College Basketball Picks a Good Night for Showcase Games

Eamonn Brennan made the point on Monday that I was too sleep-deprived to make myself: With the Super Bowl in the books, people can start paying attention to college hoops now. You’ve got no excuse; it’s time. (OK, the real freaks out there will sit and do draft prep for the next two months.)↵

↵↵Monday was a perfect place to start, with two games featuring top 15 teams. Villanova claimed a big road win against West Virginia and Kansas rolled past Texas in Austin.↵

↵↵If you’re like many, you’ve tapped out of watching much of the season to this point. Fear not! I have bullet points. Together, we will get you through this foreign game with the bouncing round ball.↵

↵↵1. The Preseason No. 1 Looks Right, So Far. If you at least glanced at the preseason polls, you’d know Kansas was No. 1 at the season’s start. The Jayhawks haven’t gone wire-to-wire in this department, but they’re back on top and after Monday’s dismantling of the Longhorns, it’s looking like a pretty obvious selection. Texas is a mess, one that I figured would happen if they didn’t figure out their rotation. (They didn’t.) So beating Texas alone isn’t really as impressive as it would’ve been a month ago. No, what’s really impressive is that Kansas won so convincingly on a night Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins combined to shoot 5-of-23 from the field. Marcus Morris and Xavier Henry stepped up with big games. Unlike Texas, Kansas has figured out how to utilize its depth and they’ve trimmed the rotation to a manageable number. ↵

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↵2. The emerging DeMarcus Cousins > John Wall meme. Did you only watch a few early games? You got in on the ground floor of the John Wall hype. He was everything everyone could hope and then some, sticking critical late-game jumpers against Miami and Stanford early in the year. But there’s been something of a shift in recent weeks. Cousins is quickly becoming the first player people name-check with the Wildcats. He’s posted six consecutive double-doubles, which moves him to 14 on the season. Cousins (16.4 points/10 rebounds) is one of two freshmen averaging a double-double this season. (The other is Fordham’s Chris Gaston.)↵↵3. The Big East: still good. As it stands just over a month before Selection Sunday, the Big East is in line to grab four of the top eight seeds in the Big Dance. The next month will be particularly telling for Villanova, which is in the midst of a brutal stretch of games. Remaining on the schedule: at Pitt (Feb. 21), at Syracuse (Feb. 27) and home to close the regular season against West Virginia (March 6). The Wildcats are 1-1 in their recent tests, having been beaten by Georgetown prior to knocking off the Mountaineers on Monday.↵

↵↵4. Beating North Carolina isn’t that big of a deal. OK, this one is important if you’ve been living a football-centric life for the last couple of months. Long, long ago, in the year 2009, North Carolina took down Big Ten heavyweights Ohio State and Michigan State. The Tar Heels narrowly lost to Kentucky. Since then: losses to College of Charleston, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Maryland. North Carolina has lost six of its last seven games, which ranks as its worst streak since 2002.↵

↵↵5. Teams to watch outside of major conferences. Gonzaga, BYU, UNLV, Butler, Old Dominion, Northern Iowa, Butler, Siena, Cornell, New Mexico, Richmond. Haven’t seen many/any of these teams? Thankfully BracketBusters is coming up. Plan your schedule accordingly. This is required homework for filling out your bracket next month.↵

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