College Basketball Nation: West Virginia
West Virginia lawsuit one worth watching
November, 1, 2011
11/01/11
11:12
AM ET
By
Kristi Dosh | ESPN.com
West Virginia University didn’t hand out a Halloween treat to the Big East when it filed a lawsuit against the conference in a Morgantown, W.Va., court.
Full of legal claims like “breach of contract” and “breach of fiduciary duty,” the lawsuit seeks to allow West Virginia to escape to the Big 12 without having to serve a 27-month mandatory waiting period required by the Big East’s bylaws. I’ve explained previously why the Big East might enforce this provision.
Here’s what West Virginia claims:
1. That the bylaws are void because of any one of the following reasons:
2. That a new conference agreement was made between WVU and the Big East when the Big East accepted a $2.5 million payout from West Virginia when it told the conference it was leaving.
3. That the 27-month exit provision is an “unreasonable restraint on trade,” meaning WVU believes the provision isn’t necessary to protect the Big East’s interests.
Here are the counter-arguments the Big East could be expected to make:
With regard to the material breach claim, one factor courts will examine is whether WVU is deprived of the benefit it expected to receive from its Big East contract. To this end, WVU states in its lawsuit that the material breach is due to the commissioner’s “failure to maintain a ratio of football-to-non-football universities of eight-to-eight and maintaining and enhancing the level of competition in the Big East football conference.”
However, the Big East can be expected to argue that during the 27 months WVU will remain a member of the conference there will be eight football members, as other defectors Pitt and Syracuse will also be held in the conference through the 2013 season as part of the 27-month requirement. In addition, the BCS has confirmed that the Big East will remain an BCS football conference through the 2013 season.
WVU’s claim that performance under the bylaws has become “impossible or unreasonably burdensome” relies in part on the assertion that the Big East is “no longer a viable and competitive football conference.” Again, the Big East will likely argue that there will be no change during the seasons WVU will continue to compete as a conference member, and the conference will operate the same in 2012 and 2013 as it did in 2010 and 2011. The same argument will likely be used to oppose WVU’s claim that its purpose in entering into an agreement with the Big East has been “substantially frustrated.”
Another argument by WVU is that even if the bylaws are valid, a new agreement was struck with the Big East for immediate withdrawal upon payment of $2.5 million. WVU claims the Big East accepted the new agreement by accepting the payment. However, the Big East requires such a payment be made when a school notifies the conference of its plans to exit, with another $2.5 million to be paid by the time a school exits. Without additional evidence from WVU on the new agreement it claims was reached, it appears the Big East could argue WVU was only remitting payment as required.
West Virginia’s final argument is that the 27-month withdrawal period is an unreasonable restraint of trade, one that is unnecessary in order to protect the Big East’s interests. Here, attorneys likely will point out that the Big East has already waived its right to enforce the 27-month notice period because it allowed TCU out of its commitment; essentially, the conference can’t hold one school to the 27-month period and not another. Big East Associate Commissioner John Paquette said Tuesday afternoon that the Big East had a separate agreement with TCU that stated if it left before competing, it would not be subject to the 27-month provision.
Paquette said Monday evening that he could not reveal whether WVU voted in favor of the 27-month withdrawal period in the bylaws when it was added. But he did point out: “David Hardesty, the former WVU president, helped write the current withdrawal policies.” Expect the Big East to bring this up in its response to the lawsuit.
The case is important, because it will likely decide the Big East fates of Pitt and Syracuse, which are bound to stay through the 2013 season before heading to the ACC. Although each of those schools could file suit in their respective states, Washington, D.C. law (where the WVU suit will be heard) would govern, according to the Big East bylaws. So any decision in WVU’s case would create precedent for any case filed by Pitt or Syracuse.
Additionally, any decision rendered by a court in this case could impact future conference realignment involving any other conference. Although the decision wouldn’t have to be followed by courts in other jurisdictions, it could be persuasive. No doubt WVU is gambling on the Big East settling the case before a decision is rendered which could impact conference realignment for years to come.
Full of legal claims like “breach of contract” and “breach of fiduciary duty,” the lawsuit seeks to allow West Virginia to escape to the Big 12 without having to serve a 27-month mandatory waiting period required by the Big East’s bylaws. I’ve explained previously why the Big East might enforce this provision.
Here’s what West Virginia claims:
1. That the bylaws are void because of any one of the following reasons:
- There has been a “material breach” of contract. WVU alleges that the Big East and its commissioner breached their fiduciary duties to the university by failing to keep the Big East a viable football conference.
- WVU’s performance under the contract has become “impossible or unreasonably burdensome” because the university contends it has always valued the strength of the Big East as a significant football conference.
- The principal purpose of WVU entering into an agreement with the Big East has become “substantially frustrated.” This means that although WVU could still perform under the contract, its purpose in entering into the contract has been destroyed.
2. That a new conference agreement was made between WVU and the Big East when the Big East accepted a $2.5 million payout from West Virginia when it told the conference it was leaving.
3. That the 27-month exit provision is an “unreasonable restraint on trade,” meaning WVU believes the provision isn’t necessary to protect the Big East’s interests.
Here are the counter-arguments the Big East could be expected to make:
With regard to the material breach claim, one factor courts will examine is whether WVU is deprived of the benefit it expected to receive from its Big East contract. To this end, WVU states in its lawsuit that the material breach is due to the commissioner’s “failure to maintain a ratio of football-to-non-football universities of eight-to-eight and maintaining and enhancing the level of competition in the Big East football conference.”
However, the Big East can be expected to argue that during the 27 months WVU will remain a member of the conference there will be eight football members, as other defectors Pitt and Syracuse will also be held in the conference through the 2013 season as part of the 27-month requirement. In addition, the BCS has confirmed that the Big East will remain an BCS football conference through the 2013 season.
WVU’s claim that performance under the bylaws has become “impossible or unreasonably burdensome” relies in part on the assertion that the Big East is “no longer a viable and competitive football conference.” Again, the Big East will likely argue that there will be no change during the seasons WVU will continue to compete as a conference member, and the conference will operate the same in 2012 and 2013 as it did in 2010 and 2011. The same argument will likely be used to oppose WVU’s claim that its purpose in entering into an agreement with the Big East has been “substantially frustrated.”
Another argument by WVU is that even if the bylaws are valid, a new agreement was struck with the Big East for immediate withdrawal upon payment of $2.5 million. WVU claims the Big East accepted the new agreement by accepting the payment. However, the Big East requires such a payment be made when a school notifies the conference of its plans to exit, with another $2.5 million to be paid by the time a school exits. Without additional evidence from WVU on the new agreement it claims was reached, it appears the Big East could argue WVU was only remitting payment as required.
West Virginia’s final argument is that the 27-month withdrawal period is an unreasonable restraint of trade, one that is unnecessary in order to protect the Big East’s interests. Here, attorneys likely will point out that the Big East has already waived its right to enforce the 27-month notice period because it allowed TCU out of its commitment; essentially, the conference can’t hold one school to the 27-month period and not another. Big East Associate Commissioner John Paquette said Tuesday afternoon that the Big East had a separate agreement with TCU that stated if it left before competing, it would not be subject to the 27-month provision.
Paquette said Monday evening that he could not reveal whether WVU voted in favor of the 27-month withdrawal period in the bylaws when it was added. But he did point out: “David Hardesty, the former WVU president, helped write the current withdrawal policies.” Expect the Big East to bring this up in its response to the lawsuit.
The case is important, because it will likely decide the Big East fates of Pitt and Syracuse, which are bound to stay through the 2013 season before heading to the ACC. Although each of those schools could file suit in their respective states, Washington, D.C. law (where the WVU suit will be heard) would govern, according to the Big East bylaws. So any decision in WVU’s case would create precedent for any case filed by Pitt or Syracuse.
Additionally, any decision rendered by a court in this case could impact future conference realignment involving any other conference. Although the decision wouldn’t have to be followed by courts in other jurisdictions, it could be persuasive. No doubt WVU is gambling on the Big East settling the case before a decision is rendered which could impact conference realignment for years to come.
Clarifying the Big East-BCS relationship
October, 26, 2011
10/26/11
5:10
PM ET
By
Kristi Dosh | ESPN.com
This morning I spoke with Bowl Championship Series Director Bill Hancock, who provided some clarification about the BCS’s automatic-qualification standards and formulas for conferences.
The issue came up Tuesday as a result of the Big 12 telling West Virginia it could be accepted into that conference pending formal approval, giving the Big East conference yet another team defection. The Big East intimated it would likely hold West Virginia, Pitt and Syracuse to a conference restriction that would keep the schools as Big East members for 27 months. I pointed to a major reason why that might be the case: the millions of dollars that could be lost by the Big East if it somehow were to slip out of automatic-qualifier BCS status.
And while that’s true, the annual qualification standards cited as one of the reasons currently applies only to non-BCS conferences attempting to achieve BCS status. The Big East is guaranteed to remain a BCS conference through the 2013 season, but like the other BCS conferences, that’s only a guarantee through 2013.
Whether the Big East -- or any other conference -- retains BCS status from 2014-17 depends heavily on an evaluation of member schools’ performances during the 2010 to 2013 regular seasons. That’s the reason why retaining Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia matters to the Big East.
Another factor in whether the Big East retains BCS status: The Big East doesn’t have a contract with a specific BCS bowl a la the Big 10 with the Rose Bowl, which puts it in a precarious position when compared with the other BCS conferences.
When asked if the Big East could lose its BCS status if it does not have a contract with a bowl in 2014, Hancock said: “Any of the conferences could, if the marketplace requests it.” He defined “marketplace” as the bowl games’ boards and television partners. (ESPN has the exclusive television, radio, digital, international and marketing rights for the Fiesta, Orange and Sugar Bowls through 2014 and the BCS title game through 2013.)
Hancock said whether the Big East could end up entering a contact with a BCS bowl is dependent on “Negotiations among all conferences for any new BCS bowl. This would be part of conversations coming up.”
The issue came up Tuesday as a result of the Big 12 telling West Virginia it could be accepted into that conference pending formal approval, giving the Big East conference yet another team defection. The Big East intimated it would likely hold West Virginia, Pitt and Syracuse to a conference restriction that would keep the schools as Big East members for 27 months. I pointed to a major reason why that might be the case: the millions of dollars that could be lost by the Big East if it somehow were to slip out of automatic-qualifier BCS status.
And while that’s true, the annual qualification standards cited as one of the reasons currently applies only to non-BCS conferences attempting to achieve BCS status. The Big East is guaranteed to remain a BCS conference through the 2013 season, but like the other BCS conferences, that’s only a guarantee through 2013.
Whether the Big East -- or any other conference -- retains BCS status from 2014-17 depends heavily on an evaluation of member schools’ performances during the 2010 to 2013 regular seasons. That’s the reason why retaining Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia matters to the Big East.
Another factor in whether the Big East retains BCS status: The Big East doesn’t have a contract with a specific BCS bowl a la the Big 10 with the Rose Bowl, which puts it in a precarious position when compared with the other BCS conferences.
When asked if the Big East could lose its BCS status if it does not have a contract with a bowl in 2014, Hancock said: “Any of the conferences could, if the marketplace requests it.” He defined “marketplace” as the bowl games’ boards and television partners. (ESPN has the exclusive television, radio, digital, international and marketing rights for the Fiesta, Orange and Sugar Bowls through 2014 and the BCS title game through 2013.)
Hancock said whether the Big East could end up entering a contact with a BCS bowl is dependent on “Negotiations among all conferences for any new BCS bowl. This would be part of conversations coming up.”
Millions of reasons for Big East's stance
October, 25, 2011
10/25/11
5:49
PM ET
By
Kristi Dosh | ESPN.com
This post has been corrected. Updated post:
My colleague, Joe Schad, is reporting that the Big 12 has told West Virginia it will be accepted into the conference pending formal approval, which could happen very soon.
While Texas A&M and TCU, which recently announced conference moves, will join their new conferences for the 2012 season, Schad notes the Big East could try to keep WVU, along with Pitt and Syracuse, in the conference for up to 27 months, per conference guidelines.
Why would the Big East play hardball with its defectors? Because more than $20 million per year is at stake given the Big East's automatic-BCS-qualifying status.
For the 2011-12 school year, BCS conferences will receive $22.3 million for their qualifying team and can earn another $6.1 million if another member receives an at-large berth. A non-automatic-qualifying conference team selected for a BCS game receives $26.4 million but must divide that revenue with the other four non-automatic-qualifying conferences.
If the Big East were to lose Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia at the end of this school year, it could jeopardize the Big East’s future BCS status. Here’s how it works:
Current BCS conferences were determined based on data from the 2004-07 football seasons. Data from the 2008-11 seasons will be reviewed following this season to determine if a seventh conference makes the cut to be an automatic-qualifier for the 2012 and 2013 BCS bowl seasons. BCS guidelines also provide for the following formulas to be used if the BCS format remains the same or similar following the 2013 season. At that point, results from the 2010-13 seasons would be used to determine which conferences without bowl contracts will be AQs for the 2014-2017 seasons. The Big East is the only of the current BCS conferences without a bowl contract.
This is where the situation could get dicey for the Big East under the next review.
Three sets of data are considered in the review: First, the average ranking of the highest-ranked team in the BCS standings over the four-year period; second, the average rank of all the conference’s teams based on rankings from each of the six BCS computers over the four-year period; and third, something called a conference’s Adjusted Top 25 Performance -- a calculation based on a conference’s number of teams in the Top 25 of BCS standings over the four-year period as a percentage of the top conference in this calculation, which would have been rated 100 percent.
The threshold for qualification requires a conference to be in the top six in the first two sets of data and in the top 50 percent in the third set of data. However, a waiver can be obtained from the BCS’ Presidential Oversight Committee if a conference is in the top six of the first two sets of data and top 33 percent of the third set, or top five of one of the first two sets and top seven in the other, along with top 33 percent of the third set.
When asked how conference realignment might affect these reviews, Maxey Parrish of the BCS said: “Since it's impossible to determine how a team would have played had they been a member of another conference, the rankings count for the conference schools [which] were members of [the conference] at that time. For example, TCU is not factored into the Big 12's status as an AQ until the 2012 season.”
The Big East's 27-month waiting period for members exiting ensures the conference will have suitable time to find a replacement and that current members will be included in automatic-qualifying calculations following the 2013 season, which is when new BCS agreements would have to be put into place following the expiration of current ones.
An Oct. 25 blog post about the Big East and its BCS conference status contained incorrect information provided by the BCS about how conferences achieve and hold BCS status. Current BCS conferences do not have to undergo an annual review to retain status – that applies only to non-BCS conferences that are seeking BCS status. Updated story
My colleague, Joe Schad, is reporting that the Big 12 has told West Virginia it will be accepted into the conference pending formal approval, which could happen very soon.
While Texas A&M and TCU, which recently announced conference moves, will join their new conferences for the 2012 season, Schad notes the Big East could try to keep WVU, along with Pitt and Syracuse, in the conference for up to 27 months, per conference guidelines.
Why would the Big East play hardball with its defectors? Because more than $20 million per year is at stake given the Big East's automatic-BCS-qualifying status.
For the 2011-12 school year, BCS conferences will receive $22.3 million for their qualifying team and can earn another $6.1 million if another member receives an at-large berth. A non-automatic-qualifying conference team selected for a BCS game receives $26.4 million but must divide that revenue with the other four non-automatic-qualifying conferences.
If the Big East were to lose Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia at the end of this school year, it could jeopardize the Big East’s future BCS status. Here’s how it works:
Current BCS conferences were determined based on data from the 2004-07 football seasons. Data from the 2008-11 seasons will be reviewed following this season to determine if a seventh conference makes the cut to be an automatic-qualifier for the 2012 and 2013 BCS bowl seasons. BCS guidelines also provide for the following formulas to be used if the BCS format remains the same or similar following the 2013 season. At that point, results from the 2010-13 seasons would be used to determine which conferences without bowl contracts will be AQs for the 2014-2017 seasons. The Big East is the only of the current BCS conferences without a bowl contract.
This is where the situation could get dicey for the Big East under the next review.
Three sets of data are considered in the review: First, the average ranking of the highest-ranked team in the BCS standings over the four-year period; second, the average rank of all the conference’s teams based on rankings from each of the six BCS computers over the four-year period; and third, something called a conference’s Adjusted Top 25 Performance -- a calculation based on a conference’s number of teams in the Top 25 of BCS standings over the four-year period as a percentage of the top conference in this calculation, which would have been rated 100 percent.
The threshold for qualification requires a conference to be in the top six in the first two sets of data and in the top 50 percent in the third set of data. However, a waiver can be obtained from the BCS’ Presidential Oversight Committee if a conference is in the top six of the first two sets of data and top 33 percent of the third set, or top five of one of the first two sets and top seven in the other, along with top 33 percent of the third set.
When asked how conference realignment might affect these reviews, Maxey Parrish of the BCS said: “Since it's impossible to determine how a team would have played had they been a member of another conference, the rankings count for the conference schools [which] were members of [the conference] at that time. For example, TCU is not factored into the Big 12's status as an AQ until the 2012 season.”
The Big East's 27-month waiting period for members exiting ensures the conference will have suitable time to find a replacement and that current members will be included in automatic-qualifying calculations following the 2013 season, which is when new BCS agreements would have to be put into place following the expiration of current ones.
An Oct. 25 blog post about the Big East and its BCS conference status contained incorrect information provided by the BCS about how conferences achieve and hold BCS status. Current BCS conferences do not have to undergo an annual review to retain status – that applies only to non-BCS conferences that are seeking BCS status. Updated story
Bob Huggins' summer injury tradition
July, 29, 2010
7/29/10
11:11
AM ET
By
Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com
Yesterday, the good news came. West Virginia coach Bob Huggins was released from a Las Vegas hospital.
As you likely know, Huggins spent five days in the hospital after breaking seven ribs in a coffee table-induced fall in his hotel room. Huggins was initially thought to have only broken four ribs, but his condition was slightly worse than that, and his stay was extended until Wednesday afternoon. Fortunately, though, Huggy Bear is reportedly doing OK. Like I said, good news.
Of course, this isn't the first time Huggins had suffered a mysterious injury in the offseason. Last June, Huggins showed up to a West Virginia charity event with two black eyes, which the coach (somewhat dubiously) claimed he got from stepping into the corner of a bathroom door late at night. One can't help but wonder if Huggins is trying to start his own summer injury tradition. Next year he'll dislocate his shoulder, and the year after that he'll go to an AAU tournament dressed like Cristiano Ronaldo. Can't you just picture Huggins in a soccer uniform, lunging forward with both feet in the air, before rolling over, fake-screaming, and grabbing his knee? Pretty surreal mental image, right? You're welcome.
It's either that, or Bob Huggins is competing in a secret underground fight club. Black eyes and broken ribs? Come on.
In all seriousness, though, it's good to know Huggins is well. Let's hope that tradition thing is just my dumb joke, and the big man avoids injury for years to come. Because broken ribs? Ouch. I totally would have cried.
Update: Somehow, I forgot to include Huggins' fall at a Charlotte, N.C. airport in May of 2008. Huggins spent a few days in the hospital then, too. The tradition is actually three years running, not two. And it's officially getting weird.
As you likely know, Huggins spent five days in the hospital after breaking seven ribs in a coffee table-induced fall in his hotel room. Huggins was initially thought to have only broken four ribs, but his condition was slightly worse than that, and his stay was extended until Wednesday afternoon. Fortunately, though, Huggy Bear is reportedly doing OK. Like I said, good news.
Of course, this isn't the first time Huggins had suffered a mysterious injury in the offseason. Last June, Huggins showed up to a West Virginia charity event with two black eyes, which the coach (somewhat dubiously) claimed he got from stepping into the corner of a bathroom door late at night. One can't help but wonder if Huggins is trying to start his own summer injury tradition. Next year he'll dislocate his shoulder, and the year after that he'll go to an AAU tournament dressed like Cristiano Ronaldo. Can't you just picture Huggins in a soccer uniform, lunging forward with both feet in the air, before rolling over, fake-screaming, and grabbing his knee? Pretty surreal mental image, right? You're welcome.
It's either that, or Bob Huggins is competing in a secret underground fight club. Black eyes and broken ribs? Come on.
In all seriousness, though, it's good to know Huggins is well. Let's hope that tradition thing is just my dumb joke, and the big man avoids injury for years to come. Because broken ribs? Ouch. I totally would have cried.
Update: Somehow, I forgot to include Huggins' fall at a Charlotte, N.C. airport in May of 2008. Huggins spent a few days in the hospital then, too. The tradition is actually three years running, not two. And it's officially getting weird.
Saddle Up is our daily preview of the day's best basketball action. We're officially into that oh-so-awesome part of the season when a healthy portion of your daily hoops regimen will be happening, you know, during the day, necessitating Saddle Up's move to the morning. So let's do this.
Just like Wednesday and Thursday, let's open Friday with five themes to watch for as the conference tournaments heat up.
1. The Patriot League -- the L-ingest league in the world. Apparently, a precursor for success in the 2009-2010 Patriot League conference tournament involves a name that starts with the letter "L." Hey, I don't make the rules. I merely report them. But is there any other conclusion to draw from the Patriot League final, a matchup of No. 3 seed Lafayette and No. 1 seed Lehigh? With the exception of the various at-large bids being traded back and forth by sundry bubble teams, the Patriot League final is today's only surefire tournament bid producer, the lone automatic qualifier decided Friday. Thus far, this week's automatic qualifiers have almost uniformly survived down-to-the-wire games to get to the tournament. Let's hope the Patriot League finale is no different.
2. Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it. Anarchy in the Big East! Every top seed in the Big East tournament but West Virginia lost Thursday, which leaves us with the rather random pairings of Marquette-Georgetown and Notre Dame-West Virginia, and it's officially anyone's tournament. It's hard not to like West Virginia, which stumbled late against Cincinnati but hit a last-second Da'Sean Butler three to get past a suddenly pesky Cincinnati team. West Virginia is the most athletic team left in the bracket, and now has a clear opportunity to do what Butler said they were planning on doing when the Mountaineers finished their season-closing win at Villanova last Saturday -- win the Big East tournament and get a No. 1 seed in the NCAAs. Notre Dame is no simple matchup though; it will be interesting to see if West Virginia's length can disrupt a suddenly potent Irish offense.
3. Quick: Give me two words you hate to hear if you're either Ole Miss or a Wall Street banker. SEC and bubble. See what I did there? Really, though, the Ole Miss Fighting Admiral Ackbars had the best day of their season in a while yesterday. While other SEC teams (better ones, like Tennessee) duked it out in the first round of the tournament, geographically fortuitous Ole Miss sat back and watched the action unfold. By the end of the day, thanks to teams like Memphis and UAB helpfully losing, Mississippi was promoted into the NCAA tournament by one Mr. Joe Lunardi. Now comes the real work: Actually winning a game in the SEC tournament and holding on to that spot. The Rebels will face Tennessee today, and a win would bolster what to me looks like a pretty shaky tournament case. A loss? Say bye-bye.
4. Three cheers for chalk! Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy a good conference tournament upset as much as the next person who loves college basketball with a deep, burning, passionate, unquenchable love. But it's also nice to see the de facto best teams in a conference duke it out in that conference tournament's semifinals. That's what we've got in the Big 12 today, where No. 1 seed Kansas will take on No. 4 seed Texas A&M and No. 2 seed Kansas State gets No. 3 seed Baylor. Look out for the Bears here -- no team has inspired quite so many "I think this team is dangerous!" comments in our last two days of live-chatting, and the Bears' late-night win over Texas proved why. Baylor is deep, athletic, balanced and smart. They score. This tournament is still Kansas' to win, and unlike its Big East counterpart, there is no parity to discuss here. Just dominance at the top. Refreshing, huh?
5. You're watching the Mountain West tournament, right? Because you should be watching the Mountain West tournament. Unfortunately for those of us who don't live in America's most beautiful 1,000 square miles or so and thus don't get The Mtn., the Mountain West's take on the Big Ten Network, watching the early rounds of the Mountain West tournament has been a challenge. HOWEVA, if you have CBS College Sports -- which comes on a sports tier package with cable providers and DirecTV -- you can watch the rest of the tournament, as Mountain West games have switched over to the more available network. This is a good thing. Why? Because Jimmer Fredette is doing ridiculous things with the ball in his hand, for one. He scored 45 points in Thursday night's win over TCU. (That's almost half of his team's 95, by the way.) On the other side of the bracket, New Mexico and San Diego State will duke it out, the Aztecs with an NCAA tournament bid on the line. So, yeah, find a TV, and make sure that TV has plenty of channels.
Bonus thing, per the usual: In just a few minutes, I'll be chatting from 12 p.m. ET to 6 p.m., right here, same as Wednesday and Thursday. These chats are a great time. Be there.
Just like Wednesday and Thursday, let's open Friday with five themes to watch for as the conference tournaments heat up.
1. The Patriot League -- the L-ingest league in the world. Apparently, a precursor for success in the 2009-2010 Patriot League conference tournament involves a name that starts with the letter "L." Hey, I don't make the rules. I merely report them. But is there any other conclusion to draw from the Patriot League final, a matchup of No. 3 seed Lafayette and No. 1 seed Lehigh? With the exception of the various at-large bids being traded back and forth by sundry bubble teams, the Patriot League final is today's only surefire tournament bid producer, the lone automatic qualifier decided Friday. Thus far, this week's automatic qualifiers have almost uniformly survived down-to-the-wire games to get to the tournament. Let's hope the Patriot League finale is no different.
2. Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it. Anarchy in the Big East! Every top seed in the Big East tournament but West Virginia lost Thursday, which leaves us with the rather random pairings of Marquette-Georgetown and Notre Dame-West Virginia, and it's officially anyone's tournament. It's hard not to like West Virginia, which stumbled late against Cincinnati but hit a last-second Da'Sean Butler three to get past a suddenly pesky Cincinnati team. West Virginia is the most athletic team left in the bracket, and now has a clear opportunity to do what Butler said they were planning on doing when the Mountaineers finished their season-closing win at Villanova last Saturday -- win the Big East tournament and get a No. 1 seed in the NCAAs. Notre Dame is no simple matchup though; it will be interesting to see if West Virginia's length can disrupt a suddenly potent Irish offense.
3. Quick: Give me two words you hate to hear if you're either Ole Miss or a Wall Street banker. SEC and bubble. See what I did there? Really, though, the Ole Miss Fighting Admiral Ackbars had the best day of their season in a while yesterday. While other SEC teams (better ones, like Tennessee) duked it out in the first round of the tournament, geographically fortuitous Ole Miss sat back and watched the action unfold. By the end of the day, thanks to teams like Memphis and UAB helpfully losing, Mississippi was promoted into the NCAA tournament by one Mr. Joe Lunardi. Now comes the real work: Actually winning a game in the SEC tournament and holding on to that spot. The Rebels will face Tennessee today, and a win would bolster what to me looks like a pretty shaky tournament case. A loss? Say bye-bye.
4. Three cheers for chalk! Don't get me wrong -- I enjoy a good conference tournament upset as much as the next person who loves college basketball with a deep, burning, passionate, unquenchable love. But it's also nice to see the de facto best teams in a conference duke it out in that conference tournament's semifinals. That's what we've got in the Big 12 today, where No. 1 seed Kansas will take on No. 4 seed Texas A&M and No. 2 seed Kansas State gets No. 3 seed Baylor. Look out for the Bears here -- no team has inspired quite so many "I think this team is dangerous!" comments in our last two days of live-chatting, and the Bears' late-night win over Texas proved why. Baylor is deep, athletic, balanced and smart. They score. This tournament is still Kansas' to win, and unlike its Big East counterpart, there is no parity to discuss here. Just dominance at the top. Refreshing, huh?
5. You're watching the Mountain West tournament, right? Because you should be watching the Mountain West tournament. Unfortunately for those of us who don't live in America's most beautiful 1,000 square miles or so and thus don't get The Mtn., the Mountain West's take on the Big Ten Network, watching the early rounds of the Mountain West tournament has been a challenge. HOWEVA, if you have CBS College Sports -- which comes on a sports tier package with cable providers and DirecTV -- you can watch the rest of the tournament, as Mountain West games have switched over to the more available network. This is a good thing. Why? Because Jimmer Fredette is doing ridiculous things with the ball in his hand, for one. He scored 45 points in Thursday night's win over TCU. (That's almost half of his team's 95, by the way.) On the other side of the bracket, New Mexico and San Diego State will duke it out, the Aztecs with an NCAA tournament bid on the line. So, yeah, find a TV, and make sure that TV has plenty of channels.
Bonus thing, per the usual: In just a few minutes, I'll be chatting from 12 p.m. ET to 6 p.m., right here, same as Wednesday and Thursday. These chats are a great time. Be there.
Afternoon Linkage: Let the madness begin
March, 8, 2010
3/08/10
12:12
PM ET
By
Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com
In many ways, today is the real start of March Madness, though you could just as easily say that about last week, when the conference tournaments really began. But since we have, count 'em, eight conference championships on the line tonight, and since this week marks the beginning of all the power conference tournaments, today rather feels like the start of what will be four consecutive awesome weeks of win-or-go-home hoops. Let's go to the tape:
- Ken Pomeroy breaks down this week's most voluminous, and usually most exciting, conference tournament (who's up for another six-overtime thriller, because I am): the Big East. Can Syracuse rebound from its loss to the Cardinals? It might not matter, as Louisville is safely in the opposite side of the bracket. Meanwhile, West Virginia will look to upset the established order, and Villanova will try to overcome its defensive issues -- which actually didn't show up in its overtime loss to the Mountaineers Saturday -- and re-boost its once lofty projected tournament seed in the process.
- ESPN Insider's LaRue Cook breaks down the historic chances of mid-major at-large bids, finding that conference tournament wins can be both a blessing and a curse for mid-majors on the bubble: "A handful of mid-major teams will receive consideration for at-large bids after strong work during the regular season, particularly given the under-performance of some of their major-conference brethren down the stretch. For those mids -- Saint Mary's, Old Dominion, Wichita State and Siena among them -- a conference crown isn't a must. Instead, our data shows that a single conference tournament win may do the trick. One win doesn't seem substantial, but last season four mid-majors received at-large bids and all of them had one conference tournament win on their resume. In fact, 33 mid-majors have earned an at-large bid in the past five NCAA tournaments, and just seven have not had at least one win in their conference tournament."
- The New York Times' Thayer Evans has a quick rundown of what's at stake in all of the major conference tournaments. In short, a lot.
- As expected, The Mid Majority is all over the mid-major conference tourney beat.
- CAA Hoops tries to summarize the insanity in Saturday's quarterfinals round of the CAA tournament and finds words insufficient to do the tournament justice.
- Searching For Billy Edelin has a handy little Microsoft Paint-drawn visual bubble aid. Who doesn't love Microsoft Paint? Back before the Internet was awesome, Microsoft Paint, Candystand mini-golf and Solitaire were the best ways to waste time in your high school's computer classes.
- With the regular season finished, John Gasaway drops his final Tuesday Truths of the season. Maryland is still under-seeded according to their efficiency margin despite last week's big win over Duke, Notre Dame has added defense to its conference-leading offensive efficiency, Wisconsin is first -- yes, first -- in the Big Ten, and the order of the top four teams in the Mountain West might surprise you.
- Casual Hoya hands out a few post-Oscar awards for its win over Lance Stephenson and Cincinnati on Sunday, which was, according to Hoya, "just the kind of medicine" Georgetown needed before the start of postseason play.
- The Michigan State fans at The Only Colors relish a season-ending win over Michigan. Taking one look at the Spartans' offensive rebounding against the Wolverines is all you need to know; if Michigan State keeps that sort of obsessive second-chancing (not at all a verb, but let's go with it) going in the Big Ten tournament, it could separate itself from Wisconsin, Ohio State and Purdue just in time for the NCAAs.
- IU coach Tom Crean fired assistant Roshown McLeod, who will not coach in the Big Ten tournament. IU is 1-0 this season without McLeod on the bench; the Hoosiers won their first game post-firing, a nearly blown home win over Northwestern Saturday. So maybe that bodes well for the Big Ten tournament? OK, probably not.
- Kentucky fans might not like this column from CBS' Gregg Doyel, which parrots John Calipari's own consistent criticisms of the Cats: "Calipari looks tired. He sounds drained. And he looks and sounds this way on a Sunday afternoon when his team has just beaten Florida 74-66 to win the SEC regular-season title by two full games. He looks and sounds this way because he knows the heavy lifting is still to come, and because he has a team that is talented enough to lift as much weight as any team in college basketball -- but a team that is young enough, and dumb enough, to drop the weight on its own foot."
- Basketball fans of the semi-nerdy persuasion were no doubt aware of MIT's Sloan sports conference, a collection of some of the best basketball-related statistical and business minds in the world. The conference is of primary interest to NBA fans, sure, but there is plenty of interesting stuff that spans into college hoops, too. Kevin Pelton has a recap, and our blog brothers at True Hoop were all over the gathering from start to finish.
The Morning After is our semi-daily recap of the night's best basketball action. Try not to make it awkward.
No. 8 West Virginia 81, No. 20 Georgetown 68: A few things either learned or observed while watching last night's relatively easy West Virginia win over Georgetown:
1. Da'Sean Butler is a Mountaineer through and through. It's not like this is a revelation. But in a sport that requires us to nibble at the edges of teams' personalities so often, that requires us to keep half an eye on everyone and never a full eye on anyone, hearing Da'Sean Butler's fully emotional, front-and-center response to his final home game in Morgantown was borderline revelatory:
Any graduate who hasn't been overwhelmed with that feeling -- that sinking "What am I going to do now?" thing that ruthlessly invades your gut during your final months at school -- didn't like college all that much in the first place. Heck, we've all felt that before. We can capital-I Identify. Not to get all syrupy here, but that's a little taste of what makes sports so very awesome sometimes. It was cool. (Oh, and it didn't hurt that Butler finished his storied Morgantown career -- he ended up third in scoring all-time behind Jerry West and Hot Rod Hundley and holds the school record with 100-plus double-figure scoring games -- with a tidy 22 points, six rebounds and six assists.)
2. Austin Freeman is very important to Georgetown's ability to handle the ball on the perimeter, score on the perimeter, penetrate from the perimeter -- Austin Freeman is pretty much the best thing about Georgetown's perimeter, and when he's out of the game, his team suffers. Duh, right?
3. West Virginia doesn't always have to outrebound you to win. The nation's top offensive rebounding team by efficiency didn't outwork its opponents on the offensive glass Monday night. What the Mountaineers did do was rarely turn the ball over and get to the free throw line at a high rate. Georgetown played even with WVU ... except in those two categories. It was more than enough.
4. There was one somewhat important bit of postseason seeding on the line here (besides Georgetown's potentially plummeting NCAA tournament seed, of course): Big East tourney seeding. With the win, the Mountaineers sealed a direct double-bye into the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. Skipping those early conference tournament games means fewer opportunities to lapse and have a bad upset. This is, obviously, a good thing.
No. 25 Texas 87, Oklahoma 76: Oklahoma led by three with just under 10 minutes remaining. This is all you need to know about the relative ugliness of Texas' first half -- and the relative ugliness of the past month and a half of Texas' season. The Longhorns have suffered some bad losses in that time. A home loss to a sub-.500 Sooners team -- one with its own dire share of personnel and chemistry issues -- would have been the worst.
Instead, Texas fans can breathe a sigh of relief. Damion James got 24 points a win on Senior Night, and freshman J'Covan Brown, who suffered a neck injury and was carted off the floor at Texas A&M Saturday, returned to score 15 points and notch five assists in relief duty.
Everywhere else: Pretty quiet night last night. Get the full download here.
No. 8 West Virginia 81, No. 20 Georgetown 68: A few things either learned or observed while watching last night's relatively easy West Virginia win over Georgetown:
1. Da'Sean Butler is a Mountaineer through and through. It's not like this is a revelation. But in a sport that requires us to nibble at the edges of teams' personalities so often, that requires us to keep half an eye on everyone and never a full eye on anyone, hearing Da'Sean Butler's fully emotional, front-and-center response to his final home game in Morgantown was borderline revelatory:
"I definitely wanted to win on my Senior Night against a good team like them," Butler said, his voice cracking. "When I was taken out at the end of the game, it just kind of hit me, like I'm not playing here anymore and it just took off from there. I thought about everything and I had every emotion possible. Happy, sad, scared -- just getting ready to grow up. You never know what's out there."
Any graduate who hasn't been overwhelmed with that feeling -- that sinking "What am I going to do now?" thing that ruthlessly invades your gut during your final months at school -- didn't like college all that much in the first place. Heck, we've all felt that before. We can capital-I Identify. Not to get all syrupy here, but that's a little taste of what makes sports so very awesome sometimes. It was cool. (Oh, and it didn't hurt that Butler finished his storied Morgantown career -- he ended up third in scoring all-time behind Jerry West and Hot Rod Hundley and holds the school record with 100-plus double-figure scoring games -- with a tidy 22 points, six rebounds and six assists.)
2. Austin Freeman is very important to Georgetown's ability to handle the ball on the perimeter, score on the perimeter, penetrate from the perimeter -- Austin Freeman is pretty much the best thing about Georgetown's perimeter, and when he's out of the game, his team suffers. Duh, right?
3. West Virginia doesn't always have to outrebound you to win. The nation's top offensive rebounding team by efficiency didn't outwork its opponents on the offensive glass Monday night. What the Mountaineers did do was rarely turn the ball over and get to the free throw line at a high rate. Georgetown played even with WVU ... except in those two categories. It was more than enough.
4. There was one somewhat important bit of postseason seeding on the line here (besides Georgetown's potentially plummeting NCAA tournament seed, of course): Big East tourney seeding. With the win, the Mountaineers sealed a direct double-bye into the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. Skipping those early conference tournament games means fewer opportunities to lapse and have a bad upset. This is, obviously, a good thing.
No. 25 Texas 87, Oklahoma 76: Oklahoma led by three with just under 10 minutes remaining. This is all you need to know about the relative ugliness of Texas' first half -- and the relative ugliness of the past month and a half of Texas' season. The Longhorns have suffered some bad losses in that time. A home loss to a sub-.500 Sooners team -- one with its own dire share of personnel and chemistry issues -- would have been the worst.
Instead, Texas fans can breathe a sigh of relief. Damion James got 24 points a win on Senior Night, and freshman J'Covan Brown, who suffered a neck injury and was carted off the floor at Texas A&M Saturday, returned to score 15 points and notch five assists in relief duty.
Everywhere else: Pretty quiet night last night. Get the full download here.
Saddle Up is our daily preview of the hoops your TV wants you to watch. Here's Monday night's briefer-than-usual rundown.
No. 20 Georgetown at No. 8 West Virginia, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN: There's no mystery as to why Georgetown fell off a cliff in this week's coaches' poll; the Hoyas have lost three of their last four, including a loss at Rutgers and Saturday's blowout at home to a desperate, bubble-riding Notre Dame team. This is the mark of the Hoya in 2010: inconsistency. Georgetown has the talent to play with anyone, and can blow out very good teams on its best nights -- see the Jan. 30 Duke rout, easily Georgetown's best win of the season -- but the Hoyas are prone to frequent letdowns against lesser squads. A win at West Virginia would right the ship, so to speak. Georgetown has no hope of a Big East title now. But ending the season with a win over a top 10 team at a place like Morgantown is the sort of boost any psychologically inclined Georgetown fan would love to see. It couldn't hurt the Hoyas' tournament seeding, either.
The Mountaineers have the chance to close their season on a similarly uplifting note. Tonight's game is big enough; Saturday's at Villanova is even bigger. Win both of them and Bob Huggins' team could put itself in position to snag a No. 2 seed on Selection Sunday. The Mountaineers are miles ahead of Georgetown on tempo-free paper, and are still doing what they've been doing all season long: rebounding an insane number of their misses on the offensive end and creating second possessions at a higher rate than anyone in the country. Against Georgetown's mediocre defense -- the Hoyas are just No. 132 in opposing offensive rebound percentage -- it's safe to expect more of the same.
Oklahoma at No. 25 Texas, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN: This is another in a long list of combined Oklahoma and Texas games that looked pretty awesome before the season started. Then Willie Warren and the Sooners had an inexplicably disastrous year, rendering them a non-entity in the Big 12. Warren has been sidelined with mono and will miss tonight's game thanks to an ankle injury as the Sooners look to avoid their first seven-game losing streak in -- get this -- 41 years. Meanwhile, Texas is Texas, and you already know this story. Rick Barnes can't decide on a rotation, the Longhorns on the floor can't seem to figure out their roles, and a team that began the year by winning its first 17 games and rising to No. 1 overall is now a fringe top 25 team entirely gone from the Final Four picture. If North Carolina and UCLA showed up in Austin, Tex., tonight, we could hold a star-studded convention of the year's most disappointing teams.
Everywhere else: Morgan State and Utah State will both try to avoid upsets tonight; other than that, Monday's offerings won't do much for you. (Unless you're trying to do some deep scouting for minor conference tournament predictions, in which case, can I look at your notes?)
No. 20 Georgetown at No. 8 West Virginia, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN: There's no mystery as to why Georgetown fell off a cliff in this week's coaches' poll; the Hoyas have lost three of their last four, including a loss at Rutgers and Saturday's blowout at home to a desperate, bubble-riding Notre Dame team. This is the mark of the Hoya in 2010: inconsistency. Georgetown has the talent to play with anyone, and can blow out very good teams on its best nights -- see the Jan. 30 Duke rout, easily Georgetown's best win of the season -- but the Hoyas are prone to frequent letdowns against lesser squads. A win at West Virginia would right the ship, so to speak. Georgetown has no hope of a Big East title now. But ending the season with a win over a top 10 team at a place like Morgantown is the sort of boost any psychologically inclined Georgetown fan would love to see. It couldn't hurt the Hoyas' tournament seeding, either.
The Mountaineers have the chance to close their season on a similarly uplifting note. Tonight's game is big enough; Saturday's at Villanova is even bigger. Win both of them and Bob Huggins' team could put itself in position to snag a No. 2 seed on Selection Sunday. The Mountaineers are miles ahead of Georgetown on tempo-free paper, and are still doing what they've been doing all season long: rebounding an insane number of their misses on the offensive end and creating second possessions at a higher rate than anyone in the country. Against Georgetown's mediocre defense -- the Hoyas are just No. 132 in opposing offensive rebound percentage -- it's safe to expect more of the same.
Oklahoma at No. 25 Texas, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN: This is another in a long list of combined Oklahoma and Texas games that looked pretty awesome before the season started. Then Willie Warren and the Sooners had an inexplicably disastrous year, rendering them a non-entity in the Big 12. Warren has been sidelined with mono and will miss tonight's game thanks to an ankle injury as the Sooners look to avoid their first seven-game losing streak in -- get this -- 41 years. Meanwhile, Texas is Texas, and you already know this story. Rick Barnes can't decide on a rotation, the Longhorns on the floor can't seem to figure out their roles, and a team that began the year by winning its first 17 games and rising to No. 1 overall is now a fringe top 25 team entirely gone from the Final Four picture. If North Carolina and UCLA showed up in Austin, Tex., tonight, we could hold a star-studded convention of the year's most disappointing teams.
Everywhere else: Morgan State and Utah State will both try to avoid upsets tonight; other than that, Monday's offerings won't do much for you. (Unless you're trying to do some deep scouting for minor conference tournament predictions, in which case, can I look at your notes?)
Afternoon Linkage: Huggins' silent treatment
February, 23, 2010
2/23/10
1:00
PM ET
By
Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com
- Bob Huggins was not pleased with the officiating in Monday night's loss to Connecticut, so much so that he earned himself an ejection in the final minute -- one of those "I'm sick of this, I'm getting kicked out, which ref do I insult first" coach's decisions you see from time to time. After the game, though, Huggins was less direct: "You saw it. You're allowed to report on it. I'm not," Huggins said when asked about the effect of 46 fouls and 65 free throws -- 42 of them by UConn -- on the way the game played out. "That's a tremendous advantage."
- Northern State coach Don Meyer announced Monday that he will retire after the current season is over. Meyer is the NCAA's all-time wins leader in college basketball for all divisions, followed by former Indiana and Texas Tech coach Bob Knight and current Philadelphia University coach Herb Magee. Magee plans to stick around a little while longer; Jameson Fleming at the Bleacher Report picked Magee's brain and found out why.
- Did BracketBusters work? And just what does "work" mean? The Dagger's Jeff Eisenberg writes: "If the purpose of the Bracket Buster event is to help more mid-major teams play their way into the NCAA tournament, then there's no denying that this year's event was a colossal failure. In addition to Old Dominion and William & Mary, Siena's at large hopes vanished after a blowout loss at Butler and Wichita State's did so as well after falling at Utah State. [...] The solution to this, of course, would be to pit mid-majors against big-name opponents in the BracketBuster event, except few if any teams from the power six conferences would have anything to gain by such a format." Ballin' Is A Habit responds: "The bottom line? No matter who you play, you must win games to make the tournament. Old Dominion, Siena, and Wichita State lost games that would have helped their tournament resume. William & Mary lost a game it should have won. If ODU and Siena had both won, and that win helped the two teams to earn an at-large bid, people would be singing a much different tune about BracketBusters. So until a situation arises in which a team winning their BracketBusters game has a negative effect on their tournament résumé, I think BracketBusters is working just fine."
- Hokies fans are predictably giddy about their team's late-season rise into the NCAA tournament bracket; here's a roundup of Virginia Tech's newfound bracketology love.
- Gasaway's Tuesday Truths. More on this later, but Maryland is much, much better than the RPI folks seem to think. Oh, and here's more Gasaway, this time taking on the Purdue homers who insist on claiming this team is "old-fashioned" and "hard-nosed" (which they are, sort of) while completely ignoring what's made the Boilermakers of 2010 so much better than last season's counterparts: the offense!
- Nebraska is 1-11 in the Big 12 and 13-14 overall, but Nebraska's athletic director isn't putting coach Doc Sadler's head on the chopping block. Rather, he's extending the always-welcome-when-it-seems-sincere vote of confidence, saying Sadler is the "right guy to get this thing done."
- Michigan State's Kalin Lucas was frustrated Saturday. After losing to Ohio State in East Lansing -- and scoring a mere nine points on 3 of 13 shooting -- Lucas decided to pull a LeBron and blow off the postgame media question-and-answer session. On Sunday, Lucas called head coach Tom Izzo to apologize and tell him he felt bad about "leaving his teammates to explain" the loss. On Monday, Lucas joined Izzo at the coach's weekly news conference, where Lucas apologized to the media for ditching out. All things considered, a pretty classy move.
- Doug Gottlieb (Insider) says he's heard Jim Calhoun has five-year contract extension from UConn "on his desk" and that Calhoun should sign it, thereby ignoring folks like me who think now's as good a time as any to experience the joys of retirement.
- SB Nation's Andrew Sharp has some lighthearted fun with Vanderbilt's A.J. Ogilvy, and the many faces of A.J. (Of special note is Ogilvy's hair, which reminds of the kids I used to play club soccer with -- they loved to frost their tips. Like aging 90s country chicks and their relationship to mullets, I have an irrational soft spot for this hairstyle.)
- Speaking of lighthearted fun, let's hope this budding Kent State sideline reporter -- and heir to the "Boom Goes The Dynamite" guy's legacy of student reporter hilarity -- can laugh at himself in the morning.
- Barry Alvarez confirms: The Big Ten is indeed looking for another school, and has hired a research firm to look into 15 potential expansion additions. Not on this list? Texas and Notre Dame.
The Morning After is our semi-daily look at last night's best hoops action. Try not to make it awkward. Oh, and sorry about that headline. I couldn't help myself.
No. 4 Purdue 60, No. 12 Ohio State 57: Any time you face a player as good as Evan Turner, the conventional strategy is simple: Make someone else beat you. It might not have been conscious, but Purdue's execution in last night's impressive road win at OSU was the exact opposite. It let Turner get his points (and his assists, and his rebounds, and pretty much anything else he wanted, because what are you going to do, triple-team him?) and the rest of the Buckeyes couldn't step up in time. By the time OSU started hitting the shots it usually makes to complement Turner's brilliance, it was too late: Purdue is simply too smart, too hard-nosed and too complete on defense to spot it 15 first-half points. OSU and Turner made a valiant comeback, but it was too late.
Purdue's defense didn't stop Turner -- he went for 29 points, seven rebounds, and five assists -- but what it did do was isolate Turner from the rest of his teammates. Purdue swarmed OSU with that patented man-to-man defense, and Ohio State's offense turned simple. There was no motion, no movement, none of the things that the Boilermakers kept wowing with on their own offensive end. Instead, Turner would bring the ball up the floor, receive a screen or an iso call, go to the hoop and oftentimes score. But even a player as good as Turner can't rebound all of his misses. Even Turner can't find himself on back cuts. Even Turner can't make every shot. Ohio State had six assists all game; Turner had five of them.
In the end, it's games like these that set Purdue apart from the Big Ten pack. The Boilermakers have elite talent -- JaJuan Johnson is perpetually slept on; sooner or later we'll learn -- but they also have the depth and style, that hard-nosed, lockdown defense thing that you can feel when you watch them, to outlast mercurial teams like Ohio State. Matt Painter's boys are not perfect, and they're not Kansas, but they're the closest thing the Big Ten has to a Final Four favorite. That much is no longer in dispute.
Louisville 91, Notre Dame 89, 2OT: Which team needed this one more? Louisville, coming off an upset of Syracuse and trying to fight its way back into safe bubble territory? Or Notre Dame, whose bubble hopes are almost entirely waned, but who could maybe take a win at Louisville to the committee as a résumé-builder? Hard to say. What I do know that is that a Louisville win -- in which Samardo Samuels scored a career-high 36 points, including 16-of-19 from the free throw line, marking the only real difference between these teams in Four Factors land -- moves Louisville into legitimate tourney consideration, and just might move Notre Dame off the bubble for good. Such is life in the middle of the Big East.
Missouri 82, No. 17 Texas 77: Is Texas going to drop out of the Top 25? This is the Longhorns' sixth loss in nine games, and while there's nothing wrong with losing at Missouri -- Missouri is a tough out, to be sure -- a team as talented as Texas losing so many games in the stretch run of its season, just as the country's elite are hitting their stride and doing their best work, ought to be hugely discouraging to voters. Take a gander at those Big 12 standings: Texas is 6-5 in the conference, behind Kansas, Kansas State, Texas A&M, Baylor and, yes, Missouri, which moved to 7-4 with Wednesday night's win. Texas is one of the most-talented teams in the country. How does that happen? Anyone with a really good answer -- something besides "Rick Barnes plays too many players" -- wins a cookie. Not kidding. I will mail you a cookie of your choosing. Just please help me understand this, because I am so very confused.
Everywhere else: Duke was over the ledge in the first half at Miami, trailing by 12 at halftime and apparently doing another of its incomprehensible road loss routines, but credit the Devils for the turnaround: Duke won 81-74 in an impressive comeback victory. Sure, it's just Miami, but a road ACC win is a road ACC win. Especially for Duke. ... It was a night of survival for highly ranked teams, and Kansas State's near-loss at home to Nebraska was no exception. ... West Virginia withstood Providence's second-half rally. ... St. Louis got a huge win for itself and for the prospect of six A-10 teams in the NCAA tournament with its win over Rhode Island. ... Tennessee got a challenge from Georgia, but pulled away for the nine-point win. ... Florida State rolled at Virginia, a doomer for the Cavaliers' faint NCAA hopes. ... South Carolina did itself no favors by losing at Arkansas; as fun as it would be to have Devan Downey in the NCAA tournament, it's not looking good.
No. 4 Purdue 60, No. 12 Ohio State 57: Any time you face a player as good as Evan Turner, the conventional strategy is simple: Make someone else beat you. It might not have been conscious, but Purdue's execution in last night's impressive road win at OSU was the exact opposite. It let Turner get his points (and his assists, and his rebounds, and pretty much anything else he wanted, because what are you going to do, triple-team him?) and the rest of the Buckeyes couldn't step up in time. By the time OSU started hitting the shots it usually makes to complement Turner's brilliance, it was too late: Purdue is simply too smart, too hard-nosed and too complete on defense to spot it 15 first-half points. OSU and Turner made a valiant comeback, but it was too late.
Purdue's defense didn't stop Turner -- he went for 29 points, seven rebounds, and five assists -- but what it did do was isolate Turner from the rest of his teammates. Purdue swarmed OSU with that patented man-to-man defense, and Ohio State's offense turned simple. There was no motion, no movement, none of the things that the Boilermakers kept wowing with on their own offensive end. Instead, Turner would bring the ball up the floor, receive a screen or an iso call, go to the hoop and oftentimes score. But even a player as good as Turner can't rebound all of his misses. Even Turner can't find himself on back cuts. Even Turner can't make every shot. Ohio State had six assists all game; Turner had five of them.
In the end, it's games like these that set Purdue apart from the Big Ten pack. The Boilermakers have elite talent -- JaJuan Johnson is perpetually slept on; sooner or later we'll learn -- but they also have the depth and style, that hard-nosed, lockdown defense thing that you can feel when you watch them, to outlast mercurial teams like Ohio State. Matt Painter's boys are not perfect, and they're not Kansas, but they're the closest thing the Big Ten has to a Final Four favorite. That much is no longer in dispute.
Louisville 91, Notre Dame 89, 2OT: Which team needed this one more? Louisville, coming off an upset of Syracuse and trying to fight its way back into safe bubble territory? Or Notre Dame, whose bubble hopes are almost entirely waned, but who could maybe take a win at Louisville to the committee as a résumé-builder? Hard to say. What I do know that is that a Louisville win -- in which Samardo Samuels scored a career-high 36 points, including 16-of-19 from the free throw line, marking the only real difference between these teams in Four Factors land -- moves Louisville into legitimate tourney consideration, and just might move Notre Dame off the bubble for good. Such is life in the middle of the Big East.
Missouri 82, No. 17 Texas 77: Is Texas going to drop out of the Top 25? This is the Longhorns' sixth loss in nine games, and while there's nothing wrong with losing at Missouri -- Missouri is a tough out, to be sure -- a team as talented as Texas losing so many games in the stretch run of its season, just as the country's elite are hitting their stride and doing their best work, ought to be hugely discouraging to voters. Take a gander at those Big 12 standings: Texas is 6-5 in the conference, behind Kansas, Kansas State, Texas A&M, Baylor and, yes, Missouri, which moved to 7-4 with Wednesday night's win. Texas is one of the most-talented teams in the country. How does that happen? Anyone with a really good answer -- something besides "Rick Barnes plays too many players" -- wins a cookie. Not kidding. I will mail you a cookie of your choosing. Just please help me understand this, because I am so very confused.
Everywhere else: Duke was over the ledge in the first half at Miami, trailing by 12 at halftime and apparently doing another of its incomprehensible road loss routines, but credit the Devils for the turnaround: Duke won 81-74 in an impressive comeback victory. Sure, it's just Miami, but a road ACC win is a road ACC win. Especially for Duke. ... It was a night of survival for highly ranked teams, and Kansas State's near-loss at home to Nebraska was no exception. ... West Virginia withstood Providence's second-half rally. ... St. Louis got a huge win for itself and for the prospect of six A-10 teams in the NCAA tournament with its win over Rhode Island. ... Tennessee got a challenge from Georgia, but pulled away for the nine-point win. ... Florida State rolled at Virginia, a doomer for the Cavaliers' faint NCAA hopes. ... South Carolina did itself no favors by losing at Arkansas; as fun as it would be to have Devan Downey in the NCAA tournament, it's not looking good.
Saddle Up is our daily look at the hoops your TV wants you to watch. Here's Wednesday night's rundown.
No. 4 Purdue at No. 12 Ohio State, 6:30 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network: If you're one of the college basketball fans who doesn't live in a market that carries the Big Ten Network, or that doesn't have DirecTV, well, man. I'm sorry. That's no good. Because tonight is one of the biggest games the Big Ten has had in years, and you're going to have to follow along on the Internet. You're also going to have to rush home from work; a 6:30 p.m. ET start time is mighty unfriendly to those Big Ten fans who live in the central time zone, which is most of them.
Sneak out early. Duck your boss on your way out. Put up an out-of-office notification email. ("I'm not in the office, because I'm watching an awesome basketball game. Please direct all urgent issues to Person X, and don't bother me for the next few hours, nerds.") Do what you need to do, because the battle between the fighting Evan Turners and Matt Painter's steadfast and solid Boilermakers team is full of implications. If Purdue wins, they make a very strong case to displace Villanova as the fourth No. 1 seed and might cruise to the Big Ten title. If Ohio State wins, it boosts its own tourney resume and gets the added bonus of a foot forward in the Big Ten title race. The Big Ten is loaded at the top; tonight's result should provide some measure of separation.
The most notable match up on hand is, obviously, Evan Turner versus, well, anyone Matt Painter decides to send Turner's way. The Boilermakers are great at harassing opposing guards, and the one chink in Turner's armor is his tendency to turn the ball over. Expect Painter to try and smother Turner with multiple defenders as soon as he crosses the half-court line, and maybe before. E'Twaun Moore and Chris Kramer will play a prominent role, and it wouldn't be shocking to see Robbie Hummel try to keep Turner from dominating inside.
That's a solid strategy, but it leaves Purdue open to Ohio State's biggest non-Turner strength: shooting. The Buckeyes hit their outside shots. That efficiency means Turner doesn't need to dominate the scoreline for OSU to stay productive on offense; he merely needs to be enough of a distraction to dominate the other team's gameplan. If Purdue can find a balance between keeping Turner away from the areas he usually owns, as well as keeping OSU's shooters from getting too many kickouts and easy, Turner-delivered looks, Purdue has a great chance to win. But that, as with anything Villian-related, is easier said than done.
Whatever both teams decide to do, the numbers would point toward a close game: Ohio State is the country's eighth-best offense; Purdue is its seventh-best defense. Ohio State has the No. 24 defense in the country; Purdue has the No. 24 offense. Both teams have their eyes on deep tournament runs, and both teams are hitting their late-season strides. Like I said, rush home from work. Screw your personal file. This one is worth it.
But that's not all! Bonus previews, notes, and errata: Be sure to check out Hammer And Rails' lengthy preview of tonight's game; same goes for Boiled Sports, who says the anticipation "almost feels like a football game," which, were I a Purdue basketball player, would offend me. For the OSU-interested, you can find excellent fan-centric previews at Eleven Warriors and Buckeye Battle Cry. The Big Ten Network seems rather excited about tonight's game, too. And don't forget the implications. So many implications! (I like writing the word "implications." Implications. OK, sheesh, I'll stop.)
Everywhere else: Duke gets a chance to prove itself on the road against a decidedly mediocre Miami (FL) team, which should be no problem, except this is Duke on the road, and, well, you know ... West Virginia goes to Providence, where Bob Huggins' men will attempt to sidestep the recent plague of Big East upsets ... Nebraska plays Kansas State in Manhattan; have fun, Huskers ... Your sneaky-good game of the night? Texas at Missouri ... Georgia has played well on the road in the SEC; their next challenge is at Tennessee ... Notre Dame, barely hanging on to a bubble spot, will face fellow bubblers Louisville at Freedom Hall ... In a stacked A-10 with six possible NCAA tournament teams, Rhode Island at St. Louis means a lot ... and two fringe ACC bubble teams will try to sort themselves out when Florida State goes to Virginia.
No. 4 Purdue at No. 12 Ohio State, 6:30 p.m. ET, Big Ten Network: If you're one of the college basketball fans who doesn't live in a market that carries the Big Ten Network, or that doesn't have DirecTV, well, man. I'm sorry. That's no good. Because tonight is one of the biggest games the Big Ten has had in years, and you're going to have to follow along on the Internet. You're also going to have to rush home from work; a 6:30 p.m. ET start time is mighty unfriendly to those Big Ten fans who live in the central time zone, which is most of them.
[+] Enlarge
Robin Alam/Icon SMIExpect Purdue to try to smother Ohio State star Evan Turner.
Robin Alam/Icon SMIExpect Purdue to try to smother Ohio State star Evan Turner.The most notable match up on hand is, obviously, Evan Turner versus, well, anyone Matt Painter decides to send Turner's way. The Boilermakers are great at harassing opposing guards, and the one chink in Turner's armor is his tendency to turn the ball over. Expect Painter to try and smother Turner with multiple defenders as soon as he crosses the half-court line, and maybe before. E'Twaun Moore and Chris Kramer will play a prominent role, and it wouldn't be shocking to see Robbie Hummel try to keep Turner from dominating inside.
That's a solid strategy, but it leaves Purdue open to Ohio State's biggest non-Turner strength: shooting. The Buckeyes hit their outside shots. That efficiency means Turner doesn't need to dominate the scoreline for OSU to stay productive on offense; he merely needs to be enough of a distraction to dominate the other team's gameplan. If Purdue can find a balance between keeping Turner away from the areas he usually owns, as well as keeping OSU's shooters from getting too many kickouts and easy, Turner-delivered looks, Purdue has a great chance to win. But that, as with anything Villian-related, is easier said than done.
Whatever both teams decide to do, the numbers would point toward a close game: Ohio State is the country's eighth-best offense; Purdue is its seventh-best defense. Ohio State has the No. 24 defense in the country; Purdue has the No. 24 offense. Both teams have their eyes on deep tournament runs, and both teams are hitting their late-season strides. Like I said, rush home from work. Screw your personal file. This one is worth it.
But that's not all! Bonus previews, notes, and errata: Be sure to check out Hammer And Rails' lengthy preview of tonight's game; same goes for Boiled Sports, who says the anticipation "almost feels like a football game," which, were I a Purdue basketball player, would offend me. For the OSU-interested, you can find excellent fan-centric previews at Eleven Warriors and Buckeye Battle Cry. The Big Ten Network seems rather excited about tonight's game, too. And don't forget the implications. So many implications! (I like writing the word "implications." Implications. OK, sheesh, I'll stop.)
Everywhere else: Duke gets a chance to prove itself on the road against a decidedly mediocre Miami (FL) team, which should be no problem, except this is Duke on the road, and, well, you know ... West Virginia goes to Providence, where Bob Huggins' men will attempt to sidestep the recent plague of Big East upsets ... Nebraska plays Kansas State in Manhattan; have fun, Huskers ... Your sneaky-good game of the night? Texas at Missouri ... Georgia has played well on the road in the SEC; their next challenge is at Tennessee ... Notre Dame, barely hanging on to a bubble spot, will face fellow bubblers Louisville at Freedom Hall ... In a stacked A-10 with six possible NCAA tournament teams, Rhode Island at St. Louis means a lot ... and two fringe ACC bubble teams will try to sort themselves out when Florida State goes to Virginia.
Afternoon Linkage: Cousins vs. Alabama
February, 9, 2010
2/09/10
12:45
PM ET
By
Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com
- First, a few leftover Texas-Kansas notes: Mike DeCourcy writes that Kansas is making Big 12 dominance look easy. That causes Rush The Court to make a pretty trenchant observation: "Often you hear the media say that it’s a “wide-open field” as we’re heading up to the Tournament, only to say afterwards that Team X (as in UNC’s case last year) was “clearly the best team” after they win it all in April. I have a feeling that we’re going to by hearing the same contrasting platitudes this year, except that Kansas will be this year’s UNC." North Carolina occasionally stumbled during the regular season in 2009-10, only to roll through the tournament with nary a challenger. Kansas looks primed to do the exact same thing, only the Jayhawks already look dominant enough (and relatively stumble-free, at least so far) to win at all.
- Yes, Bill Self has Twitter, and yes, he's using it to poke fun at Brady Morningstar: "Just got back to lawrence. Guys feel pretty good abt themselves. Different guys stepping up. Fun nite.how abt bradys ft. Never seen that."
- In case you needed another look at that Texas-themed design on the back of the Longhorns' new Nike HyperElite uniforms, here you go. There's a star and some rays of light and a building, I think. It's actually kind of Art Deco, and I have a major soft spot for all things Art Deco. (Including Bioshock 2, which, yay, comes out today.) All it needs is an old-school train rolling through an idealized city and we'd be right there.
- DeMarcus Cousins is an Alabaman, but that doesn't mean he has any love for his homestate school. Quite the contrary, in fact -- in this video by the Lexington Herald-Leader's John Clay, Cousins says he didn't attend Alabama because it was a "bad situation." When asked to elaborate on his coy response, the big man says he "doesn't really want to talk about it." Mobile Press-Register reporter Gentry Estes, who has an awesome name, says Cousins is probably referring to some hurt feelings over former Alabama coach Mark Gottfried's -- and then new coach Anthony Grant's -- decisions not to recruit Cousins due to concerns about his attitude. Whether Cousins would have attended Alabama seems unlikely anyway (why go to a transitional program when you can play for John Calipari at Memphis neé Kentucky?) but athletes still like to know they're wanted in their own backyard. Apparently, Cousins wasn't. So, yeah. If I were Alabama, I'd start devising ways to keep Cousins off the glass. A doubly motivated DeMarcus -- who has morphed into the most important and productive player in Calipari's lineup these last few weeks -- will be fearsome to behold.
- You know what's confusing? Why Pierre Henderson-Niles would leave Memphis at this point in the season. Is the frustration with Josh Pastner -- or maybe it's the other way around -- so great that the two can't stick it out a while longer for the good of Memphis' tournament chances? Apparently so.
- "The A-10 currently has six teams -- Rhode Island, Temple, Xavier, Charlotte, Richmond and Dayton -- in the top 43 of the RPI. That means when those teams start facing each other, which they will five times in the next 10 days alone, those games will be RPI helpers. Much like the Missouri Valley Conference in 2006, if results break the right way, all of these teams are going to have very strong computer profiles at season's end, with a series of league wins that should be very valuable in at-large consideration. This year, the A-10, literally and figuratively, could get a major at-large haul." That's SI's Andy Glockner on the A-10, which has a plethora of teams worthy of tournament consideration in 2009-10. It probably helps that the Missouri Valley isn't as good as it usually is, and of course it doesn't hurt that the Pac-10 is a one-bid league. Is this the year of the A-10? It's certainly looking that way.
- Here's the story: Purdue blog Hammer And Rails runs a semi-joking post saying Syracuse is overrated because of the Orange's exhibition loss to LeMoyne. After Syracuse fans raid his house and threaten his family -- just kidding; they actually wrote very reasonable, well-received responses in defense of their club-- BoilerT does something people who spend their time arguing on the Internet never do: apologizes. It's a small victory, but this is what John Lennon was talking about, guys.
- Athens Banner-Herald columnist David Ching makes the case for Georgia's Mark Fox as SEC coach of the year. It's no secret Fox has done a fantastic job in his first year in Athens; it's also no secret that coaches with his league record (2-6 in the SEC), no matter how hard their team plays, probably aren't going to win any awards.
- Seth Davis says Georgetown learned from last year's letdown.
- It's Tuesday, so here are your Tuesday Truths. Mr. Gasaway is especially good on why West Virginia looks better on paper than they do in person: "Take West Virginia last night. Please! (Har!) The Mountaineers have a really nice EM because they've been able to pummel teams like Rutgers, South Florida, St. John's, DePaul, and, yes, Pitt. Pummeling teams, even non-NCAA tournament teams, is a good marker of quality and I don't minimize that. Still, it's also true that Bob Huggins' team has seen its two main rivals, Syracuse and Villanova, come to Morgantown, and in those games the Mountaineers are 0-2, having been outscored by 0.06 points per trip. Looking ahead, West Virginia closes the season by hosting Georgetown and then going to Villanova. If they're smart they'll seize the opportunity to show what they can do against top-quality opponents."
- Mike Brey isn't taking his foot off the pedal as Notre Dame hits the stretch run of the Big East. Brey wants to make the tournament. To ensure his players' complicity, he's started running two-a-day practices. Maybe a big deal, maybe not, but it's easy to see how that strategy would backfire, yes? Your players get mad at you and don't play hard, or, failing that, your players play as hard as possible but don't have the energy to compete late in games. It's a risky gambit, but like I said: Brey wants to make the tournament. He's putting his chips on the table. That's one way to do it.
- Dan Hanner smartly explains the impact of RPI and how it relates to Northwestern's tourney chances.
- Pete Thamel writes a brief vignette on Rhode Island 17-year-old high school player Andre Drummond, who Thamel says might be U.S. basketball's next great big man prospect.
The Morning After: Texas-sized letdown
February, 9, 2010
2/09/10
10:08
AM ET
By
Eamonn Brennan | ESPN.com
The Morning After is our semi-daily recap of the night's best hoops action. Try not to make it awkward.
No. 1 Kansas 80, No. 14 Texas 68: The act of sitting down, chatting on the Internet, and watching college basketball is nothing to complain about, so I'll do my best not to complain about Texas' ugly performance against No. 1 Kansas last night. You probably watched the game, so you don't need me to recap it; things were close until Kansas went on a devastating 22-0 first-half run, essentially sealing the game before Texas really had a chance to get going. The Longhorns never really climbed back into it, and Kansas cruised to an easy win in a game that was supposed to decide the Big 12 regular season. Instead, it solidified one fact: These Texas Longhorns are a major disappointment.
How did Kansas do it? A closer look at the advanced stats shows a relatively evenly matched game. The biggest difference was offensive rebounding. Texas usually bests their opponents on the boards, which has allowed them to get away with their otherwise stagnant offense these past few weeks. But last night, Kansas ripped 50 percent of its misses, while Texas could only recover 35.9 of theirs. Both teams shot about the same, and Kansas forced a few more turnovers, but there was your difference: The Jayhawks extended their possessions frequently and didn't allow Texas to do the same. The result was the ugly show you saw last night.
The question now is: Where does Texas go from here? Rick Barnes is apparently as confused about the Longhorns' rotation as the rest of us. He also seems convinced that the Longhorns were better earlier in the season because he played his veterans more minutes, which, OK, I guess, except why did he do that? Wouldn't it have made more sense to play your young players early, give them some big minutes in some easy blowouts, figure out what you have, and save your most crucial minutes for your veterans in the thick of the Big 12 season? Instead, the Longhorns are giving big minutes to guys like Jordan Hamilton, who has yet to figure out his role (and is convinced he needs to shoot every time down the floor), and the team is suffering for it. Now is not the time to tinker. If Barnes wants to salvage this thing, he should take a few notes from the coach that just beat them -- figure out your best rotation, set it in motion, and stick with it. The Longhorns don't have that cohesion. For the fifth time in three weeks, it showed.
No. 5 Villanova 82, No. 4 West Virginia 75: Everyone who saw this coming, raise your hand. All right, put your hands down. Because you're all lying.
Sure, some of you probably liked Villanova to come in a steal a really tough Big East road win at West Virginia. The Wildcats are very, very talented, and there's a reason their first conference loss didn't come until Saturday. But the Cats had to fend off a bad loss at Georgetown, travel to West Virginia in the midst of a brutal East Coast snowstorm, play one of the most athletic, efficient teams in the country, and do so in front of a crowd that on any given night may or may not throw loose change at your eyeballs. This was a daunting task. And Scottie Reynolds and Villanova delivered.
Villanova did two things most teams usually can't do against West Virginia. The Wildcats prevented offensive rebounds (or, at the very least, kept up with the Mountaineers on the offensive glass, negating WVU's huge advantage there) and shot really, really well, finishing with a 61.8 percent eFG and scoring 1.17 points per trip. On a night when I assumed West Virginia's size and athleticism would be too much for Nova -- especially on WVU's offensive end; who would guard the Mountaineers' bigs? -- the opposite was true. West Virginia couldn't handle Nova's quickness, and Jay Wright's team finished when they had to.
Everywhere else: Siena edged Fairfield to go to 14-0 in the MAAC ... Butler beat up on Chicago rival Loyola for their 13th straight win, tying Murray State for the second-longest winning streak in the country (the aforementioned Siena has won 15 games in a row, and currently wears the belt) ... Robert Morris gave Pitt a run in the first-half -- our live chat commenters were all over that during WVU-Nova -- but Pittsburgh opened a gap in the second half and cruised to a relatively easy win ... and Murray State nearly suffered their first loss in the MEAC, finding themselves down five to Bethune-Cookman with 4:34 remaining in the second half before scoring five straight points and edging a 48-47 win on two late free throws.
No. 1 Kansas 80, No. 14 Texas 68: The act of sitting down, chatting on the Internet, and watching college basketball is nothing to complain about, so I'll do my best not to complain about Texas' ugly performance against No. 1 Kansas last night. You probably watched the game, so you don't need me to recap it; things were close until Kansas went on a devastating 22-0 first-half run, essentially sealing the game before Texas really had a chance to get going. The Longhorns never really climbed back into it, and Kansas cruised to an easy win in a game that was supposed to decide the Big 12 regular season. Instead, it solidified one fact: These Texas Longhorns are a major disappointment.
How did Kansas do it? A closer look at the advanced stats shows a relatively evenly matched game. The biggest difference was offensive rebounding. Texas usually bests their opponents on the boards, which has allowed them to get away with their otherwise stagnant offense these past few weeks. But last night, Kansas ripped 50 percent of its misses, while Texas could only recover 35.9 of theirs. Both teams shot about the same, and Kansas forced a few more turnovers, but there was your difference: The Jayhawks extended their possessions frequently and didn't allow Texas to do the same. The result was the ugly show you saw last night.
The question now is: Where does Texas go from here? Rick Barnes is apparently as confused about the Longhorns' rotation as the rest of us. He also seems convinced that the Longhorns were better earlier in the season because he played his veterans more minutes, which, OK, I guess, except why did he do that? Wouldn't it have made more sense to play your young players early, give them some big minutes in some easy blowouts, figure out what you have, and save your most crucial minutes for your veterans in the thick of the Big 12 season? Instead, the Longhorns are giving big minutes to guys like Jordan Hamilton, who has yet to figure out his role (and is convinced he needs to shoot every time down the floor), and the team is suffering for it. Now is not the time to tinker. If Barnes wants to salvage this thing, he should take a few notes from the coach that just beat them -- figure out your best rotation, set it in motion, and stick with it. The Longhorns don't have that cohesion. For the fifth time in three weeks, it showed.
No. 5 Villanova 82, No. 4 West Virginia 75: Everyone who saw this coming, raise your hand. All right, put your hands down. Because you're all lying.
Sure, some of you probably liked Villanova to come in a steal a really tough Big East road win at West Virginia. The Wildcats are very, very talented, and there's a reason their first conference loss didn't come until Saturday. But the Cats had to fend off a bad loss at Georgetown, travel to West Virginia in the midst of a brutal East Coast snowstorm, play one of the most athletic, efficient teams in the country, and do so in front of a crowd that on any given night may or may not throw loose change at your eyeballs. This was a daunting task. And Scottie Reynolds and Villanova delivered.
Villanova did two things most teams usually can't do against West Virginia. The Wildcats prevented offensive rebounds (or, at the very least, kept up with the Mountaineers on the offensive glass, negating WVU's huge advantage there) and shot really, really well, finishing with a 61.8 percent eFG and scoring 1.17 points per trip. On a night when I assumed West Virginia's size and athleticism would be too much for Nova -- especially on WVU's offensive end; who would guard the Mountaineers' bigs? -- the opposite was true. West Virginia couldn't handle Nova's quickness, and Jay Wright's team finished when they had to.
Everywhere else: Siena edged Fairfield to go to 14-0 in the MAAC ... Butler beat up on Chicago rival Loyola for their 13th straight win, tying Murray State for the second-longest winning streak in the country (the aforementioned Siena has won 15 games in a row, and currently wears the belt) ... Robert Morris gave Pitt a run in the first-half -- our live chat commenters were all over that during WVU-Nova -- but Pittsburgh opened a gap in the second half and cruised to a relatively easy win ... and Murray State nearly suffered their first loss in the MEAC, finding themselves down five to Bethune-Cookman with 4:34 remaining in the second half before scoring five straight points and edging a 48-47 win on two late free throws.
Video: Villanova tops West Virginia, 82-75
February, 8, 2010
2/08/10
10:10
PM ET
By ESPN.com staff | ESPN.com
No. 5 Villanova bounced back from a blowout loss to Georgetown by topping No. 4 West Virginia, 82-75.
Saddle Up is our nightly look at the hoops your TV wants you to watch. You might have heard already, but there are a couple of pretty big games tonight. What? You hadn't heard? Then it's a good thing you dropped by. Here's Monday night's rundown:
No. 5 Villanova at No. 4 West Virginia, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN: A few weeks ago, this was still a big game, but it paled in comparison to two former/current No. 1s duking it out for Big 12 and national supremacy, which was what Texas-Kansas held in store. Now? This is your biggest game of the night. Oh, sure, Texas-Kansas still promises to be great -- it's a No. 1 team going on the road to face a talented Big 12 rival; that only will be worth the price of admission -- but Nova-WVU is the game packed with conference intrigue and, at a rankings' glance, the two better teams.
You'll notice West Virginia leapfrogged Villanova in the coaches' poll after Nova's loss at Georgetown on Saturday. That loss was the Wildcats' first in conference, placing them at 9-1. Meanwhile, West Virginia has racked up wins in its last six outings, the most important of which came at home in front of an antagonistic, defiantly misbehaved student section. Those wins leave WVU at 8-2, and you can do the math: A win tonight pulls West Virginia into a tie for second in the Big East with Nova, nipping at Syracuse's heels for the conference marbles.
But what about the basketball? How do these two teams match up? No disrespect intended toward WVU's fans or the Big East race, but this is where it gets really interesting. This is also the part where AP and coaches rankings start to melt away. West Virginia, with the No. 4 overall offense and No. 22 overall defense in Ken Pomeroy's ratings, is much more efficient than Villanova; the Mountaineers score early and often and do it in a way (with interior buckets primarily created by the second-best offensive rebounding performance in the country) that isn't susceptible to the occasional off-night. West Virginia has won its past seven games this way. The story remains the same. If the Mountaineers are crashing the glass and getting easy putbacks, the game is out of reach. You have to block Bob Huggins' team out. Most teams can't.
As for the Wildcats? Villanova's loss to Georgetown was a manifestation of why the Wildcats are susceptible to losses and off games. Their offense is great. It's the third-best in the country, and Nova's fast-paced style shows it off. But Villanova's defense -- ranked No. 64 overall -- will hurt the Wildcats in key games, just as it did Saturday. Nova wants to run and spread the floor and score a lot and hope you don't make enough shots to catch up, because if you do, the Wildcats are not particularly well-suited to stop you. They'll need to do that often enough tonight to keep West Virginia, a slow, grinding, half-court team, on its heels. Tonight's 7 p.m. game won't just be a battle of wills. It'll be a battle of styles.
No. 1 Kansas at No. 14 Texas, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN: The story of this game is already pretty obvious -- Texas is limping into what should have been the biggest regular-season game of the year -- and doesn't need to be repeated again. So let's just get to the hoops.
A quick on-paper comparison bears out what Texas has helped voters figure out in the past few weeks: The Longhorns are talented, but they're not a top-10 team. This is as true in the AP poll as it is in the tempo-free numbers. Texas' best feature is its defense. The Longhorns pressure out to 25 feet, and their length and athleticism make it difficult for opposing shooters to get good looks. On the interior, the combination of Damion James and Dexter Pittman keep scoring low. The Longhorns, if nothing else, can defend.
The problem is that Texas' offense has yet to catch up with its defense, and the occasionally scattered nature of the Longhorns' approach -- Jordan Hamilton goes off for 27 one night, goes 3-for-15 the next; Pittman dominates in nonconference, disappears in the Big 12 -- has prevented Texas from really figuring things out. The Longhorns are not a good shooting team. They get by on offensive rebounding. Sometimes it's enough. But not always, and not recently. (Texas also has major issues from the free throw line, where it's shooting 61 percent as a team. Yikes.)
Kansas, meanwhile, looks every bit the world-beater we've come to expect during Bill Self's time in Lawrence. The Jayhawks are ruthlessly efficient on the offensive end; they prevent good looks on the defensive end, especially with Cole Aldrich patrolling the lane; and their plethora of scorers and depth make them almost impossible to stop. Shut down Xavier Henry? Sherron Collins will go to work. Start doubling Collins, or start shading defenders toward the perimeter? Aldrich will destroy you.
To beat Kansas, Texas will need to make outside shots, rebound its misses, defend KU's shooters and hope Aldrich leaves some room for Pittman and James to go to work. Considering everything you just read, does that seem very likely? Such are Texas' chances. For one night, an increasingly imperfect team will need to be downright perfect. It might not happen, but it will be fun to watch the Longhorns try.
Everywhere else: As is the case most Mondays, the action is concentrated at the top of the pile. Some scattered mid-major stuff of interest here. And, as a final reminder before game time, be sure to join us for a live chat at 7 p.m. ET right here.
No. 5 Villanova at No. 4 West Virginia, 7 p.m. ET, ESPN: A few weeks ago, this was still a big game, but it paled in comparison to two former/current No. 1s duking it out for Big 12 and national supremacy, which was what Texas-Kansas held in store. Now? This is your biggest game of the night. Oh, sure, Texas-Kansas still promises to be great -- it's a No. 1 team going on the road to face a talented Big 12 rival; that only will be worth the price of admission -- but Nova-WVU is the game packed with conference intrigue and, at a rankings' glance, the two better teams.
You'll notice West Virginia leapfrogged Villanova in the coaches' poll after Nova's loss at Georgetown on Saturday. That loss was the Wildcats' first in conference, placing them at 9-1. Meanwhile, West Virginia has racked up wins in its last six outings, the most important of which came at home in front of an antagonistic, defiantly misbehaved student section. Those wins leave WVU at 8-2, and you can do the math: A win tonight pulls West Virginia into a tie for second in the Big East with Nova, nipping at Syracuse's heels for the conference marbles.
But what about the basketball? How do these two teams match up? No disrespect intended toward WVU's fans or the Big East race, but this is where it gets really interesting. This is also the part where AP and coaches rankings start to melt away. West Virginia, with the No. 4 overall offense and No. 22 overall defense in Ken Pomeroy's ratings, is much more efficient than Villanova; the Mountaineers score early and often and do it in a way (with interior buckets primarily created by the second-best offensive rebounding performance in the country) that isn't susceptible to the occasional off-night. West Virginia has won its past seven games this way. The story remains the same. If the Mountaineers are crashing the glass and getting easy putbacks, the game is out of reach. You have to block Bob Huggins' team out. Most teams can't.
As for the Wildcats? Villanova's loss to Georgetown was a manifestation of why the Wildcats are susceptible to losses and off games. Their offense is great. It's the third-best in the country, and Nova's fast-paced style shows it off. But Villanova's defense -- ranked No. 64 overall -- will hurt the Wildcats in key games, just as it did Saturday. Nova wants to run and spread the floor and score a lot and hope you don't make enough shots to catch up, because if you do, the Wildcats are not particularly well-suited to stop you. They'll need to do that often enough tonight to keep West Virginia, a slow, grinding, half-court team, on its heels. Tonight's 7 p.m. game won't just be a battle of wills. It'll be a battle of styles.
No. 1 Kansas at No. 14 Texas, 9 p.m. ET, ESPN: The story of this game is already pretty obvious -- Texas is limping into what should have been the biggest regular-season game of the year -- and doesn't need to be repeated again. So let's just get to the hoops.
A quick on-paper comparison bears out what Texas has helped voters figure out in the past few weeks: The Longhorns are talented, but they're not a top-10 team. This is as true in the AP poll as it is in the tempo-free numbers. Texas' best feature is its defense. The Longhorns pressure out to 25 feet, and their length and athleticism make it difficult for opposing shooters to get good looks. On the interior, the combination of Damion James and Dexter Pittman keep scoring low. The Longhorns, if nothing else, can defend.
The problem is that Texas' offense has yet to catch up with its defense, and the occasionally scattered nature of the Longhorns' approach -- Jordan Hamilton goes off for 27 one night, goes 3-for-15 the next; Pittman dominates in nonconference, disappears in the Big 12 -- has prevented Texas from really figuring things out. The Longhorns are not a good shooting team. They get by on offensive rebounding. Sometimes it's enough. But not always, and not recently. (Texas also has major issues from the free throw line, where it's shooting 61 percent as a team. Yikes.)
Kansas, meanwhile, looks every bit the world-beater we've come to expect during Bill Self's time in Lawrence. The Jayhawks are ruthlessly efficient on the offensive end; they prevent good looks on the defensive end, especially with Cole Aldrich patrolling the lane; and their plethora of scorers and depth make them almost impossible to stop. Shut down Xavier Henry? Sherron Collins will go to work. Start doubling Collins, or start shading defenders toward the perimeter? Aldrich will destroy you.
To beat Kansas, Texas will need to make outside shots, rebound its misses, defend KU's shooters and hope Aldrich leaves some room for Pittman and James to go to work. Considering everything you just read, does that seem very likely? Such are Texas' chances. For one night, an increasingly imperfect team will need to be downright perfect. It might not happen, but it will be fun to watch the Longhorns try.
Everywhere else: As is the case most Mondays, the action is concentrated at the top of the pile. Some scattered mid-major stuff of interest here. And, as a final reminder before game time, be sure to join us for a live chat at 7 p.m. ET right here.
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Eamonn Brennan
Brennan joined ESPN.com in 2009 after several years of blogging at Yahoo! and other places around the Internet. The Iowa native lives in Chicago with his roommates, his dog, and a crippling addiction to caffeine.
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