I don’t ever want college basketball to get to the ridiculous level of a “signing day” like college football had yesterday. This is clearly among the first steps that create these huge egos that walk around on college campuses today.

–No. 2 Duke 89, No. 3 North Carolina 78. Wayne Ellington’s 3 attempt with about three minutes to go that rattled in then rattled out is what probably killed Carolina’s momentum. No matter, Duke was the better team and deserved this win. I’m already looking forward to seeing how Carolina plays with Lawson at Cameron Indoor at the end of the season. Other notables: Hansbrough eclipses His Airness to move into 11th all time on UNC’s scoring list, Paulus went 6-for-8 from 3 for his 18 points.

–No. 1 Memphis 77, Southern Methodist 48. Southern Methodist sounds like some D-II program, but then you remember it stands for SMU and that was the school with all of the football troubles in the ’80s. Doesn’t really matter because Memphis took a 2×4 to them anyway. I’m starting to think that Tennessee won’t even lose by less than 10 against this team in Memphis.

–No. 8 Wisconsin 60, Iowa 54. The Badgers were trailing at the half, but they win in their usual tough, six-point, Big Ten type of way. There’s nothing left to discover about this team. They’re solid and deserve, at worst, a 4 seed in March.

–No. 12 Texas 64, Oklahoma 54. Only peeked at this game when UConn-Syracuse was at commercial. Oklahoma did have the lead for a while. Blake Griffin led the team in points (19), rebounds (15), assists (4) and tied in blocks and steals (one each). Okay, Oklahoma, you’re going to need to do more than that to have some success.

–No. 19 Connecticut 63, Syracuse 61. Break up the Huskies, who’ve won six straight and give Calhoun a one-game advantage on his colleague, Jim Boeheim, on the all-time win list. I thought that Syracuse got a little tired (they’re currently only playing seven schollies) and UConn kind of outlasted them. It was also good to see G-Mac hangin’ out, though I wish he’d be in some NBA threads right about now.

–No. 20 Kansas State 74, Nebraska 59. Only four home games left for Beastley. See him while you can, ‘Cats fans.

–No. 22 Notre Dame 95, Seton Hall 69. The Hall is showing they’re a year away. Notre Dame, however, is here and now. I need to see some more of this team to really develop a solid opinion on them. Is it more than just the growing legend of Luke Harangody and the stroke of Kyle McAlarney?

–No. 23 Vanderbilt 67, Georgia 59. Hey, a road win in the SEC for the Commies! Then again, Georgia’s an also-ran.

Notable:

Georgia Tech 89, Wake Forest 83. The Yellow Jackets aren’t going to make The Dance and they’re trying to bring down as many people as possible in the process.

Baylor 80, Texas Tech 74. New Knight has a long way to go, yada, yada.

Duquesne 102, St. Joseph’s 88. Of course, I add the Hawks to the better side of the bubble and the Dukes go out and channel their December version of their team. Also, you can see that this could be qualified as a trap game, as St. Joe’s was likely looking ahead to their Saturday game against Xavier.

Maryland 70, Boston College 65. Gary Williams has 600 wins now.

Utah 81, UNLV 73. Vegas’ hot streak comes to an end and Utah reminds everyone that they’ve still got a distant shot to take this conference.

Florida State 62, Miami (FL) 55. Intriguing…

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