The college basketball season is beginning to heat up. This is the third week of conference play. Teams are settling into the rhythm of the season. They’re getting a lot of mileage on the tires. Young players will soon begin to struggle to maintain their level of energy on a regular basis. As teams move through their conference schedules, they will play the top-level opponents in their conferences. Then you’ll really see the races for No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament take off. Teams are existing in a state of flux. Here are teams which have to address one kind of imbalance or another if they are to improve.
Grand Canyon Antelopes
The Antelopes have a player, DeWayne Russell, who has been averaging close to 24 points per game this season. That’s one of the highest marks in Division I basketball. That would seem to suggest that the Antelopes have a very strong and powerful offense. However, the second-best scorer on Grand Canyon’s roster averages near nine points per game. That lack of a solid second scorer, and of a high-level number-two option in the half court, makes Grand Canyon University a one-trick pony. That’s not the kind of offense that can be sustained over the course of a full season. If defenses can reasonably take away Russell and limit his shooting numbers, they can shut down the Antelopes as the Western Athletic Conference season continues.
Old Dominion Monarchs
The Monarchs are a great defensive team. They were allowing well under 60 points per game earlier this week and then clamped down on defense Thursday night against Southern Mississippi in a Conference USA game, digging out a 54-50 win. This team plays pretty much one way – it doesn’t know how to change speeds. Old Dominion would be out of place playing a game in the 70s or the 80s. That has to change in the coming weeks, since a team has to be able to learn to win in different ways.
We’ve already seen that issue come up a couple of times this week as the Monarchs are just 2-2 in their last four games. They lost 75-63 at home to Louisiana Tech on Saturday. They also lost 90-86 at Marshall on Thursday, January 5th. We’ll see if they can clean that up in the coming college basketball games against Charlotte, Rice and North Texas.
Marshall Thundering Herd
The opposite of Old Dominion is Marshall. The conference is the same – Conference USA – but the Thundering Herd create an entirely different profile relative to the Monarchs. If Old Dominion likes to play games in the 50s or very low 60s, Marshall plays in the high 80s. The Herd averaged nearly 89 points earlier this week while allowing nearly 85 points per game. It’s the other side of the spectrum, but in the end it comes down to the same thing: Marshall can play only one style and is uncomfortable doing anything else. That has to be able to change if this team is going to move forward.
Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets
This is a team which is doing better than expected in the ACC, at 2-2 through four games, but it still won’t make the NCAA Tournament. What is the reason? It’s simple: This team has only two players with more than 10 made three-pointers in the middle of the season. Georgia Tech is a terrible three-point shooting team. Good college basketball teams have to get ample amounts of points from the arc, period.
Seton Hall Pirates
The Pirates are good in many ways, but they have an assist-turnover differential of minus-40 and get only 41 percent of their baskets from assists, which are both very low and discouraging stats within Division I and its 351 member schools. Seton Hall has to pass the ball better in order to make needed improvements. We’ve seen those deficiencies crop up in the last two games as Seton Hall have lost back-to-back contests. They lost 89-86 in overtime at Marquette on Wednesday and that followed that up with a 65-61 loss at Providence on Saturday. They’re likely to extend that losing streak to at least one more game as they’re at No. 3 Villanova on Monday evening.
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