Games #176-177.  RTC Live is back at MSG for a couple of 2d Round matchups that are NCAA Tournament worthy.

12 pm.  UConn-Georgetown.  Georgetown is in an awkward situation. With Chris Wright out with an injury — he’s expected to be back for the NCAA Tournament but its still unclear if that will happen — the Hoyas are looking to prove not just to the committee, but to themselves that they can play without their point guard. In two and a half games without him, Georgetown’s offense has been anemic, as Wright is apparently their sole source of offensive creativity. As far as UConn is concerned, every game is the same thing — when the Huskies get big games out of some of their non-Kembas, they can play with or beat anyone in the country.

9 pm.  West Virginia-Marquette.  Let’s put aside the fact that Marquette can all but lock up a trip to the NCAA Tournament with a win, because worrying about the bubble in this atmosphere can ruin it. The Mountaineers and the Golden Eagles play as hard as any two teams in the country. As Buzz Williams said last night, West Virginia wants to turn this game into a “rock fight”, but Marquette is more than capable of handling themselves in a physical battle (have you seen Jae Crowder’s shoulders? He’s built like a wrestler). WVU is not a team that blows people out, and Marquette is notorious for their late-game dramatics. This could be a lot of fun.

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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.

Only two auto-bids go out tonight, but a couple of interesting games from the Big East are also on the slate. All rankings from RTC and all times Eastern.

Big East Second Round (at New York, NY): #18 Connecticut vs. Georgetown – 12 pm on ESPN (***)

He and His Droogs Dispatched DePaul Last Night; Tonight, Alex Descends Into MSG For a Battle With the Hoyas

The Huskies drew a pretty good bracket by Big East standards, getting bottom feeder DePaul in the first round and a depleted Georgetown team this afternoon. Connecticut ended its winless drought in this tournament, blowing out DePaul yesterday for their first Big East Tournament win since 2005. Alex Oriakhi had 13 points and 19 rebounds, making his presence known at the start of the tournament after a regular season full of inconsistency. Kemba Walker added 26/7/5 as the Huskies cruised. Things get considerably tougher today against Georgetown, but the Hoyas are a reeling squad. They’ve lost four of their past five games, including a loss to UConn, and have not looked competitive since senior point guard Chris Wright went down with a broken hand. The Hoyas haven’t scored more than 51 points in three games without Wright and will have to play a strong defensive game if they want to knock off the Huskies.

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RTC is pleased to announce that we’ll be covering all of the major conference tournaments this year — the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC — in addition to the strongest two high-middies, the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West.  Each day for the rest of this week, we’re asking our correspondents to provide us with a Daily Diary of the sights and sounds from the arena at each site.  Equal parts game analysis and opinion, the hope is that this will go beyond the tiresome game recaps you can find elsewhere and give you an insightful look into Championship Week.

Big East Tournament – by Rob Dauster

• Kemba Walker’s mom can dance. She had a seat in the second row right next to the UConn band, and everytime they played a song that was too her liking, she was up in the aisle leading the cheers. And I kid you not, she didn’t sit down the entire game.
• DePaul has some good young talent on their roster. Brandon Young and Jeremiah Kelly are similar to Shabazz Napier and Jeremy Lamb. You can see their potential, you can tell that there is talent there, its just a matter of whether they put it all together. Throw in freshman Cleveland Melvin, and Oliver Purnell has a promising start.
• Its a shame that Seton Hall’s season had to end like this. That teams had so much potential. Jordan Theodore, Herb Pope, Jeremy Hazell and Jeff Robinson is, on paper, the core on a tournament team. But whatever it is that Bobby Gonzalez ingrained in this team in his time at the helm of the Pirates, its still there.
• I can’t help but root for Rutgers. They aren’t all that talented, but they play as hard as any team in the conference. Mike Rice is quickly becoming one of my favorite coaches in the country. He’s got a team with a lot of upperclassmen right now. It will be interesting to see what Rice can do when he has a roster full of talent.
• Rutgers and Seton Hall are both located in New Jersey, and while neither school has much of a basketball program right now, there is still a healthy hatred. As entertaining as that game was, listening to the fans of both teams scream at each other in Jersey Shore-lite accents was quite enjoyable.
• Anthony Crater averages four points per game for the USF Bulls. He scored the final four points for USF today. Crater has been a massive disappointment. He originally enrolled at Ohio State and was supposed to be Mike Conley’s replacement, but he lasted all of 10 games. Nice to see him succeed.
• Villanova is a disaster right now. And it seems to be mental. The Wildcats dominated the first half tonight. Dom. I. Na. Ted. They were up 49-33, and the only reason USF was that close was because the worst shooting team in the Big East had a kid hit five in the first 10 minutes of the game. In the second half, when USF started applying some defensive pressure, the Wildcats managed all of four field goals. That’s five straight losses, seven of the last nine, and nine of the last 13.  The Wildcats don’t run an offense. The entire second half, the ball was dribbled out front by Corey Fisher or Maalik Wayns until one of them was forced to drive and take a tough shot or force a tough pass.
• Well, it looks like Marquette wanted to make the NCAA Tournament. Coming in, they were probably on the right side of the bubble. After this, they can probably still get in with a loss to West Virginia tomorrow, but it Buzz Williams’ kids would be able to sleep a lot easier on Saturday night in they knock off the Mountaineers.
• Marshon Brooks is lazy. Well, at least he was lazy tonight. Far too many times, Brooks jogged back on defense or stood at half court waiting for an outlet pass. Part of me doesn’t blame him — I mean, this is not a very good Providence team — but he also did not show off a lot of what NBA scouts are looking for.
• Providence fans are ruthless. They were chanting “fire Keno” [Davis] at the end of the game.

***** – 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.

Only two games affect the bubble tonight, but four of the five listed here are for auto-bids or will go towards deciding one. All rankings from RTC and all times Eastern.

Princeton @ Pennsylvania – 7 pm on ESPN3.com (***)

Coach Sydney Johnson Will Gladly Take Another 25 From Mavraides -- As Long As It Results In a Win

The formula for Princeton is simple: win tonight and beat Harvard in a playoff on Saturday (4 pm at Yale) to earn the Ivy League’s automatic bid. Should the Tigers lose tonight, Harvard will claim the title and earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

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Games #173 & 174.  A couple of interesting first round games for your Tuesday pleasure live from Madison Square Garden.

12 pm.  UConn vs. DePaul: Hard to believe that a team that spent much of the season in the top ten can fall all the way to ninth in their conference tournament, but they have. The Big East is that deep. UConn is going to have a higher seed in the NCAA Tournament than they are in the Big East Tourney. The issue that has been plaguing the Huskies is that they cannot beat a sloughing defense. Kemba Walker struggles when he doesn’t have the space to penetrate, and on the nights when UConn doesn’t have one of their role players become a secondary scorer, defenses are able to pack in their defense and force the UConn point guard into tough shots. DePaul will be without their best player, freshman Cleveland Melvin, who also happens to be a former UConn commit, so UConn should be able to roll through this first round matchup.

9 pm.  Marquette vs. Providence: Marquette is the only team in the Big East still on the bubble, putting them in an interesting situation. As of today, they are probably on the right side of the bubble, albeit barely. A loss to Providence in the first round would probably push them onto the wrong side. In all actuality, if the Golden Eagles want to feel safe, they probably need to win two games in the Big East Tournament. It also needs to be noted that Providence has the Big East’s best scorer in Marshon Brooks. Brooks, however, is a one man show. When he gets it going, he can put up some sensational numbers, like the 43 he had against Georgetown and the 52 he had against Notre Dame. But when his teammates struggle, defenses can collapse on Brooks.

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Shamelessly cribbing from the clever NBA catch phrase, we here at RTC will present you with the 2010-11 edition of Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball as we ramp up to the start of the season a little over a month from now.  We’ll be bringing you players to watch for this season and moments to remember from last season, courtesy of the series of dump trucks, wires and effluvia known as YouTube.  If you want to have some fun while killing time, we encourage you to re-visit the entire archive of this feature from the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons.  Enjoy.

#9 – Where The Butler Did It Again Happens

1. It’s been a rough summer for Louisville head coach Rick Pitino, and things haven’t gotten any better as we head into the upcoming Labor Day weekend.  Two players expected to contribute on the wing for the 2010-11 Cardinals will not be eligible.  The biggest hit comes in the form of Memphis transfer Roburt Sallie, who was attempting to take advantage of a transfer rule that allows a player to play immediately at his new school if he has already graduated and his school does not offer post-graduate training in his area of study (see: Alabama’s Justin Knox to UNC as but one example).  Well, Sallie failed to graduate from Memphis over the summer in time to enroll at Louisville, so he will not be allowed to utilize the rule.  Additionally, incoming freshman Justin Coleman, a top fifty scoring guard from Huntington, WV, is also ineligible.  Louisville clawed its way to a mediocre season by its lofty standards last year (20-13, 1st round NCAA loss), but frankly, we’re having trouble seeing how Pitino is going to coax his current roster back into the Big Dance.
2. Meanwhile, a little farther east on the interstate, John Calipari continues to enjoy the Midas touch with his recruits.  Despite Mike Gilchrist’s tweeting about taking three official visits on Friday night, conventional wisdom is that he’s still strongly committed to Kentucky and will end up in Lexington a year from now.  On Saturday, UK received a commitment from another elite player in the Class of 2011, Kyle Wiltjer, a 6’9 forward from Oregon who proves that Calipari is keeping that Pacific Northwest pipeline greased and fertile.   Additionally, 6’11 transfer forward (and former Florida Gator) Eloy Vargas was declared eligible over the weekend and will have two seasons remaining with the Wildcats.  The only missing piece for Cal’s 2010-11 team remains the eligibility limbo that Enes Kanter is in over questions about his amateur status.  The way things are going in Lexington these days, expect him to be declared eligible by Midnight Madness.
3. Ray Holloman at Fanhouse deconstructs the Big East’s decision to continue with the double-bye system for the top four seeds of the Big East Tournament.  The basic premise: the Big East is loaded in positions one through eight, much more so than any other conference.  No wonder the coaches unanimously voted for a sixteen-team bracket scenario — it gives those at the top an opportunity for an easy first-round win before getting down to serious business among the quarterfinal teams, most of whom are NCAA-caliber in a given year.  Great analysis.
4. LeBron’s high school coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary (OH), Dru Joyce, stated late last week that Xavier University is now his “enemy,” and that the school would no longer be allowed to recruit his players after what he describes as the unnecessary pushing of one of his stars to a prep school for 2010-11.  JaKarr Sampson is a rising senior who shot up the summer recruiting rankings after a strong showing at LeBron’s Skills Academy, but according to his mother, it is she, not XU, who is responsible for sending her son to prep school Brewster Academy (NH) because of his lackluster academic record.  Weird situation, there.
5. This BYU to the WAC or WCC thing is getting even more fascinating than we thought possible.  As the Salt Lake Tribune reported on Sunday, BYU is expected to announce complete independence in football and a move to one of the other “W” conferences in all other sports as soon as today.  The deadline that the school has to inform the Mountain West Conference if it plans to leave is Wednesday of this week, and all indications are that it will take that step despite the MWC’s counter-poach of two of the more valuable properties in the WAC, Fresno State and Nevada.  Open records requests revealed that “The Project” to target BYU was originally a WAC retaliatory measure for the MWC’s nabbing of Boise State during the early-summer conference realignment madness.  Ironically, Nevada president Milt Glick was the first person to use the code name to target BYU on the record, yet it was his school in Reno that jumped at the chance to join the MWC within mere hours of the offer.  Wild stuff going on out there in the Great Basin.

1. Despite a unanimous (16-0) vote by league coaches to dump the double-bye format for the four top seeds, the Big East decided yesterday to not make the change to the Big East Tournament as league officials and ADs felt uncomfortable with the change for a number of reasons including financial and logistical  considerations.   Last year three of the four double-bye teams (Syracuse, Villanova and Pittsburgh) lost their initial tournament games, so coaches were pushing for a traditional sixteen-team bracket in part so that they can load up on some easy wins prior to playing the tougher teams in the later rounds, and in part so that everyone could plan on the same start date.  Won’t happen, at least not this coming year.
2. Gary Parrish has a good read on former summer basketball camp organizer Sonny Vaccaro, the Godfather of AAU basketball, who has been out of the game the last three summers but apparently has the pieces in place to make another run at world domination of elite schoolboy prospects, just like the good old days.
3. We mentioned last week the possibility that class of 2011 top twenty prospect DeAndre Daniels may attempt to move up his entrance into college by a year, Scottie Wilbekin-style, but he has made the decision to attend prep school next year and will graduate with his class.  He originally committed to Texas, but has re-opened his recruitment, with Kansas, Kentucky, Memphis, Tennessee and the Longhorns on his current list.
4. We found this interesting nugget in an article about something completely different (Jenn Brown’s possible beer ad career), but did you know that the average age of ESPN’s college basketball-watching audience is 48 (!!!) years old?!?!?  For some reason, this is a lot higher than the NBA audience (39), and a year older than that of college football (47).  For some reason, we’re stunned by this — maybe we’ve just been deluded by the much-younger internet audience, but wow.
5. We hope to have a post on this up later today, but both Scout and Rivals have updated their post-summer recruiting rankings.  Their previous lists both had 6’6 wing Michael Gilchrist from Elizabeth, NJ, as the top player in the class of 2011, but both services have downgraded him coming out of the summer as a result of concerns over his shooting touch.  The new #1s?  Austin Rivers (Rivals) and Anthony Davis (Scout).  Let the debates commence.

1. Vegas Watch aggregates seven pre-preseason top 25s, including yours truly’s.  Duke is a clear #1, but Michigan State at #2 and a lot of teams with serious question marks (K-State, Villanova, Pitt, Gonzaga) populate the rest of the top ten.  We had Butler (#8) and Georgetown (#10) in our top ten, but few others did.  Thanks for doing this, VW.
2. More transfer news — a while back we suggested that the Wear Twins (David and Travis) would end up at UCLA, and that was confirmed yesterday with the announcement that the SoCal-raised pair will be heading to Westwood.  They’ll have three years of eligibility remaining, beginning in the 2011-12 season.  All we want to know is where was Stanford on this one (remember the Collins and Lopez twins)?  Meanwhile, UNC filled one of their open inside positions with Alabama transfer Justin Knox, who has already graduated and will be eligible to play next season for Roy Williams.  This is a substantial coup for UNC in that they were facing a season with few experienced bigs (only the rail-thin John Henson and Tyler Zeller return inside), and this addition will help bridge the gap until Williams can bring in some help.
3. Finishing in the top four spots of the Big East regular season will not hold as much meaning as it did the last two years, as conference officials yesterday voted to do away with the double-bye system in the Big East Tournament.  In the new format, MSG’s Tuesday and Wednesday sessions will feature first round games using a traditional 1/16, 2/15, etc., format.  For some reason, we’re less excited about this change.
4. Gregg Doyel thinks that Oklahoma basketball might deserve the death penalty, but taking his typically grumpy stance (we love it, btw), he doesn’t think that much of anything will come to pass.
5. Duke’s national championship team has plans to visit the White House tomorrow.  No word on whether Coach K will give President Obama some beef over picking against his Devils in the regionals.

Maybe this was overlooked amidst the relentless barrage of close games and buzzer-beaters yesterday, but West Virginia’s Da’Sean Butler had a little fun with the Twitter at the expense of conference rival Georgetown’s shocking loss to Ohio University, 97-83.

Spike Lee, of course, was at last week’s Big East Championship game wearing a Georgetown jersey.  He claims that he’s been a Hoya fan since the Ewing era, and maybe he has, but it’s still plenty interesting for a New York guy through and through to be seen rooting for a team from the District instead.  Much like you, we just watched that Reggie Miller vs. Spike Lee thing on ESPN’s Thirty at Thirty this week, so maybe Butler is auditioning for the new role of Spike’s nemesis?

As for Da’Smack, we’re not sure that making fun of a first round loser is the greatest idea one day before playing your own opening game (and especially the way the Big East has looked so far), but hey, we’re not the guy with seven hundred and forty-one game-winners this season either.  If he can back it up…