Archive for the ‘Blog Entries’ Category

NEW YORK — When the shots won’t fall, the best-coached teams can look more like a pack of streetballers than a trained division of athletes. When two teams not known for their aesthetic styles meet at the Big East Tournament and battle for a win for 40 minutes? Let’s just say Springfield needn’t save any space in its library for a tape of this game.

Marquette defeated Seton Hall, 67-54, in the nightcap of Big East Tournament first-round action on Wednesday night at the Garden, but the game was as close as one point with less than six minutes to play — a testament to how the Pirates can conquer a lack of talent with an utter unwillingness to relent.

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NEW YORK — Last October, at Big East preseason media day in Madison Square Garden, Pittsburgh’s players wanted to tell anyone who would listen that a Pittsburgh-metro prospect named DeJuan Blair was — all due respect to Syracuse’s Jonny Flynn and Donte’ Greene — as good as, or better, than any freshman in the conference.

The confidence Blair’s teammates showed in the 6-foot-8 big man was well-founded. Blair and Flynn shared conference Freshman of the Year honors this week. But to see the young man play in Pittsburgh’s 70-64 win over Cincinnati on Wednesday was to wonder whether this long season has taken a toll on him.

Blair’s game is built on both an unyielding energy and an uncommon on-court intelligence that allowed him to be among the conference’s leaders in both steals and blocked shots. But that energy appears to be on the wane. In recent games at Syracuse and West Virginia, he was in and out of the lineup and combined to grab just nine total rebounds — this for a player who’s averaged 9.5 per game this season.

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Our format for this show, which you can listen to by clicking on the download link at the right of this page — or by going to Itunes — is a little different, so we wanted to give you a breakdown of the layout.

1:00 - Introduction/Headlines

3:30 - Top quarter breakdown (Georgetown, Villanova, Syracuse); guest Camille Powell, Wasington Post (8:00)

19:00 - Second quarter breakdown (Connecticut, West Virginia, Providence); guest Kevin McNamara, Providence Journal (22:00)

36:30- Third quarter breakdown (Louisville, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati); guest Brian Bennett, Louisville Courier Journal (41:00)

51:30 - Fourth quarter breakdown (Notre Dame, Marquette, Seton Hall)

55:00 - Picks and close

Hope you enjoy!

Before Tuesday’s announcements of the award winners in the Big East, I wanted to submit my list of honorees followed by the last regular-season power ranking of the winter.

View full list of Big East honorees >

You can’t go anywhere around the sporting world without hearing about the bubble. Who’s on it? Who’s safe? Who’s in trouble? It’s a bit mind-numbing, but it’s also great fodder for talk-show chatter because it can be so subjective. I try to avoid most of this talk, because I don’t want popular opinion to affect my perspective, but when the bubble lists scroll across the bottom of my television screen, they’re kind of hard to miss.

Full bracket projection >

There’s a certain cachet about being named Player of the Year in a major conference. Last year’s Big East Player of the Year, Jeff Green, led his team to the Final Four and was drafted fifth overall in the NBA. This year’s potential POYs include a couple of amazing freshmen — Kevin Love (Pac-10) and Michael Beasley (Big 12) — two upperclass big men at two of the nation’s most storied programs — D.J. White (Big 10) and Tyler Hansbrough (ACC) — and perhaps the best shooter in the country on a team looking for a repeat trip to the Sweet 16 — Shan Foster (SEC). And then there’s the likely Big East Player of the Year, Luke Harangody. To separate Harangody from Foster is a case of splitting hairs, but Harangody — in body type, reputation and buzz — is about as different from the other four as South Bend is from Los Angeles.

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There’s just one week left before the Big East Tournament, but so much has not been decided — at the top, bottom and middle of the conference.

We are the champions: Before the season, folks were about split about who they thought the best team in the Big East was. Four months later, and it appears that those two teams will play for the right to call itself the best when Louisville travels to Washington to play Georgetown on Saturday. Both teams are 14-3 in conference and off in this mid-week and therefore have about a week to prepare. Georgetown will have to figure out how it can get an inside game going that will earn it more than the four free throws the Hoyas shot in Louisville a month ago. Louisville will just be trying to cap a tremendous run of excellent basketball. The Cardinals have won nine straight, including a 14-point win over Villanova on Sunday.

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