Welcome to the latest edition of Talking Hoops With Ted Sarandis. We’re just days away from the start of conference tournaments as we go live with this podcast in the beginning of March.
We begin by looking at the Big 12, where Kansas is still alive for a 15th consecutive Big 12 regular season title. The Jayhawks have been especially bad on the road and don’t have much depth, and they were two games back before the week began, but they are alive and have a chance when you consider the schedules they, Kansas State and Texas Tech have left.
The next subject we get into is teams not playing well down the stretch. Among the teams we highlight here are Villanova, who had lost four out of five before beating Marquette for a big win, along with Louisville and a team whose season once had a lot of promise in Nebraska. Along the way, we also get into how the Big East is very balanced, but unlikely to get a high number of teams in the NCAA Tournament.
That leads us to look at a couple of conferences with great races for the top in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) and Missouri Valley. Both have several teams within a game or two of first as the final weekend of the regular season approaches. From there, we look at mid-majors who may or may not be able to get an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament and who might be able to give someone trouble there whether they get there via automatic or at-large bid.
Along the way, we also talk about how the American Athletic Conference has looked this year, as well as how UConn and Temple don’t fit geographically. UConn, in particular, is truly a fish out of water more than any other team in the country, as we have talked about in the past. I also allude to an article I read last year that I found very insightful and that had a few great details to shed some light on this prior to Kevin Ollie’s firing. The Huskies are fading on the court this season, but we will see if Dan Hurley can get them back to prominence.
We hope you enjoy the podcast and share it with your fellow college basketball fans. Be sure to tune in next week when we talk more about college basketball, especially with conference tournaments getting underway.
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