City of Basketball Love

Matt Trabold (@TrabsMatt)
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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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Onto the NIT, Smaller Conference Tournament Top Seeds
One of the top storylines of conference tournament play every men’s college basketball season is the top seeds in those events that shockingly get upset and fail to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament after usually dominating the conference during the regular season. After defeats like that occur, the best postseason scenario for those squads is an automatic berth into the NIT. Usually, the emphasis of those surprising results at the end of the year is on the conference top dogs that fall rather than the sides that somehow found a way to keep their field of 68 hopes alive. This season, there’s no shortage of teams with some promise that may not lead the current standings in their conference but could have performances like this over the next couple of weeks.

It almost makes too much sense to include a team from the Sun Belt in this discussion because it has been so wildly deep for a mid-major conference this season. While there are many candidates for this designation, Georgia State may just be the tip-top one. The Panthers may now have the services of former Indiana Hoosier Jeremy Hollowell and former Samford Bulldog Isaiah Williams on the court, but the individual they may have to ride the most to pull off a feat like this is head coach Ron Hunter. He hasn’t risen to being one of the most high-profile head coaches out of the mid-major ranks over the last half-decade just because his men upset Baylor in the 2015 NCAA Tournament. Even after the graduations of R.J. Hunter, Ryan Harrow, Curtis Washington and Ryann Green, Georgia State boasts a top-seven this time around that can go toe-to-toe with just about anyone. It’s not egregious to utter that the Panthers are better than their 8-10 Sun Belt record so far suggests.

The concept that Stephen F. Austin could be given a legitimate test in its attempts to again grab both the regular season and conference tournament crowns for the Southland is usually a rather far-fetched one due to what the Lumberjacks have unleashed upon the other teams in the conference over the last better part of a decade. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi actually makes that concept a conceivable one this year. At 6-8, junior Rashawn Thomas isn’t just one of the most notable risers to the rim in men’s college basketball this season and top-thirty nationally at the moment in blocked shots, but he’s also averaging over seventeen points and eight rebounds per contest. Thomas may be the most notable Islander this year due to his aerial acrobatics, but you can’t overlook the backcourt duo of Hameed Ali and Ehab Amin. Ali and Amin combine for over five steals an outing and are both top-25 in the country in the statistic. Additionally, Ali is just outside of the top-thirty in the country in assists.

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Watch Your Back, Goliath (Upset Predictions)
No. 3 Virginia at Clemson--Tues., Mar. 1, 7:00 PM ET
Most seasons, match-ups between top-five teams and unranked sides, especially ones arguably on the wrong side of the bubble at the time, wouldn’t be touched for upset predictions. This is not most seasons. Going into the start of this past week, squads ranked in the top-five of the AP Top-25 Poll at one point or another this season had lost a whopping 33 times. Last season as a whole only featured 21 defeats for ball clubs ranked that highly. After winning seven ACC games in a row, the Cavaliers have now dropped two of their last four contests. While falling to Duke and twelfth-ranked Miami (FL) aren’t scathing results, Virginia has shown it’s susceptible to head-scratching losses in conference play after losing three over a four-game stretch early in the ACC slate against Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and Florida State.

The Tigers are also coming off a loss after dropping two games in a row to North Carolina State and Georgia Tech. Even though Clemson looked like a pretty safe bet to make the 2016 NCAA Tournament field nine games into ACC competition – mostly due to a five-game winning streak that boasted victories over three ranked groups – those recent defeats versus the Wolfpack and the Ramblin’ Wreck have arguably thrust them to the wrong side of the bubble. Reigning supreme in this battle would go a long way towards getting the Tigers back on the right side of that cusp. 6-10 Senegalese junior Sidy Djitte has shown his penchant for playing his best in bigger games on a few occasions this season. In ballgames against Texas Southern, (the first meeting with) Florida State and Louisville during his junior campaign, Djitte combined for 36 points and 32 rebounds. Djitte was one of the few bright spots in that pair of losses coming in with a combined twenty points on 10-of-12 shooting from the floor and ten rebounds.

Georgia Tech at No. 3 Louisville--Tues., Mar. 1, 8:00 PM ET
Similar to a Southern Methodist group that held the moniker earlier this season of being the last remaining undefeated squad in the country, the Cardinals have played some of their best basketball as a response to the adversity of a self-imposed postseason ban. Louisville may only be 4-3 since that aforementioned shortening of its season, but that seven-game span included a three-game streak of victories over Syracuse, the twentieth-ranked team at the time in Duke and Pittsburgh. Few, if any, players have provided men’s college basketball fans with more highlight-reel plays over the last two weeks than Chinanu Onuaku – and that includes mystifying assists from the 6-10 center. Over his last four outings, all against teams that could easily find themselves in the field of 68, Onuaku averaged nearly eleven points, thirteen rebounds, nearly five assists and two blocks per contest.

The Cardinal most benefitting from Egyptian seven-footer Anas Mahmoud being sat down for the remainder of the season due to an ankle injury four games ago is 6-7 Australian freshman Deng Adel. In the three-game stretch prior to Louisville’s most recent trio of contests, Adel combined for just ten minutes of playing time. The last three times out though, Adel recorded a combined 33 points on 12-of-18 shooting from the floor and fourteen rebounds. While they may not be up to the caliber of Mississippi State at the moment when it comes to being a late season spoiler, giant killer or bubble popper out of the power six conference ranks, the Yellow Jackets have grasped four wins in a row, including against Clemson, the nineteenth-ranked team at the time in Notre Dame and a Florida State club that just throttled the Fighting Irish by 21 points on Saturday.

Stat Tease
Georgia at South Carolina: Rebounding
The Gamecocks were in top-four seed in the 2016 NCAA Tournament contention not too long ago, but now find themselves closer to the bubble conversation instead after losing three of their last five games – including against the side with the worst record in the SEC in Missouri. South Carolina currently finds itself ranked tenth in the country in offensive rebounding despite having no player averaging at least eight rebounds an outing. 6-5 wily Venezuelan veteran Michael Carrera leads the squad with 7.8 boards per contest. On the other side of this match-up, underachieving Georgia is top-thirty nationally in defensive rebounding. Sophomore breakout star Yante Maten has four double-digit rebounding performances over his last seven games and averages over eight rebounds per contest.

Philadelphia Area Product Conference Play Update

Derrick Jones Jr.--Fr., UNLV (Archbishop Carroll)
After combining to score just thirteen points against Colorado State and Air Force in a two-game span a little over two weeks ago, Jones Jr. detonated for a cumulative 62 points on 19-of-27 shooting from the floor, 24 rebounds, eight blocks, eight steals and 24-of-28 shooting from the charity stripe over the last three contests for the Runnin’ Rebels versus Nevada, Boise State and Wyoming.

Lamarr Kimble--Fr., Saint Joseph’s (Neumann-Goretti)
As part of six double-digit scoring performances in Atlantic 10 competition so far, Kimble has two of them over his last trio of outings. After going 4-of-5 from the floor for thirteen points, five assists and just a single turnover in the upset victory over the fifteenth-ranked team at the time in Dayton, Kimble shot 4-of-5 from the floor again two games later against Massachusetts.

Leo Vincent--Jr., Southern Illinois (Bensalem)
After combining to go 2-of-12 from the floor against a couple of the Missouri Valley Conference’s best in Evansville and Illinois State – both defeats for the Salukis after a three-game winning streak – Vincent got back on-track by dropping seventeen points last time out as Southern Illinois returned to its winning ways versus Missouri State.

Markus Kennedy--Sr., Southern Methodist (Brewster Academy)
Kennedy went 1-of-7 from the floor three games ago as his Mustangs were upset by Connecticut, but returned to his usual manimal self the last two times out with a combined 31 points and seventeen rebounds against East Carolina and Memphis. Kennedy has eclipsed double figures in scoring in eight of his last twelve performances.