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Big Tests For Big-Name College Programs
What we’ll be watching while debating whether Syracuse, Baylor or Murray State – indeed, Murray State – will be the last unbeaten Division I College team:
Five can’t-miss contests
Baylor (15-0, 2-0 Big 12) at Kansas State (12-2, 1-1), Tuesday 8 p.m. Five of the last six ranked opponents to enter Bramlage column left the building worse for wear. It’s not easy to stand up to the Wildcats’ physicality with so many fans screaming in your ears. If you don’t, though, you lose.
Virginia (14-1, 1-0 ACC) at Duke (13-2, 1-0), Thursday 9 p.m. Although it won each time, UVa didn’t reach 60 points in any of its last three games. Duke’s defense lately has looked like the ideal cure for that.
Gonzaga (13-2, 3-0 WCC) at Saint Mary’s (14-2, 3-0), Thursday 11 p.m. The Zags are shooting for a 12th West Coast Conference regular-season title in a row. The only streaks in sports that aren’t overrated: consecutive championships.
UNLV (16-2) at San Diego State (13-2), Saturday 4 p.m. This will be the best college basketball game staged in San Diego on dry land this season.
Indiana (14-1, 2-1 Big Ten) at Ohio State (15-2, 3-1), Sunday 4:30 p.m. The Hoosiers could transform from charming comeback story to imposing national challengers in the space of about two hours.
— SI: Does Syracuse deserve to be No. 1?
Has Tide Turned?
Each day leading up to Monday’s BCS National Championship College Game, Sporting News will discuss one topic. Today’s question: Is Alabama’s offense better now than it was on Nov. 5?
Alabama lost to LSU in November in a game where neither team reached the end zone, calling into question the offensive play of the losing squad.
By eliminating comedy of errors, offense will be better
By Steve Greenberg
NEW ORLEANS—Of course it is. Alabama isn’t a team of ham-handed incompetents. The Tide aren’t bumblers, screw-ups, chokers. They were all those things, unfortunately, when they met LSU in Tuscaloosa, but that was out of character, an aberration … wasn’t it?
I believe it was. There was a combination of great defense by LSU and awful execution by Alabama inside the Tigers’ 30-yard line—leading to four misses on long field goals—and only one of those factors can be counted on Monday night in New Orleans. You’ll see great defense again from LSU, but not another comedy of errors by the Tide.
“It sounds so cliché, but it comes down to what we do,” senior center William Vlachos said on Thursday. “When you look at it, it comes down to our execution.”
How has Alabama executed over three games since Nov. 5? With 12 offensive touchdowns and only two turnovers. With 505 yards on the ground from Trent Richardson and a six-to-one touchdowns-to-interceptions ratio from quarterback AJ McCarron.
Conference Rankings
Any journalist who’s been through the NCAA’s mock College tournament selection exercise knows conference affiliation is not a factor in the process. Conference association is, though.
In a sense, the company you keep defines you. If you’re in a top College league, you get top teams on your home court and in your conference tournament and thus a better chance to accumulate the quality wins that impress the selection committee. So conference strength does matter.
Plus, it’s a heck of a place to start an argument. So with most teams finished with non-league competition, here’s how we see all 32 Division I conferences stacking up:
1. Big Ten
NCAA title contender: Ohio State
Final Four contenders: Michigan State, Indiana
The Big Ten runs deeper with good teams than any other league, but, as was the case with the football postseason, many are not structured for March success.
2. Big 12
NCAA title contender: Baylor
Final Four contender: Missouri
It’s so tempting to put Kansas in the Final Four category, but the whole Tyshawn Taylor turnover fest makes that seem unlikely. The Big 12 should get bonus points in this ranking for its double round-robin league schedule. It didn’t, but it should.
High-Octane Orange
Clemson (10-3) vs. West Virginia (9-3)
8:30 p.m. ET January 4, Miami (ESPN)
CLEMSON
College Bowl appearances: 33
College Bowl record: 16-17
BCS College bowl record: 0-0
Last appearance: 2010 Meineke Car Car Bowl (lost to South Florida, 31-26)
Last win: 2009 Music City Bowl (over Kentucky, 21-13)
Insider’s Guide
Basic instincts. Sophomore quarterback Tajh Boyd has been spectacular at times—as in his 386-yard, four-touchdown coming-of-age performance vs. Auburn—but threw a combined five interceptions in the Tigers’ three losses. He looked overwhelmed at South Carolina, completing 11 of 29 passes for 83 yards. He needs to go back to basics, with calm drops and trust in himself on his reads. Instinctively, Boyd is a gifted kid.
Bring Sammy back. There aren’t many receivers in the country—let alone freshmen receivers—who can take over a game like Sammy Watkins. But Watkins hasn’t had a superb game since the last weekend of October, when he caught nine balls for 153 yards and a score at Georgia Tech. He has a total of seven receiving touchdowns in the five games when he went over 100 yards.
The Dabo effect. “After 13 games, you are who you are,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney says. Not always. This is a rah-rah guy to the extreme, and that’s a good thing at bowl time; he should have his team more ready to play than it has been all season. But Tigers teams past and present have had a way of coming out flat—and if that happens in a BCS game, it’s all on Dabo.
The Number That Defines Them
2-0
No Such Luck
To his credit, Andrew Luck doesn’t sound like a young man filled with regret.
“Yes, it was worth it,’’ Stanford’s College quarterback told reporters in Glendale, Ariz., on Monday night after his college career ended in a Fiesta Bowl loss that was a freshman kicker’s shaky leg away from a victory. “Not to say I enjoyed every moment, because I didn’t, but it was worth every moment.”
“It” is Luck’s decision to return to play another year in college, instead of moving on to the NFL and what was believed then to be a sure No. 1 overall selection in the 2011 Draft.
Should he regret it? Nobody can answer that for him, and nobody should. He knew the pluses and minuses of passing up the NFL for more of the college life, and he weighed the risks and rewards. Nothing so far has indicated that he isn’t as smart and reasoned as he’s been portrayed.
— 2012 Draft: Preliminary order of first 20 picks | Iyer: Colts win Luck sweepstakes, if they want him | Luck finishes second in Heisman Trophy balloting | Stanford community is only place Luck doesn’t stand out
The Washington Huskies Break Bowl Record: on the losing end though…
A thrilling, back-and-forth, record-shattering College Alamo Bowl had barely ended when Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III already started hearing the chants.
“One more year! One more year!”
Robert Griffin III threw for a touchdown and ran for another to help Baylor beat Washington in Thursday’s Alamo Bowl. (AP Photo)
One more year? There’s still the craziness of what happened Thursday night to get through first.
Griffin wasn’t dazzling in possibly his last college game—and didn’t need to be—yet No. 15 Baylor still pulled out an incredible Alamo Bowl victory in the highest-scoring regulation bowl game in history, beating Washington 67-56 in the wildest shootout of this bowl season or any other in memory.
If this was RG3′s final showcase before jumping to the NFL, it was a gripping goodbye to watch. One of the nation’s most electrifying players was upstaged by an even more exciting nail-biter that shattered the previous record for points in regulation set in the 2001 GMAC Bowl.
“We went out in style!” Griffin shouted to his teammates. He paraded the Alamo Bowl trophy around the field before taking it to the front row of the stands and his mother, who’s already been looking at her son’s NFL draft prospects.
Griffin said he was still catching his breath after this one.
“I want Baylor nation to enjoy this,” Griffin said. “It’s not about me. I’ve got about two weeks. I’ll enjoy this the next day, and then the next day, and then I’ll make it.”
In race to regain status, Seminoles gain the lead on Notre Dame
Since everybody was longing for 1993, Notre Dame sort of obliged at the Champs Sports College Bowl.
That was the year “Groundhog Day” was released. After losing to Florida State 18-14 Thursday night, Irish fans must feel like Bill Murray waking up to the same radio broadcast every morning.
Florida State receiver Rashad Greene, left, made this 42-yard catch and also had a TD grab. He was named MVP of the College bowl game. (AP Photo)
It was another day/night of turnovers, scatter-armed quarterbacks and Brian Kelly rumbling like Mount Vesuvius.
“You saw it,” Kelly said. “We turned the ball over, we had miscues on special teams. When you play the quality of opposition we do, you’ve got to clean up the little things.”
The little things added up to five losses and eight wins. That’s not exactly the progress Irish fans were hoping for in Year II of the Kelly’s reign.
Then there’s FSU, which gave Jimbo Fisher a one-year extension before the game. He’s now under contract through 2016, by which time Seminoles fans expect to be partying like it’s 1993.
That was the year FSU won its first national championship. The path went through South Bend, where the No. 1 Seminoles lost a 31-24 epic to the second-ranked Irish.
NCAA vs. University of North Dakota
The use of Native American names and mascots in sports is a contentious subject. Many sports fans and non-sports fans object to the cartoonish portrayal of “Chief Wahoo” of the Cleveland Indians, for example. But what happens when Native Americans support the use of their tribe’s name and imagery?
This is a case that rages on in North Dakota where UND has been known as the Sioux since 1930 and as the Fighting Sioux since the 1960s. The university has the full support of the Spirit Lake Sioux reservation; Spirit Lake and Standing Rock (a neighboring reservation) actually blessed the use of the nickname in a religious ceremony. Now the NCAA has instructed the university to change the mascot and nickname or else UND will not be able to host postseason competitions nor will the university be able to display their mascot or nickname during a postseason game elsewhere. The school estimates that the cost of changing the mascot and nickname amounts to $750,000. I’m sure that number does not include the hundreds of thousands of dollars fans have spent on custom NCAA jerseys and other Sioux fan gear.
College Football Star Quest For Win 50: Customize his jersey at Onthefield.com to capture the monumental moment
Though it finished seventh in the final BCS College standings, Boise State will finish its College season in the Las Vegas Bowl Thursday night against Arizona State, as anything but a perfect regular season pretty much guarantees that the Broncos won’t earn a BCS bid.
Boise hopes of another perfect season and a potential shot at the national title vanished when it lost at home Nov. 12 to TCU, 36-35.
Boise State’s Kellen Moore is fifth on the all-time career passing yards list. (AP Photo)
But despite the disappointment, we get one last shot at honoring and appreciating the winningest quarterback in NCAA history in Kellen Moore, as a win against the Sun Devils would be the 50th of his career.
Moore, who surpassed Texas’ Colt McCoy earlier this year for No. 1 on the wins list by leading Boise State to a victory over UNLV, is just the sixth quarterback in NCAA College history to surpass 14,000 passing yards. He’s now fifth on the list. He’s also second on the career list in TD passes, and his 41 TD passes this season were the most by any Boise State QB in history. Those are staggering numbers for anyone. Read More >>
There are a lot of stories. I remember a big game against Ohio State. We came out at halftime, and after the half had started and everyone thought he wasn’t going to be able to play, he limped out. The place just went gonzo. I’ve never heard it so loud in my life. The funny thing is we had just put Greg Kelser back in the game. Afterward, Kelser said, “I didn’t know they liked me so much.” It was kind of comical. That’s the influence Magic had on the crowd and the community.
Slideshow: Meet the starting five for the College Basketball All-125 team
He had a great basketball IQ. We’d run a play at the end of practice, with the opportunity to use it tomorrow. We’d run through it once, and he’d know what he was going to do, and what all the other players were going to do.
He had a knack for his teammates. He’d come down on the break. Jay Vincent would be open. He’d kind of hesitate a little bit and then wait for Greg Kelser and then give the ball to Kelser. He’d look back to Jay, “Hey, I saw, you, I thought the defense would collapse on you, I’ll get the ball to you next time.” Jay would say, “Hey, that’s fine.”
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