City of Basketball Love

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:

Question marks remain in Power Six conferences

Many years when the conference season is right around halfway through, like it currently is this time around, the tip-top conferences have at least some semblance of a top few squads that are the sides most legitimately vying for the conference’s regular season crown. For smaller conferences, this frequently becomes the case earlier on because they are usually more top-heavy. At the moment, it is difficult to put a finger on which programs make up the upper echelon in half of the power six conferences.

The RPI seems to lose more and more of its luster with every season of late, but the wildly deep Big 12 is still the current leader in conference RPI. Six teams in top-ranked Oklahoma, fourth-ranked Kansas, ninth-ranked West Virginia, fourteenth-ranked Iowa State, seventeenth-ranked Baylor and Texas are all just a game within each other in the conference’s standings right now. Two games after putting away a top-ranked at the time contingent of Jayhawks, the Mountaineers were upset by the unranked Longhorns. Speaking of Shaka Smart’s bunch, Texas also upset the seventeenth-ranked team at the time in Steve Prohm’s Cyclones just after falling to Texas Christian. Those same Cyclones came out victorious a week and a half ago against Oklahoma in the first game the Sooners played since being vaulted to the top spot in the AP Top-25 Poll.

Not far behind the Big 12 in terms of conference depth this season is the second-ranked team in conference RPI currently in the Pac-12. It’s feasible that the Pac-12 has no teams included in the polls at the end of the regular season, but still leads the country in amount of squads included in the 2016 NCAA Tournament field. This conference also has a logjam at the top of the standings right now with five teams – a group that doesn’t even include eighteenth-ranked Arizona and formerly ranked Cal – in currently ranked Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Utah and Southern California all just a game within each other. Lorenzo Romar’s crew has come a long way from losing to UC-Santa Barbara and Oakland by sixteen points in two of their last three non-conference match-ups. Two of the country’s most pleasant surprises this season not too long ago in Oregon State and Arizona State both currently find themselves with conference records of at least two games under .500.

Like the Big 12, the Big Ten also has six teams separated by just a single game at the top of its standings at this time with third-ranked Iowa, eighth-ranked Maryland, nineteenth-ranked Indiana, 21st-ranked Purdue, Michigan and Ohio State. Similar to what Notre Dame and Wichita State have done recently, the Hoosiers recently played their way back into the polls after being removed from them pretty early on this season. Tom Crean’s men and the Hawkeyes suffered their first losses in Big Ten competition just this week. The young Buckeyes have shown in conference play for the most part that they have tightened the hinges from when they lost four games in a row in the out-of-conference slate, including against Texas-Arlington and Louisiana Tech.

~~~

Watch Your Back, Goliath (Upset Predictions)

No. 22 Wichita State at Evansville--Sun., Jan. 31, 4:00 PM ET
What do the Shockers get as a reward for finding themselves this most recent Monday afternoon in the AP Top-25 Poll for the first time since the third week of the season? It’s match-ups with yet another stout collection of Purple Aces and one of the very top national men’s college basketball pleasant surprises this year in currently 18-4 Southern Illinois in two of their next three games after having that honor bestowed upon them. Wichita State has gone 13-1 since household name senior point guard Fred VanVleet was sidelined for four games with a hamstring injury. On top of going for thirteen points in the overtime loss to Seton Hall, midseason eligible Kansas transfer Conner Frankamp has recorded eight points or more in five of the squad’s Missouri Valley Conference outings so far. Freshman forward Markis McDuffie has really come into his own in conference play with five double-digit scoring performances over the group’s nine games in that part of the schedule up to this point.

Right when you thought there was no way D.J. Balentine could actually add on yet another campaign with a scoring average of over twenty points per contest to his already storied Evansville career and Egidijus Mockevicius couldn’t possibly become an even bigger double-double threat, the former has set himself up for a third straight season in the twenties in the points per game column and the latter has added over four points to his scoring average on top of four boards to his rebounding average thus far. Mockevicius – currently averaging around seventeen points, fourteen rebounds and three blocks an outing – is first nationally in rebounding, sixth nationally in field goal percentage and twelfth nationally in shot-blocking. Croatian former Villanova Wildcat Mislav Brzoja had the best game of his three-year men’s college basketball career last time out in the comeback win over the Salukis with 25 points on 4-of-5 shooting from behind the arc. In the first meeting this season between these two sides on January 6, the Shockers prevailed by just three points as Mockevicius was only able to get off four shots.

No. 5 Texas A&M at Vanderbilt--Thurs., Feb. 4, 7:00 PM ET
Just because it has been seven weeks since the Commodores have been ranked this season and they have an underachieving .500 record in SEC play so far through eight contests in that part of the schedule doesn’t mean Vanderbilt isn’t still boasting one of the most impressive rosters in the country. The Commodores fell in three of the five outings 7-1 junior front liner Luke Kornet was forced to sit out due to an MCL tear, but he has luckily wowed at times in the seven games since returning to the floor. Damian Jones was the Vanderbilt skyscraper that came into the season as the established rim protector supreme and projected 2016 NBA Draft lottery pick, but Kornet is now the one that is second nationally in shot-blocking. By sending over three opposing shots the other way per contest, Kornet has tripled his blocked shots average from last season thus far. He has recorded at least five blocked shots in three of his last five contests, including a triple-double of ten blocks, eleven points and eleven rebounds against Auburn.

The Aggies were one of the two more unorthodox names in the top-five of the AP Top-25 Poll this week – along with Iowa – and it only took three days and change for both of them to fall after reaching that lofty level in the rankings. The Hawkeyes dropping a down to the wire affair to top-ten Maryland certainly looks better than Texas A&M being upset by previously 9-10 Arkansas. After being one of the top stories in men’s college basketball nationally through the first two weeks of the season with double-digit scoring in five of the first six games for Billy Kennedy’s club – especially because he averaged less than two points an outing last year – Colombian sophomore center Tonny Trocha-Morelos has a scoring average of just over four points per contest in his last seven outings. A player to watch for the Aggies down the stretch as he acclimates to the rigors of the college game is 6-5 midseason enrollee freshman guard and former four-star recruit Kobie Eubanks. Eubanks has seen action in a pair of games versus Georgia and Missouri since becoming eligible.

~~~

Stat Tease

Arkansas at Florida: 3-point shooting
This week, the Razorbacks pulled off one of the top upsets of not just the conference play portion of the schedule nationally but this entire men’s college basketball season so far by squeaking past top-five Texas A&M. Arkansas got to fourth nationally in three-point field goal percentage after pouring in eight triples against the Aggies Wednesday night. The upperclassman backcourt duo of Dusty Hannahs and Anthlon Bell are both shooting over 46% from behind the arc - with a combined 113 made threeballs through twenty games – up to this point en route to adding around nine points per contest apiece to their scoring average from a year ago thus far. On the other side, the Gators are eighteenth in the country in three-point field goal defense after holding opponents to 30.1% shooting from deep through twenty ballgames. In the January 26 match-up with the renowned perimeter offense of Vanderbilt, Florida held the Commodores to just three made triple attempts.

~~~

Players to Watch down the Stretch

Ethan Telfair--Jr., Idaho State
With the Bengals just two and a half games back in the Big Sky standings behind usual stalwarts Weber State and Montana – not to mention them being ahead of Eastern Washington – the younger brother of recent NBA journeyman Sebastian Telfair has really turned it on over his last six outings. That span started with Telfair exploding for 37 points on 6-of-8 shooting from deep and seven assists against North Dakota. In Idaho State’s last-second upset victory over Weber State last weekend, Telfair had thirty points on 4-of-5 shooting from deep and three steals.

Hameed Ali--Sr., Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
The concept is pretty hard to fathom due to how dominant Stephen F. Austin has been over the last decade in the Southland Conference, but the Islanders look like legitimate competition for the Lumberjacks in the fight for the conference’s crown this time around. Only Ohio’s Jaaron Simmons has more assists over the last five-game stretch nationally than Ali. Ali has an assists average of 8.6 dimes per contest over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi’s last handful of contests, including recording twelve of them in a tussle last week with Northwestern State.

Joseph Uchebo--Sr., Charlotte
The 6-10 former top-ten junior college transfer just couldn’t get the productivity flowing in his time at Pittsburgh, but he has added over ten points an outing to his scoring average and just about ten boards an outing to his rebounding average from last season thus far since joining the 49ers as a graduate transfer. Uchebo has recorded rebounding performances of at least twenty boards twice in the last six Charlotte contests with twenty rebounds and eighteen points versus Louisiana Tech, in addition to 21 rebounds and 24 points versus a squad currently tied for the Conference USA lead in Marshall.

Joshua Braun--So., Grand Canyon
Not only are the unfortunately postseason ineligible Antelopes all alone at the top of the WAC standings at the moment, Grand Canyon also became the first team in the country this season to reach 19 wins when they downed Cal State-Bakersfield Thursday night. Braun has eclipsed thirty points in half of Grand Canyon’s last foursome of games with 34 points against Utah Valley and 31 points against Missouri-Kansas City. Additionally, the 6-4 guard has pulled down double-digit rebounds in three of his last five outings versus New Mexico State, Chicago State and the Kangaroos.