Pennant Races Heat Up

Okay, college hoops fans. This is it. Buckle your chin straps and begin to focus. With the pro football season ending (gloriously I might add), the final push for NCAA tournament bids and seeding begins now. I equate it to Labor Day for MLB. Hopefully the team you root for is not only in the mix, but will not pull a Boston Red Sox or Atlanta Braves from the 2011 baseball season. Plus scouting players and teams for making out brackets and drafting for stat leagues is most important over the next 30 days.
Tonight features a marquee match-up with Florida traveling to Lexington. The Wildcats have a great opportunity to become the overall number one seed, while the red hot Gators have a shot to move up to a number two seed. Tonight is important to them as they are really floating between 2 through 4. As for the players, scouting Kentucky tonight is imperative as we need to see which of their young players steps up in a pressure game. Kentucky enjoys balance on offense with six players scoring between 9.6 pts per and 13.9. But forward Michael Kidd-Gilchrist, who is third in scoring at 12.6 per, scored 24 in a huge late December win over Louisville and 17 against UNC earlier in that month. If he plays well tonight then he will firmly have an arrow next to his name for my March draft board. As for Florida, they are going to take threes and hopefully, for their sake, hit a lot of threes. Obviously that negates a lot of what Anthony Davis adds to the Kentucky defense. The Gators also have five players score in double figures and it will be interesting to see how effective their offense can be in such a tough place to play. If guard Kenny Boynton scores anywere near his 17.6 average then he will make a claim to the middle of round one in March drafts. It will also be interesting to see how super frosh guard Brad Beal holds up in the Rupp Arena environment. It should be compelling viewing, tonight at 7.
Tonight we also have another chance to see Ohio State, who is also a favorite for a number one seed. They should be able to beat an up-and-down Purdue squad. I am also interested to see how Creighton bounces back from their third loss of the season as they take on Evansville. Iowa State at Stillwater is also a key game for a team, ISU, hoping to improve their seeding while the same is true for Alabama, heading to play at Auburn tonight.