John Wooden
Buzzketball is headed to the west coast to play in the Wooden Legacy tournament over the Thanksgiving break. This Tournament honors the late John Wooden, who was a three time All American, leading Purdue to a National Championship as their point guard in 1932. Considered one of the greatest coaches of all time, he led UCLA to ten national championships over a twelve year period back in the late 60's and early 70's. He had an incredible 664-162 record as a head coach, an amazing .807 winning percentage.
The Setting
The first two rounds of games will be played on the campus of Cal State Fullerton at the Titan Gym. The third and final round of games will shift to the Honda Center in Anaheim, home to the Anaheim Ducks. The Hokies will get three games regardless of how they perform as this event plays down to a seventh place game
The first round of games will be held on Thanksgiving (November 24th) starting at 2PM EST, with a slate of four games, the last starting at 11PM. Three of the four second round games will be held on November 25th, the first starting at 3PM, the last at 9:30PM. The fourth game will be at noon on Saturday, November 26th. (No the Hokies won't be in this game so it doesn't interfere with football). The final round of games start at 2PM on the 27th, going until 11PM Tipoff for the 7th place game. The championship will be at 830PM on ESPN.
Who is in the field?
Listed by Bracket/First Round Opponents. Rankings are based on KenPom Rankings.
#32 Texas A&M Aggies (SEC)– Come in 2-1, with wins over #295 Northwestern State and #293 American and a close loss to #55 USCwest.
Vs
#181 Cal State Northridge Matadors (Big West) – Come in 2-2 with wins over Div III Pomona Pitzer and #122 Northern Illinois and losses to #21 UCLA and #65 Stanford.
#45 Virginia Tech Hokies (ACC) – Come in 3-0, with wins over #331 Maine, #274 High Point and #242 VMI. Obviously a very weak schedule for the Hokies coming in but that seems the case with most participants here.
Vs
#81 New Mexico Lobos (Mountain West) – Come in 3-0 with wins over #265 Idaho State, #300 Houston Baptist and #149 New Mexico State.
#38 Dayton Flyers (Atlantic 10) – Come in 2-1, with wins over #285 Austin Peay and #70 Alabama and a loss to #13 St Mary's.
Vs
#76 Nebraska Cornhuskers (Big Ten) – Come in 3-0 with wins over #263 Sacramento State, DIV III University of Mary, and #157 Louisiana Tech
#147 Portland Pilots (West Coast) – Come in 3-0 with wins over #251 UC Riverside, #250 San Jose State, and Div III Lewis and Clark.
Vs
#21 UCLA Bruins (Pac 12) – Comes in 4-0 with wins over #200 Pacific, #181 Cal State Northridge, #288 San Diego, and #159 Long Beach State. Currently ranked #16 in the AP Top 25. Won the only game between participants 102-87 over Cal State Northridge.
All four first round games show an obvious advantage in terms of rankings, but its early in the season so take that into account.
I will have more on our individual opponents closer to game day.
If the Hokies were to win out, this would be the tentative schedule:
November 24th 430PM ESPN – New Mexico
November 25th 540PM ESPN 2 – Winner of Texas A&M v Cal State Northridge
November 27th 830 PM ESPN – Winner of bracket of Dayton, Nebraska, Portland, UCLA
Just wanted to get this little primer out there before most folks get wrapped up in the holidays.
Comments
In traditional seeding, it was probably something like this preseason:
1. UCLA
2. aTm
3. VT
4. Dayton
5. Nebraska
6. New Mex
7. Northridge
8. Portland
Most people didn't see much difference between UCLA, aTm, VT and Dayton in preseason rankings. UCLA was slightly ahead due to their freshman incoming class, but the other three have all been close together.
Critical step 1: get past New Mexico. Otherwise, you swap out aTm/UCLA (or Dayton) games for Northridge/Nebraska games.
45 KenPom is pretty good I think we finished last year at 63. This is a great opportunity for this team to show what they can do and move up those rankings.
If I had to speculate on the first round, I think that UCLA, Tech and A&M all advance as favorites. I think that Nebraska has a good shot to "upset" Dayton although Dayton has one major plus on its side and thats experience. Dayton has seven seniors on their roster, three of which are scoring in double figures so far this season. The Huskers however are third in the nation so far in scoring defense, allowing only 51.7 PPG. If they can keep Dayton off the board than the upset may be on.
Dayton lost one of their starters/post players to a serious leg injury last week. They also have another starter/post player that hasn't played yet this year due to injury. They do have talented and experienced guards but the exact opposite as far as post players go. Don't know what Nebraska has to offer but if they have any talented big men they should have a lot of success.
I'm not overlooking New Mexico for us. Tim Williams is a heck of a player. LeDay/Sy need to be ready to play some good ball if we want to limit him. I'm expecting a very close game with them.
I saw that Dayton player injury on TV, it was ugly. I hope he recovers.
Just reading up on it, they are saying its going to be a minimum of 3 months that he is out so he will likely have to ask for a medical redshirt for this season.
Nebraska's Jack McVeigh is 6'8, 220 that is putting up 15 points, 6 rebounds a game while shooting better than 50% from outside on 10 of 19 shooting. They also have a group of five players 6'7 to 6'11 that combine for eighty minutes contributing 23.5 PPG, 20.3 RPG, 2.7 APG. Thats essentially three spots on the floor for full game putting up 39 of their 73 PPG and 26 of their 41 RPG.
Obviously winning is the most important, but some strength of schedule would be nice. I still remember going undefeated in non-conference play one year with Greenberg and missing the tournament.
Well that makes winning even more important because the SOS difference between opponents on the winning side of the bracket barring major upsets is extreme. Two potentially in the 147/181 range on the losing side rather than the top 50 range if we keep winning. Regardless, the SOS difference between this tournament and the ones that Greenberg used to take us to already is significant. Greenberg used to take us places we were favored with an 80+ KenPom ranking. Almost every team in those tournaments was over 100, several in the mid 200's.
Oh I remember the "quality" tournaments we use to go to with Seth. We were regulars in the Aeropostale Classic or whatever over Christmas constantly.
or the Puerto Rico Tip Off that he loved when AD Vassallo was here.