Tuesday Lay-up Lines

The ACC-Big Ten Challenge, which started off with such a bang last night, continues tonight with five games on the schedule. The headliner is, of course, Duke-Purdue, but there are a couple other quality match-ups as well.

• 9:00 PM: Duke (7-0) @ Purdue (5-1): This is going to be a great match-up as these teams are very similar. They both are perimeter oriented, have a lot of guys that love to shoot three's, are very well coached, and play aggressive defense. Duke is probably a little bit more athletic (with guys like Nolan Smith and Gerald Henderson) and likes to play at a faster tempo than Purdue does, but the Boilermakers are the better team defensively. 
  
  I gotta be honest, I like Purdue at home in this one. Two reasons why. The first is the interior play. Brain Zoubek, Lance Thomas (to be fair, he did have 21 in their last game ... against Duquense), and Miles Plumlee have not been all that impressive so far this year (the three of them combined are averaging 17.5 ppg and 10.3 rpg). For Purdue, Nemanja Calasan has been playing great (he had 20 and 8 against Oklahoma) off the bench. JaJuan Johnson has been a bit inconsistent so far this year, but Duke is the kind of team he excels against because they don't have any big bodies to push him around.
  
  The second is Purdue's defense. Duke struggled mightily in the first half against a Southern Illinois team that plays a similar, tough, man-to-man defense to Purdue. They turned it over something like 15 times in the first half, but still managed to be up 29-23 because, well, they were playing Southern Illinois. If Duke comes out with anything close to that effort against a very good Purdue team, they are going to get smacked.
  
  Beyond that, these teams are similar, it is basically going to come down to who plays better. Simple right? Does Robbie Hummell out play Kyle Singler? Is E'Twaun Moore better than Jon Scheyer? Does Gerald Handerson's length win out over Chris Kramer's strength? Regardless, it should be a great game to watch.
• 7:00 PM: Ohio State (3-0) @ Miami FL (4-1): The Hurricanes are the first real test for the Buckeyes. I really don't know what to make of this OSU team. I thought that they would be a sleeper for the Big Ten crown, mainly because of the addition of their two freshman (BJ Mullens and William Buford). Buford has shown flashes, but Mullens has yet to really do much of anything. He wasn't expected to come in and be Greg Oden, but I also didn't expect him to 5.7 ppg and 2.3 rpg after three games against, well, nobody. As far as Miami goes, I like their team a lot. Jack McClinton has yet to really get it going, but once he does they have a lot of talent around him. A solid win here would be a nice statement game.
• 7:30 PM: Clemson (7-0) @ Illinois (6-0): Both teams came into the season with somewhat tempered expectations, but both are coming into this game undefeated. Illinois already has a couple of solid W's under their belt (Kent State, Vanderbilt). Clemson won the Charleston Classic, which included wins over Temple and TCU. It should be fun to watch the Illini's Mike Davis go toe-to-toe with Clemson's Trevor Booker, both of whom are averaging close to a double-double. I like the Illini in this one. I think Chester Frazier (42 assists, 9 turnovers) is one of the more underrated PG's in the country. He and Trent Meacham (both seniors) are experienced enough that they won't be flustered by Clemson's pressure.
• 7:00 PM: Iowa @ Boston College: BC could actually be OK this year. Tyrese Rice is as good of a scorer as there is in the country, and Vermont transfer Joe Trapani has been better than advertised (14 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 1.7 bpg). 
• 9:30 PM: Virginia (3-2) @ Minnesota (6-0): The best win either of these teams has posted is against ... South Florida?

Other games to keep an eye on:

• 7:00 PM: Florida A&M (1-5) @ Florida (5-1)
• 7:30 PM: South Dakota @ Notre Dame (5-1)
• 7:30 PM: Troy (3-4) @ Dayton (6-0)
• 7:30 PM: Monmouth (1-6) @ Seton Hall (5-1)
• 8:00 PM: Cal St. Fullerton (3-4) @ LSU (5-0)
• 8:00 PM: Arkansas Pine-Bluff (0-5) @ Missouri (5-1)
• 8:00 PM: Villanova (6-0) @ Pennsylvania (1-4)
• 8:00 PM: Marist (2-3) @ Memphis (4-1)
• 8:00 PM: Central Michigan (2-3) @ Marquette (5-1)