For the past few seasons, you have seen my weekly Top-25 post every Monday, which is something that I think became pointless as everyone posts a weekly Top-25 and that doesn’t get the type of views needed to make it worth my time if I am being quite honest here. While there won’t be a weekly Top-25 on this site, I will continue to post Top-25 rankings now twice a week on both Twitter and Instagram, so you can still see that. What will be changing though is that I am now doing a weekly awards article that will now post every Monday. This will go over my Team of the week, Player of the week, upset of the week, and my personal favorite, the dumpster-fire of the week, which are three topics that I think will go around and wraps up the games that took place this week.
Team of the week: Texas Longhorns
There were a lot of nominations for the Team of the week with teams like Washington, Kentucky, and even Nicholls State having a chance to win this award. My pick though is the Texas Longhorns. Head Coach Shaka Smart comes into this season on the hot seat, so he is in need of a big season and he certainly got the season off to a great start as his Longhorns won at Purdue on Saturday night. The Longhorns week got off to a nice start as Andrew Jones scored 20 in his first game back after beating Leukemia, as the Longhorns beat Northern Colorado comfortably. Then they won at Purdue which is a really great road win, this game saw Matt Coleman score 22 points and finish with 7 assists, including ones on the Horns final three field-goal attempts. This type of win will go a long way in terms of helping the Longhorns not only make the NCAA Tournament but also getting a high seed in the tournament.
Player of the week: Jordan Roland – Northeastern
Northeastern has beaten now both Boston University and Harvard and is now has the claim to be the best team in the Boston area. One big reason for this has been the play of senior guard Jordan Roland who has averaged 40.5 points per game for the Huskies. Roland started his season only scoring 39 in Northeastern’s win over Boston University. Then in the big game of the week against a Harvard team that was receiving Top-25 votes in the preseason, Roland scored 42 points to help lead the Huskies to an 84-79 win over the Crimson.
Upset of the week: Nicholls State beating Pittsburgh
There are so many upsets that happen on a weekly basis but I think one of the biggest ones was Nicholls State beating Pittsburgh. Nicholls really challenged a good Illinois team on Tuesday but were unable to come away with a win as they lost in Overtime. Most teams would then probably throw out a bad performance in their next game but the Colonels did not, they won at Pittsburgh early on Saturday afternoon and proved that their performance at Illinois was not just a fluke.
Co-Dumpster-fires of the week: Nebraska and Northwestern
The battle for last in the Big Ten might be one of the more interesting races this year as there are two teams that have been completely terrible at the start of the season. Let’s start with Nebraska, they started the season getting run off the court by UC Riverside. That is less than ideal but they had a chance to rebound against Southern Utah, that didn’t happen as they lost in double overtime. Safe to say, this Nebraska team is still a few years from ever being near the NCAA Tournament. With Nebraska struggling, Northwestern looked poised to show that they are not the worst team in the Big Ten. However, that failed miserably as they lost 71-61 against Merrimack, a College that just became a D1 program this year and got run off the court on Wednesday to a bad Maine team. Safe to say the bottom of the Big Ten has been nothing short of horrific at the start of this season.