Syracuse Shocked; Gators and Wildcats Escape
The #1 Syracuse Orange went down to the Boston College Eagles on Wednesday 62-59 in overtime. That’s right the BC Eagles who improved to 7-19 with the win beat the #1 team in the nation.
Also, the #2 ranked Florida Gators were tied with 21 seconds to go against the 12-11 Auburn Tigers at home no less. Auburn committed a huge mistake when nobody stayed to receive the inbound pass after Patric Young hit the go ahead free throws with :19.1 to play. The pass sailed out of bounds for a crushing turnover or the Gators may have gone as well.
And the #4 Arizona Wildcats narrowly escaped the Utah Utes 67-63 in overtime. Utah is 6-8 in the PAC 12. What does all of this mean?
Well, first, none of these results should be a shock. Syracuse has been flirting with a loss for their last five games or so. They needed two overtimes at home to beat the Duke Blue Devils. They needed a miracle shot from 35 feet at the buzzer to beat the Pittsburgh Panthers and they barely beat the middle of the road NC State Wolfpack at home. With a rematch at Duke looming on Saturday it was easy to see how they could over look BC. But the real reason they lost was because they wore orange jerseys with blue shorts. What is this a rec league at the local Y? Jerseys and shorts match at this level boys.
Florida has trailed at halftime five straight games now. With them the pattern goes like this. Start slowly, trail at the half, then clamp down on defense in the second half and wait for Michael Frazier to get hot from the outside. The worrisome part about last night though was Florida was hot themselves in the first half from outside with five first half three-pointers yet still trailed at the half 38-30. But in their defense, they too had reason to overlook the Tigers with that game being sandwiched in between two road games at the Tennessee Volunteers and Kentucky Wildcats and another pair at the Ole Miss Rebels and Vanderbilt Commodores.
Arizona plays in a tough conference where you get a stern test nearly every night. Between the UCLA Bruins, Stanford Cardinal, Oregon Ducks, Colorado Buffaloes and Arizona State Sun Devils, the Wildcats are just beat up. They lost one of the staring forwards a couple of weeks ago in a close loss at the Cal Golden Bears and don’t seem to be quite as good since.
But, let us not forget that all of these teams are walking around with a big target on their backs. They get the opponents best shot every night. And when you have your regular season championship pretty much in the bag and you are looking forward to the postseason with about three weeks left in the regular season, it is tough to get up for every games like that.
There is always a concern among top teams this time of year that they may have peaked too soon. But really, a loss this time of year is not a bad thing. For example, Florida is now on a school record 18 game win streak. The previous record was 16 set by the 2006 and the 2007 teams that went on to win the NCAA Tournament both years. The ’07 team lost three of four games with only one regular season game left to play. It was a home game against Kentucky. Starting with that game, they won 10 in a row to win their third straight SEC Tournament and second straight NCAA Tournament. But in that two week funk, people were wondering what happened. What happened was they got bored and were ready for the post season.
When the NCAA Tournament starts, it is better to be a ‘Cuse fan, Gators fan or Wildcats fan than not. Odds are the winner will be one of those three teams. Throw in Duke and you could bet those four against the field and you will likely win. Look for all three to pick it up here soon.
