As the regular season comes to a close, a pair of Big East teams are fighting for their NCAA Tournament lives. For Butler and Providence, nothing will come easy over the next two weeks. The Bulldogs in particular sit squarely on the bubble as the Big East conference tournament looms. A huge chance awaits Butler tomorrow night when they host a surging Seton Hall team. Chris Holtmann’s group has matched up quite well with the Pirates over the last few seasons, and is the only team to beat them since January 23. A middling RPI, poor non-conference strength of schedule and a 5-8 record versus the RPI top 100 are all resume items conspiring against Butler at this moment. Given those deficiencies, you have to think a wins on Wednesday and Saturday (Marquette) to close the regular season are necessary for Butler to stay in the Tournament mix. Butler passes the so-called “eye test,” but its resume needs an immediate boost to prevent a trip to the NIT.
After picking up a massive road victory at Villanova on January 24, Providence stood at 17-3 overall and looked like a sure-fire NCAA Tournament team. Who could have thought that Georgetown would be the only team the Friars would defeat in the month that followed? Providence swept the Hoyas but went 0-6 against every other team it played between January 26 and February 25. While the resume is good enough to merit a bid at this point, a loss to either Creighton or St. John’s would severely damage the Friars’ chances of holding on to an at-large bid. Star point guard Kris Dunn has been fighting an illness over the last week but head coach Ed Cooley said on Monday that the team is now healthy. As they did Saturday in dispatching DePaul, the Friars need to take care of business this week. No excuses if they fail to get the job done.
What an incredible disappointment Georgetown has been this season. Picked to finish second in the preseason Big East coaches poll, the Hoyas stand at 14-15 (7-9) entering a final week that features games at Marquette and Villanova. Amazingly, this team was 6-2 in conference play after completing a miracle comeback in the final minute of play against Creighton on January 26. Since then the Hoyas have dropped seven of eight games, with the only win coming against a historically bad St. John’s team. What has gone wrong? Well, a lot (obviously), but one thing the Hoyas do not do well is rebound, especially given their size. The injury to Bradley Hayes surely hurt the Hoyas, but the same problems have plagued them the entire season. They turn the ball over too much and seem incapable of playing defense without fouling. Georgetown ranks No. 344 nationally in defensive free throw rate, which means there are only seven schools in all of Division I that foul at a more frequent rate than the Hoyas do. The scary thing is this is the third consecutive year where John Thompson III has fielded a team that simply cannot stop fouling. Is it the freedom of movement initiative that has caused Thompson teams trouble? Or perhaps chemistry issues and a lack of buy-in by the players to what the coaching staff is preaching? We can’t figure it out, but one thing is for sure – this season can’t come to an end soon enough for Georgetown.
Energy, passion and motivation are incredible factors in all sports, but particularly college basketball. This past week alone, one Big East team experienced the power of these forces from both sides. Xavier had the Cintas Center fired up on Wednesday night in toppling No. 1 ranked Villanova, the Musketeers first win over the Wildcats since joining the Big East. It also avenged a New Year’s Eve blowout loss at the Pavilion earlier this season. All in all, it was a fantastic win for Chris Mack’s squad, one that looks like a complete team primed to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. However, the shoe was on the other foot Sunday afternoon when Xavier visited Seton Hall. A natural spot for a road letdown, certainly, but it was the combination of a solid opponent looking to lock up an NCAA bid and a fired up crowd at the Prudential Center that resulted in a dominant Pirates victory. The game was not nearly as close as the final score indicated, as Seton Hall dropped the hammer on Xavier right from the start in opening the game with a 9-0 run. They extended that opening spurt into a 19-point halftime lead and never trailed the rest of the way, all but securing the program’s first Tournament bid in 10 years in the process. It’s not a bad loss for Xavier by any means, but it does temporarily take the Musketeers off the projected one seed line according to most “bracketologists.” Xavier may have to win the Big East Tournament in order to climb back on to the one seed line, but it is a great final opportunity to do so.