The Lede.  What a weekend.  Unless you care about the Pro Bowl (and really, other than gamblers, who does?), we here in the college hoops universe had the sports world to ourselves, and the weekend gods in charge made sure that we had a wild and woolly preview of March even though the calendar still said otherwise.  Fully half of the ranked teams in the RTC Top 25 lost over the weekend, and quite a few others including two of the top three teams in America hung on by the skin of their teeth.  What this shows us once again is that there are no dominant teams in basketball this year; even though Ohio State remains undefeated, they’ve had numerous close encounters and it’s clear that the Buckeyes are merely one of a dozen teams with the goods to win six straight this spring.  It should be a wild ride through the remaining five weeks of the regular season; if this weekend’s results are any indication, we should all down a few anti-vertigo meds and strap ourselves in.

St. John's Made the Garden Rock Again Today (Getty/N. Laham)

Your Watercooler Moment.  Duke Destroyed in the Garden.  The last time we saw the Duke Blue Devils so thoroughly undressed as they were in today’s matchup with St. John’s at the Garden, many observers at the time believed that Coach K had lost some of his touch on the recruiting trail and his teams simply could not compete at the highest level of college basketball anymore.  On that day, Villanova used a dominant second half to rattle the Devils with its superior quickness and athleticism, forcing Duke to fire off 22 bricks from beyond the arc (versus five makes) in the game and generally embarrassing a team that had been ranked as high as #1 at one point that season.  Today’s game against Steve Lavin’s fun group of Johnnies was not entirely dissimilar.  Duke looked generally slow, uninterested and incapable of making an outside shot (shooting 5-26 from deep after starting out 1-19) while SJU had all the energy and emotion of a home crowd desperate for a winning program again.  Whether this is emblematic of a bad day for Duke or indicative of a deeper set of problems, we’ll have to see how February goes before making that decision.  Make no mistake, though, today’s result was a major red flag for the defending national champs.  Teams that win titles don’t find themselves down 50-25 to anybody, much less unranked teams.

We have much more on this destruction of Duke from our correspondent’s report from the game here.

This Weekend’s Quick Hits…

• Ashton Gibbs and Jared Sullinger.  A couple of big-time players making big-time shots in the clutch with their teams on the verge of defeat.  #1 Ohio State appeared to be in serious trouble when David Lighty got the ball into Sullinger deep in the post off a steal.  He was fouled and subsequently hit 1-of-2 free throws with three seconds remaining and all the noise and pressure of the Northwestern students weighing on him at the time.  Just another day at the office (21/8) for the impressive freshman.  At Rutgers, it was the junior Gibbs (24/4) who played the role of Mr. Clutch, drilling a 25-footer as the shot clock wound down and the Panthers clinging to a precarious one-point lead.  His three gave Pitt just enough breathing room to keep Rutgers on the fouling strategy, ultimately unsuccessful as Pitt hit twelve down the stretch to salt away another win.
• The Texas Defense.  It’s starting to scare us.  We know that the Longhorn defense is already the most efficient in America, but to put the clamps on an offensive juggernaut like Missouri in holding the Tigers to 58 points (25 below their season average) is ridiculous.  In six Big 12 games, they’re holding teams to 54 points per game, a statistic that is particularly amazing when you consider that three of those wins were against teams in the top 15.  If Rick Barnes can coax a little more offense from his young team, the Horns might end up as the best team in America by March.

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It was a game with a result that was shocking not so much for the fact that St. John’s beat Duke, but the manner in which they did so. Coming into the game on Sunday afternoon, the Red Storm had lost five of six after raising expectations with a win over Georgetown at the beginning of an unprecedented stretch of eight consecutive games against top 25 teams. That skid had threatened to put a damper on all the hype that had accompanied Steve Lavin‘s arrival in New York City and his much-ballyhooed incoming freshman class, but for one afternoon all of that was forgotten as the Red Storm put on as dominant of a performance against such a high caliber opponent as any St. John’s team has had since the days when they were still called the politically incorrect Redmen, Lou Carnesecca roamed the sidelines, and Walter Berry and Chris Mullin donned the uniform. Today, the newest generation of St. John’s players turned in a performance that certainly made Carnesecca and Berry (both in attendance today) proud.

St. John's Brought Back Ancient Memories This Afternoon

Behind a full court press than left Duke looking sloppy and some hot shooting, the Red Storm ran away with a 93-78 victory that was not as close as the 15-point final margin indicates. In front of a sellout crowd of 19,353 at Madison Square Garden that was nearly 50-50 in terms of allegiance to Duke or St. John’s, the Red Storm played their best basketball of the season and took advantage of the Blue Devils playing their worst. Even though Mike Krzyzewski seemed to imply in his post-game press conference that this game was an isolated incident, it does raise questions about the defending champions. On one hand we can probably discount Duke’s 5-for-26 shooting from 3-point range (and 1-for-19 before a late hot streak after the game was out of reach made the final numbers more respectable) as an aberration, but there were several other aspects of the game that should not be dismissed as easily.

• Duke’s lack of athleticism: Last season Doug Gottlieb caught some heat from Coach K for calling the Blue Devils “alarmingly unathletic.” While it may not have been the politically correct thing to say, there was some truth to the statement. Outside of perhaps Mason Plumlee, none of the current Blue Devils will amaze any NBA scout with their athleticism. This doesn’t mean that Duke isn’t athletic enough to win the title (their biggest losses from last year’s championship team are Jon Scheyer and Brian Zoubek, who were probably the two least athletic players in last year’s starting line-up), but it does mean that this Duke team isn’t going to blow any elite team off the court with their athletes, and, in certain situations like today when their shots are not falling, they are vulnerable to inferior teams.

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Game # 123.  It’s an Atlantic 10 blockbuster matchup as Duquesne faces off with Dayton on a Sunday afternoon.

Welcome to a flurry filled Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh for an Atlantic 10 Conference matchup between Duquesne and Dayton at the Consol Energy Center, the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins. Duquesne comes into the contest as the hottest team in conference, riding a nine-game win streak, including 6-0 in the A-10. Duquesne has been stuffing the stat sheet of late, leading to a #11 national ranking in points per game, and #2 in assists per game. Dayton, meanwhile, has had a bouncy ride so far this A-10, coming into the match 3-3. Look for the Flyers to try to control the tempo, as they come into the game averaging 14 points a game less on the year. This should be a great matchup at a great new venue in a town with Super Bowl dreams this time of year. Join us for a great A-10 matchup this Sunday afternoon.

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Game #121. RTC heads to Madison Square Garden (aka “The World’s Most Famous Arena”) as the defending champs invade The Big Apple.

Game #120.  RTC Lives makes its first-ever trip to Arizona’s McKale Center for a battle between Pac-10 stalwarts.

Today’s game between USC and Arizona at the McKale Center represents the turning point of the conference season.  Arizona has designs on catching first-place Washington in the standings, sitting only one game behind the Huskies with the difference being the Wildcats’ loss at Seattle nine days ago.  Secure in the knowledge that UW will have to pay Sean Miller’s team a return trip in late February, Arizona knows that it can’t afford a home loss here today.  USC is coming off a solid road win in Tempe on Thursday night, and it’s clear that when their inside/outside duo of Nikola Vucevic and Jio Fontan have it going, they can compete with anyone in this league.  Arizona has a strong frontcourt anchored by All-American candidate Derrick Williams, but guard play has been troublesome and inconsistent.  Nevertheless, we’re excited to be headed to McKale tonight, site of so many great games over the years.  Join us on RTC Live…

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Game #121.  RTC Live visits Tulsa this evening for what should be a key Conference USA battle.

We are expecting a good game tonight in this high-stakes bout between the UTEP Miners (17-4, 5-1) and the Tulsa Golden Hurricanes (10-10, 3-3). For Tulsa, this is a revenge game. They were defeated 69-59 by the Miners in the conference opener on January 5, and they would love nothing more than to upset the C-USA standings, and hopefully right the ship with a win tonight. UTEP has a little more than just pride on the line. They are currently tied atop the conference standings with Memphis; I’m sure they would love for things to stay that way. It will also be a matchup between the conferences two biggest stars. Tulsa is led by leading scorer Justin Hurtt, who is averaging 20.7 points per game, while UTEP is led by Randy Culpepper; the returning Conference USA Player Of The Year.

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Game #119.  The nation’s top-ranked team visits struggling Northwestern this evening.

#1 Ohio State comes to Welsh-Ryan Arena on Saturday night with a perfect record and a dominating cast of players. Jared Sullinger should find plenty of room in the paint against a porous Northwestern interior defense, or the 1-3-1 zone, and the Buckeyes tend to knock down shots from everywhere. Northwestern’s star player, John Shurna, suffered a concussion in the Wildcats’ latest disappointing loss at Minnesota and will be a game-time decision. If he can’t go Northwestern will be undermanned at almost every position on the court. Still, can Northwestern pull the epic upset? It’ll be televised on ESPN2 and you can follow along during the whole game here starting at 6 p.m. ET / 5 p.m. CT.

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***** – quit your job and divorce your wife if that’s what it takes to watch this game live
**** – best watched live, but if you must, tivo and watch it tonight as soon as you get home
*** – set your tivo but make sure you watch it later
** – set your tivo but we’ll forgive you if it stays in the queue until 2013
* – don’t waste bandwidth (yours or the tivo’s) of any kind on this game

Brian Otskey is an RTC contributor

This weekend brings us yet another great slate of games with plenty of ranked teams heading out on the road to face unranked opponents. How many will go down this time? All rankings from RTC and all times eastern.

#21 Georgetown @ #6 Villanova – 12 pm Saturday on ESPN (****)

Despite their win at the Carrier Dome over Syracuse last week, Villanova has lost two of its last three games and now welcomes their rival Georgetown Hoyas to the Wells Fargo Center. The Hoyas have won three straight over the New York-area schools to climb back to 4-4 in Big East play. Georgetown has won four true road games but none of those wins were against teams the caliber of Villanova.

If Freeman and the Hoyas Plan On Finishing Strong, Tonight's a Good Night To Start

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Highlighters and Headsets is an occasional look at the coverage of college basketball – from television to print (they still make paper?), blogs to bracket busters, and Gus Johnson to Gameday – written by RTC contributor Steve Moore. He welcomes your comments, column ideas and Dickie (V) jokes at smoore71@gmail.com. You can follow him on Twitter @smoore1117.

With a Mountain West matchup taking a national stage for the first time, I’m sure there were plenty of college hoops fans – and mainstream sports fans (even Simmons was watching) – searching the cable guide for CBS College Sports Wednesday night.

All Eyes, Including Our Boy Steve's, Were On the Marriott Center On Wednesday Night

While unable to watch live, I did set the DVR and decided to see how this mid-major network handled its moment in the sun. By the time I pressed play, the Twitter explosion had already told me how the Jimmer show went down in Provo. But since I usually leave the on-court analysis to my RTC colleagues, the suspense wasn’t really what I was after.

Having only seen the occasional glimpse of action on CBS College Sports, I hopefully enter with no bias or prejudice. Hell, I don’t even know who’s on the call tonight. We’ll soon find out.

PREGAME: First disappointment: Realizing I don’t get CBS College Sports (CBS-C from now on) in high def. I understand they broadcast in it, and that some carriers offer it, but if you want to be a major sports network, you need to FORCE everyone to carry your HD feed (I’m looking at you, Fox Soccer Channel).

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Welcome to Through the Lens, an RTC photo tour through the game of college basketball.

This week’s topic: FIRED UP.