The college basketball season is rapidly speeding by – there’s just one week left in February, and teams know they have very little margin for error in the coming weeks. In a short span of time, many people will wonder if teams can be consistent enough to make a big push into March, and then through the early rounds of the NCAA Tournament. These are some of the teams which have been noticeably inconsistent at various points during the regular season, and will have to stay on the straight and narrow from now on if they want to be successful.
Florida Gators
The Gators did not get a lot of work done out of conference. They lost to rival Florida State and they couldn’t make that much of an imprint against the high-end teams they played. Florida was also lackluster enough to lose at home to a mediocre Vanderbilt team. The Gators looked terrible on offense in an ugly but close loss at South Carolina. Recent Saturday games against Texas A&M and Mississippi State were both wins, but Florida played very poorly in each game. The Gators haven’t lost very many games, especially to bad teams, but that’s part of the point: They have not been punished on several occasions for playing poorly. This team’s level fluctuates a lot more than the record might indicate. The Gators know they will have to be a lot better to reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
Michigan Wolverines
The Wolverines are looking very solid right now in terms of being able to get into the NCAA Tournament, but they are not going to get a very high seed. Michigan is probably looking at a number nine or No. 10 seed. It could have been a sixth or even fifth seed had the recent version of the Wolverines showed up in January. The Wolverines have watched D.J. Wilson come out of nowhere in February to give the team a huge scoring lift in support of point guard Derrick Walton, the undisputed leader of the group. Had Wilson done more in January, the Wolverines might have been able to avoid losses to Iowa and Illinois plus an early-February home loss to Ohio State. Michigan has lacked both depth and defense. More scoring from Wilson has minimized those problems, but that extra production has not been a constant for the Wolverines this year.
A case and point for the Wolverines hot-and-cold performance can be seen this week. The Wolverines did a great job with three straight wins over Michigan State, Indiana and No. 11 Wisconsin. That moved them up to 17-9. However, they followed that up with a five-point overtime loss to a Minnesota team that was just 7-6 in Big Ten play.
Kentucky Wildcats
The Wildcats beat North Carolina in December, 103-100, in one of the best games of the season and, moreover, one of the best regular-season college basketball games of all time. Kentucky looked like the No. 1 team in the country that day, beating a North Carolina squad which was the national runner-up last season and could be a No. 1 seed this March in the NCAA Tournament. Since then, however, Kentucky – while not terrible – has not been anything close to a powerhouse. The Wildcats lost decisively to Tennessee and got blown out by Florida. They were convincingly defeated at home by Kansas, which does not have a strong backup center. Kentucky has been all over the place this season.
Iowa State Cyclones
This is a remarkable story. The Cyclones were 4-5 in the Big 12, drifting along without real hope of a season turnaround. They went to Kansas, which is about to win another Big 12 title, and trailed by 14 at halftime after being thoroughly outplayed in the first half. Then, all of a sudden, the Cyclones hit a ton of threes and became the first team in three years to beat Kansas on the Jayhawks’ home floor in Lawrence. Iowa State then lost at Texas – a humiliating defeat – but has since won four straight, including tough road victories over Kansas State and Texas Tech. No one can figure this team out.
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