FanPulse CBB: We’re not hating life anymore so things are looking up

Hi Everybody!

Your Missouri Tigers have won three of their last four games, with the only loss coming on the road to 2nd place LSU (in a game Missouri probably should have won). With a few wins under the belt we actually are feeling positive and confidence continues to trend up! (if you want to keep those positive feelings don’t listen to me and Matt on the podcast... too much reality on the last one... sorry everyone).

FAN CONFIDENCE GRAPHICS

Here are the last five weeks of numbers:

• 50%
• 35%
• 42%
• 60%
• 76%

SOARING FAN CONFIDENCE! SEVENTY SIX PERCENT!

Clearly winning basketball games is better than losing basketball games. Hopefully the Tigers can keep it up.

Moving on...

Who is the Player of the Year (so far) in College Basketball?

I actually find this question incredibly difficult to answer, especially when you consider the fact that everyone is bad. But the question was asked anyway and here are the results.

• Obi Toppin, Dayton 25%
• Luka Garza, Iowa 14%
• Other 14%
• Udoka Azubuike, Kansas 11%
• Vernon Cary Jr., Duke 9%
• Malachi Flynn, San Diego State 8%
• Cassius Winston, Michigan State 7%
• Payton Pritchard, Oregon 6%
• Filip Petrusev, Gonzaga 6%

I love me some Obi Toppin. He’s become a monster in Dayton and the Flyers are running roughshod over the Atlantic 10. But the A-10 is the A-10, and currently only the 9th rated conference in the country. Outside of the Flyers, VCU, Rhode Island, and Richmond are all solid, but the rest of the league is drab. It’s for this reason I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Toppin despite him probably being my favorite player to watch of the group.

Luka Garza is putting up ridiculous numbers at Iowa, but the Hawkeyes have been sort of all over the place, whereas I’m not sure anyone impacts the game more than Udoka Azubuike at the school to the west. We hate giving credit to those guys but Doke is pretty danged good.

Cassius Winston was the preseason player of the year and he’s been terrific but his teammates haven’t lived up to expectations and that will likely knock him out of contention by the end of the season, barring some kind of turnaround.

I’ll be honest, I hedged and voted other. I’m gonna let the rest of the season play out and then vote for Xavier Pinson because surely he’s going to continue to average 30 points a game and lead Mizzou on an undefeated streak all the way to the NCAA tournament... right?

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