Blog Archives

NEW YORK — On the last rebound of the game in which the contest’s result was still in doubt, two bench players determined the outcome.

With 1:30 left in overtime of Pittsburgh’s 76-69 win over Louisville in the Big East Tournament on Thursday, the Cardinals trailed by four. Louisville’s Andre McGee attempted a wide-open 3-pointer that went long. Two of the game’s most important players — both reserves — were in on the rebound. Louisville’s Earl Clark got it, but the Panthers’ Gilbert Brown stripped him and recovered the ball.

Seconds later, Levance Fields got the roll on a tear-dropper that gave Pitt a six-point lead with 1:08 to play, and the Panthers were on their way to eliminating Louisville from its third straight Big East Tournament. And while stars like Fields and Sam Young will grab most of the headlines, reserves like Clark and Brown would form the character of the event.

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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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