Selection Sunday is less than two weeks away. Teams are in heated races for the final at-large bids in the NCAA Tournament. The Bubble Watches have begun and with this, fans begin to map out who they feel will be the big winners next month. This week’s big stories:
The Virginia Cavaliers are good and nobody can dispute that. Pete Gillen has his team ranked 11th in the country with big wins over ACC rivals Duke and Maryland. However, last Sunday they sent a statement to the rest of the country. The Cavs easily defeating No.2-ranked North Carolina 86 – 66. Virginia used a 22 – 6 run in the first half to turn a two-point deficit into a fourteen-point lead. They would never look back. The Cavaliers improved to 8 – 6 in the difficult ACC and 19 – 6 overall.
“When we play, we can play with anybody in the country,” Gillen said. “We just want to try to be as close to what we did today as many times as we can. That’s what the great teams do.”
As the final horn went off, students stormed the floor as they had done last week against Duke. The Cavalier fans could get used to this as their team is putting itself in position for a run at the ACC title and also a national championship.
The Iowa State Cyclones were thinking about a number one seed in next month’s tournament. Maybe they were looking too far ahead. The Cyclones got easily handled by unranked Texas last Saturday night 94 – 78, giving Iowa State very little chance for the vaunted top seed. Maurice Evans scored 28 points for the Longhorns, who snapped Iowa State’s ten game conference winning streak.
“We’ve been working hard all year trying to have this kind of effort,” said Evans, whose four 3-pointers in the second half sparked the rout. The win kept Texas in the hunt for the Big 12 title. “I kind of feel like eventually it was all going to come together.”
Texas, not known as a very strong shooting team, hit 49 percent of its shots and missed only three of 28 free shows, pulling away from the Cyclones at the end of the game. The Big 12 title will come down to many key games in the next week and a half, with Iowa State, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri still in the hunt.
The Duke Blue Devils love late comebacks. A few weeks after erasing a 10-point deficit at Maryland in the final fifty-eight seconds, the Devils did it to Wake Forrest. Duke trailed by nine points with a little over five minutes left. They actually took a three-point lead with less than ten seconds left, but a Demon Deacon three pointer tied the game at eighty. The ball then ended up in the hands of Chris Duhon, the superstar freshman, who hit a runner as time expired for the win. Duhon, who has waited his turn behind other superstars like Shane Battier and Jason Williams has gained the confidence of his teammates.
“We’ve grown up a lot together,” Williams said. “In the beginning of the year he was in position, but he wouldn’t shoot the ball. Truthfully, at the beginning of the year I don’t know if I would have passed him the ball, but he has built some confidence and is going to be a heck of a basketball player.”
The win was big for the Blue Devils, who play Maryland and North Carolina this week in games that should determine the ACC champion.