You can’t spell ugly without GU

There are two stories that are consuming my Big East basketball world on this Tuesday. The first is the disgusting display of basketball and officiating at the Verizon Center on Monday night. The second is the impending termination of the basketball coach at Providence College. The latter I will get to in another blog post shortly — I thought I would have room in this post but quickly became too verbose.

First to the Wildcats-Hoyas debacle. And the first thing is that this game was a borderline embarrassment for the Big East. Villanova was on the road against the purported best team in the conference, and the Wildcats shot 24.6 percent from the field, missed 20-of-23 3-point attempts, and yet still had the ball in Scottie Reynolds’ hands with a chance to win the game in the closing seconds.

If you were watching, you know what happened next — Jeremiah Rivers stripped the ball from Reynolds after what Jay Wright thought was excessive body contact; Jonathan Wallace came up with the loose ball after a scramble; Corey Stokes then nudged Wallace as he dribbled up the sideline with time expiring. Rather than letting the buzzer sound and heading to overtime, the referee deemed Stokes’ knee bump too egregious to let slide and called the freshman for a foul with 0.1 seconds remaining and the score tied at 53. Wallace drained both free throws to give Georgetown a 55-53 win.

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