Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Is Ben Woodside this year's Stephen Curry?

We talked to a relative in North Dakota today. Apparently they just had a blizzard and the snow drifts are covering the windows of the house. Well, at least there is something to be excited about in the state. North Dakota State is headed to the NCAA tournament. After trailing for virtually the entire game, Michael Tveidt (which seems to be pronounced Tweet) hit a three pointer to give NDSU a two point lead. Then, after Oakland tied it, NDSU chose not to call time out. Instead, Ben Woodside calmly dribble down, passed on a guarded three, acted like he was going to drive to the bucket, and calmly knocked down a jumper for the game winner.

Is Ben Woodside this year's Stephen Curry? Eh, probably not. North Dakota State won't get that good a seed. But Woodside could still give some elite team a big scare next week. He averages 23 points a game, 43% on threes, with an ORtg of 120.1.

By the way, if you are ever really bored, check out the wikipedia pages for each Division 1 conference. By far the most ridiculous is the Summit League where teams stretch from North Dakota to Louisiana to Utah to Michigan. That seriously cannot be worth the travel costs.

Oh, and if you are so busy as to not catch the obvious, John Gasaway has unveiled the final tempo free conference numbers. Log5 predictions for the conference tournaments are also rolling out on BP Unfiltered. (Yeah, about Georgetown having an easy path to the semifinals? Not so much.)