Two Early Glimpses at Cinderella

After yesterday's insane and thrilling day of college hoops, it will be pretty easy for today's light slate to fade into NFL oblivion and go completely unnoticed.  However, for you fellow Hoops Maniacs, a fantastic non-conference mid-major matchup is happening today at 2:30 in Huntington, west Virginia when the Iona Gaels visit the Marshall THundering Herd.

Iona is 7-1 on the season, with their only loss a 91-90 overtime thriller to Purdue before Thanksgiving.  Marshall enters at 5-2, but their latest loss was a very well-played 6-point loss at Syracuse, who will likely be the #1 team in the country tomorrow morning when the new AP poll is released.   Neither team has a glamorous marquee win to hang their hat on, but neither have just fattened up on teams significantly beneath them either.  Iona owns wins over Maryland (by 28), St. Joe's (who beat Creighton yesterday) and a good Denver team in overtime, who will compete for the Sun Belt's automatic bid to the tourney.

Marshall's first loss was a two-point overtime loss to Ohio, and it came fresh on the heels of a road win over Cincinnati, before their entire team had their jersey's and perhaps their student-status ripped by Coach Cronin (more).

Both team's are potential pesky #13/#14 seeds come March.  It will be interesting to see which can pick up an important seed-jockeying win for the resume today.


MANIAC'S PICK: Marshall -1.5