Shameless Self-Promotion Time: Arizona

Michigan took on No. 1 Arizona in chilly Ann Arbor this afternoon, looking to snag a huge resume-booster of a win. As usual, my post-game recap can be found at Maize n Brew.

Despite leading for most of the game, the Wolverines couldn't quite hold off the big, athletic Wildcats late in the game. Nik Stauskas had a chance to regain the lead for Michigan with under 20 seconds to play, but his jumper landed off the mark and the Wolverines ultimately fell, 72-70.

With the loss, Michigan fell to 6-4 on the season with two games remaining before the Jan. 2 Big Ten opener at Minnesota.

NIT Season Tip-Off Final Observations: Arizona 72, Duke 66

Fouad Egbaria

For those with unrealistic expectations, Michigan's 5-2 start to the season could be considered a disappointment. However, when tethered to reality and understanding the difficulties of breaking in a new point guard --not to mention replacing a player of Trey Burke's caliber, not to mention Tim Hardaway Jr., who is having a solid start to his NBA career in New York-- then perhaps such a start is not so surprising. 

With that said, if Michigan is planning on entering the Big Dance with a decent seed, they will need to grab a big non-conference win or two before entering what should once again be a brutal Big Ten slate. Fortunately for the Wolverines, Duke and Arizona (and even Stanford, to a lesser extent), present the Wolverines with that opportunity. 

I was lucky enough to attend Friday NIT Tip-Off final between Duke and Arizona at Madison Square Garden, so I figured this would be a good space to kill two birds with one stone with some of my observations on both teams. 

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First, a general outline of the game itself is probably in order. After sitting through the triple overtime Alabama-Drexel game, the first half of Duke-Arizona provided an enormous step up in the speed and level of play. The Blue Devils and Wildcats battled it out in what was an incredibly entertaining first half of basketball, one in which the largest lead was only five (11-6, Duke). 

Duke went into the half up, 36-33, with eight points from Jabari Parker in the half's final five minutes (he finished the first half with 10). Brandon Ashley led the Wildcats at the half with 11 points of his own. 

A Quinn Cook three six minutes into the second half gave Duke a 43-37 lead, its largest of the game. Sitting in MSG, however, you got the sense that if Duke got a stop and scored again, things might start to get out of hand. 

Luckily for Sean Miller U of A squad, a dunk and an Aaron Gordon three a minute later cut the lead to one, and it was back to being the tight game it had been all along. 

The Wildcats kept rolling, rattling of a 12-2 run that eventually gave them a 4-point lead with 8:16 remaining. The pressure was then squarely on Duke's shoulders, but especially Parker's, who had only scored two points in the second half to that point (from the free throw line). 

Rodney Hood, by far Duke's best player on Friday, pitched in an and-1 to cut the lead to one, but the Wildcats kept pushing, this time with an 8-0 run to gain a 57-48 lead, ultimately the knockout punch, with about six and a half minutes to play. 

Hood answered the call again, this time burying a shot from beyond the arc, but Duke couldn't defend the paint, allowing consecutive Arizona dunks. 

HTR's Top 25: Week 4

Week 3 is in the books, which sadly means we're already a quarter of the way through the regular season schedule. Putting that thought aside, this was another exciting week of football around the country, with big games going on out west, in Texas and in Big Ten country.

Rank	Team
1	Alabama
2	Oregon
3	Ohio State
4	Clemson
5	LSU
6	Stanford
7	Florida State
8	Louisville
9	Georgia
10	Texas A&M
11	Oklahoma State
12	South Carolina
13	UCLA
14	Miami (FL)
15	Oklahoma
16	Michigan
17	Northwestern
18	Washington
19	Ole Miss
20	Florida
21	Arizona State
22	Baylor
23	Notre Dame
24	Texas Tech
25	Wisconsin

Bullets: 

• All week, the talk was about how important this weekend was for the Big Ten. Whether or not a better performance would have done anything at all vis-a-vis the conference's reputation is debatable, but needless to say the Big Ten didn't do well this week. The Buckeyes did get a win on the road at Cal, but the Badgers went down in the desert at Arizona State and the Huskers completely collapsed at home against UCLA after having built up an 18 point lead by the halfway point of the second quarter. Additionally, Illinois couldn't beat Washington at Soldier Field, Purdue lost a close one to Notre Dame, Minnesota struggled against Western Illinois and Penn State fell at home to UCF. The conference went 7-5 over the weekend. 

• Speaking of Wisconsin, that ending was one of the more mind-bogglingly nonsensical finishes I've ever seen. Spencer Hall has a nice breakdown of what happened at the end of what was otherwise a fun game to watch. In short, Wisconsin definitely did not play that the right way whatsoever, but there had to have been some sort of penalty called on Arizona State for a delay of game. At minimum, that sequence of events required some sort of action from the refs, who did absolutely nothing. I feel bad for the Badgers; I understand the desire to set up an ideal spot on the field for your kicker, but sometimes you just need to take what's there, lest you risk something disastrous happening...which, is exactly what happened. 
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• Some will argue for Oregon at the top spot, and that's definitely reasonable. However, Alabama just went into Kyle Field and beat Texas A&M at its own game. This Alabama team is probably not Saban's best, but it was good enough to drop a whopping 49 points on the road against the No. 6 team in the country. Until Alabama loses, I see no reason why they shouldn't remain in the top spot. 

• Louisville didn't do much this week to change my general perception of them: they're a very good team, but I just can't confidently call them great given their competition. I didn't watch their game this weekend, but a 27-13 victory against a bad Kentucky team doesn't exactly inspire confidence. 

• The State of Mississippi. Texas has seen better days, but the Rebels' 44-23 victory in Austin is still a solid one for Hugh Freeze's now 3-0 Ole Miss squad. Meanwhile, Dan Mullen's Bulldogs lost at Auburn. Unfortunately for the folks in Starkville, it looks like Ole Miss is the top team in the state, a point worsened by the fact that Freeze is in his second season in Oxford while Mullen is in his fifth in Starkville. Whether Freeze makes the Rebels a legitimate contender remains to be seen, but we've probably seen enough from Mullen's tenure in the SEC West to know that Mississippi State probably won't get there. That's by no means a knock on Mullen's coaching ability; the reality is that that division is just too stacked, what with Alabama and LSU (and now Texas A&M as of last season), recovering Auburn and Arkansas programs and, perhaps most painfully for Mississippi State, Ole Miss under Freeze. 

• Pac 12 South. Oregon will once again represent the Pac 12 North in the conference title game barring some ridiculous happenings, but the race in the South should be a wild one, with Arizona, Arizona State and UCLA all looking to contend. UCLA appears to be the strongest of the bunch, but the Sun Devils picked up a nice win against what should prove to be another solid Badgers squad. Meanwhile, Arizona has looked good while playing absolutely nobody, but that will change with their Sept. 28 trip to Washington. 

Pac 12 South Preview: The Odyssey and Other Familiar Stories of Personal Relevance

Already blabbered about: SEC West, SEC East, ACC Coastal, ACC Atlantic, Big 12 (Part 1), Big 12 (Part 2), Pac 12 North 

So, I got a little lazy last week and decided not to finish the Pac 12 preview in a timely fashion. With that said, this will probably be the last preview, because the time spent to page views ratio is pretty grim, not unlike Nick Sheridan's completion percentage on passes going farther than five yards past the line of scrimmage. Yeah, that means no Big East preview (or worse, MAC, Conference USA, etc.). I have my limits. 

After this post, I promise that it'll be all Michigan the rest of the way until 9/1. No more of this "talking about other teams" business. I will do this in spite of the fact that there is really nothing Michigan-centric to discuss/write about right now other than maybe some Denard Robinson fan fiction and possibly a season overview that features some variation of the following: "the 2012 team will have a worse record than last year's team but will actually be better." You know, mostly annoying things. Anyway, here's some stuff about the Pac 12 South for all you tens of search engine wayfarers getting ensnared in this shoddy SEO web. 

This man wears sunglasses inside--at least, I think it's inside, but since it's the Pac 12 he might also be on the top of a mountain somewhere getting all zen and whatnot--and might actually be good at coaching football, which flies in the face of pretty much every pre-conceived notion regarding Lane Kiffin that you've ever had. 

Prologue 
The 2011 season in the Pac 12 South was like when you're watching Jeopardy and you're just killing it, getting every answer right and generally making your friends look like they're operating on a plane of existence several levels beneath yours. After a while it just gets sad, and you just sit out a round to let somebody else shine for a little while. You jump in and nail that question about Rachmaninoff just to remind everyone who the boss is, but you generally let your weaker peers fight for second best. 

Anyway, don't pretend like you didn't cheat on a few of those questions...yeah, I'm looking at you, USC. You know what I'm talking about, the 'ol "mouth the answer right as the guy on TV says it, pretending like you knew it before but just wanted the pleasure of feeling like you came to the realization of that answer at the same exact time as this ridiculous dude with the encyclopedic brain" maneuver. We've all done it. Hey, I've done it, and I'm not proud of it but dangit not getting a single question before Trebek takes you into that first mid-round commercial break is not a good look, man.