Post-Super Bowl checkup for Rutgers, Seton Hall and more
Selection Sunday is in less than four weeks...
Heck of a game Sunday, right?
NFL football was always my first love as a young sports fan. My horizons expanded to college football, then quickly to college basketball from there, but Super Bowl Sunday was among the most exciting days of the year, like a birthday or Christmas. Even when Tom Brady was playing – and he usually was – I’d be motivated to root against him with all my might.
Given I was working on Super Bowl Sunday for the first time this year, and given how much space the “big game” needs to breathe before I try to talk to you about NET ratings and Quadrant 1 wins, I postponed today’s edition and dubbed it a post-Super Bowl checkup. This will be the last time this season I take a quick, wide survey across the state and bring you up to speed on each of them. After today, it’ll be time to home in on the teams with the greatest chances of actually making the field of 68 in less than four weeks’ time.
Rutgers
Record: 15-9 (9-5 Big Ten)
NET: 81
KenPom: 78
Status: Not only a freshly minted bubble team, but truly the talk of college basketball. Skeptics understandably stood firm after the Scarlet Knights beat Michigan State and Ohio State in Piscataway. The discrepancy between Rutgers’ home and road performances was well established. But to go on the road and beat a very good Wisconsin team, becoming just the second Big Ten team to hand the Badgers a home loss, legitimized Rutgers’ tournament hopes to a much wider audience. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi elevated Rutgers into the conversation in the “Next Four Out” section Tuesday.
Rutgers is a solid sixth place in the Big Ten, too, which can’t hurt when the conference tourney in Indianapolis rolls around. But there’s more work to do, starting Wednesday with first-place Illinois.
Remaining schedule: vs. No. 12 Illinois, at No. 5 Purdue, at Michigan, vs. No. 15 Wisconsin, at Indiana, vs. Penn State.
Seton Hall
Record: 15-8 (6-7 Big East)
NET: 34
KenPom: 34
Status: Hanging in there just north of the bubble. We could be talking about a four-game Pirates winning streak, but Villanova did what Villanova does on Saturday and closed out a back-and-forth game in Philly. Seton Hall is 4-3 in seven games without Bryce Aiken, still suffering from a concussion. Truthfully, that record could be worse, especially given how awful they looked the night of the 84-63 home loss to St. John’s. That defeat is Hall’s only Quadrant 3 loss, one of the only blemishes on the team sheet. ESPN has Hall at a No. 8 seed.
Remaining schedule: at No. 24 UConn, vs. DePaul, vs. Butler, at Xavier, vs. Georgetown, at Creighton.
Princeton
Record: 17-5 (7-2 Ivy)
NET: 116
KenPom: 132
Status: Time to talk mid-majors. The Tigers’ recent losses to Yale and Cornell took them out of the driver’s seat in the Ivy, making it a three-horse race for the regular-season title and top seed in Cambridge. Yale is 8-1, Penn is 8-2 and Princeton is 7-2, but they all have games against one another coming up, meaning a high number of permutations (to use an Ivy League word) for how this could finish.
From here on out, though, we’re discussing one-bid leagues. The only way to the NCAA Tournament for any of these programs will be to win the conference tournament. (I’ll keep including the NET and KenPom metrics for fun.) Princeton is in little danger of missing the Ivy Tournament, which only takes the top four teams.
Remaining schedule: at Brown, at Yale, vs. Harvard, at Harvard, at Penn.
Monmouth
Record: 16-9 (8-6 MAAC)
NET: 119
KenPom: 136
Status: Fading from the Metro Atlantic’s elite. The Hawks’ 1-2 week dragged them down to 8-6 in conference after such a promising start to the season. Most notably, they were never really in it on Sunday at first-place Iona. The Gaels led by as many as 18; Monmouth clawed to within five in the final minutes, but it was too late. The Hawks get their next three at home, including games with second-place Siena and third-place Saint Peter’s, which I want to keep an eye on to see how Monmouth will stack up against the other top MAAC contenders.
Remaining schedule: vs. Rider, vs. Siena, vs. Saint Peter’s, at Siena, vs. Quinnipiac, at Rider.
Saint Peter’s
Record: 11-9 (9-4 MAAC)
NET: 170
KenPom: 168
Status: Has roughly as much of a chance in the MAAC as Monmouth now. The Peacocks were winners of four of five, with the lone loss coming by eight at Iona; they looked like a remarkable turnaround story after a rough non-conference schedule ruined by COVID. A home loss to Rider last Friday was a confusing development, though the Broncs are improving (see below).
Saint Peter’s hosts Iona tonight in what could be a huge win if the Peacocks pull it off. They’re jostling with Siena and Monmouth for top-three placement in the MAAC Tournament; Nos. 4 and 5 in that league also get a first-round bye but must play each other in the quarters.
Remaining schedule: vs. Iona, at Fairfield, at Siena, at Monmouth, vs. Niagara, at Manhattan, vs. Fairfield.
Rider
Record: 10-14 (6-8 MAAC)
NET: 270
KenPom: 261
Status: The Broncs had the MAAC’s best active winning streak going at four games, including stunners on the road at Siena and Saint Peter’s, until falling to Siena 76-75 in overtime in the rematch Sunday. They’re in the MAAC basement no longer. “We’re growing up,” Rider coach Kevin Baggett told The Trentonian after beating the Peacocks. “This team is playing with a ton of confidence right now and the right guys are taking the right shots. The right guys are doing the right things for the most part and that’s why we’re winning.”
Remaining schedule: at Monmouth, at Manhattan, vs. Niagara, vs. Iona, at Fairfield, vs. Monmouth.
NJIT
Record: 10-13 (5-8 America East)
NET: 313
KenPom: 328
Status: An also-ran in the AEC. Look, anything can happen, but Vermont is the king of the conference with a 4.5-game lead on second, and NJIT is ninth out of 10, though just 2.5 games separate second and ninth. A seven-game losing streak really knocked the Highlanders down a peg, but they recently grabbed consecutive wins over Stony Brook and New Hampshire to right the ship a bit. It would still take a miracle for this team to make any noise in March.
Remaining schedule: vs. UMass Lowell, at Maine, vs. New Hampshire, at Hartford, at Stony Brook.
Fairleigh Dickinson
Record: 3-18 (4-10 Northeast)
NET: 348
KenPom: 349
Status: Like NJIT, just isn’t FDU’s year. The Knights’ latest outing was a win, 82-75 over Sacred Heart, with Sebastien Lamaute scoring a season-best 24 points. Recall, if you will, that the reason FDU has more league wins on its record than overall wins is due to a COVID forfeiture by an opponent. Anyway, Wagner and Bryant are the bullies atop this league, and any team other than one of those two representing the Northeast in March Madness would be, well, mad.
Remaining schedule: at Merrimack, at Bryant, vs. Wagner, at Long Island.
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Thanks for stopping by! I hope to have a few fun things planned for the final stretch of the season, so stay tuned. Here are some updated power rankings to close this one out.
League power rankings
Big Ten
1. Illinois
2. Wisconsin
3. Purdue
4. Ohio State
5. Michigan State
6. Rutgers
7. Michigan
8. Iowa
9. Indiana
10. Northwestern
11. Penn State
12. Maryland
13. Minnesota
14. Nebraska
Who do I punish worse: Wisconsin for losing at home to Rutgers, or Purdue for being walloped at Michigan? Knowing the heater Rutgers has been on, I went with the latter and demoted Purdue. Friend and colleague Dylan Sinn of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette astutely pointed out that even if you’re having an off night, getting worked like that by a lesser foe doesn’t happen to Final Four contenders. And it’s already the third time Purdue fell victim to a court-storming this year! I also moved Ohio State over Michigan State – a much closer loss to Rutgers than the Spartans had + better overall basketball over the past several weeks.
Big East
1. Providence
2. Villanova
3. UConn
4. Marquette
5. Seton Hall
6. Xavier
7. Creighton
8. St. John’s
9. Butler
10. DePaul
11. Georgetown
Our leading scientists may never solve the perplexing question of whether Creighton is Actually Good. I pumped the brakes for now because the Bluejays’ current three-game win streak has come against Butler, Georgetown and Georgetown again. The metrics don’t love them either. No. 10 Villanova at No. 8 Providence might be the game of the week in all of college hoops. That one and No. 24 UConn-Seton Hall should help me better sort out the top half of this league.
Ivy League
1. Yale
2. Princeton
3. Penn
4. Cornell
5. Brown
6. Harvard
7. Dartmouth
8. Columbia
Brown can hang? Brown can hang! It was a one-point win at Cornell, won in the final seconds by Jaylan Gainey’s putback dunk, but it’s still better basketball than Harvard has played for several weeks. The Crimson have lost five of six. Yale hosts Penn and Princeton on back-to-back nights, which could reshape the outlook atop this league.
MAAC
1. Iona
2. Siena
3. Saint Peter’s
4. Monmouth
5. Fairfield
6. Quinnipiac
7. Rider
8. Marist
9. Niagara
10. Canisius
11. Manhattan
Siena is the hottest team in the league now, with a three-game winning streak anchored by a win over Iona (though the Saints then needed overtime to slip by Rider). Speaking of Rider, it gets a boost for its recent winning exploits, along with Marist, which posted a 3-0 week – from last Tuesday over Monmouth to Valentine’s Day over Niagara.