Saturday Roundup

A few housecleaning notes before we get into last night's action: since the weekend's game start early, there will be no lay-up lines on Saturday's and Sunday's. Instead, we will look at the previous night's games and preview the day's important games in the same post. And all of this is still a work in progress, so we will be playing around with the formats a little bit.

Now to last night's notable games and performances.

VMI 111, Kentucky 103: VMI got 30 points, 7 boards, and 4 steals from Travis Holmes, and the Keydets hit 14 three's en route to an upset win over the Wildcats. Chavis Holmes added 16 and 6 dimes and Keith Gabriel chipped in 20 in 19 minutes off the bench. UK got huge nights out of Jodie Meeks (39 points) and Perry Stevenson (20, 14, and 4 blocks), but not much else.

For the second year in a row, Kentucky lost an early season home game to a team that, frankly, they have no business losing to. The issue this year was point guard play. Michael Porter and DeAndre Liggins combined for 12 turnovers and UK had 25 as a team (13 in the first 11 minutes). Another big question mark from this game - where the heck was Patrick Patterson? It's not a good sign for a guy expected to be one of the best posts in the country to get just 8 and 7 against a team from the Big South with one player (that got more than five minutes of burn) taller than 6'4".

To be honest, if I'm a Kentucky fan, I am not that worried ... yet. Meeks looks like he is capable of filling the void left by Joe Crawford and Stevenson, who played great ball when Patterson went down last year, has picked up where he left off. Kentucky may as well of had a brand new back court this year with newcomers DeAndre Liggins and Darius Miller, seldom used Michael Porter, and Meeks coming off of a season marred by injuries. VMI is a tough team to play against for anyone, let alone inexperienced players, simply because of the unique style that they run. UK got down big early because of sloppy play and turnovers, but were able to come storming back, even taking the lead at one point. Chalk this one up to inexperience, and hope that a little experience and seasoning will help these kids get better.

Other notable scores:

• George Washington 63, Boston University 58 OT - A lot of pundits were picking BU as a sleeper team coming out of the America East, but losing to a very so-so GW team at home is not a good way to start. 
• Boston College 80, Central Connecticut 65 - Joe Trapani had 13, 9, and 6 dimes in his first game for BC, but the real story was who didn't play - Eagles star point guard Tyrese Rice was suspended for the game
• Pitt 86, Fairleigh Dickinson 63 - Levance Fields played and appeared healthy as he had 15 and 8 dimes. Gilbert Brown didn't play.
• Oregon 66, Northern Colorado 64 - The Ducks weren't supposed to be anything special this year, but beating a Big Sky team by two does not bode well for Ernie Kent's crew.
• Howard 47, Oregon State 45 - I would love to know why Oregon State, a Pac-10 team, decided to open their season on the road in Washington DC against a team from the MEAC. Was it because Craig Robinson is Obama's brother-in-law? Or is it because Oregon State is just that bad?

Best of the night:

• Lester Hudson, UT-Martin: In a 121-56 win over Maryville, Hudson came close to a quadruple-double, going for 27 points, 7 boards, 7 assists, and 8 steals.
• Dionte Christmas, Temple - Christmas had 26 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 steals in a 79-65 win over ETSU.
• Lawrence Hill, Stanford - 22 points, 11 boards, and 4 dimes are good numbers anytime, but even more impressive when that line comes in just 19 minutes. The Cardinal beat Yale 75-67.
• Al-Farouq Aminu, Wake Forest - The freshman had a promising debut, going for 21, 10 and 3 blocks in a blow out win.
• Ahmad Nivins, St. Joe's - Nivins had 25, 13, and 4 blocks in a 12 point win over Rider.
• Hasheem Thabeet, UConn - 23 points, 17 boards, and 5 blocks. Granted, it was against Western Carolina.
• Stephen Curry, Davidson - 29 points, 10 assists, and 9 steals, but more importantly, just 1 turnover.
• Wesley Matthews, Marquette - Matthews led the way for Marquette in a blowout win with 27 points, 8 assists, and 5 steals.
• Lee Cummard, BYU - Cummard had a great fantasy basketball day - 36 points (13-15 from the floor, 7-7 from the line, 3 3's), 11 boards, 4 assists, 3 blocks, and 2 steals.

Six Top 25 teams will be opening their season on Saturday, including consensus #1 UNC who hosts Penn at 4:00 PM. Ginyard and Hansbrough will not be playing for the Heels, but UNC should still roll over the Quakers. The other Top 25 teams in action on Saturday:

• 3:30 PM: UC Irvine @ USC
• 7:00 PM: Montana State-Billings @ Gonzaga
• 7:00 PM: Chattanooga @ Tennessee
• 7:30 PM: Florida Southern @ Miami FL
• 8:00 PM: Fairfield @ Memphis

There are some other games to keep an eye as well.

• 1:00 PM: George Mason @ Vermont - Can you imagine how good the Catamounts would be if they still had Joe Trapani?
• 5:30 PM: San Diego @ UNLV - Fantastic PG match-up in this one - the Torero's Brandon Johnson and the Runnin' Rebels Wink Adams.
• 7:00 PM: Illinois State @ Wright State; 8:05 PM: Butler @ Drake - The Horizon League and the MVC have been arguably the best mid-major conferences the last decade or so, and these two games pit last season's top two teams from each conference against each other.