NCAA Men's Basketball Top 25 Friday Recap: Come on Spartans!

about 2 years ago

It was kind of a tame week coming off the high of the Holiday weekend for college basketball. Sure, there were still games but not the flurry of activity that the destination tournaments tend to bring us.

Monday started things off slowly with just two games being played in the top 25. Neither of them were upsets and neither of them were close. #11 Arkansas and #9 Kansas did a great job of retaining their current rankings (so far).

Tuesday brought us a bit more action with seven top 25 games on the schedule. There was only one upset and that was #6 Baylor at the hands of unranked Marquette. The Bears fell to the Golden Eagles 96 to 70. It should be noted that unranked Michigan narrowly lost to #3 Virginia 68 to 70. It would appear the Big 10 and the ACC are having their showdown week right now.

#22 Maryland beat Louisville and # 16 Illinois beat Syracuse.

Sadly, #25 Ohio State didn't fare as well against #17 Duke. They lost to the Blue Devils 72 to 81. Even more sad, #20 Michigan State lost to unranked Notre Dame 70 to 52. Izzo has to be pretty hot about that one. Sure, they have some players out, but this just feels like the same old Spartans to me. Get a great victory and then throw it away in the next game. There seems to be a disconnect that has been there for years and I am not sure how to fix it.

Clearly no one does because we continue to struggle with the same things. I bet if I dug in to the breakdown of that game we would find that Michigan State had a stupid number of turnovers and sloppy play. It's heart breaking to watch.

Meanwhile, #5 Purdue beat Florida State 79 to 69 and #10 Indiana beat the formerly #1 ranked North Carolina 77 to 65.

In case you are counting, that's 4 games to the ACC, and 4 games to the Big 10.

Finally, Thursday brought us five games in the top 25. My congratulations to unranked Utah for taking down #4 Arizona. That was the sole upset of the night last night, but what a big one it was. It looks like the #7 Creighton versus #2 Texas game was pretty exciting. The Longhorns ultimately edged out the Bluejays 72 to 67.

Tonight we have four top 25 games slotted for your enjoyment. If you had to pick one or two to watch, I'd go for the only two all top 25 matchups. That would be #14 Gonzaga at #6 Baylor and #16 Illinois at #22 Maryland.

I think those are both going to be really good games.

If I had to pick. I'd go with Illinois over Maryland even though it is an away game for them. I'd also have to go with Gonzaga over Baylor for the upset. Bet at your own risk of course!

Across Saturday and Sunday there are another 15 games that I will be covering on Monday. It looks like some pretty good match ups. I am hoping that Michigan State can turn things around and pull out a win against Northwestern. It's pretty likely they are going to fall out of the top 25 no matter what after the loss to Notre Dame.

I have little doubt they will find their way back though.