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The Breakfast Buffet: Indiana eyes a signature win against Illinois, St. John’s bench, SEC needs to a better job spacing out games

Here’s today’s installment of “The Breakfast Buffet”, a daily column that can be found here every single morning getting you caught up to date on everything that’s happened from the day/night before and everything that’s going to happen in the next 24 hours.

Mangia!

Things To Sample

Indiana eyes a signature win against Illinois
The Hoosiers haven’t truly helped or hurt themselves in terms of their NCAA Tournament resume, but Saturday night’s 25-point loss at Iowa felt a bit alarming. Indiana is currently 13-4, but its best win this season was against Penn State at The Palestra and didn’t even come in a true road environment. For Mike Woodson’s team to legitimize itself as an NCAA Tournament team, it needs to beat Illinois tonight in Bloomington. The Illini are coming off a home loss on Saturday against USC and haven’t had freshman star Kasparas Jakucionis (16.4 points, 5.6 rebounds, 5.4 assists) for the last two games due to a forearm injury. With or without Jakucionis, Illinois represents a formidable opponents for the Hoosiers, who are currently just 1-4 in Quad 1 games this season.

St. John’s must continue to develop its bench
The primary six players in Rick Pitino’s rotation — Deivon Smith, Kadary Richmond, Simeon Wilcher, RJ Luis, Aaron Scott, and Zuby Ejiofor — have combined to score 86.3 percent of the Red Storm’s points this season entering tonight’s game against Georgetown at MSG. While that’s not likely to drastically change moving forward, St. John’s still needs more mileage out its reserves. With sophomore guard Brady Dunlap still out indefinitely due to a hand injury, this team currently does not have another active player who averages double figure minutes. Keep a close eye a pair of freshmen — Jaiden Glover and Rubin Prey — who may be able to give Pitino extended time as January progresses into February.

The SEC needs to do a better job spacing out its big games
The best rendition of this league that we’ve ever seen deserves to have its product showcased properly. That’s not necessarily the case with how the SEC crafted its schedule for tonight. At 7 PM ET, the SEC will have three massive games — Mississippi State/Auburn, Texas A&M/Kentucky, and Ole Miss/Alabama — all being played at the same time. That’s not in the best interest of this conference. All six of those teams are currently ranked in the Top 19 of this week’s ROTHSTEIN 45. I totally understand that TV windows need to be filled. I totally understand that TV deals are what ultimately drives revenue for these conferences. But the SEC needs to do a better job of spreading out its marquee games moving forward in order to fully maximize the upside of what’s unequivocally the best basketball season in the history of the conference. As of Monday, the SEC still had 14 of its 16 teams ranked in the Top 50 of the NET.

On The Side

  • Marquette is 36-9 in Big East regular season games over the last two and a half years entering tonight’s game against DePaul in Chicago.
  • Jon Scheyer announced on Monday that Duke’s Maliq Brown will miss an extended period of time with a sprained knee. This is a major loss for the Blue Devils’ defense. The 6-9 Brown only averages 2.5 points and 4.5 rebounds, but his impact can’t be measured by statistics alone. This is one of the premier defenders in the ACC.
  • Arkansas and Texas have both started 0-3 in SEC in play. I wouldn’t be overly alarmed. At least one team from this conference is going to make the NCAA Tournament with a 7-11 mark in SEC play.
  • Arizona is 6-0 in games this season where Campbell transfer Anthony Dell’Orso scores in double figures. The 6-6 wing has scored 25 points in his last two games entering tonight’s tilt in Tucson against Baylor.
  • Ole Miss’ Chris Beard was this week’s guest on the College Hoops Today Podcast.

Daily Specials

  • Mississippi State at Auburn
  • Ole Miss at Alabama
  • Texas A&M at Kentucky
  • Illinois at Indiana
  • Baylor at Arizona

Leftovers