South Carolina @ Auburn
Light slate, didn’t watch many full games as most were blowouts.
Auburn’s jungle is next level atmosphere. One of the best of the SEC. Have never been to a SEC arena. Would like to see some of these arenas down size like Ole Miss. No one needs 25,000 seat arena for college hoops.
Auburn destroyed them, were up huge at half and cut off any hope for Gamecocks. Have seen on Twitter that a lot of people are calling Auburn a sneaky championship team. Thus they are no longer sneaky. Just because a team isn’t a blue blood, doesn’t make them sneaky.
Saint Joe’s @ Loyola Chicago
Harry Potter world with all of the scarves. Impressive crowd for a Wednesday evening and would love to go to a game if it overlaps with a Phattyman Chicago visit.
Game was U.G.L.Y. to start. Missed layups all over the place. Watched on side laptop and we did have the over here (150.5), which never came close to hitting.
First time watching the Hawks all year. Saint Joe’s has several playmakers and shooters but appear to be quite dependent on three ball. I don’t foresee them making it far in the A-10 tourney. Loyola needs a few more talented players but their offense is beautiful to watch with their head coach Valentine still running similar stuff to what Porter Moser was doing during their great NCAA tourney runs.
Didn’t see the Hawk and his continuous flapping wings in action on the broadcast. Was lucky enough to witness several years ago when the Hawks visited Moraga. A young Phattyman was entertained and mystified at a mascot in constant motion for two plus hours.
Miami @ Clemson
The game I paid the most attention to throughout the evening. Dan Schulman was on the call. An all-time college basketball voice. Jay “I gotta go to work” Bilas joined Schulman. He’s fine. Side note, I find it peculiar that ESPN’s College Gameday has four analysts and that 75% of said analysts are ACC affiliated. Jay Williams and Jay Bilas are both Dukies while Seth Greenberg is still a Virginia Tech man. Greenberg typically has a hard time mentioning any other conference outside of the ACC with any depth or interest. While former ESPN analyst LaPhonso Ellis is also ACC affiliated (Notre Dame), he was the best they had in a long time. He is missed but doing a great job at Fox. Back to the game.
Phattyman is still not impressed with Clemson. Any team that provides a medium level of defense should be able to crack their scheme of get the ball to PJ Hall then if that doesn’t work, have former Cuse transfer Joe Girard huck up a three. Miami, however, provided a small level of defense and with Nigel Pack’s knees banged up, they ran out of juice. Still could see Miami make some type of run in ACC tourney but that’s probably bias based off of last year’s NCAAT. Fun offense to watch when they are hot, as they are mostly gunslingers.
Western Carolina @ Samford
SoCon is an extremely underrated league. If you like offense, you should watch the SoCon. This conference typically produces a great double digit seed that comes close to or does create a first round upset. Chattanooga in 2022 nearly defeated 4 seed Illinois that had Kofi Cockburn, Coleman Hawkins, and Andrew Curbelo. SoCon also has Furman, who had one of the top moments of 2023 with their buzzer beater vs Virginia. They weren’t a double digit seed but Wofford also had a great team in 2019 that nearly went to the Sweet Sixteen vs Kentucky. All to say that college basketball fans should pay attention to this conference if they aren’t already.
Thought WCU would have more fight but Samford was able to put them away once the 2nd half started. Samford now 12-1 in conference but I have a sneaky feeling they won’t be the one representing the SoCon come March Madness. WCU beat Notre Dame, McNeese State, and UNC Asheville earlier in the year but have faltered since. Haven’t followed the team closely so maybe they’ve had injury issues.
Phatty's Hoops Thoughts 