Tuesday Morning Shootaround

Georgia Southern 65, Houston 63: Georgia Southern will advance to play Duke tomorrow as they held Houston to one basket in the last 10 minutes. Trumaine Pearson led the way with 19 and 11 for the Eagles. Nothing against Georgia Southern, but my word, how far has the Houston program fallen since the days of Hakeem and Clyde? Ok, so after losing three of their top four scorers, four starters overall, and bringing in six newcomers, the Cougars weren't exactly expected to beat out Memphis for the C-USA title. But losing to a middle of the pack team in the Southern Conference? Not really the way you want to start off a season, especially if you are Tom Penders.

Duke 80, Presbyterian 49: Duke got 19 and 10 from Kyle Singler and 15 from Nolan Smith (who, as expected, got the start over senior Greg Paulus), but the win was not as pretty as Duke would have liked - they turned to ball over 21 times. A couple of other tidbits you may be interested in (there's not much to write about today) - freshman Miles Plumlee got the start over junior Lance Thomas, but Thomas was much more effective with 12 and 5 versus no points and just 2 boards from Plumlee.

And did you know that Presbyterian's nick name is the Blue Hose? I'm just going to leave that one alone...


On a side note, I currently have Comcast cable, which means that I do not get ESPN U or ESPN 360. So I didn't get to watch the Duke-Presbyterian game. And I won't be able to watch a lot of games this year. Which sucks (the Blue Hose if you will?).

Cable companies are essentially monopolies, and Comcast is notorious for acting like one and providing terrible customer service. Based on some internet sleuthing, it seems like Comcast and ESPN have a disagreement over money (whoa, big surprise there). But the recent deal between the worldwide leader and the SEC lends hope that Comcast will pick up the U and 360 soon. From Multi-channel:

ESPN senior vice president college sports programming Burke Magnus said the programmer hoped the addition of SEC fare would “accelerate” the active carriage conversations ESPNU is having with Comcast. The network, through deals with DirecTV, Dish, Time Warner Cable, Charter, Cox and other cable operators, counts some 22 million subs in total, but has a significant hole in the conference’s nine-state footprint without distribution on the nation’s-largest cable operator.

With any luck, by the time we are in the thick of the college basketball season, Comcast will have at least picked up ESPN U. But I'm not going to be holding my breath.