College Hoops Today

Serving College Basketball 365 Days a Year

The Breakfast Buffet: Wake Forest visits North Carolina, Cincinnati gets a taste of Allen Fieldhouse, Memphis had a bad week

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

Wake Forest visits North Carolina
Steve Forbes has done a very good job in his four years in Winston Salem, but he’s yet to take this program to the NCAA Tournament. Beating the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill would be a major step in that direction. It won’t be easy. North Carolina enters tonight’s tilt on an eight-game winning streak and is playing like one of the best teams in the sport. It will be interesting to see if the Tar Heels’ improved defense can slow down the Demon Deacons, who enter tonight’s game averaging 80.8 points. North Carolina has held its opponents to just 62.3 points during its current winning streak. This is one of the most significant games that Wake Forest has played under Forbes, who took his current post in 2020.

Cincinnati gets a taste of Allen Fieldhouse
And Kansas should be plenty ticked off when the Bearcats arrive. The Jayhawks gave up 91 points in a six-point loss at West Virginia on Saturday, which currently will count as a Quad 3 defeat on Kansas’ resume. Playing a strong opponent is nothing new for Cincinnati, who is 2-3 in Big 12 play in its first season in the league. Wes Miller’s squad won its conference opener at BYU and has since played four consecutive games that have been decided by four points or fewer. The weight class gets raised tonight in one of the sport’s best venues.

Memphis had a bad week
The Tigers haven’t been the same team since they lost veteran guard Caleb Mills (7.9 points) to a season-ending knee injury on Jan. 4th and their deficiencies were magnified in the past few days in back-to-back losses against South Florida and Tulane. Another thing of note? Many of the teams that Memphis beat early in the season — Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, and VCU — no longer resemble teams that are going to be vying for an NCAA Tournament berth in March. The Tigers do still own wins over both Texas A&M and Clemson, but still only have just one Quad 1 victory as of today. Part of the difficulty of being a member of a non-power conference is you not only have minimal opportunities for big wins, but you also have even more opportunities to pick up losses that hurt your resume for March Madness. Memphis is experiencing that firsthand.

On The Side

  • St. John’s three-game losing streak has coincided with a poor stretch for Joel Soriano. The 6-11 big man is averaging just 10 points and eight rebounds during the Red Storm’s last three outings. He was previously playing like an All-American. 
  • Michigan State is now 9-0 in games this season where Tre Holloman scores six or more points. This guy is essentially a sixth starter for the Spartans and made the key defensive play late in Sunday’s road win at Maryland.
  • Can six teams from the Mountain West really make the NCAA Tournament? Don’t rule it out of the realm of possibility. As of Sunday, six teams from this league were ranked in the Top 56 of the NET. 
  • Chris Mooney deserves credit for the job that he’s doing at Richmond. The Spiders lost Tyler Burton to Villanova during the offseason via the transfer portal, but are still 13-5 overall and tied with Dayton for first place in the Atlantic 10. 
  • The people at Temple who made the decision to keep the school’s athletics — especially the men’s basketball program — in the AAC have done an incredible disservice to everyone involved with the university. The Owls fell to 8-11 after a home loss on Saturday to Rice and haven’t reached the NCAA Tournament since 2019, which was Fran Dunphy’s last season as head coach. And if you think Temple made a league change because it was a football decision, this is a reminder that the school finished 3-9 last season on the gridiron.  

Daily Specials

  • Wake Forest at North Carolina
  • McNeese at Texas A&M Corpus-Christi
  • Cincinnati at Kansas

Leftovers