In case you’re just catching up with us after a football weekend, we covered Friday night’s games — the real Opening Night — in a special ATB that evening, while RTC contributor Zach Hayes put together an Opening Night edition of his 10 Scribbles series to share some of his initial thoughts on most teams’ first games of the year.

Your Watercooler Moment.  This is something we don’t see much and it may be a long time before we see something like it again, so Butler’s banner unfurling from Saturday night was this weekend’s best moment.  Jump ahead to the 2:20 mark if you’re the impatient type (a shorter alternate version is also available).

Quick Hits…

• Emmanuel Negedu.  Hey, if you can literally come back from the dead and contribute 8 points, 6 rebounds, a steal and a block in your first game as a New Mexico Lobo merely a year after you were resuscitated, you deserve all kinds of props.  Can’t root for this guy enough.
• Chris Singleton. Quite possibly the best defensive player in the country, Singleton pulled off a very difficult triple double by going for 22/11/10 stls on Sunday against UNC-Greensboro.  Oh, he also added four blocks just for show.
• Illinois Backcourt. Bruce Weber’s backcourt of Demetri McCamey, DJ Richardson and Brandon Paul off the bench was outstanding on Saturday against Southern Illinois.  The three combined for 43 points and 16 assists in that game, and in three games this season all of them are shooting over 50% from the field and 40% from deep.  With the solid play inside of the two Mikes (Davis and Tisdale), the Illini look very strong right now.
• Kyrie Irving.  As good as advertised, with 17/4/9 assts to prove it against Princeton on Sunday.  Everything seemed completely natural and smooth with very little wasted motion.
• Matthew Bryan-Amaning.  MBA’s been getting a lot of hype all offseason, but we weren’t completely sold due to his inconsistency over the last three years.  After a 28/13 performance against McNeese State on Saturday, we might be coming around.  As a side note, the Huskies had an inconceivable 67 rebounds in that game.
• Matt Howard’s Foul Trouble.  Sure, we know the game was against Marian College, but the fact that Howard failed to commit a single foul in 23 minutes of action is encouraging.  Without Gordon Hayward around, Brad Stevens must have his star big man on the floor most of the time this season, so committing nearly four fouls a game again isn’t going to work.
• DJ Cooper.  Keep an eye on Ohio University again this year — the MAC champions who took out Georgetown in last year’s first round NCAA game return MAC POY candidate Cooper, who debuted the 2010-11 season with a strong 25/5/7 assts/3 stls evening.
• James Rahon.  SDSU’s transfer guard from Santa Clara hit three straight threes in the mid-second half to give the Aztecs breathing room to win a true road game in front of a packed arena in Long Beach.  If the Aztecs can get solid guard play to match their dominant post play, Steve Fisher could have a MWC juggernaut on his hands.
• Jeremy Hazell.  Seton Hall might be able to put together a surprisingly good season if it can continue to get the types of games it got from Hazell today.  28 points on 8-11 FG and 8-8 from the line is extremely efficient, something that Hazell hasn’t always done well.

… and Misses

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David Ely is an RTC contributor.

Every year teams come out of nowhere and burst into the top 25, while sports writers run to their keyboards to type the requisite “Where Did Team X Come From” story. I mean how many people saw Cornell coming last year? Who said last October that Butler would go on to lose the national championship game by just a couple of inches?  Conversely, there are teams that look great on paper in the preseason but fail to live up to the hype once the season starts. Think North Carolina last season. Why did the Tar Heels begin the year in the top 10 again?  Allow us to sort through the mess and pull out this year’s Cornells and North Carolinas for you. Missouri fans, get ready to be excited. West Virginia fans, start thinking of things to say in your hate mail.

On Monday we took a look at four teams that will be up this season.  Today we’ll examine four teams that will be down as compared to where they were last year.

#1) West Virginia

There's a Lot of Pressure on Kevin Jones to Produce This Year

No Devin Ebanks. No Da’Sean Butler. All kinds of problems for the Mountaineers, who are the only team from last year’s Final Four to begin the season outside of the AP top 25. Bob Huggins’ squad lost a lot of what made last year’s team so tough to handle with the depatures of Ebanks and Butler. The 2009-10 Mountaineers got by on their ability to suffocate opponents with their brutally physical play combined with Butler’s brilliance on the offensive end. Now much of the responsibility falls to forward Kevin Jones, who averaged 13.5 points per game as West Virginia’s third option. Can Jones step up his game this year when defenses single him out as the guy they have to stop? If Jones struggles, then the Mountaineers will have a hard time duplicating even some of the success they enjoyed last year.

Reports coming from preseason practices aren’t too encouraging. Huggins recently told the Charleston Gazette that freshmen Kevin Noreen and Noah Cottrill “look lost” at practice. And that was after Cottrill sparked rumors when he was introduced but didn’t participate in West Virginia’s Midnight Madness. There also was the case of Casey Mitchell, who was suspended for a violation of team rules but is now back with the team. These aren’t the kinds of stories that equate to success in the regular season. This year might be one to forget in Morgantown.

#2) Cornell

Such is the Life of a Mid-Major -- Seasons Like Last Year Come Around Once in Generation

The Big Red was the last year’s feel good story, upsetting Temple and Wisconsin en route to an unprecedented run to the Sweet 16. And what was the reward for America’s favorite brainiacs turned basketball stars? A return to obscurity.

Cornell lost its X&Os wizard in Steve Donahue when he opted for the greener pastures of the ACC, taking the head coaching gig at Boston College. The Big Red lost all-time leading scorer and 2010 Ivy League Player of the Year (Ryan Wittman), the sparkplug and catalyst of its NCAA Tournament run (Louis Dale) and six other seniors from last year’s squad.  That would be a lot of attrition for even a team like Duke to endure, and there’s no doubt Cornell and new coach Bill Courtney are headed for a big step backward this season.

The Big Red was predicted to finish third in the Ivy League, which would require a number of players to step up fill the voids left by the likes of Wittman and Dale. Cornell needs big seasons from proven players like point guard Chris Wroblewski and forwards Adam Wire and Mark Coury. Then the Big Red will need some of its unknown pieces (one if its four freshman or maybe junior transfer Anthony Gatlin) to emerge if Courtney & Co. hope to compete for a fourth straight league title.

#3) Purdue

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The NCAA unleashed the database for academic progress ratings (APRs) for coaches in six different sports on Thursday.  While it’s fun to plug in coaches from a few other sports — anyone surprised by Pete Carroll’s 971, 24 points higher than the college football average in 2008-09, and six-for-six over 925? — the most fun for us comes from plugging in the names of college basketball coaches and seeing how they did each year.

First, though, just a little background.  The NCAA uses this little metric to determine how a team’s athletes are moving toward the ultimate goal of graduating, and the formula they employ to come up with the number is pretty simple.  Each semester, every athlete gets a point for being academically eligible, and another for sticking with the school.  You add those up for your team, then divide by the number of points possible.  For some reason, they decided to multiply those  numbers by 1,000 to get rid of the resulting decimal point (otherwise, it would have been as confusing as, say, a batting average), so if you get a score of .970, that means you got 97% of the points possible, and your APR score is 970. If you fall below the NCAA’s mandated level of 925, you get a warning, and then penalties if you don’t improve.  Keep in mind, though, that if a coach changes schools, he shares his APR with the coach he replaced.  And, the database only goes through 2008-09 right now.  That’s why if you search for John Calipari, you’ll notice he has two APRs — a 980 that he received at Memphis which he shares with Josh Pastner, and a 922 for the same season at Kentucky which he shares with Billy Gillispie even though Calipari technically didn’t coach a game at Kentucky during that season.  Because he was hired in 2009, he shares the APR with the preceding coach.  You get the picture.

Why is this man smiling? How about two straight perfect APRs?

A couple of the numbers that people have been talking about the most since the database was released are the two perfect 1,000s put up by Bob Huggins‘ last two West Virginia teams.  Most college basketball fans like to point the dirty end of the stick at Huggins when it comes to academics, and he’s been a lightning rod since his days at Cincinnati; rightly so, since his last three years as Bearcat boss saw APRs of 917, 826, and a eyebrow-raising 782.  But his scores in Morgantown have been excellent, so he’d appreciate it if we all found a new poster boy for academic underachievement.

An AP report today specifically mentioned Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun, who, in the six years the database covers, has had teams better than the national average — and over the 925 cutoff — only three times.  In fact, the APRs of his last three teams have steadily declined, posting scores of 981, 909, and (ouch) 844 from 2006-2009.  The same AP report fingered Kelvin Sampson as having even more harrowing results, having only two years in which he topped 900 (his 2004-05 Oklahoma squad scored exactly 900) — his 2003-04 Oklahoma team posted a 917, and his final roster at Indiana in 2007-08 turned in a downright hurtful 811.

With a new toy like this, there was no way we could keep from checking all of the APRs of the Ivy League schools.  The most impressive tally was by Columbia’s Joe Jones, who posted six straight perfect scores of 1,000 but will now evidently become an assistant on fellow Ivy man Steve Donahue’s Boston College team next season.  Only two teams in the league didn’t score a perfect score for the 2008-09 season.  The two bad boys of the league were Glen Miller, whose Penn team from that season put up — gasp! — a 950 (he had two straight perfect scores before that), and Tommy Amaker’s Harvard squad from that year, which posted a 985.

1. The extortion trial of Karen Sypher began Monday in Louisville, and the blockbuster allegation of the day came from the defense.  Sypher says that Rick Pitino threatened to have her “put in concrete in a river” if she didn’t keep quiet about their affair in 2003.  It’s going to be educational to see how the defense tries to spin this so that Pitino is viewed as the guilty party considering the amount of evidence that the feds already have in this case.
2. The second installment of the Flourishing Five came out yesterday, and the Wisconsin Badgers are the #4 pick.  As a reminder, CBS Sports is picking the five collegiate programs with excellent basketball and football programs.  #5 Pittsburgh was named last week.  The Badgers are a solid choice.  We’re going to predict that the next three (in order) are: Florida, Ohio State and Texas.
3. This is an interesting article from Dennis Dodd about how the ACC hasn’t shut the door on future expansion, having mocked up 14- and 16-team scenarios.  The ACC has to know that as a lesser football conference, it behooves them to be more proactive in this arena rather than waiting to get raided by the Big Ten and/or SEC at some future date.
4. The thing is, when Tom Izzo says that he believes Purdue is the Big Ten favorite next season, he realizes that his team (not the Boilermakers) will probably be standing later into March and April.  Would you bet against this guy in the postseason given what he’s been able to accomplish the last two with much the same cast of characters?
5. The Ivy League is still the Ivy League, regardless of the success of Cornell making the Sweet Sixteen and Harvard’s Jeremy Lin getting signed by the Golden State Warriors.  But there are some league insiders who believe the added attention that the conference has received will only help recruiting the type of players who would have otherwise gone to BCS schools.

It’s the Monday after the first two rounds, so that means it’s time for conference report cards!  With only eleven of the 32 BCS conference teams remaining, we have a feeling that the major conferences aren’t going to perform so well in this year’s grading.  But you never know.  It all depends on the individual matchups and our mood as we break out the red marker.  We review the conferences with multiple bids below…

WCC (2 bids, 1 remaining, 3-1 record, expected PASE = 1.4 wins)

Obviously, any time a WCC team makes the Sweet Sixteen it’s a great year for the conference.  It’s especially great this time around because #10 St. Mary’s shows that the conference has some talent and depth in its league beyond the same old Zags.  With two relatively low seeds (Gonzaga was a #8), many people were expecting the league to go oh-fer in the Dance this year, but now one week later the Gaels are a popular darkhorse pick to come out of the South Region as a true F4 Cinderella.

Verdict: A.  The only thing that would have made this an A+ would have been if Gonzaga had upset #1 Syracuse.  Every additional win from here on out is just gravy.

Big 10 (5 bids, 3 remaining, 7-2 record, expected PASE = 7.1 wins)

The Big Ten is having a good tournament after a somewhat disappointing regular season, and every year the league does this everyone acts surprised.  #2 Ohio State rolled in its two games and appears a very strong contender to get to the Final Four after Northern Iowa blew up the Midwest Region.  #4 Purdue and #5 Michigan State both survived extremely close games that support the contention that the Big Ten style of play (gutting out close games) helps when it comes Tourney time.  OSU and MSU are on a likely collision course to the regional finals for an all-Big Ten extravaganza, but even if nobody wins another game, the league has already reached this year’s expectations.

Verdict: A-.  Minnesota wasn’t expected to do much and they didn’t, but #4 Wisconsin was upset by a vastly underrated #12 Cornell in the second round.  That upset is more than compensated by Purdue’s showing against #5 Texas A&M, a game where it was clear just how much they missed Robbie Hummel yet they still found a way to win.  OSU and MSU give the Big Ten the most Sweet Sixteen teams of any league this season.

Pac-10 (2 bids, 1 remaining, 3-1 record, expected PASE = 1.2 wins)

West coast bias reared its head as the two Pac-10 invitees won first round games over Big East squads to move into the next round.  #11 Washington then followed that up with a pasting of #3 New Mexico, while #8 Cal was simply outclassed by Duke’s talent.  The way Washington is playing right now (nine in a row), we wouldn’t automatically assume a loss to WVU in the Sweets, but regardless of that result the league has already far outperformed what most people expected this year (which was an 0-2 record).

Verdict: B+.  The league was undoubtedly way, way down this year, but UW and Cal gave it back a wee bit of respectability with their showings over the weekend.

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Backdoor Cuts is a weekly college basketball discussion between RTC correspondents Dave Zeitlin, Steve Moore and Mike Walsh that occasionally touches on relevant subjects. This week the guys debate the merit of conference tournaments — and you can guess where the Ivy Leaguer stands.

DAVE ZEITLIN: Let me start by saying that I love everything about March. The weather is better. The food is tastier. People are friendlier. Even this German kid is less annoying. Such is the power of college basketball. From the first day of the conference tournaments until the final lyric of One Shining Moment (which is, as you probably guessed, “one shining moment”), wall-to-wall college hoops takes a hold of you and doesn’t let go until your eyes are bloodshot, your voice is hoarse and all your dreams are of Digger Phelps’ ties. And if I just made watching college basketball sound creepy, that wasn’t my intention. Everything about March Madness is perfect. Well, almost everything…

You guys may disagree, but I think conference tournaments need to be changed. More specifically, I find it unfair that automatic NCAA bids go to conference tourney champs as opposed to the winners of the regular season. Did I just pour a bucket of cold water over my gooey-gushy first paragraph? Maybe.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m still delighted to watch the final few minutes of any conference championship game and get even more excited when there’s an upset involved. It just doesn’t make sense that a team that gets hot over a few days gets rewarded over the team that already proved it’s the best in the conference over the regular season. Read this recent column by Jeff Goodman if you disagree. Or read this disgustingly pretentious column I wrote in college. You’ll come around.

Every Game Counts?

Now, you guys may be thinking I’m just saying all this because I’m an Ivy Leaguer and the Ivy League is the only conference in America that doesn’t have a tournament. I guess that’s part of it. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the value of league play with so many titles coming down to a thrilling regular season finale between Penn and Princeton. But even now, as Penn has floundered to the bottom of the league standings, I wouldn’t feel right about my Quakers having a chance to go dancing just by going on a three-game winning streak. I mean, come on, they have 20 losses. I love the idea that every team can win a national championship, but don’t you think the regular season should hold just a little value?

I’m not saying get rid of tournaments. I just think there should be some compromises. Make it so it’s a privilege (not a right) to play in the conference tournament, kind of like the way it is in Division II or III. Sorry but if you’re in the bottom half of your league, you don’t deserve the chance to steal a bid from a 25-win team just so you can play in Dayton on Tuesday. And how about home games and byes for top seeds in every league?

All that said, I have no problem with the big-conference tournaments (other than the fact I can never tell which of the NCAA locks are actually trying). The Big East Tournament at the Garden, especially, has given me many great memories over the years. And any team that runs the table against the nation’s giants over the course of a few days (remember Georgia?) deserves a bid in my mind. So by all means, keep the money pouring in for those leagues. It’s just the one-bid conferences (where revenue isn’t as much of an issue) that seem to be doing a disservice to the NCAA Tournament — and mostly their own teams.

So what do you guys think? At the very least can we agree that the changes I suggested would be much better than that heinous 96-team NCAA tournament proposal?

MIKE WALSH: First off, let me go on record as saying that I’d rather be strangled with one of Digger Phelps’ aforementioned ties while he was still wearing it than see the tournament expanded to 96 teams. In a world where everyone gets a trophy just for trying, I think a little disappointment is good for the teams whose bubbles burst each year. Sorry, Rhode Island, better luck next year! And let’s be honest with ourselves, stretching the field to 96 teams is just another way to get more power conference schools in the Big Dance – or would we have to call it the Bigger Dance? And who doesn’t want to see Rutgers get in? Those kids try so hard…

This concludes the soap box portion of the show.

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Big Red Freshness Lasts Right Through It. Cornell 95, Brown 76.  It probably took a little longer than the nervous Big Red faithful hoped to put away the pesky Brown Bears tonight, but in the end, it was simply a formality because Cornell players were so narrowly focused on winning their third straight Ivy League title and NCAA bid that there was no way they were going to lose this game tonight.  How focused were they?  Try a season-best 57% shooting and an utterly ridonkulous 20-30 from deep tonight.  At one point during the conflagration of shot-making by the Big Red, they hit eight treys in a row en route to an 11-13 first half.  But it was the second half where Cornell exhibited its dominance, using a 14-4 run early to take control of the game and ensure another title coming to Ithaca this season.  All five starters reached double figures, but it was lesser-known forward Jon Jaques who took the scoring honors with 20/7 tonight (including six threes).  In all, four players had four or more threes, which we figure has to be some kind of a record for versatile and voluminous shooting!  Cornell will now wait to see where their NCAA seed lies, but the smart money is on a #12 seed when the brackets are released.  Anyone up for a #12/#5 upset this year?

Will 3d Time Be the Charm For Cornell? (Ithaca Journal/G. Ertl)

RTC Live.

• Wichita State 73, Missouri State 63.  On Quarterfinal Friday in St. Louis, top seed Northern Iowa defeated Drake, Bradley upset Creighton and Illinois State won the nightcap. And in the game you followed here on RTC Live, Wichita State held off Missouri State, 73-63. A close, hard-fought and well-played game, the Shockers were paced by Garrett Stutz, whose play in the paint helped them overcome hot outside shooting of the Bears. Stutz finished with 19 points and 6 rebounds, and converted on back-to-back possessions during a key stretch of the second half to help them pull away. The Shockers advance to play the Redbirds of Illinois State tomorrow afternoon here in St. Louis.

Conference Tourneys.  Eight conference tourneys tonight, and a ridiculous thirteen tomorrow.  Let’s see what was interesting…

• Ohio Valley.  The top two teams — Murray State and Morehead State — both advanced tonight to the finals on Saturday.  Murray has put together a phenomenal 29-win season, so it’d be a shame to see them miss out on the NCAAs, but Morehead is the only OVC team to have beaten the Racers this year.  It was Morehead tonight, though, not Murray, who had the comfortable win in the semis.  Should be a great one on Saturday for the auto-bid.
• Atlantic Sun.  #6 seed Mercer continues to use its home court advantage to knock off higher-seeded teams with tonight’s victory over #2 Jacksonville.  #5 East Tennessee State was able to get by #8 Kennesaw State whom had knocked off top seed Belmont last night.  So it’ll be Mercer vs. ETSU for the automatic bid.  The Bucs will be playing in their third A-Sun title game in four years, and will be looking to win back-t0-back NCAA bids despite having not finished first in the regular season in either of the last two years.
• Horizon.  In the Horizon second round tonight, #7 Detroit continues to turn heads with another upset win behind Eli Holman’s dub-dub (16/11), while #4 Milwaukee earned the pleasure of facing #1 Butler in the semifinals on Saturday by defeating #5 Cleveland State.  The Titans will play #2 Wright State in the other semifinal — neither of the top two seeds have played yet in this tournament, while Detroit has already played two games and Milwaukee one.

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Unless half of the Cornell basketball team (the starting half) suffers serious food poisoning or takes a sudden interest in the illicit pleasures of Federal Hill in Providence, we should have our first 2010 NCAA Tournament bid secured at around 9 pm eastern tonight.  With the Big Red’s twelfth Ivy League victory likely this evening, Steve Donahue’s team will have clinched their third straight regular season title (and NCAA bid).

Winning is Gorges (CDS/T. Chou)

In filling the vacuum left by the Penn and Princeton boondoggles, it’s been a phenomenal run for the men from Ithaca as Cornell has won 36 Ivy games over the past three seasons.  Their Ivy scoring margin of +15.6 this year is the best seen in the league since the great Quaker teams at the turn of the millennium, with eight of Cornell’s eleven wins this year virtually in the books by the first timeout.  We’d love to build up some drama about tonight’s game at Brown, but Cornell has defeated the Bears by a 22-point average margin of victory in the last five games between the two teams; given that this is Donahue’s best team of his career, we doubt that tonight’s the night for the 12-19 (5-7) Rhodies to shock the world (ed. note: the previous game this year was closer than the 14-point margin indicates, but we expect Cornell to come strong tonight with their NCAA bid on the line).

The one thing Cornell has so far failed to do in their three-year reign of Ivy dominance is to win a game against an RPI top-50 opponent (0-8), which squares with their 0-2 record in the NCAA Tournament (Ls to Missouri and Stanford).  But they’re getting closer, as a closely-contested January game against #1 Kansas in Allen Fieldhouse showed.  The core group of seniors — guard Louis Dale, forward Ryan Wittman, and center Jeff Foote — have been playing together for so long (and so well) that they know what each other is going to do before they’ve even thought of it yet.  In an era of elite teams led by young players not far removed from the Prom and Selective Service sign-ups, the opportunity is ripe for the Big Red to catch an overconfident, sloppy team in the first round of the Dance this year.

Cornell's Decorated Trio (credit: Cornell Daily Sun)

In Zach Hayes’ latest RTC Bracketology, he has Cornell as a #13 seed playing #4 seed Temple, while Joe Lunardi has the Big Red as a #12 seed playing #5 Georgetown.  While neither of those particular teams fit the criteria as a young, undisciplined team, there are others in that seed range who do (Tennessee in particular comes to mind).  With a little luck in the draw this year, the Ivy League champion could be on the cusp of more than just its third straight trip to the NCAAs but also its first-ever win in Tournament history.

RTC Live is back for a rare Friday night edition. Normally we “take the night off” given the relatively light slate, but tonight is a special occasion. Tonight the unofficial playoff for the Ivy League title and first official NCAA tournament bid commences when Cornell travels to Cambridge, MA to take on Harvard.

When these two teams met on January 30th, it was one of the most highly anticipated Ivy League match-ups in years. Cornell came in 17-3 having won 15 of 16 with its only losses coming against Seton Hall (10 points) and on the road against a pair of top-5 foes in Syracuse(15 points) and Kansas (5 points). Harvard came in 14-3 having won 7 straight with its only losses coming on the road against Army (3 points), UConn(6 points), and Georgetown (16 points). Many were expecting one of best games of the season featuring a match-up of Ivy League Player of the Year favorites Ryan Wittman and Jeremy Lin. Wittman and the Big Red lived up to their billing, but Lin and the Crimson apparently forgot to bring their game with them to Ithaca as they were embarrassed 86-50 while Lin managed to outscore Wittman (19-11), but committed a season-high 8 turnovers (of the team’s 25) with only 1 assist. With Wittman having a relatively quiet game the Big Red were led by seven-foot senior center Jeff Foote, who had 16 points, 9 rebounds, 4 assists, and 3 blocks. Following the blowout, it appeared as if the two teams were headed in opposite directions as the Crimson lost their next game to a surprisingly good Princeton team before bouncing back with 3 straight wins. The Big Red appeared poised to run the table in the Ivy League before stumbling in a shocking loss at Penn before bouncing back to win a hard-fought game at Princeton the following night. All this left the Ivy League with 3 teams sitting near the top of the conference: Cornell at 7-1, Princeton at 6-1, and Harvard at 6-2. The game is being billed as the biggest in the history of Harvard basketball (please, no snickering) and the athletic department is going to try to use a “Fade to Black” theme where the fans wear white shirts in the first half then taking them off to reveal black shirts in the second half [Ed. Note: Another benefit is layering for the New England winter night.] while the audio system will play Jay Z’s “Run This Town” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” before the start of the 2nd half when the fans will reveal their black shirts in an attempt to throw off the Big Red (who happened to almost win at Kansas, which we think would be slightly more daunting than the visual “hallucination” of having the fans in the stands change their shirts from white to black at halftime).

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What Happened Tonight?  On a random Friday night in February when most people were watching the opening of the Winter Olympics and the epic fail of the cauldron-lighting, we very well may have had the wildest evening of the year in the 2009-10 college basketball season.  Normally, there’s no reason to even recap games from Friday nights throughout the year, but tonight we wouldn’t be doing our job if we weren’t here.  Could both the Game of the Year and the Upset of the Year have been tonight?  If you missed it, we’ll try to do our best to get you caught up…

Jermaine Dixon & Brad Wanamaker Are Giddy After Beating WVU

Game of the Year? #23 Pittsburgh 98, #4 West Virginia 95 (3OT). In a game that was reminiscent of the six-overtime epic from last year’s Big East Tournament, Pitt made a miraculous comeback to beat #4 West Virginia in triple-overtime, 98-95.  Thanks to three consecutive missed free throws by WVU on 1-and-1 opportunities, Pitt was able to cut the lead in regulation to three with 30 seconds left.  Nasir Robinson stole West Virginia’s pass, and after a missed out-of-bounds call by the referees, Ashton Gibbs sent the crowd into a frenzy with a three-pointer.  The Panthers carried their momentum to a five-point lead in the first overtime, and had a chance to ice the game with seven seconds left.  Gibbs then went to the free-throw line with the Panthers up by two, but missed the second free throw attempt and West Virginia’s Darryl Bryant took the ball and made a clutch three-pointer with three seconds left to force a second overtime.  WVU was forced to make another comeback when they were down by three points with 20 seconds left when Gary McGhee fouled Da’Sean Butler on a three point attempt.  After Butler made all three free throws, the fans at the Peterson Events Center became witness to a third overtime.  West Virginia had a one-point lead with less than a minute to go when Pitt’s Gilbert Brown sank a pair of free throws.  After two missed shots by WVU, the Panthers escaped with a three-point win.  With the victory, Pitt moved to a tie with the Mountaineers for third place in the Big East.  There was no RTC for the student section tonight, but with their third consecutive win, Pitt may have moved up to an overall four seed tonight.  As for the Mountaineers, they need to work on their free throw shooting before they meet Georgetown and Villanova at season’s end.  If you missed the game and highlights, we suggest you go here to watch the last six minutes of regulation plus the OTs.

Two Conference Unbeatens Go Down…

Penn Fans RTC Against Cornell (photo credit: Ed Hille)

• Pennsylvania 79, #22 Cornell 64.  In his recap of this game, ESPN’s Doug Gottlieb called this the upset of the year in college basketball.  His reasons: Cornell has all five starters back (including four seniors) from last year and are the two-time defending Ivy league champions; they were undefeated in conference play up until tonight and had beaten all of their Ivy opponents by an average of 25 points.  Penn, on the other hand, had their coach fired earlier this year and had only won four games all year.  KenPom ranks Penn 308th… out of 347 D1 teams.  Mr. Gottlieb makes a good case.  After Penn took a single-point lead into halftime, sure, a few eyebrows were raised.  It was the 15-0 Quaker run to start the second half that turned heads.  After that run, the closest the Big Red got was five.  That tends to happen when you play the kind of defense that allows your opponent to shoot 56.3% from the field, including 52.4% from behind the three-point arc.  Jack Eggleston and Zack Rosen had the nights of their lives, shooting a combined 14-24 and 7-10 from three-point range, posting 24 and 22 points, respectively.  A couple of weeks ago Cornell was the feel-good story of the year, enjoying that shiny new ranking and the head-tilted awwwws of the college hoops world, as well as an assumed Ivy League title and NCAA Tournament bid.  Now, it’s all in danger.  The ranking’s gone, come Monday.  Their tournament lives will be determined by their next two games, both on the road — tomorrow at now-first-place Princeton and next Friday at Harvard, the latter rather pissed and looking to avenge the 36-point pasting they took from the Big Red on January 30th.  That one could very well determine the whole thing.  The Pennsylvania supporters pulled an admirable RTC after this one, and we could hardly blame them.  Man, we’re going to have to all chip in for (Back Door Cuts contributor) Dave Zeitlin’s electro-shock therapy as a result of this, aren’t we?

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