2019-20 Out-of-Town Scoreboard

Notable WCC games:
SMC over Wisconsin 65-63 (neutral)
Pepperdine lost to Cal 87-71 (away)
USD lost to UC Irvine (home)

Games involving upcoming opponents:
USC over Florida A&M 77-48 (at UCLA)
SJSU over Hofstra 79-71 (away)
Maine over Merrimack 84-64 (home)
UC Davis lost to Loyola Chicago 82-48 (away)

And two other games of interest:
Tulane beat Southeastern Louisiana (snaps Tulane's 21-game losing streak)
Vanderbilt beat Southeast Missouri State (snaps Vanderbilt's 20-game losing streak)

Winthrop lost Sunday night on a buzzer-beater to Fresno St., but Monday in back-to-back games, they upset #18 St. Mary's in Moraga, 61-59.

Of note, SMC favored by 19, was coming off an OT win over Wisconsin six days ago, but tonight only five SMC players scored, and their bench was outscored 38-2.

USF holds off Yale in OT 84-79.

Pacific was down 1 to Hawaii with 10 seconds left (after leading by 8 with 4 minutes left), then Stoudamire earns a tech after calling for a non-existent timeout to basically give Hawaii the win with 4 straight free throws. Big oooof.

Here's a ten-cent "around the WCC" after Week 1. 10-9 overall for the conference this week against D1 teams.

TRENDING UP
Portland: Keeping it competitive with USC and a nice road win over SJSU have the Pilots looking better than many expected so far.
Pacific: Mostly here because of their 22-point win over Florida A&M. Mighty Mouse learned a lesson last night long ago learned by Chris Webber. Poor guy.

ABOUT THE SAME
Gonzaga: Good thing the WCC changed to a 16-game schedule to allow Gonzaga to schedule tougher non-confer....what's that? They played #316 Alabama State and #341 UAPB this week? Oh.
BYU: Beat Fullerton, but blew a good opportunity at home against SDSU.
SCU: Beat Cal Poly at home.
USF: Two home wins over Ivy League opponents including Yale last night in OT. Close to “trending up” territory but both wins were expected.
LMU: Close road loss to Nevada on Saturday thanks in no small part to a couple big threes by Jazz in the second half.

TRENDING DOWN
SMC: Nice win over Wisconsin to start, but a loss to Winthrop last night will likely send them right out of the polls. The Gaels have some work to do, starting Thursday against a LBSU team that's been better than expected.
Pepperdine: Somehow pulled out a win over UCI despite being down 73-64 with two minutes to go, but got throttled in the opener against Cal.
San Diego: Losses to UCI and LBSU to start the year. Tough part of the schedule coming up and the Toreros could very well be 1-6 after the next two weeks.

BEST WIN
Portland over San Jose State (PORT was 51.8% favourites)

WORST LOSS
Winthrop over Saint Mary's (SMC was 94.5% favourites)

#1 Kentucky was 39-0 at home against unranked nonconference opponents until tonight when they were knocked off by the Evansville Purple Aces, 67-64.

Evansville won just 11 games last season and had never before beaten a ranked opponent, but tonight they shot from deep and outran UK...a team that was favored by 25.

An upset like that has to give all teams some hope...

That probably knocks SMC's loss out of the headlines.

up7587 wrote:That probably knocks SMC's loss out of the headlines.

I think you're probably right. Love seeing all the Purple Aces stuff all over Twitter this morning.

Great night for the WCC. 4-0 with wins by USD over Fresno, SCU over WSU, Pepperdine over Northridge, and Gonzaga over UND.

Dean Murdoch wrote:
Gonzaga: Good thing the WCC changed to a 16-game schedule to allow Gonzaga to schedule tougher non-confer....what's that? They played #316 Alabama State and #341 UAPB this week? Oh.

GU stepped up this week, and played #265 North Dakota. Will Maupin, the MidMajor Madness correspondent, is showing pictures on Twitter of the Zag student section half empty after halftime.

up7587 wrote:That probably knocks SMC's loss out of the headlines.

I like the SMC team and school...wish I could say the same for their head coach.

Wonder who was more upset with SMC's loss, Randy Bennett or Mark Few because the SMC loss "devalues GU's opponent NET."

Tip of the cap to Gonzaga and BYU tonight. 30-point road win over Texas A&M for GU and a shot at the buzzer by T.J. Haws to give BYU a 72-71 win over future Pilots opponent Houston. That is a huuuuuuge win for BYU.

Nice to see one-time UP commit, Grant Anticevich, have a breakout game last night in Cal's win over D1 Cal Baptist.

You might recall that Anticevich, a former teammate of one-time Pilot (now a senior at Idaho St.) Chier Maker at Newington College in Sydney, committed to UP when Rev was the coach, and maintained his commitment after TP took over, but was told by TP to look elsewhere.  

Anticevich visited Rev at Georgia Tech, but landed at "closer to home" Cal and is now a 6-8/230 junior.

Last night Anticevich started and had 9 rebounds and 4 assists while shooting 9-11, including 5-5 from beyond the arc for a total of 23 points.

UP could use that kind of production...just saying.

Around the WCC -

TRENDING UP
San Diego: Did a good job to pick up a nice win over Fresno and a road win over Weber State, but have now entered a tough three-game stretch here starting Saturday with a loss to Colorado.
San Francisco: The Dons are 4-0 now including a road win over Southern Illinois on Saturday, which I saw suggested that was supposed to be part of a WCC/Missouri Valley scheduling challenge that never fully materialized. Interesting.
GU: 30-point win over Texas A&M. I'll put them up here just for spanking a lower-tier SEC team on the road, but really these guys are just in coast mode until the Bahamas tournament next week.
BYU: Huge Q1 road win over Houston. BYU has the chance to play themselves right into bubble consideration.

ABOUT THE SAME
Pepperdine: Expected wins over Northridge and Abilene Christian.
Portland: What can I say? This team is fun to watch right now.
SMC: Rebounded from the Winthrop game with convincing wins over LBSU and Cal Poly.
Pacific: Home win over Riverside yesterday.
Santa Clara: Home win over Washington State to start the week, loss to Stanford on Saturday.

TRENDING DOWN
Loyola Marymount: Home loss to Colorado State (see below) didn't help matters much.

BEST WIN
BYU over Houston (20.5% chance)

WORST LOSS
Colorado State over Loyola Marymount (40.2% chance)

Not exactly a banner week for the WCC, which has now dropped below the A-10 in at least one conference-based metric. (Thanks a lot, LMU)

TRENDING UP
San Francisco: The Dons and new head coach Todd Golden are still undefeated after two more wins.
Portland: Isaiah White for President! UP's win over PSU was the only road win for the WCC this week.

ABOUT THE SAME
Gonzaga: Strength of schedule to this point ranks 349th out of 353 D1 teams. They'll get some better games in the Bahamas this week, but yeesh.
Saint Mary's: Expected wins over Fresno State and Lehigh.
Santa Clara: Expected home win over Idaho State.

TRENDING DOWN
BYU: Fell in OT to Boise State on the road. Not a horrible loss, but more of a missed opportunity that the rankings didn't like. They're on the Kansas/Chaminade side of the Maui bracket this week, so a win over UCLA tonight would be huge.
Pepperdine: Competitive in a road loss to USC, but then gave up two huge late runs in a home loss to undefeated Sacramento State.
San Diego: Down to 2-5 after losses to San Diego State and Washington this week.
Loyola Marymount: Started with a nice win over Air Force in their Bahamas tournament, but then lost to Indiana State and got hammered by A-10 opponent Duquesne.
Pacific: Barely squeaked by Coppin State, then lost in triple OT at home to Boise.

BEST WIN
Portland over Portland State (45.1% chance)

WORST LOSS
Sacramento State over Pepperdine (15.6% chance)

Hmmmm.....



http://realtimerpi.com/rpi_wcc_Men.html

Haha, yeah, and that's after dropping 10 spots after the Pilots' win over UCD...

Never have understood why the RPI for soccer and basketball is so ridiculously strange the first month to six weeks of the season, but hey, it's good to see the screen shot showing UP #1 in the WCC, regardless...

Maybe some math-heads can explain it.  NPN, Deaner?

I got nothing. Maybe this is why they turfed the RPI.

DoubleDipper wrote:Haha, yeah, and that's after dropping 10 spots after the Pilots' win over UCSD...

Never have understood why the RPI for soccer and basketball is so ridiculously strange the first month to six weeks of the season, but hey, it's good to see the screen shot showing UP #1 in the WCC, regardless...

Maybe some math-heads can explain it.  NPN, Deaner?  

Crazy? It’s clear we top the conference on strength of schedule.



Alternatively, it takes more than 5 games to link 325 teams in the country statistically. Wins swamp strength of schedule early because strength of schedule is not known yet. A win over Maine counts only a little less than a win over Duke or Georgetown.

Truth be told, 20 games in soccer or 30+ games in basketball isn’t enough to sort out teams beyond about 20-30 teams.

BYU playing Kansas tonight in Hawai'i. KU is just huge compared to the Cougars.

The #263 Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks from Nacogdoches, TX take down the #1 Duke Blue Devils 85-83 in OT in Cameron.

I wonder if that counts as a  bad loss in the  NET.



Answer: I guess not. Kenpom still has them ranked #4.

What a great day for Stephen F Austin and small schools everywhere. Incredible victory!

With the win, SFA jumped up to #222 in KenPom. Immediately behind... the Portland Pilots at #221. Duke is real lucky that the Pilots are not on their schedule this year!

Duke should be forced to play on the road at SFA next year. I'd love to see all the mid-major conferences band together and make a pact, taking a united stand that they will not play "buy games" on the road unless the big schools also come play them at their campus the following year. The big boys count on these buy games for early season wins and home game revenue. That means that the smaller schools have leverage. They should band together and use it.

An update on the performance of our past opponents:

USC
5-1. Only loss was at home to Temple.

San José
2-3 vs DI competition. Lost at home to Portland State 91-76. They play Oregon State in Las Vegas tomorrow.

Maine
1-3 against DI. Their victory is against first-year DI opponent Merrimack. They play at #7 Virginia tomorrow.

Portland St
2-3 against DI. Since losing to the Pilots, PSU won at San José and beat Grambling State tonight on a neutral court at UC Santa Barbara (in front of an announced attendance of 217).

UC Davis
Lost a close one at Cal today, 72-66. Now 1-6 vs DI.

The game to watch last night was Oregon's victory over Seton Hall after being down by 19 points...

The game to watch today (1 PST) is #8 Gonzaga vs. #11 (AP) UO matchup in the tournament semi-final game in the Bahamas.

Really nice rally by USD over favored Hofstra by 10 points last night, but the biggest victory was probably BYU's 13 point comeback win over favored Virginia Tech in the 3rd place game in Maui.

DoubleDipper wrote:Really nice rally by USD over favored Hofstra by 10 points last night, but the biggest victory was probably BYU's 13 point comeback win over favored Virginia Tech in the 3rd place game in Maui.

And all done without Childs, too. Assuming they beat the Montana Tech Orediggers on Saturday that means they'll have gone 6-3 in the nine games with Childs out. I think they'll take that.

DoubleDipper wrote:The game to watch today (1 PST) is #8 Gonzaga vs. #11 (AP) UO matchup in the tournament semi-final game in the Bahamas.

Helluva game as GU outlasts UO in OT, 73-72 after zooming out to a 17 point early lead and then coming back from 3 points down.

Both teams were missing more than hitting their shots as many caromed off the front rim...the result of obviously tired legs.

GU plays for the tournament title tomorrow at 11 am PST against Michigan, an upset winner over #6 UNC earlier today.