College sports seasons are a difficult thing to grasp sometimes. In both football and basketball, teams usually start the season playing games against teams that are not in their conference. Depending on who you are, these games serve different purposes.
- BCS / High Major Teams – If you’re North Carolina, Kentucky, or UConn, games at the start of the season are meant to do a lot of things. You’re probably paying for a few cupcakes to come to your place and watch you do dunking drills. You’re probably playing in a pre-season tournament, meant to face you against different teams that do things you are not used to (ala, the NCAA Tourney). You’re also playing a few good teams in order to (hopefully) get a few marquee wins on your resume before you begin conference play. These are not necessary wins because you still have your conference schedule, with chances to play other good teams, and your conference tournament.
- Mid Major Teams / Low Major Teams – Most of these guys are collecting a few checks to be a punching bag in a rabid home environment for one of the above teams. A few exceptions (Butler, Xavier, Davidson in recent years), will also be trying to add a few marquee wins vs the teams above, hoping for that mythical at large bid when tourney time comes around. The rest of the punching bags are just hoping to survive to conference schedules (usually starting after the new year), and a chance to position themselves for the conference tournament, and a ticket to the shindig.
Spring will be here before we know it. March will be here, and some of these wins will be important, but others will not. Most teams as we see them now will have a completely different make up. Tom Izzo and is MSU Spartans are notorious for this. You never see his March teams play the way his December teams do. Yes, Michigan State lost at UNC, losing to the Tar Heels for the 3rd straight time in the last two years. Yes, two of those victories were against last years NCAA champion shucks howdy hip gyro nation squad. MSU figured to have the superior squad this last week at UNC, now that most of the title team has moved onto the NBA. Sparty was outplayed for most of the game. I have always seen Tom Izzo’s season as a progression towards a goal. Yes, a win at North Carolina would be great. However, it’s the test that probably (I’m going off the cuff here) means more. Hostile environment, check. Blue Blood squad, check. Broken arm coach who lives his apple pie and the funnies in the sunday section, check. Even though MSU lost, they still gained something from playing the game, and it will go a long way to getting these guys where they need to be come tourney time.
The same could be said for WMU. They travel to Hawaii at the end of December to get beat up on by a few teams before their conference schedule starts. Flying all those time zones away, playing supposedly superior competition (you do have to play the games), and all just before you enter the grind it out portion of your schedule. WMU is not going to get an at large bid this year, unless they don’t lose another game by some miracle. This means they’re playing for a conference tournament seed, and keeping their fingers crossed for some hot David Kool shooting in Cleveland. That is the life on the other side.
So, things may seem sort of brutal at this point. I’m pumped for UNLV hoops, undefeated with two close road victories over Arizona and Santa Clara (appears Santa Clara should have won that game). I’m also hopeful for WMU, as they’ve shown flashes over their non-con schedule (win vs VCU, playing Temple tough). I also see that Tom Izzo and his Spartans are a work in progress, and if things happen the way they have previously, we’ll be watching a different team in a few months.
I’ve got no games this week, until Saturday for UNLV and Kansas State, which, as it turns out, will be a pretty big time game.
Have a good week everybody.
