Not OT: Villanova escapes Bucknell
#12 Villanova just squeaked by Bucknell at home.
Hass went off again, with over 30 points for Bucknell. Bucknell was hosed quite a bit near the end by the refs.
Bucknell took the lead off a 3 with under minute left. Bucknell "fouled" Villanova, tying it at 65. On Bucknell's next possession, they lost it out of bounds and that was that.
Pretty interesting that the team Michigan absolutely slaughtered gave #12 Villanova all they could handle, at Villanova.
This is not OT, because Michigan may play Villanova next Tuesday in the Legends Classic.
Each Legends Classic team that's going to Brooklyn struggled with a mid-major.
- Michigan with Detroit
- Oregon with Detroit
- VCU with Toledo
- Villanova with Bucknell
Oregon still has a game left in their regional bracket against Toledo tomorrow night. Here's all the results thus far from the entire Legends Classic field in case you don't have the bracket printed/haven't seen it-
Monday
Michigan 77 Bucknell 53
Villanova 81 UMES 44
Oregon 83 Detroit 66
Tuesday
VCU 87 Toledo 78
Today
Michigan 71 Detroit 62
VCU 106 UMES 66
Villanova 72 Bucknell 65
November 20th, 2014 at 10:41 PM ^
Did VCU struggle against Toledo? I didn't watch most of the game, but the few minutes I watched early, VCU looked scary. I hate the full court press.
November 20th, 2014 at 10:46 PM ^
It was close late. And don't fear the full court with Walton and Spike.
November 20th, 2014 at 10:48 PM ^
Upsets happen in basketball all the time. I think it shows what a football school we are when the chicken littles come out after a close win or an early season loss.
Prepare for a bad loss or two. It won't hurt us much (maybe 1-2 seeds). March is when it matters, the rest is just the grind.
November 20th, 2014 at 11:29 PM ^
Chicken little is a dumbass term and I vote we stop using it
November 20th, 2014 at 10:48 PM ^
Villanova is to basketball rankings as Notre Dame is to football.
For reasons that escape me they are anually massively over-ranked, over-seeded and flame out earlier than projected.
Rinse, repeat.
November 21st, 2014 at 9:32 AM ^
My son's HS coach goes to a big coaches clinic every year. It's like his own personal vacation without family. He is also one of those people who you very rarely hear say anything bad about anyone. Jay Wright was an exception to that rule. From what he says Wright's non-camera persona is major douchebag.
His favorite coach and clinic was Bruce Webber at Illinois so far.
I also wonder if Bucknell was "up" for the game since Wright is a Bucknell alum? As I said in the scout report for our game, Bucknell is a system team that just doesn't have athletes to compete when they are young and currently lacks experience. They are gonna catch someone napping and should beat Penn State at home.
They should win the Patriot League and be dancing this coming spring.
November 20th, 2014 at 10:48 PM ^
Why didnt we recruit Hass? Since we recruit every other no name kid why not him?
November 20th, 2014 at 10:54 PM ^
His calves weren't large enough.
November 20th, 2014 at 10:53 PM ^
I didn't see the game ... But how in the world did Oregon struggle with Detroit when they beat them by 17??
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November 20th, 2014 at 11:03 PM ^
It was 35-35 at halftime until Oregon pulled away later in the second half.
November 20th, 2014 at 11:50 PM ^
The same way we struggled despite being up by 15 with 2 minutes left.
November 20th, 2014 at 11:16 PM ^
I mean, if you look at this in terms of effective FG%, you get this seemingly anomalous result of Villanova having a 43.52% eFG% and Bucknell having a 51.96% eFG%. What draws attention though is that Villanova got 25 points jist from FTs. They were 25-36 on FTs. No one needs to give up that many FTs to fouls, Bucknell.
November 21st, 2014 at 4:46 AM ^
Maybe Detroit is a lot better than we are giving them credit for this year. However, I still think JHJ had his "career game" last night and Kearney played one of his better games, fueled by residual Sparty hatred of all things Maize and Blue.
November 21st, 2014 at 8:00 AM ^
I think Bucknell looked like a better team than Detroit. The difference is we had a lot of early threes just miss and blew a ton of layups in this game. Then we got impatient and just started forcing a lot of garbage shots in the second half - pretty atypical for UM these past few seasons.
I remember us being up 11-10 in the first half and thinking it easily could have been about 25-10 at that point, had we capitalized on several good opportunities. I don't want to excuse some of the poor play, and we certainly have a couple concerning issues right now. But I'll bet if we played Detroit again in a couple days, we'd coast.
November 21st, 2014 at 8:25 AM ^
Kearney was having an absolutely brutal start to the season (0-5 from 3 and 2-13 overall) so for him to hit 3-4 from deep was a bit of a surprise.
Several of Detroit's hits from deep were in rhythm but they also had a couple of a straight chucks that went in. On the flipside, Michigan missed a ton of wide-open looks from deep and blew a couple of bunnies. It happens.
November 21st, 2014 at 10:33 AM ^
Then you dont have to state it..
Just start typing...
Vigilante Mod here...
November 21st, 2014 at 8:58 AM ^
I do not like that.