skip navigation

Trabs Files: 2016-2017 College Hoops In Review Week 15

02/24/2017, 5:00pm EST
By Matt Trabold

Matt Trabold (@TrabsMatt)

--

In his weekly Trabs Files, CoBL national analyst Matt Trabold takes a look around the national college landscape, both in the week that was and the week to come:

Conference Tournaments upon Us Come Monday Afternoon

While a majority of the conferences in Division I men’s college basketball do not start their conference tournaments for at least another week and a half, the teams of five begin postseason play within the next five days. The Atlantic Sun, Big South, America East, Northeast Conference and Ohio Valley all unleash their respective conference tournaments upon fans of the sport during that timeframe.

The Atlantic Sun has the earliest conference tournament in the country this season with it rolling around on Monday, February 27, 2017. This conference already wrapped up regular season play on Thursday night with Florida Gulf Coast clinching the top seed in the 2017 Atlantic Sun Tournament with a double-digit victory over Stetson – the team they will begin that tournament against. Central Florida transfer and leading scorer Brandon Goodwin is one of six Eagles averaging at least eight points an outing right now.

The 2017 Big South Tournament is the only other conference tournament this campaign that begins in the month of February. There are currently three squads in Winthrop, Liberty and North Carolina at Asheville that are tied atop the Big South standings with a 14-3 record in conference play with one day of regular season games left in the conference. North Carolina at Asheville was on a nine-game winning streak before losing to always upset-minded Gardner-Webb last time out.

There has not been any question as to who would be the top seed in the 2017 America East Tournament for a while now. After reigning supreme in its last seventeen games, Vermont presently holds the second-best winning streak in the sport this year. The Catamounts will obviously be the heavy favorites to win that tournament, but Albany and Stony Brook – both formidable mid-majors again – accounted for the last foursome of NCAA Tournament berths out of the America East.

A Mount St. Mary’s side that went 2-11 in its non-conference slate this season has a one-game cushion atop the Northeast Conference standings at the moment. The team the Mountaineers have that slight separation over in Long Island, Brooklyn squares off with the third place team in those standings – two games back of the leaders – in Wagner on the final day of regular season games in the conference.

The third conference on this list that starts the 2017 installment of its conference tournament on March 1, 2017 is the Ohio Valley. The mighty Belmont Bruins have at least three games on the conference record of every other team in the conference at this point. A usual Ohio Valley stalwart at this time of the year in Murray State started out this season beating bubblicious Illinois State, but presently sit at an 8-7 record in conference play. Tennessee State beat Middle Tennessee State on top of giving Duke quite the scare in its non-conference slate, but the Tigers also sit at an 8-7 record in Ohio Valley competition.
 

Watch Your Back, Goliath (Upset Predictions)
 

No. 22 Butler at Xavier--Sun., Feb. 26, 3:30 PM ET
The Bulldogs beating currently second-ranked Villanova for the second time this season on Wednesday night was Butler’s top true road victory in the history of its program in terms of how close to the top of the national rankings the opponent was. A win of that caliber certainly helps salve the wounds of falling to a couple of unranked opponents in Georgetown and Providence in the last month. When leading scorer Kelan Martin was benched five games ago, he initially responded by going for just one point against Marquette and following that up with a 3-of-11 shooting performance from the field in the loss to the Friars. Martin recorded 22 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field and eight rebounds two nights ago. Memphis transfer guard Avery Woodson is currently in the best stretch of his one and only season with the Bulldogs. In Butler’s three-game winning streak versus St. John’s, DePaul and those Wildcats they enter this ballgame with, Woodson combined for 45 points on 13-of-23 shooting from downtown. Woodson scored thirteen of those points in just fourteen minutes against Villanova.

Before only seeing the floor for ten minutes on Wednesday night against Seton Hall due to foul trouble, a Norfolk State transfer senior big man for the Musketeers in RaShid Gaston had rattled off three double-doubles in a row. Xavier may have finally found its consistent post presence this season. Gaston is a massive reason Chris Mack’s bunch is just outside the top-fifty nationally in rebounding. Butler is not even in the top-three hundred in the country in that statistic. The Musketeers are just 3-4 since Edmond Sumner was lost for the season with a torn ACL, but they took down a nationally ranked Creighton side and split with more than solid Seton Hall in that span. Sumner’s replacement at the point in Quentin Goodin is still trying to find his scoring touch, but the freshman went for a combined sixteen assists and just four turnovers over his last two outings. Leading scorer Trevon Bluiett scored in double figures versus the Pirates two nights ago in his return to action after missing a pair of games due to an ankle injury.

Indiana at No. 14 Purdue--Tues., Feb. 28, 8:00 PM ET
The Big Ten side that is highest in the Associated Press Top-25 Poll at the moment in the fourteenth-ranked Boilermakers got exposed to a certain degree on Tuesday night at Penn State. Purdue was taken to overtime by the Nittany Lions in a game in which the contest’s favored participant trailed by ten tallies at one point. Sophomore marksman Ryan Cline hit a pair of pivotal threeballs in the extra session of that one, but that still only makes him 5-of-14 from downtown over his last foursome of outings. Purdue has the national leader in double-doubles in Caleb Swanigan, but the Hoosiers actually have the superior numbers on the boards this campaign thus far. Indiana is just 0.1 rebounds an outing out of being in the top-twenty in the country in rebounding. In the first meeting this season between these two notable names from the state of Indiana – that saw Purdue narrowly squeak out a victory by five points – the Boilermakers and the Hoosiers actually were tied on the glass when it was all said and done.

Indiana lost its last five ballgames, but three of those losses were by just a combined eleven points against the tenth-ranked team in the country at the time in Wisconsin, the sixteenth-ranked team in the country at the time in the Boilermakers and previously ranked Minnesota. In the first pair of contests after James Blackmon Jr. came back from a lower leg injury that cost him three games, the leading scorer for the Hoosiers only mustered 5-of-21 shooting from the field versus Purdue and Michigan. In the two games since, Blackmon Jr. turned the tide to the tune of a combined forty points against Minnesota and Iowa. Thomas Bryant has reached double figures in rebounding in four of his last seven contests, including a double-double of twelve points, eleven rebounds and four blocks against the Hawkeyes on Tuesday night. That is quite the improvement from pulling down double-digit rebounds just once in the first nine Big Ten outings of his sophomore campaign.

 

Stat Tease
Santa Clara at Saint Mary’s: Assist-Turnover Ratio

Sophomore backcourt players KJ Feagin and Matt Hauser are at the forefront of Santa Clara presently being seventeenth in the country in assist-turnover ratio. That guard duo is averaging over ten assists per contest combined at the moment. After recording 26 assists and just five turnovers over his last five ballgames, Hauser finds himself seventh nationally in assist-turnover ratio on an individual basis right now. Over his most recent trio of outings, Feagin has churned out perimeter shooting performances of going 6-of-7 from downtown against Pacific and going a perfect 6-of-6 from downtown against Pepperdine.

Both Emmett Naar and Joe Rahon are top-thirty nationally in assists average. That fact is the lifeblood of the Gaels being fourth in the country in assist-turnover ratio as a team at this point. That veteran backcourt duo combined for thirteen assists and only four turnovers in an important thirteen-point win for Saint Mary’s over Brigham Young two games ago. In the current individual assist-turnover ratio national rankings, the former Boston College Eagle Rahon is one spot behind Hauser.

Philadelphia Area Product Update
Chris Clover--So., Saint Joseph’s (Saint Joseph's Preparatory School)
Clover had just four double-digit scoring performances this season going into the Hawks’ last three games. Granted, that is a sizable improvement from scoring only ten points his entire freshman campaign. He went for a combined 45 points against Virginia Commonwealth, La Salle and St. Bonaventure in the ten-day span coming into this weekend.

Secean Johnson--Sr., California, Riverside (Penn Wood)
While his efficiency on field goal attempts was subpar over his last foursome of ballgames – a combined 9-of-36 from the floor – Johnson did go a whopping 20-of-21 from the charity stripe during that stretch. The first contest of that span featured Johnson going for a double-double of thirteen points, ten rebounds, three steals and a season-high four assists versus California, Davis.

Ryan Betley--Fr., Penn (Downingtown West)
Freshman guard play is a big reason why the Quakers are currently on a four-game winning streak that has put them in a tie for fourth place in the present Ivy League standings and in a great position to make the first-ever Ivy League Men's Basketball Tournament – that just so happens to be on their home floor. Betley rather improbably recorded a combined 62 points on 12-of-24 shooting from downtown against Cornell, Brown and Yale in Penn’s last trio of contests.

Devon Goodman--Fr., Penn (Germantown Academy)
Goodman is another freshman backcourt player for the Quakers that has seen his scoring numbers heartily increase over the past three ballgames. He scored a combined 38 points over that span. To put that into perspective, Goodman only went for a cumulative 36 points in Penn’s first twenty games of this year.

ARTICLE/VIDEO GOES HERE


HS Coverage:

Recruiting News:

Tag(s): Home