It’s still difficult in November to get a lot of people to care about a random basketball game in Las Vegas between two schools that are historically more likely to meet in a College Football Playoff than a Final Four.
The crowd at MGM Grand Garden Arena suggested as much.
It looked pretty empty.
And who knows if the financials will ever make enough sense for the Players Era Festival to continue long-term? (There are reasons to be skeptical, and event organizers have already acknowledged they didn’t plan to break even this year.) But, all that aside, there was something super-fun, and undeniably cool, about watching two good college basketball teams — one from the Big Ten, the other from the SEC — compete for real money late Saturday night.
Final score: Oregon 83, Alabama 81.
For winning the first ever Players Era Festival, the Ducks will leave Las Vegas with $1.5 million designed to be dispersed to players. That’s $250,000 more than second-place Alabama received, meaning Oregon’s players earned an extra quarter-million Saturday simply by scoring more points than Alabama’s players in both teams’ eighth game of the season. If the total of $1.5 million were dispersed evenly to the men who are averaging at least 3 minutes per game for Oregon, it would come to roughly $136,000 per player.
That’s not bad for a week of work during Thanksgiving break from college.
As for the game, Nate Bittle got a stick-back dunk that broke a tie with 4.4 seconds remaining and eventually became the game-winner. It was a big-time play from a fourth-year player having a breakthrough season, as Bittle is now averaging a career-high 14.6 points and a career-high 9.4 rebounds in a career-high 27.5 minutes per contest.
The upset of Alabama pushed the Ducks to 8-0 after they were unranked in the preseason and picked sixth in the unofficial Big Ten poll conducted by The Columbus Dispatch and The Indianapolis Star. It’s a start that’s compelled me to move Oregon to No. 11 in Sunday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings, where Kansas remains No. 1 for the 28th straight day to start the season.
Alabama is down to No. 12.
And San Diego State is a new addition to the Top 25 And 1, at No. 25, after upsetting Houston on Saturday 73-70 in overtime, to improve to 4-2 with wins over Houston and Creighton and losses only to teams ranked ahead of them in the Top 25 And 1 — specifically No. 10 Gonzaga and No. 11 Oregon. Houston, now 0-3 against top-70 teams at BartTorvik.com, is down to No. 26.
SDSU’s jump from unranked to No. 25, combined with Houston’s fall from No. 10 to No. 26, pushed Oklahoma out of the Top 25 And 1, no fault of its own. The Sooners are now what amounts to No. 27.
Top 25 And 1 rankings
In: San Diego State
Out: Oklahoma
