Wow! The Big Ten teams won all of their games today (11/29) against various degrees of opposition. Of course, the crown jewel is Purdue's victory over Duke to take the Great Alaska Shootout.

I know, I know, it is WAY early in the season, but hopefully it is a sign of great things to come for the Big Ten this year!!!

The made-for-ESPN Big Ten - ACC Challenge takes place this week.

Great line-up of games (well, except maybe for the first one!):

Northwestern at Florida State
Indiana at Wake Forest
North Carolina State at Michigan
Illinois vs. North Carolina
Wisconsin at Maryland
Georgia Tech at Ohio State
Clemson at Purdue
Duke at Michigan State
Minnesota at Virginia

The marquee games have to be Duke @ Michigan State (despite Duke's loss the Purdue last night) and Illinois at North Carolina.

I'm heading over to College Park tomorrow to see the Badgers take on the Terps. We've built up a nice little rivalry with them -- beating them in OT in an earlier Big 10-ACC challenge and then getting embarrassed in the NCAAs here in DC when the Terps won the national championship.

I dunno, Bucky, there are people out there who think that Florida State could be the sleeper in the ACC this year, and Northwestern plays that odd style that Carmody first used at Princeton. That could be a decent game. The rest WILL be good games. I'm praying for my Spartans against Duke, but we'll see.

Yep, the Big Ten is hot in the Challenge, Michigan led the charge by winning one of, let's see, 5 games so far. :-) Wake looked really good, UNC scrapped to a tough win, and MD looks young and talented. Who knows what happens tonight, but the ACC looks pretty good so far. Did Indiana have a bad night or are they that bad this year?

Of course, the big ACC fan that I am, I will be rooting for Mich. St. to beat up the Dukies, we non-Duke fans have a hard time being ACC-loyal when Duke is playing.

I am sooooo glad college bball is back. Last night was great, watching 4 games in 4 hours, going between games all night.

Yeah -- they're up 4-1 thus far, but don't get too excited -- the wins all came in ACC territory. The Big Ten gets 3 of the 4 games at home tonight -- only the Golden Rodents go on the road to uva.

Man -- what's up with that? 2-2 for a record (including a squeaker win at home over Xavier)-- and a daunting schedule up ahead: Missouri, Notre Dame, Butler and Kentucky. All this before Big Ten play begins. Mike Davis had better watch out -- Basketball is to Indiana what Football is to Nebraska.

We had a fun time at College Park last night despite the Badgers' OT loss. What a great scene in the Comcast Center. Tough crowd -- the students and other fans were really pumped up. Bit overdone though when Gary Williams entered the arena like a prize fighter to the chants of "Gary! Gary! Gary!" -- do other schools do that with their coaches?? Badgers need to really limit their turnovers (they had 14) and make more free throws (13-20) -- in other words, get back to playing BadgerBall! But all in all a very good early season test.

I love the ACC-Big Ten Challenge -- hope ESPN continues it for years.

My Tar Heels looked lightyears better than last year against an excellent Illinois team. Maybe Ol' Roy IS that good?

Ga. Tech may be the ACC's only win tonight, though the dookies have a way of surprising you when you count them out. Look for another 5-4 ACC win, though.

I was impressed, as always, by a couple of the guys on Wisconsin's bench. Heh, heh. I really need to get up to Madison some day.

Duke made Michigan St. look more like Western Michigan, I guess the MSU hype will die down here a little, even tho they got to the Elite 8 last year, they seemed too inconsistent to be ranked up that high to begin with.

OUCH!! Big Ten goes 2-7 in the matchups. And on behalf of all Boilermakers everywhere, I want to apologize to Spartan fans. If we hadn't beat Puke in Alaska they probably wouldn't have been that fired up. eek!

Too bad the matchups are set so far in advance. I think the hot teams of Purdue and Georgia Tech would have made for a really good game right now.

Overall this challenge isn't too important, but I do wish the Big Ten could win it once

That says it all! State really sucked it up big time.

How good is Georgia Tech? They gonna vie for the ACC title?

Tech was generally picked around sixth in the league preseason, but that might have to be reevaluated. They still don't have a real inside game other than Schenser, but they are very, very quick. Right now, the ACC could have four Top 10 teams, in Duke, UNC, Wake and Georgia Tech. The key for all those teams: great backcourts, something I didn't see much of from the Big 10 teams. Maryland is also a Top 25 team and Florida State could contend for the NCAAs as well; they had a great recruiting class.

Looks like it's going to be a monster year in the last season of the real, non-football-expanded-and-diluted ACC.

Gosh that was fun to watch, even the Clemson game was interesting for most of the game. Duke's defense was impressive, I will spend the entire ACC season screaming at the tv for the refs to call fouls on them. Duke, UNC, Wake and Ga. Tech. Which one will fade before the season ends? My guess is Tech and UNC, Tech because they can't play at that level all year, and they need more inside presence, UNC because they don't have a deep enough bench, one even minor injury and they are in trouble, a major injury for two starters and they will finish just above .500 in ACC play. I hope that doesn't happen, Roy Wms has the team believing in itself again, I saw very little individual play, unlike last year.

And how about that freshman for Minnesota, Humphries? He was hot, hot and hot, both in shooting and appearance. God he is beautiful, his arms.... He will be an all-american in a year or two, and I hope he hangs around and doesn't go pro anytime soon, he is fun to watch!

Humphreys is only a freshman, so hopefully, he will hang around.

Go ACC!!!!

Hey, it's not Purdue's fault that the Spartans turned the ball over. And turned the ball over. And turned the ball over. As ugly as it was, if Duke could have thrown the ball into Lake Michigan in the first ten minutes of the game, it would have been REALLY, REALLY ugly.

UNC won't fade. Guess how many people Duke played (up until about 2 mins left) in their blowout of MSU? That's right, seven, despite their supposedly endless bench. The whole UNC/depth issue is overblown, IMO. Yes, UNC is vulnerable to a key injury, but so is most any team you could name. When David Noel returns in January, UNC will go eight-deep, and that is plenty in college basketball.

Re: Humphries. Definitely gorgeous. He originally committed to Duke, but changed his mind and went to Minnesota. Thank god. He's much better than the overhyped Luol Deng, in my opinion.

If UNC can manage to play well even without David Noel currently active, look for the return of their greatness! Remember they only went about 6 deep when they made the Final Four under Guthridge.

Even though I will get to see very little of it in no-basketball-land-that-is-texas....GO HEELS!

[ December 04, 2003, 10:08 PM: Message edited by: DallasUNC ]

The feeling around here is that Chris Humphries probably decided against Duke (he had originally signed there in his jr. year of high school)at the eleventh hour and went with Minnesota because it would be an easier out to the NBA. Seems all of the most recent big name Minnesota high school stars that went to the U of M have made early (although not so successful) exits to the NBA draft. Joel Pryzebilla a couple of years ago and Rick Rickert just this past season. The feeling is that Humphries will probably do the same thing. To bad, I could handle having him around to look at for the next 4 years. Oh yeah, he plays the game pretty well too. Averaging 26 point and 12 rebounds through his first four games as a true freshman.