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This is going to be one of those snippet posts with stream of consciousness and interior headlines. There is a bevy of things to cover as we inch closer to another Big East weekend, and so a coherent column would be both ambitious and too narrow. Let’s start with a battle of the top two candidates for Big East Player of the Year and end with something closer to my heart.

Luke vs. A.J.: Neither of the leading candidates for Big East Player of the Year disappointed in Connecticut’s 84-78 win over Notre Dame in Storrs on Wednesday night. Luke Harangody made 13-of-24 field-goal attempts for 32 points a month after a 5-for-23 shooting performance in his last head-to-head battle with Hasheem Thabeet. Harangody also added 16 rebounds in a game that the Irish led at the half.

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At long last, Providence College basketball fans got something approximating what they have wanted for a long time. Both Kevin McNamara and Jim Donaldson wrote frankly about the shortcomings of head coach Tim Welsh in The Providence Journal.

Kevin McNamara centered his preview of Providence’s game at Pitt on Tuesday night around an interview with Providence athletics director Bob Driscoll, a long-time supporter of his maligned coach. While Driscoll was certainly not going to go as far as saying that Welsh was in trouble or that he was at risk of being fired before the season’s conclusions, the AD is clearly disappointed in his 13-10, 4-7 Friars.

For the better part of three years, many Friars fans have wanted the only statewide daily in the nation’s smallest state to come down hard on what they see as an underachieving and uninspired era of Providence basketball. Donaldson flat-out called for an end to the Welsh era on Smith Hill, this just days after fellow columnist Bill Reynolds waved a crotchety finger at Friars fans for booing the team, namely its coach, at home games. Loyal readers of the Projo tend to find Reynolds agreeable and Donaldson disagreeable, so it would be easy to assume that the former has it right this time. But that’s not the case. Donaldson’s column was measured and accurate — I’m sure many Friars fans will say that it didn’t go far enough in dressing down the finely coiffed Welsh. Still, Donaldson concludes his column with a fair epitaph on the Tim Welsh Era in Providence: “It’s time to thank Welsh for a job, if not exactly well-done, than certainly respectably done, and bring in a coach who can do it better.”

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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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This is a Big Eastcast blog exclusive.

Did you see this garbage?

Don’t click on that link, because you’re only encouraging their folly. It’s a bracket projection for the NCAA Tournament based on 20 media members from CBS, ESPN and CSTV. (Please don’t click on it — I will describe it herein.)

Apparently these 20 folks felt that now was as good a time as any to come together and project an NCAA Tournament field. That sounds fine to me. It is February, and we have enough of a sample for every team to have a good inclination about what the pecking order looks like.

The problem is this: those 20 folks did a TERRIBLE (ALL CAPS — I’ll use bold from here on out) job. I usually don’t bother very much with other people’s bracket projections, because I don’t want to be swayed into a groupthink scenario. But Dante, my beloved podcast partner, kept giving me tidbits from this bracket, and I couldn’t resist such incompetence.

The first major problem was that their automatic bids were all over the place. Apparently Charlotte and Oregon are in as automatics, despite not being anywhere near first in their respective conferences. In fact, judging by this, it appears that the Pac-10 got two automatic bids. Bully for them! Also, Davidson is one of the last teams left out of the field. I found that interesting, since Davidson is undefeated in conference and would seem to be a logical automatic bid recipient. But no — apparently 9-4 Appalachian State is the automatic qualifier. Also, Drake is undefeated, but of course, Creighton got the automatic bid from the Valley. Maybe they’re guessing who will eventually win the conference tournament or something equally preposterous — they didn’t factcheck it.

A couple of other things about this illustration in incompetence: What is the justification for Drake being seeded behind Indiana? Is it the fact that Drake has only lost once all year? Or is it because Drake is 28 spots better in the RPI? Or maybe it’s because Drake is 7-1 against RPI top-100 teams, and Indiana is 5-3? More likely? It’s because Indiana is Indiana and Drake is Drake.

Also, what possible justification could there be for keeping UMass out of the field at this point? The Minutemen have nine wins against RPI top-100 teams, including top-25 teams Rhode Island and Dayton. (I know the URI win came last night, presumably after this field had been selected, but even without it, UMass still had eight.) Let’s compare UMass to Syracuse, a team that I, by the way have in my bracket projection. Syracuse doesn’t have any wins to compare with the Dayton and URI wins. The Orange has beaten four fewer RPI top-100 teams, and, oh, yeah, UMass won at Syracuse. It’s for these reasons that UMass is 21 spots ahead of the Cuse in the RPI, though just 10 spots ahead in my customized DCBI. And remember, I think Syracuse is NCAA worthy at this point — that’s how far in the tourney the Minutemen should be. I know UMass is only 4-4 in conference, but almost every game has been against the A-10 chalk. Compare that to Rhode Island, which has wins against George Washington and St. Bonaventure. Clearly this panel did not even consider the differences in strength of schedule within the conference. The frightening part is that the real committee can have blind spots just as large.

WAKE UP, PEOPLE! (CAPS and bold)

I’m sure there was more refuse to observe, but I had to get on with being a sentient being, so I closed the window. (Don’t click on it, I’m warning you.) It’s this kind of anti-logical thinking that makes my head steam. If this is a preview of what we’re going to experience on Selection Sunday, then I better leave for a nation devoid of sharp objects for several months.

Again, here’s my bracket projection. I guarantee it’s better than any of the drivel the 20 dudes came up with yesterday. And mine is probably not even one of the best projections out there.

Let’s stop sucking up to ESPN and slurping on Joe Lunardi, get our collective heads out of our asses and start using our brains!

It was an interesting week in the Big East in terms of how the results affected the league and the projected field. You may remember that last week in this space, I noted that four of the nine Big East teams in my field on Feb. 1 were within eight spots of the at-large cut line. A week later, two of those teams — West Virginia and Syracuse — remain in the field but are still in danger of getting bumped thanks to 1-1 weeks; one of those teams — Seton Hall — is now on the outside looking in thanks to an 0-2 week against strong competition; and one of those teams — Louisville — has made a big leap up the board after a 2-0 week highlighted by a blowout win at Marquette. The two Big East teams in my last four out last week — Providence and Villanova — went a combined 1-3 and are now in very poor shape. It’s all in a week’s time.

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The top two shot-blocking teams in the Big East got together in Syracuse on Wednesday night, and though the Orange combined for six blocks, Huskies center Hasheem Thabeet had seven by himself in UConn’s 63-61 win. Jim Calhoun went to a little-used 2-3 zone against a Syracuse team that saw the defense every day in practice. The difference is that, at Syracuse’s practices, there is not a 7-foot-3 giant in the middle of the paint to deflect and deter shots.

Thabeet was the primary reason why a Syracuse team that prefers to work in the interior — SU takes the second-fewest 3-pointers in the conference (UConn takes the fewest) — was unable to score enough points to win a game that was within its grasp.The opportunities were there. The second-best free-throw shooting team in the Big East during conference play, Connecticut hit only 8-of-16 attempts. Both of those numbers were low. The Huskies hit just 3-of-14 3-point attempts, a shot that they rarely like to attempt and only infrequently make (31.1 percent, 14th in the Big East). UConn hit a mediocre and identical 13-for-29 in both halves, good for just 44.8 percent. Still, Connecticut left central New York with its third straight road win because Syracuse was the team that couldn’t shoot straight.

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Marquette’s loss to Louisville on Big Monday is attributable to more than just the Cardinals’ obvious advantage in size and power inside, but the Golden Eagles’ lopsided losses to Connecticut and now twice to Louisville magnify doubt about whether a team that plays so small can truly be great. In this article, I will examine the smallest good teams in college basketball and what traits those teams may or may not have that allow them to overcome their lack of size. I’m also going to spend some time comparing Marquette to recent excellent small teams, including gold standard for the mighty mites that won big — the 1996-97 national champion Arizona Wildcats.

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