Beware: If you are a favorite before the holiday break then watch your back, because the upsets are flying this week so far!
On Monday, undefeated Utah State (#19 in Strength, projected 3-seed) fell to #241 Weber State, 75-72, for their first loss.
On Tuesday, 11-0 Mississippi State fell to Drake, 58-52, and that's not all. Check out Kenpom.com's top games on Tuesday:
These are the top 12 games on Tuesday: 10 were upsets. Many were expected to be close as you can see, like Virginia-Miami, but Duke was soundly beaten by Wake Forest, and Oregon was a solid favorite over Utah Valley. Even Louisville was the favorite and lost!
But the worst upset so far, maybe the upset of the year? Has to beat Eastern Illinois beating Iowa. The Hawkeyes came in #21 in Strength while Eastern Illinois was #342, making Iowa a 33 point favorite (32 in Pomeroy, 32.5 by the oddsmakers). The Panthers won 92-83, a 40+ point swing.
Iowa was without star Kris Murray, but they beat Southeast Missouri State 106-75 without him a few days ago. They even led at halftime, 45-37! Clearly what happened here is that Iowa didn't take Eastern Illinois seriously—probably after looking at their Pomeroy ranking—and just went through the motions before their Christmas break, which lasts until the 29th. They just wanted to get this game over with and get home before the big national storm/freezeout that's coming starting tonight.
Iowa jumped to an 18-4 lead and that's it, game over, we can relax, right? And though that lead dwindled to 8 by halftime, any halftime lead just causes more complacency. But Eastern Illinois, despite being ranked so low, revealed an insane bench that outscored Iowa's bench 54-10 and shot 73% from the floor. As a team they shot 72% in the 2nd half.
The win by Eastern Illinois is listed as the biggest upset of the year on Kenpom; Iowa lost as a 99.8% favorite. It's tied for the biggest upset since Pomeroy has ranked upsets in 2011, tied with Stephen F Austin beating Duke in overtime on Nov. 26, 2019.
The Panthers now have four wins on the year:
- St. Mary of the Woods - the "Pomeroys", an NAIA team, lost 102-40
- Blackburn - the Beavers lost 93-43; they are an NCAA Division III team
- IUPUI - or, Indiana University/Purdue University Indianapolis, lost 70-59. The Jaguars are almost dead last in Strength, #362 of 363 D-I teams
- Iowa
It's like Sesame Street said: one of these things is not like the other.
In Pomeroy Iowa fell from #21 to #38 as a result, while Eastern Illinois jumped from #356 to #348 (I'd be a bit disappointed at that). It looks like Iowa will fall to about #45 in Strength and the Panthers will leap from #342 to #312. The biggest effect will be seen in our Success ratings, which rank without considering the score; Iowa will drop around 100 spots, from #68 to #168 after the bad loss. Eastern Illinois might jump from their present #348 to around #312, pretty much what they did in Strength.
Every coach in the country that is playing a game—against any level of opponent—before Christmas should be pointing to the Iowa loss and saying, "Yes, it could happen to us, too, if we don't take this team seriously!"
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