Before we get to the basketball, I owe an apology to a friend of mine. On a road trip this weekend, "Concrete Schoolyard" came up on the iPod shuffle, and in a midst of a discussion of how awesome Jurassic 5 is, he asked me how many people were in the group. At the time, I thought this was a stupid question and laughed at him, since the group's name clearly indicates there are five members, but a check of their Wikipedia page informs me that, for much of the Jurassic 5's history, they consisted of six people. Oops. It's one of those misleading names, like that slow white guy on Notre Dame's football team a couple years back named Joey Goodspeed.
Speaking of confusing names, last night I was intrigued by Ken Pomeroy's tweet about how Texas' stud freshman Tristan Thompson isn't even the nation's leading scorer among guys named Tristan Thompson. Being the naturally curious type, I wondered what team this other guy played for, but I found it nearly impossible to find him, as any Google search for "Tristan Thompson" or some variation like "other Tristan Thompson" just led me to stories about the guy on Texas. Finally, on about the 7th page of my Google search, I discovered that the other Tristan Thompson plays a few hours up the freeway for North Texas, and is having a monster year, shooting 85% from the line, 50% from 2, and 40% from three to lead the Sun Belt Conference in scoring and lead his team to a 16-6 record. And no one can even find out about him because someone else with the same name is getting more hype at a bigger school. Poor guy. Perhaps he should change his first name a la Jason nee Jay Williams, and then make sure to stay off of motorcycles.
And for those who enjoy the suffering of their enemies, here's Kevin O'Neill cementing his reputation as the biggest dink in college basketball by calling out one his former Arizona players after a loss on Saturday. It amazes me that this clown still has a job, as he not only is a complete asshole, but also sucks at coaching college basketball (199-204 career record, hasn't done anything remotely resembling a good job since the early 90s while at Marquette.) And for even more schadenfreude, here's a St. John's student getting choked by MSG security. If that's one of the same losers who was booing JerShon Cobb while he was injured, then he had it coming.
Tonight's Big Ten games after the jump...
Purdue Boilermakers at Wisconsin Badgers (-5), 6 PM central, ESPN
After Wisconsin's loss to Penn State over the weekend, Purdue becomes the only potential challenger to Ohio State for the Big Ten regular season title, and since the Boilers are already 2 games behind OSU in the loss column and got smoked when the two played last week, they can ill-afford to lose this one. But the game's at the Kohl Center, so they'll probably lose and Ohio State will all but lock up the #1 seed in the Big Ten tournament. Definitely a game worth watching though, as the Jordan Taylor vs Lewis Jackson match-up alone will be worth the price of admission.
Penn St. Nittany Lions at Illinois Fighting Illini (-8), 8 PM central, BTN
This line looks to be about 4 points too high, given that a) Penn State has had Illinois' number the past few years, b) Penn State has been better than Illinois during Big Ten play, and c) the blizzard over the Midwest should greatly reduce the attendance and thus neutralize the Illini's home court advantage a bit. I wouldn't expect Penn State to pull this one off, but they should be able to keep it within 8, so take the Nits and buy Bruce Weber a clue with your winnings.
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