Self said of his team after the BYU shredding. He anticipated the need to circle the wagons against the rocks from the outside world that are certain to be thrown.. “A lot of teams go through it. We just haven’t been through it much at all and in a long time. But certainly, we’re going to go through it this time. So all we have is each other, and we’re going to have to be strong for each other and be good teammates and good leaders and understand that we need to look in the mirror, all of us, and what can we do to change the momentum. And then whatever we commit to doing, do it. Tonight, we were one foot in, one foot out in in how we guarded things right from the jump.”
At Purdue . . .
The Boilermakers were once 11-2 in the Big Ten and seemingly on the correct flight plan to repeat as champions. They just lost three in a row, with not enough defense and too many turnovers. Now they’re suddenly in fourth place. Funny how the Big Ten expanded from sea to shining sea this season with members in three time zones and 14 states, and at the moment, the championship is being decided by two teams 65 miles apart, with Michigan a half-game up on Michigan State. They meet Friday night.
“You don’t be emotional about it as a coach. You talk about practical things,” coach Matt Painter said of where he goes from here. “We started practice in June. It’s not like we started this last week. So, you’re working on things from June until now, and we have people in our program who are returning so they understand what we work on and what we teach. We can’t get off of it. But good teams get you off of it.
“Coaching wise, we have to give our guys a better chance. It’s been an adjustment for us across the board. We don’t have rim protection (with Zach Edey gone). We have to keep it out of the paint, so, we have to do a better job as a staff.
“I can’t help them when they turn it over and get in transition. I have nothing for them. You have to take care of the basketball.”
Purdue visits Indiana Sunday for a most extraordinary anniversary. It will be 40 years to the very day from Feb. 23, 1985, when the Boilermakers were also playing in Assembly Hall, and Bob Knight grew unhappy about the officiating and reached for a chair and, well, you know the rest. Purdue won 72-63, but nobody remembers that.
READ MORE: March Madness men’s bracket predictions one month from Selection Sunday
At Connecticut . .
It has been one pothole after another for the Huskies. The three-loss nosedive in Maui. The 25 turnovers in the win at Marquette followed by the 22 turnovers in the loss to St. John’s. The inexplicable pie in the face against last-place Seton Hall. And then just Tuesday, they had to scurry back from 14 points down in the final 12 minutes to win at home against Villanova, a crossroads about which coach Dan Hurley would later say, “The season was hanging in the balance for us today. This will definitely galvanize us.”
It’d better. Now in fourth place in the Big East and 6-5 in its last 11 games, Connecticut is running out of runway.
“I can’t imagine what our fans (are going through). I know what my nerves are like,” Hurley said. “This team’s got to find a way to finish strong. UConn starts playing really well in March, so can we get on a roll here late, get some of that March magic that we tend to have here?”
At UCLA . . .
The plucky bunch of the week award goes to the Minnesota Gophers, who started the Big Ten season 0-6 but have since knocked off ranked Michigan and Oregon, and the past weekend toured Southern California by rallying from 14 points down to beat USC and 17 points behind to down UCLA.
That last result only deepened Mick Cronin’s frustration about his Bruins and their zig-zag pattern across the season. They have gone from starting 10-1 to losing four Big Ten games in a row to winning seven and now dropping two of their last three.
“You win eight out of nine and you lose humility, and you start worrying about everything but defense,” he said. “I’ve got guys in that locker room that are worried about shooting. They’re worrying about shooting, worried about points and if their shot goes in. They’re not worried about playing defense and getting the W.”
He was left to applaud the Gophers. “I watch their spirit. I do this for a living. I watch teams, and you can see on film that they play like they’re an NCAA Tournament team. I can tell from their body language, and they’re competitive, and they’re the oldest team in the country. They’re trying to get to the Big Ten tournament, or their season is over in two weeks. Their starting five’s careers are over next week, and they were playing like it.”
At Notre Dame . . .
Down the hall, the women are ranked No. 1, but times are tough for the men. The Irish have lost four of their last five to fall to 11-14. The grumbling is growing as the attendance shrinks and coach Micah Shrewsberry was obviously frazzled by it all after the latest defeat, a 75-60 loss to Louisville.
His press conference rant went viral in about three nano-seconds, with the operative lines including:
“Don’t give up on these kids, man. What have they done for people to give up on them? I know if you’re not with us because we’re losing, you don’t want to come watch us, fine. Fine. But do it because of me then, not these kids. They don’t deserve that.
“I don’t care about anybody else’s opinion. I know who I am. I know I can coach basketball. I know I’m turning this program around. If you gave up on me already, I don’t want to see you back here. I don’t give a damn. … We’re going to get this thing rolling.
“I got us in this predicament. But don’t come back when we’re winning.”
At the end he did a Karate Kid on the microphone and headed off. At least Notre Dame has four of its last six games at home, if that helps.
At Oklahoma . . .
Remember when the Sooners were one of the nation’s last unbeaten teams at 13-0? Since then, they’ve gone 3-10 in the SEC. Of course, six of their past seven opponents were ranked, and so are the next four. It’s a nice season to be coming aboard the SEC, hey Sooners?
Oklahoma is sliding off the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble and if that happens, it will be four years for Porter Moser without March. That can warm a coach’s seat.
“In life sometimes you don’t know why you got put in those positions. This was a very, very tough loss for these young men,” Moser said after another defeat. “And the only thing I know how to do is continue to teach with them, continue to fight, show a picture, show a path. We have a path. It’s a hard path, but it’s an attainable path, and that’s the belief. Leadership’s a transfer of belief. Our belief and confidence right now is cracked, and we’ve got to get it back.”
At North Carolina . . .
The Tar Heels’ muscular schedule should impress any selection committee. But you still have to win a healthy share of those tough games and North Carolina has dropped five of its last eight and stands at 15-11 and in very real danger of missing out next month. The closing stretch is filled with beatable opponents — well, except maybe Duke — so the door is still open, but there has been enough public unrest that Roy Williams went on CBS Sports Radio this week and defended coach Hubert Davis.
“He’s the right person for the job,” Williams said. “It just makes me just cringe.
We’ve had some tough moments this year. There’s no question about that. But the season’s not over. I think we’re going to make a run here, and I would love for it to turn around 180 degrees so I can look at all those other suckers and tell them to shut up.”
It’s been a bit of a wayward season in the ACC anyway. The most recent conference team to reach the Final Four, North Carolina State, is 10-15 and in 16th place. The second most recent team to get there, Miami, is 6-19 and in last. The most recent ACC national champion, Virginia, is flirting with its first losing season in 15 years. The ACC team that has played in more NCAA Tournaments than any other, North Carolina, has work to do to get invited back.
So it goes in the disquieting days of late February. It’s crunch time to fix whatever is ailing, and you can hear it in the coaches’ voices.