We’re back for the final weekend of regular season Boom Goes the Dynamite for this college basketball season. The highlights of the weekend are obviously the two top 10 match-ups (in Pittsburgh on Saturday and in Chapel Hill on Sunday). We would love to provide you with another RTC Live from those site, but apparently we’re not big enough for them yet. (The onus is on you to spread the word.)

In any event, we’re going to make lemonade out of those lemons so we’ll be providing coverage from our bi-coastal offices covering all the action. Today is loaded with 15 of the top 25 playing with the other 10 playing on Sunday. We will be trying out best to provide you with wall-to-wall coverage of the top teams in action as well as RTC Live from several different locations:

• Colonial Athletic Association at 2:30 PM EST for Hofstra–Loyola Marymount with Ryan Kish courtside
• Missouri Valley Conference at 5 PM EST for Creighton–Illinois State with Patrick Marshall
• West Coast Conference at 9 PM EST for Santa Clara–San Diego with Mike Vernetti courtside

In addition to our on-site correspondents we will be focusing in on a few key games for the majority of the day while also channel surfing over to the other games when the situation merits it. Here are the primary games that we will be covering today:

• #1 UConn at #4 Pittsburgh at Noon on CBS
• Michigan at Minnesota at Noon on ESPN and ESPN360.com
• #25 Syracuse at #15 Marquette at 2 PM on ESPN360.com
• #12 Missouri at Texas A&M at 2 PM on ESPN2 and ESPN360.com
• California at #21 Arizona State at 2 PM on CBS
• Oklahoma State at #5 Oklahoma at 3:30 PM on ABC
• Texas at #9 Kansas at 4 PM on CBS
• Washington State at #13 Washington at 5:30 PM on CBS
• Wright State at #22 Butler at 7 PM on ESPNU
• #6 Louisville at West Virginia at 9 PM on ESPN and ESPN360.com

As you can tell it’s a pretty ambitious schedule so we are asking you, our loyal legion of RTC followers, to help alert all of us if something interesting is happening. You can contribute by leaving a message in the comment section so we all can follow it.

One piece of RTC breaking news, UNC point guard Ty Lawson injured his left big toe yesterday in practice.

11:30 PM: ESPN GameDay is live from Morgantown, WV and they’re doing their own version of Make Your Case. I feel a little bit like Bill Simmons after ESPN stole his Mount Rushmore, but they aren’t paying me a million dollars a year.

11:45 PM: A couple pieces of NCAA tournament news to wrap-up before we focus on our TV for the next 12 hours: Cornell became the first team to officially get into the tournament last night by winning the Ivy League title and 3 others will join them when the Atlantic Sun, Big South, and Ohio Valley have their championship games today.

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Running Late.  Apologies to the twelve loyal readers of this nightly update, but we ran into some other issues that got into the way of a fully fleshed-out post tonight.  So we’re just going to do some quick takes and leave it at that.  We’ll be back stronger tomorrow night.

• Northwestern 64, Purdue 61. It’s really quite the shame that NW didn’t get the Illinois and Michigan games; otherwise, the Cats would be a serious bubble team.  Did you know that NW has never made the Big Dance?  Not once.
• Louisville 95, Seton Hall 78. There is no more talented dynamic duo than T-Will (14/12) and Earl Clark (27/14), but does UL have consistent enough guard play to win it all?
• NC State 74, Boston College 69. BC is as tough of a team to figure as anybody this year – they should probably make sure to beat Ga Tech on Saturday to feel safe.
• UNC 86, Virginia Tech 78. Another season, another 17-12 Va Tech team.  Hansbrough with 22/15.
• Georgia Tech 78, Miami (FL) 68. Another major disappointment in the ACC.  Does 7-9 with a 40-something RPI get it done this year?
• Pittsburgh 90, Marquette 75.  The Marquette exposure tour continues.  We thought Dejuan Blair (23/9) was seriously going to Shaq-truct the basket stanchion on one thunderous dunk (start at the 0:29 point).

• Georgia 90, Kentucky 85. Completely unacceptable loss for Billy Gillispie at home at this point in the season.  Georgia hit 11-16 from long range.
• Vanderbilt 75, LSU 67.  LSU was unbeaten at home in the SEC before tonight.  AJ Ogilvy dropped 33/10 on the Tigers, who were clearly looking ahead to next week’s SEC Tourney after clinching the top seed last weekend.
• Memphis 69, Houston 60. For about a half-second, we thought Houston might have a chance in this one.  That’ll be 57 in a row in CreampuffUSA for the Tigers.
• Mississippi St. 80, Florida 71. Another devastating loss for an SEC bubble team.  Is anyone else wondering if the Donovan magic was based solely on his O4s – Noah, Green, Horford and Brewer?
• Minnesota 51, Wisconsin 46.  Huge bubble win for the Gophers to sweep the season series against the Badgers.  If it comes down to these two teams, Minny will have the advantage.
• Texas A&M 72, Colorado 66.  With five straight Big 12 wins to get to 8-7, TAMU is getting in.
• Missouri 73, Oklahoma 64.  Mizzou finished its home slate 18-0 and “held” Blake Griffin to 16/21 in setting up a shot at sharing the Big 12 regular season title with a win this weekend (+ another KU loss).
• Texas Tech 84, Kansas 65.  No explaining this one, but KU is still a team we really like in two weeks.

QnD Conf Tourney Update.

A-Sun.  Only one game where #2 seed ETSU advanced to the semis.

Patriot.  All four quarters were at home sites tonight.  #1 American, #2 Holy Cross and #4 Army advanced.  The upset was #6 Colgate knocking off #3 Navy in OT.  The semis will be Sunday and our RTC correspondent Rob Dauster will be at American to liveblog the game between Am.U. and Colgate.

Sun Belt.  Five games at campus sites also.  Higher seeds North Texas, MTSU, S. Alabama and Denver all advanced.  The only (mild) upset was Florida Intl. over La-Lafayette.  The quarters continue on Sunday.

Upcoming: The MVC gets started with its opening round tomorrow night, and the NEC and A-Sun have their entire quarterfinal rounds tomorrow.  The Big South will have its semifinals, and all of the top four seeds are still alive.  Should be fun.

Midweek bracketology special for the loyal readers here at Rush the Court.

– Three Big East teams in the Final Four. Don’t think it can’t happen, folks.

– Kansas‘ loss to Texas Tech drops them from the highest #2 seed to a #3 seed. Duke climbs up the charts to the final #1 seed, edging out Oklahoma and Michigan State (can’t have three Big East #1 seeds, sorry Cardinals) with their 1 RPI, 4 SOS and 8 wins against the RPI top 50. I just can’t put Memphis on the top line beating up on a bad Conference USA with their mediocre non-conference performance. Oklahoma slips to a #2 seed for the first time in forever. Missouri moves up the #3 seed ranks with their big win over the Sooners.

– Some stunning losses last night: LSU losing at home to Vanderbilt drops them to the last #5 seed. Purdue losing to Northwestern actually didn’t move them at all due to Marquette and LSU losing and a superior overall resume to both Florida State and Xavier. Kentucky‘s unreal loss to Georgia knocks them totally out of the picture at this point, and Florida‘s loss to Mississippi State hurts badly.

– Creighton is an at-large team in this bracket with Northern Iowa capturing the regular season #1 seed in the Missouri Valley. Creighton is the last #10 seed and Northern Iowa the last #12 seed.

– Barely getting in this time around: Providence, Texas A&M, Creighton, UNLV, Arizona, Michigan and Penn State. All of those teams are still on the bubble big time.

Last Four In: Michigan, Arizona, Texas A&M, Penn State
Last Four Out: San Diego State, Maryland, Florida, New Mexico
Next Four Out: Kentucky, Saint Mary’s, Rhode Island, Virginia Tech
Also considered: Miami, Kansas State, Auburn, Tulsa, Washington State, Cincinnati, USC, Temple, Mississippi State, George Mason, Notre Dame

Bids per conference: Big East (8), Big Ten (8), ACC (6), Big 12 (6), Pac-10 (5), SEC (3), Mountain West (3), Missouri Valley (2), Atlantic-10 (2).

Automatic bids: Binghamton, Xavier, North Carolina, Jacksonville, Connecticut, Kansas, Weber State, Radford, Michigan State, Cal State Northridge, VCU, Memphis, Butler, Cornell, Siena, Bowling Green, Morgan State, Northern Iowa, Utah, Robert Morris, Tennessee-Martin, Washington, American, LSU, Davidson, Stephen F. Austin, Alabama State, North Dakota State, Western Kentucky, Gonzaga, Utah State.

Next bracket: Monday, March 9.

You may remember that one of the big stories from last year was Memphis and its inability to hit free throws. John Calipari was routinely questioned about it and shrugged it off essentially saying that his team was winning so it didn’t bother him that much. And with the national title game winding down they were in a position to bring Memphis its first title by knocking off Kansas. Then the unthinkable happened. Following the game Calipari was roundly mocked for his bold proclamations leading up to the game that free throws didn’t matter. You could definitely count us among those who made plenty of jokes at Calipari’s expense. Well it turns out that we may have been wrong. . .

Following up John Branch’s article on the remarkably constant free throw percentages over the past 50 years, Jack Styczynski decided to look deeper into free throw percentages. Styczynski, who was perturbed by Branch’s statement that ““there is little correlation between free-throw percentages and winning percentages”  looked through the NCAA’s basketball database and compared the team free throw percentages to the teams that made the Final 4 since 2000. Here is a summary of his findings:

• In 2005 and 2007, none of the teams in the Final 4 were in the top 50 in team free throw percentage.
• Last year, UNC (#13) was the only team in the Final 4 that ranked in the top 50 in Division I in free throw percentage.
• In 2006, national champion Florida (#34) was the only team in the top 50. Apparently Billy Donovan decided to stop working on free throws the next year (and it didn’t matter).
• Michigan State was the only other national champion to finish in the top 50 (#27 in 2000) during this period.

While all that historical information is nice, we at Rush the Court like to look to the future (namely this March and April) so I broke down the free throw percentages of the top 25 teams in the nation through the games that ended on March 3, 2009. I used the ESPN/USA Today rankings, which are slightly different than the AP rankings, but they have the same teams so we’re looking at the same sample either way. Using the NCAA’s statistics for games through March 1, 2009, the 50th best free throw shooting team (Seton Hall) was shooting 72.6% so I’m using that as the cut-off for this analysis. I have listed the free throw percentages and color-coded the teams into groups: red (<70%), yellow (70-72%), and green (>72%) .

The narrow range of the yellow group (2%) indicates how closely bunched together some teams are, but there are standouts for better or worse. UNC is by far the best free throw shooting team at 2.5% higher than Villanova (76.5% vs. 74.0%), which is the next best FT shooting team in the top 25. Syracuse is on the other end of the spectrum having the worst FT shooting (64.4%) of any team in the top 25, which has to worry Jim Boeheim a little bit. The primary cause of Syracuse’s poor free throw percentage is Arinze Onuaku, who shoots a horrific 31.1% (last in Division I for a player shooting over 100 FTs). The rest of Syracuse’s team isn’t that bad at the line (70% from the FT line). In any case, you can assume that you won’t be seeing much of Onuaku if Syracuse needs to seal a game from the free throw line. If anything, Rick Pitino should be more concerned as Louisville only shoots 64.7% and they lack someone like Onuaku who can be hidden on the bench late in games. For some perspective on these percentages, last year’s much-maligned Memphis team shot 61.4% from the free throw line.

What does all this mean? According to Branch’s article and tournament performance since 2000 it doesn’t mean much, but I do know that John Calipari would like to spend a little extra time in practice at the free throw line if he could go back to last year.

(OR, Why Rick Pitino Is Like School On Thanksgiving)

John Stevens is a featured writer for Rush The Court.

Kentucky basketball fans are wondering if they might have built their new state-of-the-art basketball practice facility on a Native American burial ground.

As if the Wednesday night emasculation at South Carolina and yesterday’s home-court disappointment against LSU weren’t enough, two pieces of news are currently at the forefront of the collective mind of the Big Blue Nation, as Kentucky fans are known.  First, it looks like Louisville Cardinals head coach Rick Pitino has decided to take a giant crap on any good will he had left in the non-Louisville part of Kentucky by profiting off of one of the worst moments in Wildcat basketball history.  We’ll get to that in a moment.  Second, in addition to the growing possibility of watching this year’s NCAA tournament from their dorm rooms, this weekend the team and their supporters have had to deal with this now well-publicized incident in which sophomore forward A.J. Stewart, sick of watching from the pine as his team loses more games than they should, told everybody where they could go a few days ago and actually quit the Wildcat squad for about 24 hours after the aforementioned South Carolina loss.  He’s obviously been reinstated by his team, since he played in the home loss to LSU yesterday.

Reinstatement or not, Kentucky fans have to be wondering — what on EARTH have we done to deserve all of this?

“This” all started two years ago, specifically when Tubby Smith decided he’d had enough of (whether warranted or not) the second-guessing in Lexington and hit the road for Minnesota, which might have well been any place, as long as NCAA Tournament bids and occasional Sweet Sixteen appearances are acceptable goals there.  If you recall, it was at this time that the one coach in the country that just about every Kentucky supporter considered their Heir Apparent, Florida’s Billy Donovan, flirted very seriously with the Kentucky job before actually accepting the same position with the Orlando Magic…only to back out on THAT commitment 48 hours later to stay at Florida.  At that moment, Kentucky fans had to know — something was up.

Enter Billy Gillispie, not exactly the program’s first choice but a good selection for them since he had earned the reputation as the New Resurrector after his stints at UTEP and Texas A&M.  He made friends early by ensuring that the Tubby Smith-recruited Patrick Patterson would still attend UK, but then dropped games to the likes of Gardner-Webb and San Diego (both at home), causing much head-scratching.  Despite a tough season with injuries and personnel-juggling, Gillispie’s first UK team battled back, made the tournament (and it looked bleak for a while), and Gillispie won co-Coach of the Year honors in the SEC.  About twelve seconds after their first-round loss, Kentucky fans were looking forward to the next season, knowing it would be better once everyone was healthy and some new bad-ass recruits came into the fold.  The Billy Donovan snub was virtually forgotten.

One of those players returning to health in that off-season was versatile point guard Derrick Jasper.  Having gotten over all the physical and mental hurdles that come with microfracture surgery of the (left) knee, the 2008-09 edition of the Wildcats was his to lead.  Jasper was poised to be the floor general of one of the storied programs of college basketball.  It was to be “his” team.  But instead, in a move that nobody saw coming, after a mere two years of living in Lexington — citing “homesickness” — Jasper bailed on his chance to lead the program, choosing relative obscurity over an amazing opportunity.  He transferred to UNLV and left Kentucky high and dry with point guard problems that Gillispie hasn’t been able to solve with junior Michael Porter and freshman DeAndre Liggins.  How big was this loss?  Considering that the point guard handles the ball 60% of the time for any given team, is it a coincidence that Kentucky is 338th out of 341 Division I teams in turnovers per game?  Probably not.

Kentucky fans are left wondering what has happened to the culture in their program.  Their obvious Heir Apparent in Billy Donovan declined to return even though he had been groomed for the job since the Pitino years; with inexcusable losses to comparatively talent-bereft teams (and not too many surprising wins) Billy Gillispie is starting to look like a good example of the Peter Principle; some important players have jumped ship, seemingly preferring oblivion over recognition and opportunity, and others choose unproductive ways to protest lack of playing time; and despite having two lottery picks on the team and some hard-working young role players, the Wildcats find themselves sliding down the bubble’s surface this season and are giving the tournament selection committee every reason to leave them off the bracket two weeks from now with these stretch losses.  This is a program that didn’t exactly weep when Tubby Smith left town; I’m not even saying they’re wrong about that, since after Smith’s 1998 title run with the Wildcats, he never returned to the Final Four in his next nine seasons — would UNC, Kansas, Duke, or UCLA fans put up with such a streak these days? — but keep in mind that, for unknown reasons, Billy Gillispie hasn’t even signed his contract at UK even though he’s basically got two seasons under his belt, now.  Many folks in Lexington wonder if he should even bother, with UK’s performance this year, even if the team slips into the tournament somehow.  And to make matters worse, if Kentucky fans have to watch this tournament without their Wildcats for the first time in 17 years, this is the time of year that a certain shot by a certain former Duke player gets played over and over again…

Oh, but if only that were the end of it for the Big Blue Nation.

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Two weeks until Selection Sunday and the bracket is really starting to take form…

– Maybe we say this every year but the bubble field seems especially weak this time around. Those coaches calling for expansion of the tournament are out of their minds. Maryland is a 10 seed, Providence is an 11 seed and Saint Mary’s has a very decent chance to sneak in should they get to the WCC tournament final. With only a handful of locks from non-BCS conferences, it doesn’t appear too many conference tournament upsets will narrow the bubble field, either.

– Bubble analysis: Texas A&M has really emerged out of nowhere to put together a decent resume. The quality wins are lacking (they get Missouri this week) but a 35 RPI, 41 SOS and 3 wins against the RPI #26-50 was enough to edge both Florida and Kentucky for one of the final nods. Michigan will have a difficult time making the field, but their 3 wins against the RPI top 25 will definitely help come Selection Sunday. Maryland at 18-10 (7-7) grabbed the last #10 seed playing in the #1 conference and with 8 wins against the RPI top 100, including victories vs. North Carolina and Michigan State. Penn State and Providence snuck in with their conference records, respectively.

– The #1 seeds are not set in stone. Louisville is emerging as a possible alternative should either North Carolina or Oklahoma continue to slip up. Kansas and Oklahoma have nearly identical resumes when you factor in head-to-head. Memphis just continues to win and there’s a small chance they sneak into the top line if they win out. North Carolina isn’t a lock at all, either. There’s still plenty to be determined.

– Two teams that clinched at least a share of their conferences Saturday, Washington and LSU, jumped a full seed from the last bracket. Washington climbed to a #3 seed with their 13-4 Pac-10 record, 12 RPI and 17 SOS. The one factor holding them back is zero wins against the RPI top 25 with UCLA at 26 representing the second highest Pac-10 team. LSU continues to build an impressive record. It’s going to be awfully hard to deny LSU a top-four seed if they finish with one loss in the SEC, as weak as it may be.

– The best part of the college basketball season is ahead with the conference tournaments and March Madness. It’s phenomenal that college hoops provides nearly everyone with one last chance to make a run for the ultimate goal in March, even if you’ve completely bombed during the season. Some of these low-major spots in the field will start to be written in Sharpie (well, bolded) in the coming brackets as teams punch their ticket. It’s an exciting time.

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Well it’s finally here. The month of March is upon us. Here at RTC, we’ll be coming up with a ridiculous number of posts (I’m not sure how we will be able to do it with our other “lives”) so be sure to check back throughout the month as we will have posts for conference recaps, our unique bubble watch, frequent bracket updates by our resident bracketologist Zach, our favorite NCAA tournament memories, and the most comprehensive NCAA tournament preview anywhere. Ever.

11:00 AM: Just to set the table for today (and before I run out to grab some lunch before the games start), we’ll be following all three of the major games today, which will all be on CBS. At noon, Dominic James-less #10 Marquette will travel to #6 Louisville. Then at 2 PM, #8 Missouri will travel to Lawrence to take on the defending national champs, #15 Kansas. (CBS will also be airing the Tennessee-Florida game at 2. We will be very unhappy if we end up with that game instead.) The last time these teams met, Missouri shocked the Jayhawks with a Zaire Taylor 10-footer to hand Kansas its only loss in their last 13 games. A win here for Kansas would essentially seal the Big 12 regular season title for Kansas since they own the tie-breaker over Oklahoma (thanks to Blake Griffin‘s absence). Finally at 4 PM, #9 Michigan State will go to #20 Illinois. Like the preceding game, a win here would essentially clinch the Big 10 regular season title for the Spartans. In addition, we will be following the aforementioned UT-UF game (hopefully online instead of on our TVs) as well as a handful of bubble match-ups (Providence at Rutgers, Cincinnati at Syracuse, Michigan at Wisconsin, and West Virginia at South Florida).

11:50 AM: If any of you are wondering if I might decide to ditch this and go outside to enjoy the beautiful March weather, here’s your answer. On a side note, I just saw myself on ESPN for the second time this season (thanks to the miracle of HD).

11:55 AM: Wow. I just saw the Blake Griffin play from yesterday where we went over the scorer’s table. Pretty impressive after his concussion against Texas.

Noon: CBS just announced they will be have an interview with Jamie Dixon at halftime. So the Pittsburgh fans might want to tune in for that if a top 10 match-up in their own conference wasn’t enough.

12:05 PM: Rick Pitino is wearing his Colonel Sanders suit for the white out. As the CBS guys mentioned, last year he had to switch at halftime. Let’s see if it is more effective this year.

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Welcome back to Boom Goes the Dynamite.  It’s Noon eastern and it’s Saturday, so that means we’re affixed to the couch for the rest of the weekend.  The day gets off to a little bit of a slow start, but keep in mind that RTC Live will be coming to you from Gampel Pavilion at UConn at 2pm, and we’ll be here for the rest of the action today (all 135 games).  Let’s get it going…

12:17pm. We’ve got Villanova – Georgetown on ESPN and Cleveland St. – Butler on ESPN2 right now.  UNC – Georgia Tech is on CBS, and if you’re really misogynistic, Depaul – St. John’s is on ESPN 360.  Here at the RTC compound we’re going to keep an eye on Butler right now because they don’t get much air time, tracking the others.

12:22pm. Has anyone else noticed that we’re only a week until the end of the regular season, but several of these “national” games are complete garbage?  Who’s making these schedules?  There’s no way UNC – Georgia Tech should be a CBS game on Feb. 28 this year.  Later we get the thrilling Oklahoma – Texas Tech game.  Oh well, at least Blake Griffin is due to return today.

12:27pm. So far it’s a brickfest in Philly at the Georgetown-Nova game, while the UNC-Ga Tech game is (shockingly) lacking defense.  Cleveland St. is giving Butler all they want so far – love the Hinkle Fieldhouse.  Where are Coach Dale, Shooter and Jimmy Chitwood?

12:43pm. Yes, Bucky, it is definitely a whiteout there.  Speaking of white, could Gordon Hayward be the second coming of Adam Morrison (w/o the floppy hair and needle injections during games)?  They both have similar builds and games (from our viewpoint), but Hayward has the superior numbers as a frosh (GH: 14/6 on 48%/83%/46% vs. AM: 11/4 on 53%/73%/30%).  Granted AM played 20 mpg his freshman season versus Hayward’s 32 mpg, but still.  Butler takes a six-pt lead into the half.

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Zach Hayes is RTC’s resident bracketologist.  He’ll regularly be out-scooping, out-thinking and out-shining Lunardi over the next three months.

We kick off this week’s edition of Your Bubble Has Burst with a fitting segment: teams whose bubbles have successfully burst since last Thursday. These teams can begin making NIT/CBI reservations barring an unprecedented conference tournament run:

Note: all computer numbers prior to Tuesday’s games.

Georgetown– The Hoyas had two great opportunities to get right back into the thick of the bubble race by at least splitting two home games against Marquette and Louisville. Instead, they hung around with Marquette and were dismantled by Louisville, dropping both games and sending the spiraling Hoyas to a 5-10 conference record. Their next game: @ Villanova, meaning the best case scenario is 7-11 in the Big East. They’ll have to reach the Big East Tournament final now. Good luck.

Baylor– The disappointing Baylor Bears finally broke a six-game losing streak at home against Texas A&M before falling to Oklahoma State and dropping to 4-8 in the Big 12. Even if they should win 3 out of their next 4, a 7-9 record in the #4 RPI conference won’t be enough to make the field. They’ll have to make a run in Oklahoma City, but how can anyone expect that the way this team plays defense?

Seton Hall– The Pirates had an outside chance to at least put themselves in a position to earn bubble consideration with a late-season run. That went up in flames with their close loss to St. John’s on Sunday night. They have some bad losses out-of-conference and now welcome Pittsburgh to the Prudential Center. The Pirates should be a threat in the NIT.

Northwestern- The schedule gods were not kind to poor Northwestern, who finishes their Big Ten campaign with four out of five on the road. They were thrashed at Minnesota and trips to Purdue and Ohio State still remain. At 5-9 in the conference, their bubble has officially burst.

Mississippi State– How can a team with a 7-5 record in conference make this list? 1) when you’ve lost your last two games to Auburn and Alabama (home win in the middle), 2) you play in this year’s SEC, 3) you have 1 win against the RPI top 50, 4) you have an 84 RPI. The Bulldogs needed to win at Alabama on Saturday and didn’t. There’s no way the committee considers a team with their resume.

Nebraska– Their computer numbers are horrible and they saw their NCAA chances end last night with the home loss to Texas A&M. Simple as that.

On to the conferences:

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When Rush the Court rushed the court. Providence 81, Pittsburgh 73. We’ll have a more thorough review of Providence’s huge upset of Pittsburgh in our recap of RTC IV early tomorrow morning, but we’ll talk about it here as well because it was the story of the night. Obviously we covered the action quite extensively in our RTC Live post of the game, but we have to say it’s a pretty amazing thing to be standing between a group of rabid fans and the court that they are about rush.  We’d also like to point out that we were the only media members to stay there for the buzzer and the fans’ RTC.  In fact, we ended up out there on the court to celebrate the moment with them (pictures to follow tomorrow).  Whether it was the “Curse of #1” (teams are now just 8-5 as the #1 team since UNC lost to Boston College) or the fact that the Friars and their fans were pumped up for Senior Night, but Providence dominated this game from the opening tip. (Ok, maybe not the tip, which DeJuan Blair won, but everything afterwards) The Friars jumped out to a 15-4 lead just 5 minutes into the game thanks to some hot shooting and some poor ball-handling by the Panthers. Providence led by double digits for most of the game as they were able to force the issue getting to the FT line 29 times compared to 15 for the Panthers, but Pitt showed some of their mettle by cutting the lead to 5 with 50 seconds left on a layup (and push-off) by Blair. The Friars hung tough though shrugging off their tendency to give away big leads this year and held on by hitting their free throws down the stretch. I’m not sure what the loss means for Pitt at this point except that the #1 overall seed is officially up for grabs, but it probably would have been anyway on March 7th when UConn travels to western Pennsylvania. Jamie Dixon’s squad was killed by turnovers and the free throw disparity. The Panthers had 18 turnovers overall with 5 coming from Blair, who had a better stat line (17 points and 8 rebounds in 30 minutes) than we thought from just watching the game.  He even managed to play 30 minutes despite fouling out as he picked up his 3rd and 4th fouls in a 13-second stretch midway through the 2nd half. Pitt got a strong performance from Ashton Gibbs (15 points) off the bench and a solid one from Sam Young (16 points and 8 rebounds), but it wasn’t enough to overcome the turnovers and free throw disparity. For Providence, this game was huge. The win, which was their first over a #1 since they beat Michigan in 1976, puts them at 9-7 in the Big East with a strong chance at a 10-8 conference record (PC is at Rutgers and Villanova to finish the season). None of the Friars had an exceptional game but everyone on the team played well (Weyinmi Efejuku with 16, Sharaud Curry with 15, Jonathan Kale with 13, Geoff McDermott with 11, and Randall Hanke with 10). They also did a great job handling the ball (18 assists with just 9 turnovers) as well as pressuring Pittsburgh (forcing 18 turnovers while allowing just 12 assists) and holding their own on the glass against the #1 rebounding team in the country (-6 rebounding margin). For more on this game and the aftermath, check back in the morning for a complete post.

We Have a BCS Conference Regular Season Champ. LSU 81, Florida 75.   Possibly the biggest question-mark team going into the NCAA Tournament is going to be this LSU Tiger team of Trent Johnson’s.  Last season with largely the same group of players but a vastly inferior coach, LSU went 13-18.  Currently LSU is 24-4 and 12-1 in the SEC, which makes them the regular season champions.  The problem is that the SEC is so incredibly weak this season that it’s difficult to discern how good LSU actually might be.  Their OOC schedule was pitiful, and they lost to every good team they played, but in watching this team this evening, they “looked” like a typically talented and athletic SEC team of any other year.  But can they get past their weak conference to make a run in the NCAAs – that’s the difficult question to answer.  Marcus Thornton had 32/5/5 assts in the winning effort.  What about the Gators, now 8-5 in the SEC with an RPI still in the 40s?  Nothing really impresses us about this team.

A Bubble Team You Probably Haven’t Considered. Texas A&M 57, Nebraska 55.  At first glance, a game between two middling Big 12 teams wouldn’t arouse much interest, but a little closer analysis shows that this buzzer-beating shot by A&M’s Josh Carter to cap a huge comeback from down 18 pts may have put the Aggies back onto the bubble.  Consider that A&M is now 6-7 in the Big 12, has two games against bottom-feeders Colorado and Iowa St. (+ Missouri) and has an RPI at #40.  Their SOS is 33d, and they boast wins over LSU (looking better and better) as well as Arizona (also looking better and better).  It says here that an 8-8 TAMU team gets in, which is why this shot was enormous.  Nebraska, incidentally, is also 6-7, but their RPI and overall profile are significantly worse than A&M’s.

Some Other Games For Your Fat Tuesday.

• Iowa St. 71, Baylor 62.  How does a top-25 caliber team lose eight of its last nine games without any significant injury?  The Bears really had almost no chance of an NCAA bid prior to tonight, but this loss to a bad ISU team was the coffin nailer.
• Boston College 72, Florida St. 67.  RTC considered going live at this bubbly game instead of Providence-Pitt.  Glad we went with the game in Rhody, but BC probably guaranteed itself a bid with a minimum .500 record in the ACC after tonight.  Tyrese Rice hit the dagger three with 20 seconds remaining to lock up the game for the Eagles.
• Ohio St. 73, Penn St. 59.  Jeremie Simmons came off the bench to hit four threes as OSU moved into a four-way tie for fourth in the Big Ten at 8-7.
• Syracuse 87, St. John’s 58.  Cuse dominated from start to finish, shooting 65% behind Jonny Flynn’s 21/8 assts.
• Northern Iowa 69, Illinois St. 67 (2OT).  UNI got an unlikely tip-in to keep the pace in the MVC with Creighton, who…
• Creighton 65, Missouri St. 59.  …rallied from a double-figure second-half deficit behind Casey Harriman’s three triples in that half.
• BYU 69, San Diego St. 59.  BYU’s Jimmer Fredette dropped twenty of his 28 pts in the second half as the Cougars made a huge comeback (theme of the night) to get a key road win to stay one game off the Mountain West pace behind Utah.