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The last full week of January always means two things: the NFL gets pushed to the back-burner for the first time in over five months and, more importantly, college basketball is about to enter its stretch run. The pretenders and contenders are starting to separate themselves, and conference play is really heating up. This week was arguably the most significant week of the season thus far, as favorites in several conferences began to assert themselves, and the No. 1 team in the country lost yet again.

As usual, a randomly timed installment of 20 random thoughts & observations about the day in college basketball:

20 Random Rants, Thoughts, and Observations from the Week in College Basketball by CollegeHoops.net Editor Shawn Siegel:

1 - Most college basketball teams are guard oriented, but Leonard Hamilton didn't get the memo. Outside of Toney Douglas, FSU has virtually no one of much worth in the backcourt. Douglas is an underrated player, but there's too much pressure on him.

Take a wild guess who is ranked as the top coach in the Pac 10?  You got it, that guy.

 

Heading into this Saturday it seemed like the Notre Dame Fighting Irish were well on their way to a seventh victory and a berth in either the Gator or Sun Bowl. All they had to do was beat Syracuse, playing for a recently dismissed head coach in Greg Robinson and dead last in the Big East. But while the Orange haven't played particularly well this season, you can't accuse this team of quitting. What ensued was one of the more stunning results of the day, with Syracuse stunning the Irish 24-23 on a late touchdown pass. Where do the Irish go from here?

Pac-10 Player Grades

 

This is the fifth of six fantasy stats projections of BCS conference starters. The lineups are based on the Starting Fives series of articles released two weeks ago, along with a couple of changes due to recent developments.

 

 

Today's BIG PICTURE