Blog Archives

You’ll see that our NCAA Tournament preview is up on the site and went up on Tuesday. As with the Big East Tournament preview, we wanted to give you a little outline of the pace of the cast so you can flip around if you like.

Intro and headlines: Big East champs, all-tournament team (1:00)
East Region preview: Notre Dame, Louisville (3:20)
Midwest Region preview: Villanova, Georgetown (14:00)
South Region preview: Pittsburgh, Marquette (25:30)
West Region preview: Connecticut, West Virginia (38:50)
Other tournaments: Syracuse in the NIT, Cincinnati in the CBI, Seton Hall gets snubbed, Providence turns down CBI, fires head coach Tim Welsh (50:20)
Final Four predictions (1:03)

After months of evaluating teams and seeing them jostle for position, I’m left without much conviction behind my last few picks to make the NCAA Tournament. Thursday saw almost every team around the bubble lose, a symbol of a season in which the nation’s mediocre seemed especially so.

In the end, I narrowed the bubble teams to 15 who could reasonably be excluded in a fight for the last seven spots. Here’s my rational behind each team making or missing the field.

Note: the bracket above assumes a few outcomes tomorrow. 1) Kansas beats Texas. If that doesn’t happen, you can simply flip those two in this projection. 2) Wisconsin and Arkansas win their conference tournaments. If either loses, the last teams in are in severe trouble. Also, a Wisconsin loss would cost the Badgers a No. 2 seed. I will post an update bracket should Sunday’s results dictate.

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NEW YORK — In the last two Big East Tournament finals, Pittsburgh’s saw its dreams of hoisting a Big East championship trophy dashed first by Syracuse and then by Georgetown. It seemed academic that the Panthers, playing four games in four days with just a seven-man rotation, were destined to end a third straight Big East season in the same disappointing fashion.

But in a business where lazy journalists use words like “heart,” “desire” and “passion” as throwaway lines, the 2008 Big East Tournament final went to the team who displayed those intangibles, the one who wanted it more. While Georgetown seemed intent on winning in a clinical fashion, the Hoyas quickly learned that a championship in this 16-team behemoth is won only by those who show the willingness to bleed for it.

Pittsburgh defeated Georgetown, 74-65, to win the Big East Tournament title on Saturday night, led by tournament Most Outstanding Player Sam Young’s 16 points and senior Ronald Ramon’s 17. Teammate Levance Fields added 10 points and six assists and earned All-Tournament honors as the catalyst for an offense that Georgetown, the nation’s leader in field-goal defense, couldn’t contain all evening.

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NEW YORK — Seeding doesn’t matter. Fatigue doesn’t matter. Getting outrebounded by 15 doesn’t matter. The only two things that seem to matter in the Big East Tournament is that Pittsburgh is playing and it’s at the Garden.

This was surely the year that Pittsburgh was not going to get back to another Big East final. As a No. 7 seed and having to play on the first day of the tournament, the odds were against Jamie Dixon’s team. But the Panthers played the odds like experienced Vegas bettors and will again play on the last day of the Big East Tournament after a 68-61 win over Marquette on Friday night.

On Saturday night, the Panthers will play in their seventh Big East Tournament final in eight seasons — an accomplishment almost impossible to imagine in and of itself, but even more so considering what Pittsburgh has been through this season.

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NEW YORK — Sometimes you need help, and sometimes you need your legs. West Virginia had neither on Friday.

For two days, Joe Alexander made Madison Square Garden his personal stage, delivering brilliant soliloquies and artistic interpretations of age-old basketball moves in eliminating Providence and Connecticut. But playing a third superb game in three days after seeing 79 minutes of action over the previous two days proved too tough a chore for the junior forward.

For West Virginia to defeat top-seeded Georgetown on Friday night in the Big East Tournament semifinals, Alexander would need help from his teammates, need them to share the offensive load so his legs would be free of some of the burden he carried in bringing the Mountaineers to this point.

But instead, his teammates’ fatigue was as evident as the pep bands. In a first half that saw West Virginia fall behind by 12 points — a margin it would never completely close — the Mountaineers shot just 35 percent en route to a 72-55 loss. With a 2-for-7 first-half performance, Alexander was the biggest perpetrator. Turnarounds and bankshots that the net beckoned on the two previous afternoons were suddenly a bit short or a bit flat.

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NEW YORK — The hackneyed expression goes that styles make fights, and that’s also true of basketball games.

Twenty-four hours after Seton Hall and Marquette spent 40 minutes in a clinch, Notre Dame gave the Golden Eagles space, and that allowed Jerel McNeal and Maurice Acker to connect on enough haymakers to land the Golden Eagles in the semifinals with an 89-79 victory on Thursday night in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals.

The first half seemed to go to form for the favored Irish. Notre Dame led by six at the break, out-rebounded Marquette by three and did all that despite Big East Player of the Year Luke Harangody playing just seven minutes after picking up a second foul with 10:35 left and sitting out the remainder of the half.

When a rare Tory Jackson 3-pointer put the Irish up, 44-34, with 18 minutes remaining, Notre Dame looked poised to take the rubber match of the season series and get back in the tournament semifinals for the second straight year.

But a funny — or perhaps disturbing, based on your perspective — thing happened on the way to a breezy victory: Marquette started knocking down shots. Seton Hall’s pressure permitted a lot of trips to the foul line for Marquette on Wednesday, but conceded few open looks. Notre Dame doesn’t play with the same defensive tenacity, and the Golden Eagles grew more comfortable from the perimeter with each passing swish.

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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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