Fresh off the heels of a sneaky home loss to Miami, Coach K is doing an excellent job preparing for Wednesday's showdown with North Carolina.

"I think [North Carolina is] by far the most talented team in the country," Krzyzewski told Bruce Pearl and Jeff Goodman today on SiriusXM's "Inside College Basketball". "Maybe not by far, but they are the most talented team -- especially offensively. And they've been playing together for two years. We'll have a tough game against them. Hopefully we'll play well, learn and have a chance to beat them at the end."

Now, hold on a tick. The Heels, although a very good team, seem to have slipped off the ledge of elite teams in the past few weeks. Many would agree that they've been slacking as of late, and also are down an important piece with Dexter Strickland sidelined for the rest of the season.

At this moment, you'd have a hard time convincing pundits that Roy Williams' team is the first, second, maybe third, possibly even fourth most talented team in college basketball. They just aren't scaring people right now like they did in 2005 and 2009.

Duke certainly hasn't been playing their best lately either, but this reeks of a classic Coach K ploy. To me, Coach K heralding the Heels as "the most talented team" was done to deflect any pressure from his own team, eliminate the opportunity for bulletin board material, and, most importantly, undersell his own squad so that if Duke does come up short, he can sit at that post-game press-conference, grin, and say "I told you so."

While I doubt this is not the type of message Krzyzewski and his coaching staff are beating into the heads of players behind closed doors, it at least portrays the potentailly less talented Blue Devils, playing on the road no less, as the underdog leading up to their biggest regular season game of the year.

Once again, the all-time winningest coach's gamesmanship supersedes his coaching acumen.

Around this time last season, with Jimmermania in full force, many people were still going nuts over Kawhi Leonard, San Diego State's versatile combo-forward who was hauling in rebounds by the bushel. Even with the eventual player of the year hailing from Leonard's own conference, the sophomore still managed to make a name for himself as the season bled into March. And, when the time came, Leonard was selected with the 15th pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, capping off a phenomenal ascension to the pros.

Leonard's story is worth bringing up again for one reason: For how eerily it parallels the path of UNLV's current forward Mike Moser, a strikingly-similar player from the same conference who is putting up Leonard-type numbers in his first year with the Rebels. Moser landed at UNLV by way of UCLA, and has been one of the nation's most dominant players on the glass this year. But instead of the national acclaim that Leonard was privy to, most of the talk about Moser's campaign has been coming from Mountain West fanatics and Ben Howland apologists, and that's just not good enough. To put it bluntly, he hasn't quite caught on with the East Coast crowd as of yet.

For some much-needed perspective, here's how Moser's current line stacks up with Leonard's from a year ago:

• Leonard: 15.7 points, 10.7 rebounds, 11.2% OR%, 26.6% DR%, 109.3 ORating
• Moser: 14.5 points, 11.4 rebounds, 12.1% OR%, 29.9% DR%, 105.8 ORating

Convinced?

Week 14 after the jump...

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Last night's game between Kansas and Missouri was a good, not great, 40 minutes of basketball.

It lived up to the hype and expectations placed upon it by both local and national media, featured a number of exciting plays and will continue to fuel the vitriol these states hurl at one another.

Both teams, however, can point to multiple junctures in the game where they were less than stellar.

But regardless of the quality of play, this video captured by a Columbia, MO sportscaster (something you didn't see on ESPN following the final buzzer) may have been the most telling as to the thrill and agony a tightly contested rivalry game can evoke from players.

Watch the whole video. It's raw video, not professionally produced, so it feels more like real life.

Towards the end you see Kim English yelling at nobody in particular because he's so happy, followed by Thomas Robinson hiding his face under his jersey, wondering what went wrong.

It's telling stuff, and uncovers an element to sports we so often are unable to see.

Many are confident that Kansas lost due to a combination of poor officiating and nerves. That may be true to a degree, but Missouri had plenty of their own struggles mid-way through the second half, and what propelled them to victory probably left a bit of an uneasy feeling in coach Frank Haith's stomach.

You see in the box score this morning that the Tigers' Marcus Denmon finished with a game-high 29 points, including nine in the final minute. Exceptional stuff, but the majority of those final nine came as off the dribble, low percentage shots that reeked of desperation.

Sure we know about the Tigers offensive efficiency, they're one of the best in the game, but last night's comeback was not textbook stuff. The senior Denmon simply rescued them.

Broadcast in stardard definition in our neck of the woods, today's Creighton - Northern Iowa match-up was a quintessential Missouri Valley conference game.

Mistakes were minimal, as the two teams combined for only 13 turnovers and no team held a lead greater than five. To top it off, it ended on a buzzer-beater; an upset buzzer beater.

That's Anthony James pulling off the ultimate rebuttal of the Blue Jays' Antoine Young, who tied the game on his own three pointer with just 4.6 seconds remaining.

James didn't panic. Instead he took the inbounds pass, drove down the court and nailed a step-back three in Doug McDermott's face as time expired.

The Panthers may be a sub-.500 team right now, but today's win gives them any extra confidence needed when they face the MVC #1a team, Wichita State, on Wednesday.

After taking a beating from the UConn Huskies today, Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard was not happy.

He was also frank about his frustration, which ranged from his team's recent struggles, to today's officiating, to, um, his white guys.

"I'm the only coach who has white guys that can't shoot," Willard told reporters outside of his team's locker room at the XL Center.

If there is an NAACP for white people, it may be time to speak up.

Surely we jest at that statement, but we also are here to tell Willard that not all white people can shoot, dude! The stereotype doesn't always hold, and we have some proof to help calm him down...

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It's been a rough 24 hours for the Butler Bulldogs.

First: during yesterday's walkthrough in preperation for today's game against Detroit, guards Khyle Marshall and Ronald Nored collided. As a result, Marshall is out today and suffering with concussion-like symptoms.

Second: that, below. Nored caught an elbow that split his front tooth in half. Something tells me he will be visiting the dentist quite soon.

( h/t @AlexReiff)

I went 6-4 in my last picks, moving me to 92-85-2 on the season. A winning record if I've ever seen one! Let's hope that continues on one of the most stacked schedules of the entire season.

This is truly a fantastic day of college basketball, and with 154 total games on the slate, you could go absolutely crazy trying to keep up with all of the action. We're going to stick to the Top 25 teams and a couple of other great matchups for our gambling purposes here, but I would encourage you to fire up ESPN3.com at random today and find a team that you've been meaning to watch all season but haven't yet.

As always, all times EST. Let's get it!

6:00pm ESPN: No. 1 Kentucky @ South Carolina (+12)

A battle of excellent defenses, and when that happens, I almost never take the odds on a double-digit win, no matter who the competitors are. This is no exception. The Wildcats are stacked to the max and playing extremely well, but this will be a slow slugfest and while the Gamecocks have lost 14 of their last 16 against Top 25 opponents, they don't get blown out very often.

2:00pm ESPN: No. 3 Ohio State @ No. 20 Wisconsin (+3.5)

First place is on the line and the Buckeyes haven't won on the Badgers' home floor since the year 2000.

9:00pm ESPN: No. 8 Kansas (+3) @ No. 4 Missouri

I'm worried about the Tigers' speed and their inside efficiency, but as a Jayhawks fan I can't live with myself picking Mizzou, and besides, Kansas has really surprised me with their consistency. I don't expect anything less as the two teams meet for the last time as conference rivals. I hate you, Mizzou, but I'm sad to see you go to the SEC.

Plenty more picks after the jump...

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It's become a time-honored tradition on Selection Sunday: spend half your time dissecting the bracket, then the other half complaining about the bracket.

Being a member of the NCAA Tournament selection committee should not be mistaken as a glamorous gig. The lashings these guys take from both fans and media would cut to the core and chip away at the emotional well-being of many.

Get 67 teams seeded reasonably fairly, but whiff on that 68th and your ridiculed.

While the committee chairman rarely offers fair insight and rationale back to the guys in the CBS Sports studio during that annual interview that immediately follows the announcement of the field, the NCAA has slowly sought to be both more transparent in the selection process, and invite the fans to get more engaged.

If you can't appease them, let them join you!

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