The box scores are in from Wednesday night. Funny, how just one night can show the whirlpool of inexplicable statistics and uncommon feats that can enliven a sport. Do these numbers make sense? Not entirely. They’re not always supposed to. This is college basketball.
Here we have Houston and Utah, one of those nouveau Big 12 matchups. The Utes had never played at the Cougars’ place. Wonder if they’ll ever go back. It says here on the box score Houston had 19 steals — and Utah had 13 field goals. That’s never a good sign. The turnover differential was 26-5, the points off turnovers were 29-2. It was 41-17 at halftime and ended 70-36, the second-lowest score for a Utah team since 1980. In other words, Houston could have not scored a single point in the second half and still won by five. “We do what we do,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said of the Cougars’ relentless defense. And often what they do is not pretty for the other team.
We have here the TCU-Kansas play-by-play. It says the Horned Frogs were up 14 points in the second half. But later lost by 13. The Jayhawks, even with their recent stumbles, can get a roll like that, but let’s see what happens Saturday. Houston will be in Lawrence.
Here’s the Northwestern team stat sheet before its game Wednesday with Indiana. Looks as if the Wildcats had been struggling from the arc. They were 16th in the Big Ten and 295th in the country in 3-point shooting. Now let’s check the box score and see how it went against the Hoosiers. Northwestern went 13 for 27 from the 3-point line, including 9 of 14 in the second half. That’s how the Wildcats could be down three points in the second half and then go on a 21-4 tear in six minutes. The final was 79-70 — and that makes five wins in a row over the Hoosiers for the Wildcats. The last time they did that was 1915, five years before the women’s right to vote was put in the U.S. Constitution. The Indiana defense that gave up 60 points in the first half against Illinois coughed up 54 in the second half to Northwestern. What happens to the Hoosiers? Said coach Mike Woodson, “I wish I knew.”
Now the final box from Florida and South Carolina. It shows how the Gamecocks led for 38:32 of the 40 minutes and the Gators only five seconds. Wonder how many points South Carolina won by, and wasn’t this just what the Gamecocks needed, upsetting the No. 5 ranked team and doing something about that 0-5 SEC record?
Oh-oh.
Those five seconds were the last five seconds for Florida. The Gators won at the end, 70-69, after trailing by 14 points. South Carolina’s night went downhill once Florida started pressing. The Gamecocks had only six turnovers in the first 32 minutes — and nine in the last 8:12. That helped pad Florida’s advantage in fast break points and points off turnovers, which were 22-0 and 22-5. So make that 0-6 for South Carolina. “This one stings,” Gamecocks coach Lamont Paris said. “There were some plays you can’t make down the stretch, so it’s tough when guys play well enough to win but come out with a loss.”
This just in from Madison Square Garden. St. John’s took 12 shots from beyond the arc against Xavier and missed 11 of them. Made one all night. What a great way to lose. Except, the Red Storm didn’t. Xavier’s 16-point lead in the second half went poof and St. John’s put away the Musketeers in overtime, 79-71, doing it the old-fashioned way, with 2-point field goals and free throws and defense. The 17-3 record is the Red Storm’s best start in 39 years.
“We cannot take losses,” coach Rick Pitino said. “It’s a non-negotiable thing for us, and that’s the attitude we have, and that’s where we come back. I think these guys have a great fear of losing, a great fear, and that’s a good thing.”
Here are the Arkansas numbers from the Georgia game. The Razorbacks shot 31 percent and went only 3 for 23 in 3-pointers. That certainly sounds like a team 0-5 in SEC play. But now they’re 1-5. Down 15 points in the second half, the Hogs came snorting back and won 68-65 with a free throw and putback basket in the final 1.8 seconds. Arkansas led for 29 seconds the entire game.
“It’s huge for the kids, for their mindset,” said coach John Calipari, whose first SEC win at Arkansas took a while. “All I’ve been working on is mindset and talking to them [about] how I’m working on my own mindset…I’m happy for the kids. It’s nice to get it off their back and now we keep playing. Let’s see how we build on this.”
Here’s the box from Texas A&M’s trip to Ole Miss. Seems the Aggies committed 20 turnovers and trailed for 38 minutes. No road team can get away with that. No road team but Texas A&M. Manny Obaseki’s 3-pointer with 13 seconds left gave the Aggies their first lead at 63-62, and the only one they would need.
Now the Big Ten standings. Notice that USC is 1-3 at home in conference play. That’s an ominous sign. But the Trojans are 3-1 on the road after beating Nebraska on Wednesday, 78-73. Shouldn’t that be the other way around?
Finally, here are the ACC standings after Wednesday night.
Yep, Miami is still there at the bottom, a freefalling 0-8. The latest was an 88-51 drubbing at Stanford on Wednesday. A year ago next week, the Hurricanes had just beaten Virginia Tech for their third win in four games to go to 15-7 and 6-5 in the ACC, a decent encore to their Final Four trip in 2023. They’re 4-25 overall and 0-18 against the league since then. Nine days ago, Miami lost by 35 points at Duke and then went home to give up 117 points to SMU and lose by 43, Then they flew 3,000 miles to Stanford to drop a conference game by 37.
So Wednesday, in about five hours, showed how flighty college basketball can be. And also how painful.
