The vast majority of those who
hadn’t yet bought into the way of thinking that the Big East is not only the
biggest but also the bestest of
basketball conferences should have been converted Saturday.
The victories by Georgetown (handing then-No. 1
Duke its first loss), West Virginia (beating Pac 10-leading UCLA in Pauley
Pavilion) and St. John’s (slapping
conference member Pittsburgh with is
first defeat) were all resounding figurative statements on behalf of Big East
superiority.
Here are a couple of other games
played in the past month that also speak to the national strength of the
conference:
*Texas 58, Villanova 55 (Jan. 14 in
Austin): The Wildcats came up oh-so-short on the home floor of a squad that is
toying with Big 12 competition, as illustrated by the Longhorns’ 34-point
shellacking of Eddie Sutton’s
Oklahoma State team Monday night.
Texas is 5-0 in the Big 12 with an
average winning margin of 26.4 points.
*Marquette
94, Connecticut 79 (Jan. 3 in
Milwaukee): Granted, the now-No. 1
Huskies were playing their first game with reinstated point guard Marcus Williams and Golden Eagles’
forward Steve Novak (41 points, 16
rebounds, two assists and two steals) turned in perhaps the top individual
performance of the season by a player not named J.J. Redick or Adam Morrison. But it’s still
indicative of the strength of a conference when one of its teams beats,
arguably, the most gifted squad in the nation in such convincing
fashion.
The Huskies are, along with fellow
conference members West Virginia
and Villanova, on a very short list of teams I wouldn’t be surprised in the
least to see advance to the Final Four.
The others are Duke,
Michigan
State and
Texas.
In the next rung I’d throw
Florida,
Gonzaga,
Illinois,
Indiana, LSU,
Memphis, Ohio
State and Washington.
The loss of its frontcourt depth
(via the departures of Marcus Landry
and Greg Stiemsma), coupled with the
unsightly loss to North Dakota State in Madison Saturday, dropped the Badgers
from consideration for either of those two plateaus for the time
being.
BOUNCING AROUND THE
COUNTRY
*In hindsight (and after revisiting
his game-by-game performances), the one player I probably shortchanged the most
when I submitted my midseason John R. Wooden Award Top 30 nomination list was Steve Novak. But I assembled the list
prior to his marvelous performances last week in leading
Marquette to Big East victories over
DePaul (24 points and six rebounds) and Notre Dame (28 points and six rebounds
and the game-winning shot with 1.1 seconds to play.
*LSU has played its way into the
No. 19 slot of the Scout.com Top 25 but not into the Associated Press version’s
of the 25 best clubs in the country. The Tigers’ five losses (four of those on
the road, all to opponents likely to be in the NCAA Tournament) are by a
combined 11 points. They fell by just a point to
Connecticut and have a three-point
victory at West Virginia (they’re
the last team to beat the Mountaineers). And they’re 4-0 in the Southeastern
Conference, with one of those W’s coming by 14 points over
Tennessee – which is in the latest
AP Top 25.
*For those who are curious about
certain ratings in the Scout.com 25 that don’t seem to make any sense (for
example, West Virginia is only No. 13 this week yet is clearly one of the four
or five best teams in the country right now), here’s one of the rules I follow:
If a team doesn’t lose, it can’t be leapfrogged in the ratings, no matter how
unimpressive it might have been the previous weeks. Trust me, those things
eventually work themselves out.
*Just when you think that J.J. Redick, after dropping in 41
points during Duke’s loss to Georgetown on Saturday after a 28-rebound and
six-assist performance earlier in the week against North Carolina State, is
beginning to pull away in the Player of the Year races, Adam Morrison reminds you that he’s
still alive and playing quite well for Gonzaga, thank you very much. The
6-foot-8 junior scored 41 points (hitting 14 of 23 from the field, including
five of seven 3’s) and grabbed nine rebounds with just two turnovers during the
Bulldogs’ 84-75 victory at the
University of San
Francisco Monday night that brought the team’s West
Coast Conference record to 6-0. The exposure the players received during their
respective games was a bit different, though. Duke’s game at
Georgetown was televised by CBS,
Gonzaga’s at USF by Fox Sports Northwest.
Inducted into the USBWA Hall of
Fame last April, Frank Burlison is Scout.com’s national basketball expert and is
also a columnist for the Long Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram. He can be reached at
frank.burlison@presstelegram.com. Read more of Burlison’s pieces at
www.FrankHoops.com