1. Well, just when everyone had become enchanted with the idea of Providence giving Syracuse a stiff challenge, the Orange came out and showed everyone why they hadn’t lost at home in 37 games. Boeheim’s defensive length sparked a 31-5 run to close the first half, and the Friars were run out of the gym, 84-59. CJ Fair logged his second consecutive double-double with 20 points and 10 rebounds, and the Orange shot almost 57% on a Providence defense that had held Notre Dame to 39% last week. Most encouraging for Syracuse fans was the impeccable performance Michael Carter-Williams turned in after his tapering assist numbers had raised eyebrows. The sophomore ended with 12 assists and an absurd 6:1 assist to turnover ratio to go along with 15 points and five rebounds. Any doubts about Syracuse’s trajectory were erased as they moved back into a tie for first place in league play.
2. In another Wednesday night blowout, Georgetown freshman D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera played a career game as the Hoyas pounded DePaul, 90-66, to extend their winning streak to eight. Coming off the bench, the stocky Thompsonian guard racked up 33 points on 10-of-12 (83%) shooting, hit 5-of-6 threes and 8-of-10 free throws. It was the most points scored by a Georgetown freshman since Victor Page put up 34 in the 1996 Big East Tournament. It also warrants some further research to determine the last time anyone accumulated as many points shooting 80% or higher from both the field, three-point and free throw lines. We’ll look into it.
3. Jamie Dixon’s emphasis on rebounding is well documented, but it’s even more important this season without a reliable scorer. Despite entering last weekend’s game tied for the best rebounding margin in the Big East, Pitt emerged bloodied from its Notre Dame embarrassment with a -22 margin between two straight losses. In fact, Pitt’s lost six of the last eight games in which it hasn’t earned an advantage on the glass. Dixon stresses the need for “rebounding from every position,” but Lamar Patterson had questioned the effort from his big men after last weekend’s Marquette loss: “We’ve got big guys, too. Steve [Adams] and Talib [Zanna] are big guys. It came down to who wanted it more.” The two performed even worse on the boards against the Irish, collecting four and two rebounds, respectively. Maybe it’s not the kind of criticism you’d pose publicly, but it appears to have some merit.
4. Notre Dame forward Scott Martin is poised to return to full participation in practice this weekend after missing eight games with chronic knee issues. Despite the leadership and production Martin brings to the table, the Irish are 6-2 in his absence, as Tom Knight has ascended from obscurity to become a reliable starter. It’s not an unfamiliar situation for Mike Brey: “Luke Harangody came back to us at time we were rolling along with a different nucleus. Scott will have to work himself in and he and I talked about that. His attitude is great… I would love to have that body available down the stretch.” Brey also revealed he’s also contemplating inserting Martin at the three spot, which would alleviate the problematic numbers game in Notre Dame’s frontcourt. It’s hard to imagine a hobbled Martin having the lateral quickness to guard many Big East threes, though.
5. Eric Crawford at the Louisville Courier-Journal juxtaposes the patchwork understanding of basketball Gorgui Dieng brought to Louisville with the astute mind for the game he’s developed in three seasons. He’s gone from not grasping that offensive and defensive fouls count toward one’s foul total, to becoming one of the team’s best passer, whom Rick Pitino compares to former point-center David Padgett for his passing ability and intellect. “He’s our coach on the floor,” says Pitino. While Dieng demurred when asked about his coach’s comments that he may encourage the 23-year-old junior to test the draft after this season, Crawford picks up on subtleties in Dieng’s speech that suggest he might be preparing for an exit. Responding to concerns about fatigue, Dieng said, “I will do whatever to help this team. I’m not worried if I play a lot of minutes or less minutes. I don’t know if I’m going to have this chance again, ever.”

1. Ed Cooley says he hasn’t mentioned the possibility of any sort of postseason berth to his Providence team. “I’m just trying to go a game at a time and that’s not coach-speak. That’s reality,” he said, “We’re still fragile. We just have guys trying to believe right now.” While it may be poor etiquette for any coach to broach that topic when his team is below .500 in conference play, it’s fair game for fans. By late last night, all but 10% of 345 respondents in a Providence Journal poll believed the Friars would make either the NIT (72%) or NCAA Tournament (18%). Any discussion of the latter is premature unless the Friars pull off the upset at Syracuse tonight. But Kevin McNamara suggests that prolonged early injuries to Vincent Council and Kris Dunn could constitute a “special circumstance” with the selection committee, should the Friars play their way onto the bubble. We evaluated the outlook for Providence in their final five games in yesterday’s Big East Burning Question.
2. It’s not all roses in Syracuse, as Jared E. Smith over at TNIAAM presents three alarming trends that have come to the surface since Cuse’s watershed victory at Louisville. Despite leading the Big East with 8 assists per contest overall this season, Michael Carter-Williams has only averaged 4.3 APG in the past six games, and his team is 1-3 when he fails to dish out 5 assists. Smith identifies other culprits in the poor three-point defense from the back end of Boeheim’s zone and a chronic inability to produce the prolific transition offense to which Orange fans are accustomed. Syracuse is producing half as many transition points as last year’s team, and consequently entered last Saturday’s Seton Hall game averaging 8 PPG fewer than their predecessors. Cuse plays two of the league’s hottest teams this week in Providence and Georgetown, so it’s an inopportune moment to grapple with the issues Smith highlights.
3. Notwithstanding the Scottie Reynolds shot that knocked his team out of the 2009 Elite Eight, Jamie Dixon may have been at his “most inconsolable” as a Pitt coach after his team’s collapse to Notre Dame on Monday night. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Ron Cook predicts Pitt will achieve the modest requirements to wrap up their NCAA invite, but says they’re clearly just as “capable of blowing the bid.” The loss only confirmed the alarm raised in last week’s 10-point loss to Marquette: “[Pitt] is trending the wrong way at the worst time of the season.”
4. Speaking of Pitt, Cardiac Hill wonders whether the infusion of blue chip talent coming out of high school next year will influence the length of Steven Adams’ career in Pittsburgh. Adam Zagoria had quoted an anonymous NBA GM who extolled the 2014 draft class and called this year’s group “historically weak” (when can we take that annual refrain out back and euthanize it, by the way?). This prompted CH to ask: “If Adams doesn’t take a huge step forward, one could wonder if he’d be better of coming out this season or waiting until 2015 if next year’s class is as stacked as the GM claims.” It’s an interesting dilemma, and from a broader perspective it’s a kind of cynical calculus necessitated by the one-and-done rule.
5. Though Cincinnati as a team is 14^th in the league in free throw shooting percentage, Mick Cronin claims it’s more an issue of the wrong players getting to the line. “If [Sean Kilpatrick] or Cash [Wright] shoots all of our free throws, I like our chances,” said Cronin, who lamented, “Your bigger guys are the ones who tend to get fouled.” Therein lies the problem, for Cincinnati, whose star guards are the only starters that shoot better than 66%. For their part, Justin Jackson and JaQuan Parker have hit 54% of 156 combined free throw attempts. Despite struggling in many other facets of his game, sixth man forward Titus Rubles’ 67% foul shooting offers a situational substitute should Jackson become a liability late in a game.

1. Otto Porter was named Big East Player of the Week yesterday for the first time in his two seasons at Georgetown. In the Hoyas’ recent big wins over Marquette and Cincinnati, the sophomore forward scored 18.5 points on 43.5% shooting, in addition to averaging 7.0 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 2.0 steals per contest. Despite picking up his third foul four minutes into the second half at Cincinnati, Porter made several crucial plays down the stretch, like hitting both free throws to extend Georgetown’s lead to two possessions in the final 1:16. In fact, Porter was a perfect 14-of-14 last week, and hasn’t missed from the charity stripe in the past three games.
2. As if the loss to DePaul on Saturday wasn’t distressing enough, Rutgers also lost its two-time leading scorer after tests revealed Eli Carter had fractured his fibula and is done for the year. The sophomore guard was averaging 14.9 points per game, represented 22.4% of his team’s total points this year, and is second only to Russ Smith in possession percentage among Big East players by using nearly 29% of offensive trips. Mike Rice warned that the void left by Carter extends beyond the offensive end: “Defensively he always guarded one of the best perimeter guys. He had such a toughness to him and when he was going, we were playing at our best.” The Scarlet Knights lost their first game without Carter last night at Villanova, and it’s hard to identify a likely win on their remaining schedule. Rutgers blog On The Banks put the devastating loss in perspective: “Season over. Another sad, bizarre season for Rutgers fans.”
3. Of the Georgetown-Syracuse rivalry that will ostensibly end this weekend, John Thompson III says, “I still anticipate us playing although it hasn’t been hammered out for next year or for the immediate (future).” It’s undeniably one of the more historic and passionate rivalries in the Big East, as evidenced by the 34,000 tickets Syracuse has sold to the upcoming game, and the fact that Jim Boeheim predicts “the most emotional game for me of any game I’ve ever coached in the regular season.” As much as the continuation of the St. John’s-Syracuse intrastate rivalry is exciting for basketball preservationists, Georgetown-Syracuse is the series that both athletic departments should most urgently seek to extend in perpetuity.
4. USF’s eight-game losing streak is its longest since Stan Heath first took over in 2007-08. Tampa Tribune’s Martin Fennelly paints a grim portrait of the Bulls’ precipitous decline after last year’s top-four Big East finish and NCAA berth: “They’re 10-15, have lost 12 of their last 13 games and in the two games against Louisville this season, they scored 79 basketball points.” Regarding Rick Pitino’s comment after Louisville’s win in the Sun Dome that Heath is “one or two guys away,” Fennelly retorts, “I think the Washington Generals are one or two guys away from beating the Globetrotters, too.” Heath built enough capital by taking his moribund program to the NCAA Tournament last year to safely withstand a season like this, Fennelly points out, but it has been an utter disappointment for a team predicted to finish in the middle of the pack.
5. After getting taken to overtime by DePaul at home and blown out by Providence in its last two games, Notre Dame appeared dead in the water when they shot 1-of-18 to open its game at Pittsburgh last night. But Mike Brey drew a technical that seemed to make an impression on both the officials and his team, and the result was a 51-42 victory in what was the second-lowest point total of Jamie Dixon’s tenure in the Steel City. In addition to blowing a 16-point first half lead, the Panthers logged a paltry 10 assists (seven below their average) and failed to score a single three-pointer. They also suffered their worst rebounding margin of the season, as the Irish outworked them by 15 boards on the glass. For a team whose identify is shaped around rebounding, the game was a huge red flag in the final stretch of the season, just when it seemed the Panthers were coalescing into a Big East contender.

1. Syracuse and UConn seem to be moving in very different directions as basketball programs on a number of levels. Syracuse is looking for another top-10 finish to the season and a high seed in the Big Dance. UConn, on the other hand, is ineligible for all postseason play. Syracuse is moving on to the ACC, leaving behind the shell of the once-great Big East. UConn was left at the altar, wondering what its next move will be. And this week, like ships passing in the night, Syracuse gained back dynamic sixth-man James Southerland, while UConn will likely be without big man Enosch Wolf after an arrest this week. Wolf was charged with third-degree burglary, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct after refusing to leave a campus apartment and getting in a physical altercation with a female resident at 6:00 AM. According to Kevin Ollie, Wolf has been suspended indefinitely.
2. When he suffered a sprained ankle in the first half of what would become an epic five-overtime game against Louisville, Pat Connaughton probably didn’t realize how crucial his presence would be. The sophomore returned to the game later and ended up playing 56 minutes and contributing 16 points and 14 rebounds in the hard-fought Irish win. Connaughton probably didn’t feel great about it on Sunday, but luckily for him Notre Dame is off until Wednesday night when the Irish will take on DePaul. Ice up, Pat.
3. Jim Boeheim is old, you guys, and I guess it works for him. The Hall of Famer has noted on many occasions that he doesn’t own a computer, and apparently he just recently got into this whole “cell phone” business, mostly because of his young kids. However, in a shocking revelation brought on by the constant Syracuse rumor-mongering surrounding the James Southerland situation, we have now learned that Boeheim knows what a blog is! And surprise, surprise — he resents them as much as we all imagined he would!
4. Pittsburgh had a slow start to the Big East slate this year, and a lot of that derived from a lack of production from vaunted freshman center Steven Adams.  However, in recent weeks Adams has really come along with his offensive production, allowing Pitt to go back to a more traditional inside-out Panthers attack. The post presence of Adams and power forward Talib Zanna allows Jamie Dixon’s offense to harken back to the days where Levance Fields was able to feed DeJuan Blair under the hoop. The recent emergence of Adams and Zanna’s solid production opens things up for guards like Tray Woodall, who had to shoulder much of the scoring load earlier in the year.
5. Rutgers has probably played better than many expected this season, but its 3-8 conference record doesn’t really reflect it. The Scarlet Knights have been in many close games but have so far failed to contain the opposition’s best player down the stretch. This problem came to pass once again in Saturday’s 69-63 loss to Georgetown. Scoring has been an adventure for the Hoyas all season, but they have been able to get by on the shoulders of star forward Otto Porter, who led the way by scoring 19 points (including 10 of Georgetown’s final 12) and grabbing 14 boards. Good defensive teams can remove a singular threat like Porter, or at least slow him down in crunch time, but Rutgers isn’t quite there yet.

Brian Otskey is an RTC columnist. Every Tuesday during the regular season he’ll be giving his 10 thoughts on the previous week’s action. You can find him on Twitter @botskey

1. Over the last week we have seen the number of undefeated teams reduced to zero. Now that every team has a loss, the speculation about which team should be #1 is heating up. Those who adhere to the résumé argument will say that Duke deserves to stay atop the polls despite its Saturday loss to NC State and they are absolutely right. The problem is, in my opinion, that ranking teams based on their résumé  alone is the easy way out. We have a NCAA Tournament Selection Committee who does that for us every year in mid-March. There is more to ranking a team than who it has beat and who it has lost to. There are other factors to consider including statistics and extenuating circumstances. When it comes to the Blue Devils as they are currently constructed, I can’t say they are the best team in the country. Duke is a potent offensive team, but there are other areas for concern. While acknowledging that the efficiency numbers say otherwise, I don’t believe Duke is an elite defensive team. The Blue Devils have allowed 70+ points on only four occasions, but all have come against good competition–Minnesota, Louisville, Santa Clara, and NC State. That tells me when the chips are down against good teams, Duke might not be able to get the stops it needs to win a close game away from Cameron Indoor Stadium. Rebounding is also a concern for Mike Krzyzewski’s team despite having Mason Plumlee in the middle. But perhaps the more immediate concern is the injury to Ryan Kelly who is out indefinitely with a foot injury. Duke has been quiet about it, with Coach K only saying it could be a long-term recovery. This only creates more doubt about a player who is very important to the team’s success. Duke is certainly among the top three or four teams in the country right now, but with Kelly’s uncertainty, some defensive concerns (especially compared to say, Louisville), and the rebounding Achilles heel, I have a hard time saying Duke is the flat out best team in the nation.
   

   Ryan Kelly’s injury is a major concern for Duke.

2. Watching Connecticut take it to Louisville in the first half of last night’s Big Monday game probably created some doubt about the Cardinals among those watching. Of course, there are two halves to a basketball game and Louisville showed why it was ranked #1 in this week’s poll with a dominant second half against the Huskies. There are two main keys to Louisville’s success: Peyton Siva and team defense. Siva was on the bench for quite some time in the first half with foul trouble, but came back and took over after intermission. Louisville’s defense, after giving up 54% shooting in the first half and likely enduring the wrath of Rick Pitino at halftime, held Connecticut to 24 points on 26% shooting over the final 20 minutes. Louisville’s ability to lock you down is second to none. There is not another team in the nation that combines the quickness and ball pressure of two all-conference guards, tall and agile forwards, depth, and an eraser with a massive wingspan on the back line. If the Cardinals are to win a national championship in Atlanta this April, defense will be the reason why. While Louisville is certainly better offensively than it was last season, I still have some concerns on that end of the floor. Louisville could have a tough time against a team with a good interior defense (Kansas for example) because three-point shooting it a major weakness. Can the Cardinals score in a halfcourt game (as tournament games usually are) against strong competition when they absolutely have to come up with a bucket? In my view, that is still to be determined.  If the answer is yes, Louisville will be your national champion. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Another day has passed and we don’t know anything more about the shady eligibility issue that is keeping Syracuse forward James Southerland off the court. Jim Boeheim spoke about the suspension with ESPN while he was on the network’s campus in Bristol and while he wouldn’t elaborate on what Southerland is actually suspended for, he did call the suspension “troubling” while also noting that “James will get through it”. While Orange fans anxiously await Southerland’s reinstatement, those of us on the outside looking in are left with an insatiable curiosity about the cloud of mystery surrounding the suspension. One would think that if this was a by-the-book suspension for academic issues, Syracuse would have just come out and said that, it isn’t the team’s first rodeo in that respect after all. Instead the program has chosen to keep everyone in the dark and there is a chance we will never know what is keeping Southerland suspended.
2. As expected Louisville survived the war of attrition and ascended to the top spot in the latest Associated Press’ Top 25 poll Monday and they celebrated by stomping out a potential upset bid from Connecticut on the same night. The Huskies have already proven they are going to be a tough game for any opponent, and they actually led the Cardinals by six points at halftime before Louisville dialed up the defense and swarmed over the younger Huskies in the second half. At this point the only thing that keeps Louisville from dominating is their own intensity and effort. When the Cardinals play with max effort, they are better than nearly everyone else in the country, but as they showed in the first half Monday, the switch isn’t always turned on. For now that will work, but a lackluster half in March will be a lot more dangerous.
3. The Providence Journal is right, this is a big week for Ed Cooley and Providence . The team is coming off its first conference win in four tries and plays middle-of-the-road teams Georgetown and Villanova. If ever there was an opportunity to potentially climb out of the basement, now, against beatable teams, is the time to do it. The Journal correctly points out that the team is still adjusting to a few new faces in the lineup and of course the familiar face of Vincent Council as well.  The Friars have almost no depth or chemistry right now, so not a lot is expected of them, but if they can win both games, it will send a statement to the fan base and the rest of the conference that this team still has a pulse.
4. At this point we are really just piling on, but Pittsburgh has not had a great start to conference play and part of it is because they aren’t winning close games the way that they used to when Jamie Dixon was regularly making NCAA Tournament runs with his teams. Most of the advanced metrics support the fact that Pittsburgh should be a lot better than they have shown so far and the team seems to think it is just a matter of taking advantage of opportunities to seize the game. The Panthers are about to hit a four-game stretch of winnable games before they meet Louisville at the end of January, and if they have any NCAA Tournament aspirations they are going to need to win more of those games than they lose.
5. There was some good news for UConn fans today as coach Kevin Ollie landed his first recruit since officially becoming the team’s head coach in Miami-area big man and Ghana native Amida Brimah. Brimah is basically a really long and really athletic 6’10” center with raw offensive skills and present defensive ability. The Huskies have had some notable success with similar players and they desperately need big men, and big men who can develop into elite rim protectors are even better.

1. The big news on Monday morning was the surpise firing of a Los Angeles area head basketball coach. Less than a month ago, the odds were probably on the rest of this paragraph being about the end of the Ben Howland era in Westwood, but instead, the “other” LA-area Pac-12 basketball program ended the Kevin O’Neill era abruptly. We posted our thoughts on the matter yesterday, but gave scant attention to USC’s new interim head coach, Bob Cantu, who has now outlasted three Trojan head coaches at the institution. Cantu said he plans to try to speed the game up a bit (but really, doesn’t every coach say that?), may opt for more zone defense, and will try to get USC’s two seven-footers (Dewayne Dedmon and Omar Oraby) on the court together at the same time. In addition, he hopes to get transfers Ari Stewart and Renaldo Woolridge, a pair of guys who have been all but forgotten this season, some more run.
2. Names like Jamie Dixon, Randy Bennett and Dan Monson seem to be the obvious lead choices for the next USC head coaching position, but plenty of other names have surfaced already, including one who is currently employed by another Pac-12 institution: Arizona State assistant Eric Musselman. Musselman, who has been a head coach in the NBA twice, is apparently interested in the job, according to Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports. But, the question is, just how far down the list is Musselman? And, as always, Reggie Theus is also on the list, at least, according to Theus, that is. And, how about a really deep cut? Former Laker and Lobo star Michael Cooper is presently the head women’s basketball coach at USC. Like I said, a seriously deep cut.
3. Meanwhile, across town, Ben Howland has turned it around, getting his team back into the Top 25 riding a nine-game winning streak. David Wharton of the Los Angeles Times has a big feature on Howland that does a good job of slapping a human face on the often introverted coach. The article touches on his relationship with his players, his assistants, and, as always, UCLA fans. But perhaps most interesting is how Howland has made the change from playing the grind-it-out, defense-first style that has characterized his last decade-plus as a head coach, to the more transition-oriented team that has currently got those rather picky Bruin fans interested again.
4. As for the team that USC just beat, Utah, head coach Larry Krystkowiak’s job is in no immediate danger, but in order to make sure it stays that way, and in order to make sure he has his team on the right track, he held one-on-one meetings with each player this week to ensure that both coach and player were both on the same page. The meetings are in an effort to let the players know what Krystkowiak needs them to work on and to hear back from the players any suggestions that they have for the coaching staff. With an 0-4 start featuring three hotly contested games now in the rear view mirror, the Utes hope to use these meetings as a springboard for future improvements.
5. It’s about that time of the year where, for one reason or another, suspensions and other little punishments begin to crop up here and there around the nation, especially on teams that have had their struggles. We saw Eric Moreland get suspended last week (and it was announced today that he’ll return Saturday against USC, making it a three-game suspension in total), but we glossed over the fact that Stanford point guard Chasson Randle got a slap on the wrist for being late to a shootaround prior to the game against Washington, having to start the game on the bench. He still wound up earning 28 minutes (and scoring 16 effective points along the way), but it’s something to stick in the back of your mind, given Stanford’s early struggles.

Last we saw USC’s basketball team, they were snapping a 14-game road losing streak while demolishing Utah in what was maybe their best performance in about 22 months. Talented junior forward DeWayne Dedmon had just put the finishing touches on a third consecutive excellent performance, the backcourt triumvirate of Jio Fontan, J.T. Terrell, and Byron Wesley had played their best game as a collective unit, and the Trojans found themselves squarely in the middle of the Pac-12 standings. And for these, admittedly diminished, accomplishments, head coach Kevin O’Neill was rewarded on Monday morning with… his walking papers? Really?

Kevin O’Neill Was Canned Monday, Despite A Road Win on Saturday

The surprise is not so much that O’Neill’s job was in jeopardy – a 13-36 record over the past year and a half guaranteed that, not to mention his brusque manner and often unappetizing style of play – but that athletic director Pat Haden was so intent on getting rid of O’Neill that he would make the change in the middle of the year and at a time when USC basketball was on a relative upswing. Two reasons for the timing of the change have been speculated upon: First, the idea that O’Neill had lost the locker room, and secondly, the possibility, as speculated by a Jeff Goodman source, that Haden didn’t want to be tied to O’Neill for the long term, so he got rid of him before this team could turn the corner and win enough games to earn the head coach another year. Both of those ideas are a little cynical, so it is fair to point out that perhaps Haden thinks that this team has the capability of playing better than it has to this point, believes that he can get more out of his team with Bob Cantu as the new interim head coach, and, rather than resting on the laurels of a win over Utah as an accomplishment worth celebrating, he was willing to make the hard choice now.

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1. The big off-the-court news in the Big East this weekend was the mysterious suspension of Syracuse forward James Southerland for an eligibility-related issue. The Orange were still able to handle Villanova without their second-leading scorer, but if Southerland is going to miss an extended period of time, Syracuse will be in trouble. Southerland is one of the team’s best outside shooters and scorers and replacing his production and athleticism will be nearly impossible, That is why it will be important for freshmen Jerami Grant and Trevor Cooney to step up and replace some of that production. As longtime Syracuse Post-Standard columnist Bud Poliquin noted, this marks yet another season marred with off-the-court controversy for Syracuse and coach Jim Boeheim and the fact that the program has announced what the eligibility issue is that Southerland is being suspended for is rather ominous. This is obviously a story that is still developing and we will have more on where Syracuse goes from here later this week.
2. After an impressive start in non-conference play, things have gotten markedly worse for Pittsburgh. The losses are one thing but now the Panthers will be without the services of its playmaker and point guard Tray Woodall as the senior suffered a concussion thanks to a head-on collision in the team’s loss to Marquette. The good news is that freshman James Robinson is mature beyond his years and an excellent point guard already. The bad news is that now Robinson will be playing a lot more and could burn out down the stretch, and Woodall is one of the best playmakers and passers in the conference. Coach Jamie Dixon played Lamar Patterson and Trey Ziegler a bit at point guard and both are relatively versatile, so it will be interesting to see if they can adapt. How much playing time Woodall will miss is anyone’s guess at this point, but its likely he will miss a good chunk of the conference schedule, not good news for a Panthers’ team struggling to find its way.
3. There is no question that one of the main reasons Connecticut is overachieving is because of the newfound consistency of junior point guard Shabazz Napier. The Massachusetts native was terrific in the team’s huge road upset win over Notre Dame this weekend and he has been the heart and soul of the team this year. Napier is leading the team in scoring, shooting as well as he ever has from beyond the three-point arc, and cut down on his turnovers all while leading a young and undersized team with no hope for postseason play this season. Those are all compelling reasons why some folks are outraged that Napier didn’t make the final cut for the Bob Cousy Award. The junior has better statistical numbers than most of the field and has dramatically cut down on the maddening inconsistencies and questionable shot-selection that plagued him last season so it is a little strange that the committee didn’t give Napier the nod. It doesn’t matter much to Napier but it would be nice for the Huskies to have something to look forward to.
4. The Big East will likely boast the No. 1 team in the country when the new rankings come out as a few top-ranked teams went down over the weekend and Louisville will likely stand alone at the top when all the dust is settled. More importantly, coach Rick Pitino is in rare form already, calling his team a bunch of Michael Jacksons when they don’t talk on defense and finding new and creative ways to motivate his team, which he has done effectively. The top billing is not always a welcome place to be but if any team has the mentality to hold onto it, its Louisville. The Cardinals are deep and their defense is downright scary good. As long as they are giving full effort, there is no one better, in the conference at least.
5. The start to conference play has been rocky for Cincinnati as well. Coach Mick Cronin felt his team needed to toughen up and they responded by playing the best defense of the season in a 10-point win over Rutgers. The Bearcats do not have a lot of interior scoring options and often struggle offensively, so playing suffocating defense like they did Saturday will be crucial if they want to have success in the Big East. Of course beating the Scarlet Knights by 10 isn’t going to impress anybody for long, it is a step in the right direction for Cincinnati and if they can carry that over into the rest of the season, there is still a chance they can finish atop the conference.

Jason Prziborowski is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after Saturday’s Big East game between Pittsburgh and Marquette.

Pitt hoisted a banner at halftime of Saturday’s game against Marquette, marking the occasion of two million fans who have watched games at the Petersen Events Center. In addition, the banner marked a few notable achievements in The Pete’s 11-year history: 5-0 versus Top 5 opponents, a sellout each and every year, and six conference championships. Pitt plays its home games in the Petersen Events Center, the relatively cozy arena on campus that holds 12,508 spectators chomping at the bit to see Panther victories, something that typically happens early and often throughout the season. Pitt is in its 11th season at The Pete, and it has reeled off an astonishing winning percentage that is close to 90% in almost 200 games. All of this begs the question of why is it so tough for opponents to win there?

Two Million Fans Have Seen Numerous Pitt Wins at The Pete

First and foremost, there is The Oakland Zoo, Pitt’s famed student section. The 2,000 deep U-shaped student section that occupies the majority of the bottom 10 rows of The Pete is a great place to start. An hour before tip-off, The Zoo is about 75% full, with students outfitted in this season’s gold Oakland Zoo t-shirts. On the back of every chair when students arrive sits a large single sheet of newspaper print. During starting lineups, every member of the section covers his or her face with this newspaper when the opposing team is announced. They want everyone in the building to know they are not impressed, a la McKayla Maroney of the US Olympic Gymnastics Team. The Oakland Zoo brings energy, dedication, and a presence, not to mention noise and intimidation, all of which is very hard for the opposing team to tune out.

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