Joseph Dzuback is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after spending an evening keeping a close eye on Marquette head coach Buzz Williams.

Why does Marquette, a school about to earn consecutive NCAA bid #8, still struggle to secure a spot in the national limelight? Part of the answer is no doubt rooted in their coach. Buzz Williams, 5’11” with that North Texas drawl, is hardly a presence at Media Day confabs. Unlike Marquette’s legendary Al McGuire, whose height and New York City accent (and ever so slightly too-loud voice) could turn heads and draw ears. Tom Crean, Marquette’s 15th head coach, came with all of the pedigree expected to head a National Championship, two-time Final Four program with 21 bids and previously headed by legends like McGuire, Hank Raymond and Rick Majerus. When he departed Marquette to rebuild a struggling Indiana program, Crean left Williams (head coach #16) with a cupboard full of prep school ballers. Harvested from some of the best recruiting seed beds on the East Coast and Midwest, these players earned Marquette (and Crean) notoriety in basketball circles even before taking their first shot in the Bradley Center. Williams spent his first two off seasons recruiting a raft of unknown players from junior colleges throughout Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Buzz Williams might not be a media darling, but the man sure can coach. (AP)

Williams sustained the momentum established by Crean with junior college players like Dwight Buycks, Darius Johnson-Odom, Joe Fulce, Jimmy Butler and Jai Crowder, who rounded out the nucleus that included Jerel McNeal, Wesley Matthews, Dominic James and Lazar Hayward bequeathed to him by Crean. The mix-n-match crew garnered Williams 47 wins and a pair of NCAA bids in his first two seasons. And in the course of his first three off-seasons Williams has found what Crean could not — not one but two low post players good enough to move the tweeners out of the rotation. Davante Gardner and Chris Otule have helped Marquette earn another 49 (and counting) wins in seasons #3 and #4. This season the win count is 16 and climbing. The Golden Eagles’ 10 conference wins put them in a three-way tie for first place in Big East conference play, but co-leaders Georgetown and Syracuse have drawn greater national recognition for their seasons.

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Shamelessly cribbing from the very clever NBA catch phrase, we here at RTC will present to you the Thirty Reasons We Love College Basketball as we gear up toward the start of the season in about two weeks.  We’ll be bringing you players to watch for this season and moments to remember from last season, courtesy of the series of dump trucks, wires and effluvia known as YouTube.

#11- Where Sick Crossovers Happen

After a thrilling finish last night that made Demetri Goodson a household name for at least a few days, we think the tournament has officially begun. Even being fairly selective, we think there are at least 3 outstanding games today. Here’s a quick rundown of the games we’ll be covering tomorrow:

• 12:10 PM: #6 Arizona State vs. #3 Syracuse
• 2:20 PM: #12 Wisconsin vs. #4 Xavier
• 2:30 PM: #11 Dayton vs. #3 Kansas
• 2:40 PM: #13 Cleveland State vs. #12 Arizona
• 2:50 PM: #8 Oklahoma State vs. #1 Pittsburgh
• 4:50 PM: #6 Marquette vs. #3 Missouri
• 5:00 PM: #10 USC vs. #2 Michigan State
• 5:20 PM: #9 Siena vs. #1 Louisville

A couple thoughts on the scheduling: (1) It’s nice to see the early finish for those of us who have to work on Monday morning and (2) I think the NCAA and CBS might have finally figured out the spacing issue. Outside of the early game, I don’t think there should be any point during the other 2 sets of games where  we have all the games at halftime. I’m guessing the NCAA and/or CBS must have hired a bunch of McKinsey consultants at $500/hr to figure out how to stagger the games. Now I’m looking at it without a fancy Excel model, but this looks like a reasonable set-up, which should get the job done, but I’ve been wrong before. . .

12:08 PM: One piece of big news from the morning: Dominic James has been cleared to play today. I’m not sure what kind of experimental medical techniques they have up at Marquette, but that’s a shocking piece of news. I’d be surprised if he could even go 10 minutes today as he was expected to be out for at least 2 months when he broke his foot (don’t remember which bone) back on Febraury 25th, but we will wait and see.

12:25 PM: This game looks like it should be fairly entertaining and competitive. Interesting back story about Jonny Flynn and James Harden. I know the old school guys won’t like it, but with the growth of AAU and all these summer camps I think it should be expected that stuff like that will happen.

12:30 PM: For those of you who questioned my earlier assertion that the arenas looked dead this year, the NCAA is backing me up. I guess it should be somewhat expected with the economy although most tickets are purchased via the lottery well in advance. The 50% in Miami is appalling though. One more thing to remember about these numbers. . .they reflect the number of tickets purchased not the attendance. I’m sure there are a lot of tickets that have been purchased by ticket brokers that have not been purchased by people who actually go to the games.

12:40 PM: As talented as Harden is, I really question his tendency to disappear for long stretches. Is he unable to play hard for 40 minutes or is he “letting the game come to him”?

12:47 PM: Arizona State is getting run out of the gym right now. I wonder how much the early start hurts the West Coast teams here. I’m not sure if any of you have data on this.

12:50 PM: We just posted the next part of our Mascot Challnege. Be sure to vote for your favorite mascots and help him/her win the national title.

12:52 PM: Rihards Kuksiks is single-handedly keeping the Sun Devils in this game with 15 of their first 30 points. Syracuse goes into half with a 41-32 lead. Harden still doesn’t have a point. If I’m a NBA GM, his tendency to do this drops him a few spots on my board.

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We’d like to apologize for our coverage yesterday. We had some technical/communication issues regarding the post yesterday, but I’ll be back covering the games today so everything should be back to normal. Here’s a quick rundown of the games we’ll be covering today:

Early Games

• 12:15 PM: #14 Stephen F. Austin vs. #3 Syracuse
• 12:25 PM: #9 Tennessee vs. #8 Oklahoma State
• 12:30 PM: #11 Utah State vs. #6 Marquette
• 12:30 PM: #14 North Dakota State vs. #3 Kansas

Afternoon Games

• 2:45 PM: #11 Temple vs. #6 Arizona State
• 2:55 PM: #16 East Tennessee State vs. #1 Pittsburgh
• 3:00 PM: #14 Cornell vs. #3 Missouri
• 3:00 PM: #11 Dayton vs. #6 West Virginia

Evening Games

• 7:10 PM: #16 Morehead State vs. #1 Louisville
• 7:10 PM: #12 Arizona vs. #5 Utah
• 7:20 PM: #10 USC vs. #7 Boston College
• 7:25 PM: #13 Portland State vs. #4 Xavier

Late Night Games

• 9:40 PM: #9 Siena vs. #8 Ohio State
• 9:40 PM: #13 Cleveland State vs. #4 Wake Forest
• 9:50 PM: #15 Robert Morris vs. #2 Michigan State
• 9:55 PM: #12 Wisconsin vs. #5 Florida State

Quite frankly, today’s slate looks a lot more interesting than what was on yesterday. There are 3 games in each of the 4 groups that seem like they will be entertaining except for the afternoon set where only the 6/11 match-ups really catch my eyes. Feel free to leave your thoughts or questions on any of these games or the ones from yesterday in the comment section. I’ll be back around noon to cover the day’s action.

12:15 PM: Ok. We’re about to get underway. I was a little delayed by the fact that the bus to RTC East decided to pick up 3 people in wheelchairs, which slowed down my trip significantly (had to get them in/out during 6 stops). Is anybody rooting for Stephen F. Austin just because they can’t stand Eric Devendorf?

12:20 PM: “The best look the Lumberjacks have had so far”? That was only their 2nd possession of the game. The crows is awful in Miami. I know its early, but there is nobody there. I have to say the NCAA did a pretty poor job with their pod placement. I’ll have to double check, but Miami is probably the worst pod location in terms of distance from the participating schools (and the fact that they don’t care about sports in Miami).

12:30 PM: Rough start for Stephen F. Austin in Miami. Already down 10-2. Hopefully they can keep it close although this was probably the game that was the most likely to be a blowout in this group.

12:35 PM: Did anybody pick upsets in this group of games? I have North Dakota State and Utah State.

12:40 PM: Good game in Dayton (Ok State 14, Tennessee 13 with 12:20 left in the first half). In Boise, Lazar Hayward is up 7-5 on Utah State.

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West Region – by Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports

#6 Marquette vs. #11 Utah State
Playing in the Big East must suck sometimes.  The Eagles are currently losers of five of their last six, but lost those five to Louisville, UConn, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Nova.  The one chance they got against an inferior team during that stretch, they crushed St. John’s by 29.  Give Utah State a chance if you’re brave, but Eagle guards Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews will probably prove too much to handle.

#3 Missouri vs. #14 Cornell
The NCAA Tournament is familiar territory to Cornell, entering the Dance as a 14-seed last season.  Missouri, on the other hand, hasn’t been to the Tourney is six years.  So, obviously, Cornell has the upper hand.  Ha!  No, but seriously though, Missouri is as dangerous a team as any in the field, winners of 11 of their last 13 and Big XII Tournament Champs.  Cornell made it here by holding four of their last five opponents to under 60 points, but that won’t happen against the Tigers.

MARQUETTE (#6, West, Boise pod)

vs. Utah State (#11)
March 20th, 12:30 P.M.

Vegas Line: Marquette -4.5

Thanks to Vegas Watch for providing these graphs that measure the moving average of a team’s spread (moving avg.) over time vs. the spread for each individual game (indiv).  If a team’s moving average is higher than zero, then Vegas currently has a higher opinion of them than Pomeroy, and vice versa.

General Profile

Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Conference: Big East, at-large bid
Coach: Buzz Williams, 24-9 at Marquette
08-09 Record: 24-9, 13-7 Big East
Last 12 Games: 5-7
Best Win: 79-72 v. Villanova, February 10th
Worst Loss: 56-57 v. South Florida, February 6th
Off. Efficiency Rating: 117.7/ 9th overall
Def. Efficiency Rating: 94.2/ 56th overall

Nuts n Bolts

Star Player(s):  Jerel McNeal- 19.7 points/game, 4.6 rebounds/game, 4.0 assists/game, 2.1 steals/game ;Wesley Matthews- 18.4 points/game, 5.6 rebounds/game, 2.6 assists/game, 48.8 FG%
Unsung Hero:  Lazar Hayward- 16.1 points/game, 8.6 rebounds/game, 35.5 3PT%
Potential NBA Draft Pick(s):  Jerel McNeal- projected 52nd overall
Key Injuries:  Dominic James- season-ending broken left foot
Depth: 24.6%/ 311th overall
Achilles Heel: It is not just a lack of depth that has been exacerbated with the loss of Dominic James, the Golden Eagles were essentially a four-horse team and almost all of their meaningful production came from McNeal, Matthews, James, and Hayward. Without James, Maurice Acker takes over, but he isn’t the same type of threat. This is still an extremely talented team, but you could tell down the stretch how they hang with teams for awhile, and then fade.
Will Make a Deep Run if…: If the Golden Eagles shoot the lights out, they could make a deep run. The team loves to shoot and McNeal, Matthews, and Hayward have no qualms about chucking it up. If they shoot the ball well, they will beat a lot of teams because they play great defense and don’t turn the ball over a tremendous amount. They need their Big Three to play well in every game, if they don’t it will be a short first tournament for Buzz Williams.
Will Make an Early Exit if…: If McNeal or Matthews or Hayward has an off-night, Marquette just doesn’t have the players to make up for that type of scoring loss…period.

Last Year Invited: 2008, lost to Stanford in the Round of 32
Streak: Three straight years
Best NCAA Finish: They won the National Championship in 1977
Historical Performance vs. Seed (1985-present): -0.20 wins per appearance

Other

Six Degrees to Detroit: None
Distance to First Round Site: 1736.47 miles away from Boise, Idaho
School’s Claim to Fame: Al McGuire was the coach of the Marquette Golden Eagles from 1964-1977, won their only National Championship, and is still celebrated like a king at that school. Known for his colorful personality, he is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and he could probably be elected Mayor in Milwaukee, Wisconsin had he not died in 2001.
School Wishes It Could Forget: In 2007, the school played Michigan State in the First Round of the NCAA Tournament and the whole school turned out to see the game, even though it was during spring break. The Golden Eagles then proceeded to get shut out for the first nine minutes of the game and make it a very long spring break for Marquette fans and students.
Prediction: The Golden Eagles are still a good team without Dominic James, and they have more than enough talent to beat Utah State. But if Missouri makes it through to the second round, their full court press will wreck havoc on the Golden Eagles, especially Acker. They don’t have the depth to play with the Tigers for 40 minutes.

Major RTC stories:  ATB: Marquette’s Dominic James Out for the Season

Preview written by… Mike Lemaire

Rob Dauster of Ballin is a Habit is the RTC correspondent for the Big East Conference.  He will be live-blogging all the action from his executive suite at MSG this week. 

Schedule:

Tuesday, March 10th / First Round
– Game 1: #9 Cincinnati vs. #16 DePaul
– Game 2: #12 Georgetown vs. #13 St. John’s
– Game 3: #10 Notre Dame vs. #15 Rutgers
– Game 4: #11 Seton Hall vs. #14 South Florida

Wednesday, March 11th / Second Round
– Game 5: Game 1 Winner vs. #8 Providence
– Game 6: Game 2 Winner vs. #5 Marquette
– Game 7: Game 3 Winner vs. #7 West Virginia
– Game 8: Game 4 Winner vs. #6 Syracuse

Thursday, March 12th / Quarters
– Game 9: Game 5 Winner vs. #1 Louisville
– Game 10: Game 6 Winner vs. #4 Villanova
– Game 11: Game 7 Winner vs. #2 Pitt
– Game 12: Game 8 Winner vs. #3 UConn

Friday, March 13th / Semis
– Game 13: Game 9 Winner vs. Game 10 Winner
– Game 14: Game 11 Winner vs. Game 12 Winner

Saturday, March 14th / Finals
– Game 15: Game 13 Winner vs. Game 14 Winner

It is only fitting that the biggest conference in college basketball have the biggest tournament. For the first time, the Big East is inviting all 16 teams to MSG for a five day extravaganza. The BET is always full of exciting moments – from Ray Allen vs. Allen Iverson in 1996 to Taliek Brown’s banked in 30 footer in 2002 to Gerry McNamara’s superhuman performance in 2006. With the number of good teams and absurdly high number of talented players, this year’s edition of the BET should not disappoint.

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This week’s poll was tough because so many top 25 teams lost and it’s kind of hard to compare the relative strength/weakness of each loss. I also wasn’t sure what to do with Marquette. I dropped them quite a bit because of the loss of Dominic James, but I came away impressed after watching their loss at Louisville particularly with Jerel McNeal having an awful day.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Connecticut	2
2	Pittsburgh	1
3	North Carolina	1
4	Oklahoma	2
5	Louisville	1
6	Memphis	1
7	Michigan St.	2
8	Duke	1
9	Kansas	7
10	Wake Forest
11	Villanova	3
12	Louisiana St.	5
13	Purdue	6
14	Gonzaga	1
15	UCLA	6
16	Missouri	2
17	Marquette	6
18	Washington
19	Xavier	1
20	Clemson	7
21	Arizona St.	9
22	Illinois
23	Butler
24	Syracuse
25	Texas
Last week’s ballot

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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RTC Intern Mike Lemaire contributed to tonight’s ATB.

Marquette Loses Their Heart & Soul.  Connecticut 93, Marquette 82.  Marquette announced at halftime that their senior leader and heart/soul of the team,  PG Dominic James, had broken the fifth metatarsal in his left foot and will not play again this season.  He hurt it on a seemingly innocuous play just four minutes into the first half, but the x-rays don’t lie, and this is a potentially devastating blow to the Golden Eagles as we approach the postseason.  James had re-invented his game this year, becoming less of a scorer and more of a set-up man (#31 nationally in assists and #22 in steals) with the ascent in production from Jerel McNeal and Wesley Matthews.  Marquette will need to regroup quickly with games at Louisville, at Pitt and vs. Syracuse in the next ten days.  As for this game, AJ Price was the other story – he was simply phenomenal, with 36/6/6 assts, including one ridiculous ankle-breaking move (see below) that crystallized the kind of night he was having.  Hasheem Thabeet added 14/15/5 blks and Stanley Robinson contributed 19/10.  When UConn is playing like this, they are the best team in the nation – the problem is that we don’t always see this level of effort from the Huskies.  McNeal and Matthews combined for 46/9/9 assts to pick up some of the slack from James’ injury, but Maurice Acker (and his 2.2 ppg) will be asked to carry the load that James is leaving behind.  No easy task.

Operation ScheyerFace Didn’t Work.  Duke 78, Maryland 67. You have to hand it to Maryland – when Grievis Vasquez picked up his fourth foul less than two minutes into the second half, you had to wonder where Maryland’s offense would come from. But they showed a lot of heart by matching Duke basket for basket in the second half. In the end there was just too much Gerald Henderson for the Terps to handle. Freshman Sean Mosley did a good job on Henderson man-to-man, but the Blue Devils did a great job of setting screens and getting Henderson free for open looks. Vasquez’s absence finally caught up to the Terps in the final four minutes of the game as the team (with the exception of Landon Milbourne) struggled to get good looks as the Blue Devils clamped down on defense. Maryland was a completely different team from the guys we saw blow big leads in the first half of the season, but Duke showed a lot of grit by stuffing the Maryland momentum coming off their huge upset of UNC.  As for Maryland, they have two winnable road games (@ NCSU; @ UVa) and Wake at home – they can still get to 9-7 in the ACC with a strong finish, but their margin of error is thin the rest of the way.  Speaking of screens, check out this pick on Nolan Smith that had the sophomore hearing bells the rest of the game.

Some Other Games of Interest.

• Northwestern 75, Indiana 53.  Northwestern ended 41 years of futility in Bloomington with this win tonight.  Tom Crean said his undermanned Hoosiers are running out of steam at this point in the season.
• Texas 87, Texas Tech 81.  UT got 24 from AJ Abrams and 20/11 from Damion James, but Texas Tech hung around until the final minute in this one behind ten three-pointers.
• Utah 70, UNLV 60.  Utah continued to pace the Mountain West with another home win to go 11-2 in the conference behind Luke Nevill’s 19/13.
• Notre Dame 70, Rutgers 65.  ND survived a closer-than-it-shoulda-been game despite Luke Harangody’s 20/15.  The Irish’s Saturday game at UConn will be huge for this team.
• Davidson 70, UNC-Greensboro 49.  Stephen Curry dropped 20/10/5 assts as the Wildcats rebounded from their loss to Butler with a convincing SoCon win.
• Rhode Island 93, Dayton 91 (OT).  Dayton dropped its second consecutive game due to Marquis Jones’ driving flip layup at the buzzer which pushes UD one game behind Xavier and Temple in the A10 standings.
• Virginia Tech 80, Clemson 77.  Huge bubble road win for Va Tech behind Malcolm Delaney’s 26/4/6 assts and AD Vassallo’s 21/5.  Clemson got double-doubles from Trevor Booker and KC Rivers, but Va Tech made the plays down the stretch in a game that went back and forth all night.
• South Carolina 77, Kentucky 59.  UK now probably needs to win its last three games to force the Committee to leave them out.  SC, on the other hand, probably only needs one more win to become a lock.  Sam Muldrow had seven of SC’s school-record sixteen blocks tonight.
• Villanova 74, Depaul 72. Depaul got closest to its first Big East win of the year than any other previous loss, but it still wasn’t to be as the Blue Demons moved to 0-15.  Scottie Reynolds and Dante Cunningham each had 18 pts for Villanova.
• Michigan St. 62, Iowa 54.  MSU never really put Iowa away, but Iowa never really threatened either.  Tom Izzo didn’t think his Spartans played all that well, but they’re now 1.5 games ahead of Purdue in the Big Ten race anyway.
• Missouri 94, Kansas St. 74.  Mizzou moved to 17-0 at home behind DeMarre Carroll’s 21/14.  The streaking Tigers go to Kansas this weekend and will host Oklahoma in Columbia next Monday.
• Tennessee 81, Mississippi St. 76.  In this bubblicious game, UT held off the Bulldogs behind Scotty Hopson’s 21 pts.  MSU’s bubble is close to bursting, having now lost four of their last five games.