{"id":49172,"date":"2023-02-04T12:01:19","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T17:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=49172"},"modified":"2023-02-04T12:20:38","modified_gmt":"2023-02-04T17:20:38","slug":"saturdays-essential-college-basketball-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2023\/02\/04\/saturdays-essential-college-basketball-games\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Essential College Basketball Games on Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We have flipped the calendar to February and that means that college basketball is ramping up to the mayhem of March and the 2023 NCAA Men&#8217;s Basketball tournament. However, before we get there, conference play, and in particular rivalry games on Saturdays, become bigger and bigger.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And, this Saturday is no exception.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Can&#8217;t Miss Games on Saturday<\/h2>\n<h3>Kansas vs Iowa State<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">First up on the games to watch is a noon eastern time showdown between Kansas and Iowa State in the Big 12. The Jayhawks (18-4, 6-3) come off of a revenge win over rival Kansas State midweek 90-78 and now head into Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa to take on an Iowa State team that is still stunned by their 23-point second half collapse and a 80-77 overtime loss to Texas Tech on Monday night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cyclones, (15-6, 6-3) look to rebound today and have already defeated top 25 teams Baylor and Texas at home this season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Purdue vs Indiana<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Later on this rivalry Saturday, number one ranked Purdue will travel to Bloomington, Indiana to meet of the true college basketball brands in the Indiana Hoosiers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Boilermakers (22-1, 11-1) have won nine games in a row in the Big Ten and post one of the top big men in all of college basketball in 7\u20195\u201d Zack Edey who&#8217;s averaging 22 points per game and is a strong candidate for college basketball player of the year. Indiana (15-7, 6-5) is still trying to recover from a midweek loss at Maryland 69-55 but they do already have a couple of Big Ten home wins over Michigan State and Wisconsin earlier this season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can hear more about this big Saturday in college basketball on the latest edition of the <a href=\"http:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/podcasts\" target=\"_self\">college basketball Coast to Coast podcast<\/a> by clicking the link below. <strong>ESPN&#8217;s Rich Hollenberg<\/strong>, who will call the Iowa State Kansas game nationally, is a guest on this week&#8217;s show.<\/span><br \/>\n<iframe style=\"width: 100%; max-width: 660px; overflow: hidden; background: transparent;\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/college-basketball-coast-to-coast\/id1342668654\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" sandbox=\"allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-storage-access-by-user-activation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>North Carolina vs. Duke<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The biggest game on the docket for this Saturday night is the renewal of the rivalry between North Carolina and Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, NC.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The rivals that are only separated by 8 Miles of Tobacco Road will play for the 259th time in their storied history. This game marks the first for Duke&#8217;s new head coach and former star player John Scheyer, who&#8217;s taken over for the legendary Mike Krzyzewski.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile former North Carolina star and second year coach Hubert Davis will lead the Tar Heels onto the court knowing where they beat Duke to end the regular season last year in Coach K\u2019s final regular season game he ever coached at Cameron.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Heels, followed that up within historic national semi-final win over the Blue Devils in the Final Four last April in New Orleans. That turned out to be coach K&#8217;s final game ever<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Duke, 16-6, 7-4, is off of a narrow win at home against Wake Forest mid-week 83-81. Meanwhile, Carolina, 15-7, 7-4, suffered a stunning loss to Pitt 65-64, who came from behind to beat them in the closing seconds Saturday night at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">\u201cDuke-North Carolina always delivers!\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JayBilas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@JayBilas<\/a> and the GameDay crew are LIVE from Cameron Indoor at 11 AM ET \ud83d\udcfa <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/c8I0nasTYS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/c8I0nasTYS<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 College GameDay (@CollegeGameDay) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CollegeGameDay\/status\/1621893283650600962?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 4, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Kentucky vs Florida<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the top modern rivalries in the Southeastern Conference will also renew on Saturday night at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That&#8217;s when the unranked Wildcats look to help build their March resume\u2019 some more by taking on the Florida Gators\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Florida, 13-9, 6-3 is often impressive Wednesday night double digit win, 67-54 over top 10 Tennessee at home. Meanwhile, Kentucky rebounded from their loss last Saturday night at Rupp to the Kansas Jayhawks by beating Ole Miss 75-66 on Tuesday night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Wildcats and the Gators are perennially two the top teams in the SEC, although right now that distinction belongs to Tennessee and Alabama so far this year. Still, both the Gators and the \u2018Cats expect to be a factor in March and into the NCAA tournament.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Road opportunity\u23f3<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/GoGators?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#GoGators<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CiwZuc71wa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/CiwZuc71wa<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Florida Gators Men\u2019s Basketball (@GatorsMBK) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GatorsMBK\/status\/1621861071182090242?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 4, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Gonzaga vs St. Mary&#8217;s<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The night will end with arguably the premier rivalry game of the last 15 years in the West with Gonzaga challenging East Coast Conference rivals St Mary\u2019s in Maraga, CA.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Gales, 20-4, 9-0, are fresh off at Thursday night when over San Francisco at home which extends their conference lead. Meanwhile,\u00a0 Gonzaga, who was #1 early this season and a perennial National Championship contender, blew out Santa Clara 88-70 on Thursday night. They look to pull into a tie atop the WCC standings by beating St Mary&#8217;s. Both of these teams are strong candidates for the NCAA tournament and will rematch February 25th.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure for the best in college basketball previews Recaps and more that you stay with us on last word on sports college basketball<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have flipped the calendar to February and that means that college basketball is ramping up to the mayhem of March and the 2023 NCAA Men&#8217;s Basketball tournament. However, before we get there, conference play, and in particular rivalry games on Saturdays, become bigger and bigger.\u00a0 And, this Saturday is no exception.\u00a0 Can&#8217;t Miss Games [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4448,"featured_media":49175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[773],"tags":[861,777,2889,878,881,776,877,860],"class_list":["post-49172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-florida-gators","tag-indiana-hoosiers","tag-iowa-state-cyclones","tag-kansas-jayhawks","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-purdue-boilermakers","tag-villanova-wildcats"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4448"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}