My 5 Favorite Things In College Basketball This Week
Get your fix before a late-December coma
It was another big week! We had the ACC-SEC Challenge, the Big East-Big 12 Battle, and an event in Fort Worth on Sunday that had a few good teams playing. It’s important that I remind you to consume all of this hoop right now. We’re a few days away from the season dissolving into the Christmas break where all we’ll have is the always-fun Diamond Head Classic (because anything Hawaii-related is fun). Consume the upsets, consume the overtimes, consume the buzzer beaters, consume the court storms. It’s the best. Speaking of things that are the best, here are my five favorite things from this week. I thought they were the best.
1. Nick Martinelli, Bucket-Getter
Northwestern hosted Illinois on Friday (because conference play happens in early December now) for a rivalry white-out game. I spent my Friday learning that Illinois fans like to think of this game as Northwestern’s Super Bowl, while they aren’t too concerned with outcome. Unfortunately for the Illini, Nick Martinelli was very concerned with the outcome. After a quiet first half, he absolutely exploded and after the overtime period finished, he found himself sitting on a 27 point night and a rivalry win. But that wouldn’t be enough to be my favorite ting on its own, certainly not. This is becoming a trend for Martinelli, and one that I like to see a lot. This is now his sixth game with more than 20+ points and his third with more than 25. He went from a guy who came off the bench last year, to replacing most of Boo Buie’s production? Put him on an All American team!
2. Ace Baldwin Ice Water
Penn State has looked a lot better than anyone reasonably could have expected and they took down defending Final Four team Purdue at home this week. And it wasn’t even particularly close. We knew he was good at VCU and we knew he was good last year, but Ace Baldwin has reached a new level this year, and with Boo Buie gone from Northwestern and Zach Edey gone from the Boilermakers, he might be trying to take Braden Smith’s assumed spot as the best point guard in the Big Ten. This all came to a head in the aforementioned Purdue game, where he copied Smith’s celebration, in what might end up being one of the coolest moments of the year. Sure, he got T’d up for it, but it was inconsequential! They won the game and Baldwin looked pretty cool!
3. Archie!
Archie Miller is a wonderful conversation topic. He isn’t the topic of this, although I suppose he sort of is because how about those Rhode Island Rams! They were 7-0 after beating a very solid Yale team, but everyone was talking about their strength of schedule (or lack thereof) and about how Kim English and the Friars with Bryce Hopkins back were coming to URI to put Archie in his place. And the Rams went out and won the basketball game. They’re 8-0. Rank the Rams. Put them in my tournament. I might be more impressed because of how highly I rate Kim English as a coach, but this team is so good. They’re undefeated! How can you be a bad team that’s not lost a game more than a month into the season?
4. Just Buy An SEC Jersey
Let’s go back to that SEC-ACC Challenge I was talking about earlier. The SEC won it 14-2. Look, we know the ACC stinks because UNC couldn’t find a big man if one walked into Hubert Davis’ office. California probably outplayed Missouri, but even that would’ve been off set if Mark Pope had just done what we were all screaming at him to do and PUT IN KOBY BREA TO SHOOT THE BASKETBALL. He’s the best shooter in college basketball and you’re letting Otega Oweh take those shots? If Brea is in the basketball game, I think the SEC goes 15-1. The loss? Auburn, who’s probably the #2 team in the country. This is gonna be a gauntlet.
5. Wazzu Knows What It’s Doing
Look, Oregon State and Washington State might look a little clueless having the PAC-12 and WCC logos on their courts, but the Cougars know exactly what they’re doing… going back to the Big Dance. You can take their coach, you can take their conference, but you can’t take their spirit. Pullman, Washington is a magical place, it seems. The Cougars beat a really good Nevada team (that beat Washington, nice transitive rivalry win!) early in the week and then followed it up with a trip to Idaho (admittedly not that far from eastern Washington, but it sounds more daunting) and took down Boise State. Both of those teams have very real tournament dreams and will almost certainly be Q1 games come Selection Sunday. You can take everything away from the Washington State, but they’ll always have this inexplicable pull, man.
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