Musings....

College basketball thoughts as the second-to-last weekend draws near.....

-Tough break for Purdue; they rally to beat Minnesota at the Barn only to come home and find out Robbie Hummel tore his ACL. Still will be a tough out in both the Big 10 and NCAA tournaments, but I doubt they have the pieces now to get to Indy for the Final Four. Gritty win though; I was not expecting them to pull that out once Hummel went down. Things get tougher Saturday as Sparty comes to town.

-This should really open the door for either Ohio State or Michigan State to win the Big Ten tourney and claim a #2 seed in the NCAA's (Purdue is the only Big Ten team with a legitimate shot at a #1 seed). Either team can beat Purdue at their best (these three teams are all pretty even), but I would fully expect they would be favored at this point over the Boilers without Hummel. Ohio State finishes with a much easier schedule (two home games left: Michigan and Illinois), while MSU makes the Saturday trip to West Lafayette. Should be a good game.

-Kansas still is the class of the Big 12 (6 years in a row now); is anyone ever going to challenge them? Texas (along with Carolina) will go down as being one of the most disappointing teams of the year (remember, they were #1 about 6 weeks ago, but for the first time in a month, won back-to-back games just this week). I'm still not sold on K-State; they've never done much damage the few times they've made the tourney, so I'm not expecting much out of them. Kansas clearly should be the #1 team in the country, but I'm not sure if they really are as good as they look or if the rest of the Big 12 just stinks.

-Speaking of the Big 12, from all of the tournament "experts" right now, Mizzou is a lock to be in the tourney. No disagreement here, although as I was thinking about this, I realized I know nothing about this Mizzou team. They rarely have a game or highlights on TV (I've only seen them once this year, playing KU), don't have any superstar players, and have not been ranked this season. Amazing how quiet of a good season they have been having. I even checked the AP and Coaches poll tonight, and they still are several slots away from being ranked. Weird.

-Which leads me to my recommended weekly reading if you love following the upcoming tournament: ESPN.com and SI.com both provide great "Bubble Watch" articles (Mark Schlabach writes it for ESPN, while Andy Glockner takes care of it for SI). Throughout the season they have been weekly, but starting next week, they'll update daily. Great sources of information, and generally both are pretty accurate. Definitely serves as good fodder before the madness (check out espn.com and www.si.com).

Check back soon....big things coming, I promise. Two interviews set up that should be exciting.