Two teams filled with gold/black bedecked players tussled last Tuesday night in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.  The Purdue Boilermakers outlasted the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, 69-58 in a battle between two programs that crossed paths while seemingly headed in different directions. Despite recently sending two players to the NBA, Wake has not won an NCAA [...]

Wisconsin scored a big victory for both its program and the Big Ten conference on Wednesday night. The Badgers upset No. 5 Duke 73-69 on the final day of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, all but clinching the Big Ten’s first win in the 11-year history of the event. Wisconsin’s triumph officially evened the 2009 score at [...]

What looked early to be the least competitive game of the entire Big Ten-ACC Challenge ended up being its most intense. Early on, the Clemson Tigers could do no wrong, as Trevor Booker showed exactly why he’s in the discussion for ACC Player of the Year.  No Illini big man was able to figure out [...]

For the third time less than a full year, the Spartans and Tar Heels battled in the national spotlight. And for the third time, the Tar Heels turned what was supposed to be a hard-fought battle into a one-team coronation with a convincing thrashing of a highly-ranked and highly-talented Spartan squad. You would think losing [...]

Maryland went into Bloomington, Indiana on Tuesday night and pulled out a hard-fought 80-68 victory over the Hoosiers to put the ACC on the scoreboard of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. The Terrapins trailed throughout the majority of the first half before earning a 35-33 advantage at the intermission. After a back-and-forth start to the second [...]

Sean Miller left Xavier in the spring, reinforcing the belief that Xavier is a launching-pad program.  The last four lead Musketeers, all wildly successful at the Cincinnati campus, moved on to bigger and better things. It’s hard to blame a guy for accepting the head coaching position at the University of Arizona where the money, [...]

Dayton’s win over Creighton, though expected, raises the national focus on the Flyers from a whimper to a murmur. Brian Gregory’s bunch of athletic anomalies got national airplay by playing in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Puerto Rico Tipoff, but they lost to Villanova and Kansas State. Forward Chris Wright, offered by Michigan State, can only [...]

This is one of the better brackets in recent memory (of course I would say that, given my projection). But top-to-bottom, Mike Slive’s Committee did a fantastic job of selection and seeding. Surprises: Boston College: A 7-seed seems a bit high for a team that lost to Harvard and Saint Louis in the non-conference portion [...]

De-fense. Clap! Clap!  De-fense. Clap! Clap! Defense wins championships.  It’s a highly regarded maxim that covers all sports.  If defense is so vital and clearly intrinsic to success, then why are defensive values rarely addressed in the written word? In Minnesota, Tubby Smith brought a renewed focus on defense.  “We take away sight from the [...]

For Creighton and St. Mary’s, let the waiting game begin. Three mid-major schools with at least 20 wins and RPI rankings in the Top 65 are without automatic bids after experiencing embarrassing loses in their conference tournaments. With Selection Sunday only three days away, the next 72 hours for these schools are going to determine [...]