This is your Morning Commute. Additional links after the jump.
Before the season started, this would have been an easy question to answer. Georgetown was/is in the top-25, Maryland was/is re-building and every other team played/plays for a small conference that typically doesn't get a lot of respect in the national scene. It was the Hoyas, and anyone who said otherwise could have been subject to public ridicule.
But things have changed considerably this season. Not so much with Maryland, they're still re-building and probably won't make the tournament at all, but a new contender has entered the race. George Mason has won 14 straight games, clinched their conference, and is starting to look like a threat in the process.
I might be shading my opinion slightly because Mason has surprised us before. If they were playing this way before their first tournament run, I might not have given them the time of day. But they've shown that they can do it before, and I happened to live in Connecticut at the time, so I'm still getting over it.
And things have become considerably harder for the Hoyas now that their point guard and leader Chris Wright has undergone surgery to repair a broken bone in his hand. He is expected to come back before the end of the season, but we don't really know how effective he will be once gets back.
George Mason's winning streak is the longest in the nation. They are the team that will enter the NCAA tournament with the most momentum of any in the area. I'm still picking Georgetown, just because I don't like betting against the big teams and I'm scared to go out on a limb, but I wouldn't be totally shocked to see if George Mason gets further than the Hoyas.
Must reads from around the SB Nation network:
- Hogs Haven asks how important it is for a QB to throw at the combine.
- Mike Rizzo went on the radio and talked about the the state of the Nats, Federal Baseball has more.
- Testudo Times with a look at Maryland's new football jerseys, more on this later.