City of Basketball Love

Matt Trabold (@TrabsMatt)
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(Ed. Note: 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)

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Feast Week 2015 Stuffed with Parity

The holiday destination tournaments of Feast Week usually prove to be an entirely different season within a season with the different kind of spirit and energy they are marked by. This week-and-change span of the college basketball year always seems to include its share of exciting upsets, making it feel like an early season mini-March Madness.

Not only could this year’s version be described in that matter, but it may have been the most parity-filled one in this generation of the sport as a microcosm of this young season as a whole.

Coming into the 2015 Maui Invitational, Indiana and Vanderbilt looked like two of the top programs in the event thanks to their offenses. The backcourt quartet of James Blackmon Jr., Yogi Ferrell, Nick Zeisloft and Robert Johnson were firing on all cylinders for yet another season for the Hoosiers on top of 6-10 freshman Thomas Bryant being one of the most talked-about players in the sport following his outing against Creighton (17 pts, 7 reb, 4 blk). Most expected Tom Crean’s bunch to undoubtedly meet the Commodores in the semifinals at the Lahaina Civic Center.

Danny Manning’s Wake Forest side had different plans though, despite their top scoring threat in senior Codi Miller-McIntyre being out for the tournament with a fractured foot. The Demon Deacons – picked to finish eleventh in the ACC in the conference’s most recent preseason poll – held off the Hoosiers in the end behind the late heroics of freshman guard Bryant Crawford. Crawford was shooting 3-of-14 from the floor before he went right at the much taller Bryant to score twice with just seconds left on the clock – once with 25 ticks left to give Wake Forest a one-point lead and again with five ticks left to break a tie.

Northeastern is no stranger to big upset victories early in the non-conference slate in the last half-decade of Bill Coen’s tenure there. The Huskies shocked St. John’s four seasons ago, Georgetown two seasons ago and Florida State last season. What made their buzzer-beating upset win Friday night versus truly one of the country’s top-performing squads this season so far in Miami (Fl.) such a bigger deal was that it was the program’s first time beating a ranked side since 1986. This one didn’t happen in a holiday tournament, but the tropical home of the Hurricanes in Coral Gables, Florida can definitely be considered a destination. Northeastern was able to pull off the exploit with one of the top combinations of elevation and perimeter prowess nationally, David Walker, only making four of his field goal attempts.

Another major upset that happened in the calendar confines of Feast Week despite not actually being in a holiday tournament was Texas-Arlington seeing its second-straight shocker of the season come to fruition on the road at Memphis. Even with arguably the best player for the Mavericks last season in Johnny Hill transferring to Purdue to be the starting point guard for the Boilermakers this year, they have wins now through just five games against a pair of blue blood programs in Ohio State and the Tigers.

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Watch Your Back, Goliath (Upset Predictions)

Utah State at No. 6 Duke--Sun., Nov. 29, 12:30 PM ET
Yes, this seems a little far-fetched, but next to no one expected a team picked last in the Summit League preseason poll this time around in Western Illinois to beat the No. 17-ranked squad in the land at the time in Wisconsin at the Kohl Center, a Northern Iowa side with no true big man averaging even seventeen minutes per contest to shock the country’s top-ranked team at that point in the daunting frontcourt-flaunting Tar Heels or Monmouth to pull one out against another nationally seventeenth-ranked crew this season in Notre Dame – even after the Hawks had already upset UCLA on the road.

A 6-4 former junior college transfer for the Aggies in Chris Smith is one of the best guard rebounders in the country this young season with just under eight boards an outing. Smith may be athletic enough to go toe-to-toe with Grayson Allen. Plus, he’s sturdier than any backcourt player the Blue Devils have. To possess comparable length to 6-9 Duke freshman swingman and projected 2016 NBA Draft lottery pick Brandon Ingram is hard to conceive, but the giant-afroed Jalen Moore is the man for the job if anyone in men’s college basketball currently can complete that feat. Utah State has had games against Union (Tenn.) and Key & Peele character Sequester Grundleplith M.D.’s collegiate home in Adams State so far, but it’s still impressive Tim Duryea’s club brings in a 28.1 percent 3-point field goal percentage defense against the likes of Allen, Matt Jones and Luke Kennard. The Aggies also boast a scoring defense currently ranked in the top-35 nationally.

A couple of first-year players for Utah State have experience playing in big-time battles for big-name programs at this level, which could thoroughly help their team in a match-up of this magnitude. The 6-9 Lew Evans was a frontcourt starter on a Tulsa side that reached the NCAA Tournament a couple of seasons ago. The Aggies already have familiarization this campaign getting a win against a big man that’s arguably a better collegiate front liner and definitely a more heralded NBA Draft prospect than anyone on the Duke front line in Weber State’s Joel Bolomboy. Also, junior college transfer guard Shane Rector began his men’s college basketball career with Missouri.

North Texas at Northern Iowa--Mon., Nov. 30, 8:00 PM ET

Despite Northern Iowa being one of the most notable mid-major forces over the past half-decade and the program’s McLeod Center hosting the tussle, previously top-ranked North Carolina was supposed to have its way with the Panthers even with Marcus Paige sidelined. Roy Williams and his staff had at their disposal five probable future NBA frontcourt pieces, while Northern Iowa lacked – and continue to lack – even a single true big man the team can consistently trust to produce. The 21-point, eight-assist performance of bouncy former Tennessee Volunteer Wes Washpun in that successful upset bid against the Tar Heels solidified him as one of the country’s top sidekick-to-top option role expansions this season.

This match-up boasts a head-turning battle of two premier mid-major backcourt talismans that used to do their work in the power conference ranks with Washpun and the former starting point guard for Texas A&M in Mean Green junior J-Mychal Reese. Ben Jacobson’s boys will again have to deal with an opponent that far from hurts for front line size and depth in this one. Seven-foot North Texas freshman Rickey Brice Jr. has already proven himself to be a dangerous rim protector in their last four games. On top of that, the now healthy enough to play 6-9 Notre Dame transfer Eric Katenda is due for his first game of note at his new men’s college basketball stop.

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Stat Tease
No. 15 Miami (FL) at Nebraska: 3-point Shooting
The Cornhuskers are firmly in a rebuilding stage this season after plenty of success for Tim Miles to start his tenure with the program, but Nebraska took a ranked side in Cincinnati to the brink their last time out to the tune of only a four-point defeat. The Bearcats averaged over 96 points per contest in their first four games of the season, but the Cornhuskers kept them to just 65 points in that one.

A big reason for Nebraska currently being ranked fifth nationally in three-point field goal defense – allowing only 23.8 percent shooting from behind the arc thus far – is the quick reflexes being displayed early on by a couple of returnees with starting point guard experience in Benny Parker and Tai Webster on top of a couple of freshmen in four-star top-eighty recruit Glynn Watson Jr. and 6-8 Australian Jack McVeigh. Every member of that foursome is currently averaging at least a steal an outing.

Those men will need to keep that up to have a chance against the fourth-ranked team in the country in three-point field goal percentage – have hit 45.4 percent of their shots from the perimeter so far – in the Hurricanes with Sheldon McClellan, Davon Reed and Ivan Cruz Uceda all averaging over 47 percent shooting from deep with a double-digit amount of triples made.

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Three Top Dogs Their Teams Were Thankful for This Feast Week

Bennie Boatwright--Fr., Southern California
Boatwright had a slow start to his first men’s college basketball season with just four points in twelve minutes in the season opener against a Monmouth side that would later upset UCLA and a ranked Notre Dame squad. His playing time and role on the team only got bigger after that though as he combined for 37 points, fourteen rebounds and 9-of-18 shooting from three-point land at 6-10 in victories over New Mexico and twentieth-ranked Wichita State.

Kale Abrahamson--Jr., Drake
The 6-8 Northwestern transfer has certainly put together quite the start to his first campaign with the Bulldogs with over eighteen points per contest through Drake’s first handful of games. In an overtime win versus Western Kentucky, Abrahamson exploded for 41 points – the highest single-game scoring performance of the season up to that point – with 11-of-11 shooting from the charity stripe and seven rebounds.

Jared Brownridge--Jr., Santa Clara
Abrahamson’s single-game scoring performance record for this season only stood for three days because Brownridge heroically led the Broncos to overtime against eleventh-ranked Arizona before they fell by just two points to move to an 0-4 record. He dropped 44 points, including 15-of-15 shooting from the free throw line, while no other player for Santa Clara had more than six points.