March 12, 2010
by Brendon
NEW YORK — It was a pulsating finished that bloomed out of so much manure that preceded it, but the payoff was exquisite.
West Virginia let Cincinnati back into a game the Mountaineers should have owned, and the Bearcats were poised to steal an appearance in the Big East Tournament semifinals until Da’Sean Butler made two All-Big East plays.
First, with 6.4 seconds left and Cincinnati in-bounding in a tied game, Butler harassed the receiver of the in-bounds pass, Cincinnati guard Dion Dixon, to force a turnover. Then, with 3.1 seconds left, Butler took Devin Ebanks’ pass about 22-feet from the basket, squared his feet and fired a fallaway directly off the backboard. It caromed in as the buzzer sounded for a 54-51 victory, and all of the ugly offense and squandered leads were momentarily forgotten in the rush of victory. Read More »
March 12, 2010
by Brendon
NEW YORK — It would be harsh to write that Notre Dame bored Pittsburgh to death in the Irish’s 50-45 win over the Panthers in the Big East quarterfinals on Thursday night, but it might also be accurate. The Irish took the lead with 18:30 left to go in the first half and never relinquished it as they ground the game to a halt.
“We got the tempo we wanted,” said Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey. “50-45 — that’s what we want.”
And that’s what Brey and the Irish got.
With just 50 offensive possessions for each team, this was the slowest-paced Big East game all season, edging the 51-possession game when Notre Dame faced Pittsburgh the first time on Feb. 26, the first of now six straight that the Irish have won. During most of Notre Dame’s offensive possessions, the Irish were satisfied to merely pass the ball around the perimeter, rarely even looking at the basket until the shotclock hit single digits. Read More »
March 11, 2010
by Brendon
NEW YORK — There are many ways to skin a cat, an unnecessarily gory person once noted. Similarly, there’s more than one way to score points in a basketball game. The Bearcats showed that an offense can be effective without making many shots, because they utterly destroyed Louisville on the glass, re-gaining more than half of their misses to stun the Cardinals, 69-66, on Wednesday night.
“So the last two nights, we have had 69 shot attempts and 72 tonight,” said Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin, whose team attempted 17 more field goals and eight more free throws than Louisville. “We can rebound the ball when we get shots off.”
In the first half alone, UC had 18 offensive rebounds. Shot after shot deflected off the hands of Louisville players and either out of bounds or into the waiting arms of Bearcats. In the first 20 minutes, though, it didn’t appear that Cincy’s backboard dominance would matter a bit, since it shot an abysmal 31.3 eFG and committed seven turnovers. Meanwhile, Louisville hit 6-of-9 3-pointers to take a 41-32 lead into intermission.
In the second half, though, Louisville went cold, and the Cards eventually succumbed to Cincinnati’s irrepressible offensive rebounding.
| Team |
Poss |
PPP |
eFG |
Turn |
Reb |
FTR |
| Cincinnati |
66 |
1.05 |
0.375 |
0.183 |
0.538 |
0.208 |
| Louisville |
66 |
1.01 |
0.527 |
0.183 |
0.257 |
0.145 |
After taking a 46-34 lead on a long jumper from Edgar Sosa with 18:38 left in the second half, UofL scored just seven points in the next 12 game minutes, a total of 19 possessions. Read More »
March 11, 2010
by Brendon
Four weeks ago, Notre Dame senior forward injured his right knee in the closing minutes of a loss to Seton Hall. Harangody would miss the remainder of that game and all of the next five. Notre Dame lost the first two without Harangody by a combined three points, and realistic thoughts of an NCAA Tournament berth seemed to vanish.
Notre Dame, however, went on a four-game winning streak, including wins over NCAA-bound Georgetown, Pittsburgh and Marquette. On Wednesday night in Madison Square Garden, Notre Dame’s NCAA hopes completed the full 180 from vanished to realized in a 68-54 win over Seton Hall.
There’s been ample discussion in the last week about how the Irish have changed in Harangody’s absence. Many have concluded that the Irish are better without the three-time first-team All-Big East player in the lineup. Read More »
March 10, 2010
by Brendon
NEW YORK — The Cincinnati Bearcats spent most of the Big East season forfeiting the benefits they should have reaped from playing so well during their non-conference schedule, and they nearly gave away their first-ever Big East Tournament win on Tuesday.
Mick Cronin’s team fought back from an early deficit to race out to an eight-point margin with three minutes to play on 14th-seeded Rutgers, but turnovers and missed free-throws led to the lead drying up in the final minutes. Mike Rosario’s difficult 3-pointer with 15 seconds left tied the score at 68, but Lance Stephenson was fouled on a powerful drive with 1.8 second left, and he knocked down a free-throw to give Cincinnati a 69-68 win and a date with Louisville on Wednesday night.
“That’s why I came to Cincinnati — to change the program around, play hard and just win games,” said Stephenson, who — along with nailing the clinching free throw — scored 13 points, grabbed nine rebounds and dished out five assists in a terrific all-around floor game. Read More »
March 10, 2010
by Brendon
NEW YORK — Some teams turn over a new leaf in the postseason. Take St. John’s, for instance. The Red Storm finished 15th in the Big East with a 46.1 percent eFG in conference games. On Tuesday, despite playing the conference’s best field-goal defense, St. John’s shot 58.8 percent eFG in a 73-51 win over Connecticut.
Other teams are the same in the postseason as in the regular season. That was the case with Providence on Tuesday night. The Friars were the worst defensive team in the Big East this season, and against Seton Hall, they allowed an unconscionable 55 points on 35 first-half defensive possessions to trail by 16 at the break.
The Friars, however, were also one of the highest scoring teams in the nation, which is how the Pirates ended the game with 109 points on 84 possessions but with a lump in their collective throat as well.
Somewhere between not being able to defend a cone and the final buzzer, the Friars had gotten to within a Duke Mondy 3-pointer of tying the game. The freshman’s shot was long, and, with that miss, Seton Hall escaped from an improbable classic, 109-106, in the highest-scoring 40-minute game in Big East Tournament history. Read More »
If the Big East Tournament were a United States metropolis, it would be Atlanta. The five-day, 16-team, 15-game goliath sprawls across Championship Week from noon on Tuesday until almost midnight on Saturday, giving nary a breath to the other conferences tournaments trying to grab a bit of air in the league’s stifling wake.
It’s really the perfect setup for ultimate exposure. When the Big East Tournament starts on Tuesday, the only real competition for media attention is the Horizon, Sun Belt and Summit finals (unless you fancy some Atlantic 10 pre-quarters). By Friday and Saturday, when the other big leagues are giving fans their first tastes of quality games, the Big East trumps them with matchups of top teams in its semis and final. The Big East finally relents on Sunday for a few hours, but then comes the selection show, in which Big East teams are likely to make up at least an eighth of the field. The conference may not end up owning the NCAA Tournament, but it has property rights to most of this seven-day period of college hoops gluttony.
With an unrivaled media footprint — especially now that either ESPN2 or ESPNU is carrying the games on Second Division Day (Tuesday) — what can college hoops fans expect from the Garden this week? Read More »
Printable Version of Bracket »
Note: Teams deemed at least 98-percent likely to make the NCAA Tournament are in bold. Three new at-large teams earned their bold tags over the weekend — Louisville, Oklahoma State and Wake Forest. Notre Dame and Virginia Tech just missed.
Moving In as At-large: Arizona State, Mississippi, San Diego State, Washington
Moving Out as At-large: Georgia Tech, Illinois, Rhode Island, UAB
Moving In as Automatic: Vermont (America East), East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun), Winthrop (Big South)
Moving Out as Automatic: Stony Brook (America East), Jacksonville (Atlantic Sun), Coastal Carolina (Big South)
On the Bubble: There was a lot of shuffling around the bubble this weekend with several teams suffering near-devastating losses. Georgia Tech and Illinois both had blowout losses at home. The loss for the Yellow Jackets is their third in five and fifth in seven, and more importantly, it puts them at 7-9 in conference. To me, Illinois only looked like an NCAA Tournament team for about a week all season — when it beat Wisconsin and Michigan State. We’ll see if that 10-8 conference record is enough to override losing five of six and dropping games to Georgia, Bradley and Utah out of conference. Rhode Island lost its fifth of seven against 18-loss UMass in Amherst on Saturday. That will be hard to overcome. Finally, UAB needed to win one of its two tough games this week, but the Blazers lost both by a total of seven points, including a 52-50 win at C-USA champ UTEP on Saturday. Read More »
