The Bobby Valentine Sport Show: Episode 41

The Bobby Valentine Sport Show: Episode 41

Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of The Bobby Valentine Sport Show. I’m your host Frank Ramppen, and let’s dive into another week of the college basketball season. This is the last week before all conference tournaments will be underway. Some of the best weeks in March are coming up right now. There’s so much college basketball; it’s basically like the tournament is starting early, with games from noon all the way throughout the day that matter.

Today, filming this on Tuesday, March 5th, yesterday, Monday, March 4th, the first conference tournaments got underway, the season tournaments. So, the first round of that is underway, and we’ve got a lot to look forward to over the next couple of weeks before this tournament even begins. There’s a lot of excitement.

New AP Poll for this week, let’s get right into that. Diving into that one, Houston stays at number one. They had a crazy game this week, ended up being our game of the week, played against Oklahoma on Saturday. We’ll talk about that one a little bit. They, like I said before, are the fifth number one seed this year, fifth different one. And Houston is the number one defense in the country. But there was a little bit of a hiccup this weekend. We’ll get into that one, though.

UConn, they move up from 3 to 2 after they beat Seton Hall on Sunday by 30. And I agree with this move. I think Houston should be number one because they had a big, big week, while both UConn and Purdue struggled, beating number 6 at the time Iowa State, and then number 11 Baylor, both in the same week. And then UConn had a tough loss, so that moved them out of number one. But I think that UConn has been playing a more well-rounded, sound level of team basketball, both offensively and defensively, than Purdue. Purdue, sure, Zach has been the best player in the country. He’s going to win his second consecutive Player of the Year Wooden Award, all that stuff. He’s going to be the first person to do it since Ralph Sampson in the ’80s. That’s going to be amazing. But they have been playing tight games against unranked opponents. So I think this is right. Obviously, Houston, UConn, and Purdue, they’ve kind of separated themselves at this point. I believe all of them are 26 and 3. But I think Houston at one, UConn at two, and Purdue at three is the correct order.

Number four for now, the Tennessee Volunteers with Dalton Connect, fighting for that last one seed. Big game later on this weekend against Kentucky for them. Arizona, they’re in the five seed right now, they’re also fighting for this last one seed. So most likely it’s going to be the South one seed, Houston, the East one seed, UConn, and the Midwest one seed, Purdue. That just leaves the West, and the voters sometimes will put a West team in the Western poll. And the only team that is fighting for it is Arizona, but they’re in the five right now, and I think number four Tennessee with Dalton Connect has been playing a lot better, so we’ll see what they do with that come tournament time at the end of this week and after Conference tournament week.

Number six, Iowa State, second-best team in the Big 12 Conference, they move up from 8 to 6. They were six last week. Great defense, Jordan Lipye, they’re a great team. Sneaky team to look for in the tournament, but they’re all the way up to six. They’re probably going to be a two-seed, so maybe not a sleeper like I kind of thought they were going to be early on. They’ve played a lot better than I thought.

North Carolina, they play Duke this week, and it’s probably going to be for the ACC Championship game.

For more from the updated tournament play in College Basketball click the video below!