Mid-Major Madness

AU and Bucknell took on two of the top mid-major teams last night, East Tennessee State and College of Charleston, respectively. Last week HC took on Manhattan, which is another school that is always decent. ETSU is ranked 7th in the CollegeInsider.com poll, C of C is 5th, and Manhattan is 11th. Also of note is that Lafayette comes in at 24 on the poll, which they'll probably fall off of after their blowout loss to Cal State Northridge, a mediocre team if there ever was one.

AU beat ETSU in their biggest victory of the season thus far. Freshman Linas Lekavicius went 6-7 from deep, with 22 points in 18 minutes of play. This kid is going to be legit, maybe even better than Rodriguez in a couple of years. Jernavis Draughn had his second double-double in 2 days, with 20 pts and 11 boards. He's starting to make me look better for putting him on my all-league team.

Bucknell struggled against CofC, which may be due to their seeming inability to win any games at all, or it may be due to the fact that Charleston is just plain nasty and is on a tear right now, winning their last 9 games. AU led all the way through against ETSUThe Bucknell situation is weird, and I'm not sure whether it's a lack of depth, killer instinct, coaching, or what, but they keep losing games that they ought to be able to win.

HC all but beat Manhattan, but they seem to be having trouble closing out games, as they dropped leads to the Jaspers and St. John's.

The only real significant PL OOC games coming up are:

-Holy Cross and Marist in MSG on Jan. 3
-Niagara at AU on Jan 5
-LC at UPenn, Jan 7
-Loyola (Md) at Navy

The HC game is only significant because it's in MSG. Marist is similar to HC in that it's struggled thus far this season, but will probably be more effective down the stretch.

Loyola and Navy will be battling for the "2nd worst in the Mid Atlantic" trophy. Should be exciting (not exciting).  @ 10:10 AM