Quick! Name The Best Basketball Team In Amherst

There’s a college basketball team from Amherst, Mass., that is undefeated, considered the best from its region and ranked among the top few in the country. And UMass is having a heck of a year, too.

Amherst College is 9-0, ranked No. 1 in the Northeast Region and is considered among the best Division III teams in the country. Trouble is, the Lord Jeffs share a zip code with the Minutemen, who are 6-0 and the No. 3 team in the Top 25 that gets the most attention.

“Back in 1989 we won the ECAC tournament and the two TV stations from Springfield had us on all the time, but of course that was before Cal came to town. Since then you never know we’re 9-0 and that doesn’t bother me,” Amherst coach David Hixon said Thursday. “I joke with Cal all the time that he’s taken all the pressure off me because no one reads about us in the paper. That wasn’t the way it is way in the old days long ago, before 1989, ‘B.C., Before Cal.’ Things were different then.”

Cal is John Calipari who has led one of major college basketball’s top program turnarounds in his seven seasons at Massachusetts.

Hixon, who is in his 19th season as head coach at his alma mater, has a good relationship with Calipari.

“He’s a terrific guy who always takes time out no matter how busy he is to come over and say hi wherever we are,” Hixon said. “I run into him at the bank during the summer when we both have camps and I always ask him to let me go first because I know his deposit is going to be bigger.”

The Minutemen and Boston College just resumed their longtime rivalry and the game all New England wants is UMass and UConn. But how about the “Battle of Amherst?” The schools have met 43 times since 1901-02 with the last meeting in 1960-61, a UMass victory that brought the Minutemen within 26-17 in the rivalry.

“We have the upper hand in the series,” Hixon said with a laugh. “Let him call.”

Two grand

Eddie Benton of Vermont became the 335th player in Division I history to reach 2,000 points when he broke the barrier last week with 42 points in a 103-83 victory over Hofstra.

The 5-foot-11 Benton has 2,004 points and his latest outing was his 21st game with 30 or more points.

He is on pace to finish his career with 2,586 points and that would get him past Calvin Murphy, at 5-10, the only player under 6-foot to score more than 2,500 points. Murphy had 2,548 at Niagara from 1968-70.

Vermont became the 187th school to have a 2,000-point scorer. Duke leads with seven (Jim Spanarkel, Mike Gminski, Gene Banks, Mark Alarie, Johnny Dawkins, Danny Ferry and Christian Laettner), while Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee have five each.

Tripled double

The triple-double and double-double have become annoying statistics that seem almost obsessive to some. Well, top-ranked Kansas had one last week in an 83-63 victory over Rice that’s a rarity.

Three Jayhawks had double-doubles for a team triple-double. Scot Pollard had 10 points and 12 rebounds and Raef LaFrentz had 11 points and 11 rebounds, while Jacque Vaughn had 10 points and 13 assists.

It’s been awhile

The barometer for success for college basketball programs is NCAA tournament appearances and as the early part of the season comes to an end it may be worth a look at some schools which haven’t been in the 64-team field in at least two years.

Florida State, Georgia Tech, Iowa, LSU, Pittsburgh, St. John’s and Vanderbilt weren’t in either of the last two NCAA tournaments. For Ohio State, Princeton, Texas-El Paso, Southern Cal, Houston and DePaul, the drought has been a year longer. Georgia, Penn State, Rutgers and North Carolina State are even a year past that.

There are many others, but those are some programs to keep an eye on as the calendar winds to days of talk of bubble teams.

Big Ten streaks

The Big Ten was part of some interesting streaks that were snapped or lengthened last week.

Detroit beat Michigan State last week for the first time since 1976 when a guy named Dick Vitale was calling his own T-Os. It snapped Detroit’s 20-game losing streak to the Big Ten, dating to 1984.

St. Bonaventure beat Wisconsin last week, the Bonnies’ first victory over a Big Ten team since downing Purdue in the 1971 NIT.

Army’s loss to Northwestern on Tuesday was the Cadets’ ninth straight to a Big Ten team. The last win was over Illinois in 1967-68, when Bobby Knight was coach at West Point and Mike Krzyzewski was a starting guard.