College Basketball Daily Feast: Kansas, Syracuse and Jacob Pullen

Welcome to the Daily Feast, where every weekday, we stuff your head with the tastiest data-driven insights on college hoops.

Coffee & Cooler Talk: News and Results from Yesterday

Fear the beard. Jacob Pullen scored 38 points, believed to be the most ever in a regular season victory over a team ranked No. 1, to lead Kansas State in a rout over newly minted Kansas. The Jayhawks fall to No. 5 in the TeamRankings predictive ratings and are closer to No. 11 Notre Dame than they are No. 1 Ohio State.

Syracuse's 63-52 win over West Virginia gave Jim Boeheim his 850th win, which he celebrated by ripping on the media for three minutes. The win came despite a great three-point shooting night from West Virginia, continuing a recent trend for Syracuse. Opponents have shot 47.1 percent from three-point range over their last three games.

Lunchtime Reading: Interesting Posts From Around the Blogosphere

When filling out your NCAA bracket, do you ever get stuck on a team that you feel will either lose quickly or win a couple of games, with no middle ground? Well, The Basketball Distribution used our bracket projections, plus some clever logic, to quantify which teams that may actually be the case for.

Ivy Basketball muses on the impact of variance on the success of underdogs in the NCAA Tournament and whether sending a regular season champ or a conference tournament champ is better for a mid-major conference, in terms of maximizing the probability of their conference sticking around for a couple rounds.

Finally, congratulations are due to Dan Hanner of Yet Another Basketball Blog fame, who has found a new home at RealGM. I look forward to continuing to read his insights at the new digs.

Dinner & A Game: Notes on tonight’s hottest games—click each matchup for a more in-depth breakdown

No. 31 St. John's at No. 22 Marquette: A big game for both teams, but especially for Marquette. If the Golden Eagles take care of business at home, they'll be tied with St. John's at 7-6 in the Big East. If they lose, they'll drop below .500 in league play.

No. 47 Michigan State at No. 1 Ohio State: Michigan State needs a scalp, but you have to believe the Buckeyes will be determined to avoid a second straight loss.

No. 43 Maryland at No. 32 VA Tech: Virginia Tech is coming off a dominating performance against Georgia Tech and already won at Maryland. Could they be overconfident heading into tonight's game?

No. 13 Villanova at No. 65 Seton Hall: Villanova is clearly the better team, but at the time I'm writing this, the TeamRankings projection has them as only 55 percent favorites here. It's tough to win on the road.

No. 25 Geo Mason at No. 78 VCU: The game of the season in the Colonial, with first place George Mason (one of the hottest teams in the country) traveling 90 miles down the road to take on second-place VCU. This is the only regular season matchup between the two this season.