owlfan2272

Current Scores:
70-57 Butler over Penn
66-59 Wake Forest over Xavier
70-69 UMass over Miami Oh
91-68 Richmond over Air Force
109-58 VCU over East Tennessee St
71-63 Charlotte over UNC-Asheville in OT
76-59 Miami over La Salle

Scheduled Games:
UMass(-3.5) plays MIAMI (OH) at 7 pm
Xavier (-2.5) plays WAKE FOREST at 7 pm ESPN3
Virginia Commonwealth (No Line) plays EAST TENNESSEE ST at 7 pm
RICHMOND (No Line) plays Air Force at 7 pm
#17 BUTLER (No Line) plays Pennsylvania at 7 pm
CHARLOTTE (No Line) plays N.C Asheville at 7:30 pm
La Salle (+6.5) plays MIAMI at 9 pm ESPN3

Atlantic 10 Up to Date Standings:
Charlotte 0-0 12-2
Butler 0-0 11-2
Temple 0-0 10-2
Virginia Commonwealth 0-0 11-3
Saint Louis 0-0 10-3
La Salle 0-0 9-3
Massachusetts 0-0 9-3
Dayton 0-0 9-4
Richmond 0-0 10-5
Saint Joseph's 0-0 7-4
St. Bonaventure 0-0 7-5
Xavier 0-0 7-6
Duquesne 0-0 7-7
George Washington 0-0 6-6
Rhode Island 0-0 4-8
Fordham 0-0 4-10

Overall Non-Con Record: 133-73

*Caps denote home team

7 games to kick off the New Year for the A-10 on Wednesday. UMass is a 3.5 point favorite going on the road to take on 5-6 Miami Ohio at 7 pm. Xavier looks to recover from 3 straight losses as they go on the road to play 6-5 Wake Forest on ESPN3. VCU goes on the road to take on a struggling East Tennessee St at 7 pm. Richmond is also trying to recover from 3 straight losses as they play 8-3 Air Force at home at 7 pm. #17 Butler hopes to keep rolling against Penn also at 7 pm. Charlotte will play a tricky UNC-Asheville squad at 7:30 and finally La Salle will hope to land it's biggest win of the year going on the road as 6.5 point underdogs to face Miami.

__________________
Temple Owls have won a lot.

twisted3829

La Salle and X have the hardest games IMO. I can see a 6-1 day, probably 5-2 at worst

__________________
2010-2011 Lock of the Day Contest NIT Champion

Title_BU

Just showing up, Butler's #5 RPI gets kicked in the teeth stepping on the court vs a team like Penn.

Silver lining?

For one of the few times this season, they can potentially take advantage of the primary weakness of the Pomeroy Ratings. Teams are rewarded for blowing out bad teams because margin value isn't capped. (That's a very significant problem to any pure points methodology). Conversely, why Pomeroy tends to skew to poorly scheduled, preconference.

uz2b-len

Miami without Reggie Johnson should be very beatable for La Salle. The line is out of whack and will probably shift toward La Salle by game time.

ItsyBitsySpiderII

Air Force could give Richmond fits if the Spiders lay back defensively and don't try to speed up the tempo. Let's see if Mooney is willing to adjust.

ExplorerSteve

I like the Explorers to win this game. Miami's center is a huge missing piece for the Canes. This is also a homecoming of sorts for Sam Mills and to a lesser extent Ramon Galloway (he played hs bball in south Florida for 2 years). Time for a road BCS scalp.

__________________
www.LaSalle-Explorers.com Unofficial Source for FREE LaSalle Explorers Information along with "Explorers Universe" Messageboard.

ace93

My sister, a La Salle grad, will be going to the game at Bank United Center with her boyfriend who is a native Miamian (just like my sister and me) and a UM grad student. She will obviously be rooting for La Salle, he for UM and me for whoever wins (though I am actually leaning towards Miami since I grew up rooting for them since when they brought the program back with Tito Harford).

I think Miami takes this one, though obviouly the lack of Johnson helps tons.

SpiderDave19

I think Lasalle wins by 8 or 10 if they are hitting outside shots. Miami has some shooters, but the big guy really opened it up for them. Different team without him.

A10BBall

If La Salle does pull this out, it will be interesting to see what that does to their NCAA chances..

This is the type of win that would do wonders in the eyes of the committee...

Could La Salle be the 5th bid into the tourney? It will be very interesting to see what happens in the final days of OOC play. You would have to think with the strength of the conference play now teams that finish in the top 6-7 will actually have either helped or at least not hurt their chances when in the could you have said that...

For the most of the 10 teams with a top 100 RPI.. How many conferences can say that? 1 other one?

ace93

Kadji and Gamble are no pushovers though.

uz2b-len

Could be quite a shoot out. Victory to the team that defends the perimeter best.

Knobby

Steve I like the Exploreres today too, but is there any game you don't like them?

__________________
Well, we were smaller, but at least we were slower!

vcurams05

VCU will take a big RPI hit tonight when they roll ETSU on the road. Then its figure out how to stop CJ McCollum on Saturday. Go Rams!

antboy

If the game was at Gola without Johnson, I'd like La Salle's chances. But at home I think Miami has enough other inside players to pull it out with an assist from the homecooking. Not that they needed it, but Miami got a nice assist from the refs in the Niners game, despite a piss-poor crowd in attendance. We'll see though, I think La Salle should be legitimately good this year with the perimeter players they have. Maybe they can pull this one out.

Free Quebec

VCU and Butler fans: Don't worry too much about the RPI hit from today. You aren't in the Horizon or CAA anymore so your RPI will be helped by most conference games.

(though I will concede that the Horizon is playing the RPI game beautifully this year with a great record against a joke of schedule, 29th in the country, so conference games will artificially inflate their RPIs).

__________________
A Wall St. banker, a tea party guy, and a union guy all sit down a table with 12 cookies.

The Wall St. banker takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea party guy and says, "That union guy wants a piece of your cookie."