Less Than 5 Weeks and Monday Recap

It's 10 to midnight here in Illinois, and I'm still trying digest what tonight and this whole past week means for the rest of the season. We are now less than five weeks away from Selection Sunday, so if you didn't start looking for Final Four teams in November, now is the time to start doing it. Here's how I look at it. There are ten teams that I think are in contention for a Final Four. Those ten are Arizona, Kansas, Louisville, North Carolina, Duke, Villanova, Gonzaga, Oregon, Virginia and Kentucky. These teams can change throughout the season (Oregon wasn't on this list until 48 hours ago), so I try not to get to attached to these lists, but they are helpful in giving you a picture of what teams can actually make a run. 

Tonight we had two major games: Louisville/Virginia and Kansas/Kansas State. The first game was honestly nothing new. Virginia has five players step on the court, Louisville explodes just thinking of them, Virginia wins by double digits. Unfortunately, my prediction of Donovan Mitchell going off fell short, as he only had 16 points. 

Kansas and Kansas State had a really sloppy and tight game, but Kansas got the win. Despite a strong showing tonight, I'm starting to worry about this Jayhawks squad. We all know about their seemingly infinite amount of off court issues, but on the court, they have tendencies to go stagnant on offense and miss free throws. That's not a combination I like, but whatever Bill Self can figure something out.