Look at the numbers. Curtis Sumpter, Randy Foye and Allan Ray combined for 58 points. As a team, Pitt scored 58. It’s not like they got those points with great accuracy. They shot a combined 15-43. Krauser, Troutman and Taft gave only 36.

Pitt was completely flustered right from the get go about the defense. They were forcing Pitt further and further outside. On some offensive sets, I actually saw no Pitt players near the basket. I never saw that this entire season. Villanova took away all the interior passing lanes. Pitt never seemed to make the adjustments.

Q. Chevy, it’s a different experience for you not going back to the final. Could you talk about that, also the pressure they put on you defensively? They kept you off the board.

CHEVON TROUTMAN: Well, I feel like they were switching all the screens that — or anything we did. Like if we interchanged, like a guard’s too big, they’ll just switch it. They were just frontin’. They was just all over, making it real hard for to pass the ball inside or get the ball wherever you needed it to go.

Q. There’s a lot made this week about you trying to guard them better as opposed to the first time you played. Did you know they were this good defensively?

CHEVON TROUTMAN: They caught us off guard again. We tried to make an adjustment at the beginning of the game but, you know, we made good passes but we just didn’t finish at the bucket.

Q. You say they caught you off guard. What in particular did they do?

CHEVON TROUTMAN: Just being more aggressive than they was last time. We came out pretty strong. Thought that we was gonna start the game off very good, but they came out more aggressive than us.

The ‘Nova team knew Pitt was frustrated, and it just spurred them to contest more shots.

I wish I hadn’t been right about my concerns with having Troutman guard Sumpter. Sumpter was just too quick off the dribble. Troutman ended up committing some bad fouls as he got past him. Being beaten on defense — even before he had to be pulled for most of the first half — took him out of his game on offense. He couldn’t seem to finish.

Taft had a very soft 10 points. It was a poor game for taft despite going 5-9. He didn’t seem to want the ball with all the bodies around him. A few minutes into the second half, Taft completely flubbed a put back dunk because he seemed to be shying from possible contact. As soon as he did, you saw Dixon send Gray to the scorer’s table. Taft didn’t do a good job defensively — letting players go right to the basket and not boxing out for rebounds.

Krauser was very frustrated in the game. He was so lucky not to get a technical when he heaved the ball high into the rafters. He did okay on scoring, but had could not shake his defender, and players were not coming open or coming to the ball. I really am wondering what happened to his free throw shooting. In the last 3-4 games, he is going maybe 50% or a little better. He shot 3-6 on FTs today, and that made no sense.

With Pitt being frustrated at not being able to get the ball inside, and the inability for Krauser and Graves to finish drives to the basket, Pitt kept trying 3s to no avail. Ramon could not find the basket shooting. O-5 on 3s, and a couple were wide open looks. 3-17 shooting 3s as a team. Pitt’s worst shooting game this year.

Pitt’s defense actually was encouraging. They held ‘Nova to 18-54 shooting, and only 5-22 on 3s — and at least 2 of those made 3s were well-contested shots. A big difference, though, was that Villanova can make their free throws. The Wildcats went 26-30 (86.7%). The bigger difference, of course, was that Villanova played even better on defense.

Though it is hard to believe, Pitt played much better in the second half. They just dug themselves too much of a hole in this kind of defensive game. In the first half, Pitt shot 5-24 (20.8%). In the second half, they were 15-33 (45.5%). Turning the ball over 18 times in the game will not help your chances.

Coach Dixon is going to come in for some criticisms. His substitution patterns were questionable to say the least. He gave DeGroat only 2 minutes after DeGroat had played some solid minutes and really contributed in the last 2 games. Kendall, just should not be out there right now. He has no confidence in his game. Benjamin provided a spark on offense, but he didn’t start getting to take shots until late in the second half.

I’m not entirely sure, though, that Dixon should get that much blame. With Pitt’s big 3 having a sub-par game (especially Troutman and Taft) it’s hard to expect a Pitt win.

Pitt played fine on defense. Held them on the 3 point shooting. Problem was Pitt couldn’t handle ‘Nova’s defense. Couldn’t hit a 3 and just let themselves be frustrated by a stifling defense.

Blogger has been acting up all morning, so I will keep this quick.

In New Jersey, one question is, “Where was this effort all season long?” For at least one night, Rutgers showed something.

The other question in Jersey, “Haven’t we seen this before?” With regards to Seton Hall’s collapse, it seems to be appropriate for the season.

Speaking of flopping,

That was quick. And ugly. Most of all, though, embarrassing.

That, in short, is how a very strange Providence College men’s basketball season ended yesterday on the country’s biggest basketball stage — Madison Square Garden — and in front of a national TV audience. The Friars opened the Big East Tournament thinking they could fit into the tourney’s Cinderella slipper. Instead, they were unceremoniously kicked all the way back to River Avenue by the West Virginia Mountaineers, 82-59.

It was PC’s worst Big East tourney loss in 20 years and the sixth first-round defeat in Tim Welsh’s seven seasons as head coach. The way the Mountaineers took it to the Friars rated as the biggest surprise. WVU, whose 19-9 record rates close to an NCAA Tournament berth, jumped on PC early. The Friars opened the game with seven sloppy turnovers, Kevin Pittsnogle fired in 11 quick points and PC was down, 15-4. The lead grew to 28-9 after 11 minutes, but the ugliness had only begun.

“We got stunned. We got knocked around and then got knocked down,” said Welsh. “Then it took us a few minutes to get back up and we’re down 16. Then we’re chasing and getting a little tighter looking up at the scoreboard.”

Instead of displaying the grit and dangerous offense that pushed them to the brink with many of the country’s elite teams, the Friars chose yesterday to fold up their tents. Any time PC showed any semblance of a spark, West Virginia stole a lazy pass or sank one of its 12 3-point shots.

Facing a defense that is hardly known as fierce, the Friars turned the ball over 20 times and shot 37 percent from the field. All in all, it was a long day at the office.
…
The Friars end their season with a 14-17 record. Instead of recalling a late-season stretch of three wins in four chances, or all the close losses, the lingering stench of yesterday’s effort could linger.

“I’d never say we didn’t show up. I know it looked like they were playing at a different speed. They went by us,” said Welsh. “But we just went to Georgetown and won and this game means a lot more than that one. We played, but sometimes it looks that way when another team blitzes you and is running their stuff better than you. They were playing at a high level today and we didn’t.”

I think everyone else knows Providence didn’t show up. Now, WVU just needs to look good against BC (I don’t think they necessarily need to win) to get their NCAA Tournament bid.

Sticking with teams that didn’t show up, ND is looking at the NIT.

All Notre Dame likely needed to reach the NCAA tournament was another win over the worst team in the Big East Conference. The Irish couldn’t deliver it Wednesday night, however.

Rutgers’ 72-65 victory on opening night of the conference tournament likely will relegate the Irish (17-11) to the National Invitation Tournament for the second straight year. Coach Mike Brey, however, wouldn’t think that far ahead.

“I don’t want to talk about tournaments,” Brey said. “We’ll await our fate on Sunday [when NCAA and NIT bids are announced], and we’ll be happy to play wherever they send us.”

Mike Brey is starting to really lose the luster, and I suspect the former revisionism regarding Matt Doherty (that he didn’t get along with people and ND was happy when he left) will be coming in for review. Espeically considering Brey hasn’t won with his players, only Doherty’s.

And you have to love Chris Thomas’ emotional outburst.

“It’s tough to swallow,” said senior Chris Thomas. “I regret being in this situation again.”

It’s no wonder ND went down without any passion.

Of course, then there is Georgetown pulling one out. You have to figure they will get whacked by UConn, but this should be a better team next year — more mature and seasoned. Of course, a good recruiting class wouldn’t hurt either.

And for anyone who thinks BC doesn’t want to rub it in the rest of the Big East’s collective face.

Jared Dudley would love nothing more than to blow the ultimate goodbye kiss to the Big East on his team’s way out the door.

“There wouldn’t be anything sweeter (than) on Saturday to cut down the nets and leave the Big East with the Big East trophy,” says Dudley, whose Boston College Eagles face West Virginia today in the opener of the Big East Tournament’s second round. “That would just be the whipped cream up top.

“We definitely want to do that. It’s been our mindset, our goal, and, slowly but surely, outsiders have seen that, that’s very possible. Before, it was just us – even family members wouldn’t even probably wouldn’t even (think it’s) conceivable, what we’ve done this year.

“We’re going to try to do it our way — and hopefully we’ll get started (today).”

BC even got its wish to play WVU rather than Providence. Why? Match-ups.

So how was it that the Mountaineers, in defeating Pittsburgh twice this season, managed to accomplish something BC couldn’t (the Eagles lost to the Panthers by 22)?

“Because they’ve got perimeter scoring,” Skinner said. “Pittsburgh’s weakness is [West Virginia’s] strength. Pittsburgh is very vulnerable in the perimeter and their interior play is what carries them. But when you have your 4-5 man step away for 3s, I think that’s tough. It’s all about matchups. I think that’s what [West Virginia’s] advantage is over Pittsburgh; their perimeter people step away from the basket.”

In their two meetings against West Virginia, senior center Nate Doornekamp, junior forward Craig Smith, and freshman forward Sean Williams combined to hold Pittsnogle to 11 points on 7-for-18 shooting, including 1 of 6 from the 3-point arc.

Game time in just a few minutes.

A thumb-sucker of a piece bemoaning the friendly end to the Big East as we knew it. Not the present incarnation. The one that existed for maybe 3 years.

The weather is still brutal, but the Big East Conference, as we knew it, is vanishing. Boston College, one of the original foul-weather seven, is making its last appearance in the tournament this week, with some bad vibrations going around.

Next season the Big East becomes a mega-conference, 16 teams stretching all the way to DePaul, Marquette, Louisville, Cincinnati and South Florida, wherever that is.

The Big East is becoming a made-for-power-ratings conference, full of implication for the screamers on the sports channels, an unholy alliance only as good as its automatic bid to the Bowl Championship Series in football, but losing its identity, gambling its soul.

“Becoming?” Please. The Big East was formed for TV in the first place. This is the conference that first jumped in with ESPN.

There was a certain unity when Syracuse, Georgetown, St. John’s, Connecticut, Boston College, Seton Hall and Providence played a six-game schedule in 1979-80. They were Northeastern colleges, all reachable by a team bus or a car packed with students, who might even feel the dedication to rush back along Interstate 95 for an 8 a.m. class.

It was nothing like today’s bloated 12-team conference, which had Notre Dame, West Virginia and Pittsburgh all stacked up Tuesday night, unable to land in New York, a symbol of a conference perhaps grown too big. The West Virginia players told tales of malfunctioning de-icers causing them to land in Scranton, Pa., and hazardous spills causing delays on their subsequent bus ride to New York.

You want to know another reason why Pitt fans don’t kow-tow to the past of Big East greatness — provincial pieces like this that all but admit that they feel the purity of the conference was lost the day Pitt joined. And that was 20 years ago.

For a better read on the future of the Big East, with an eye on the past, you have to go to Chicago.

The Big East was formed May 30, 1979, when a group of like-minded men formalized talks that had begun in a hotel room in Queens, N.Y.

League founder Dave Gavitt, then athletic director at Providence, had called old friends Jack Kaiser and Frank Rienzo, the athletic directors at St. John’s and Georgetown, and proposed they organize a conference. In short order, Syracuse AD Jake Crouthamel, who had been Gavitt’s college fraternity brother, was in on the talks.

“My goal was to have representation in all of the major markets of the East, tying them together from Washington north and not leaving out any hotbeds–Providence, Syracuse and Connecticut being three,” Gavitt said in a telephone interview last week.

Initially, Gavitt said, the inner circle resisted inviting Connecticut. But Gavitt was adamant the Huskies needed to be part of the nascent league.

“They were a middle-of-the-road [program], but it was a state school and it had the support of the whole state of Connecticut,” Kaiser said. “We just felt there was tremendous potential there.”

“Providence,” “basketball” and “hotbed” are not words commonly used together — unless you happend to be the former head coach and AD at a school there. Still, there is not nearly as much of the gauzy, things were so much better. There is also a very clear view of what will be happening in the next few years:

“If you took an all-star team of Cincinnati, of DePaul, of Louisville and of the teams in this league, with Marquette, that kid who’s hurt,” said Calhoun, referring to Golden Eagles senior guard Travis Diener, “and then added them to the guys in this league, how could you even have a five-player [all-conference team]? You can’t. It would be absolutely ridiculous.”

Ridiculously talented, that is.

“You say top-heavy or bottom-heavy,” Georgetown coach John Thompson III said. “Our league will just be heavy.”
…
Clearly, the new league will be brutally competitive.

“A lot of coaches are going to be getting fired,” Diener said.

“Travis is a very smart young man,” Thompson III said.

The point? That in a conference this deep, a program could be one of the best in the country but barely among the best in the conference.

“You could be 7-9 [in Big East play] and be a very good team,” Boeheim said.

“This is going to be a great league for fans and a great league for players, because players want to play the best players,” Tranghese said. “I think it’s going to be a very, very hard league for coaches.”

While the league will grow by four teams, it still will have only 12 teams competing in the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Tranghese felt strongly that bringing more teams would hurt the top four teams in the league, which would have to give up their first-round byes, and ultimately harm the Big East’s chances of winning the national championship.

Think about that. Can you imagine the pressure to fire a coach when a team sinks for a couple of years and doesn’t even get to the Big East Tournament? If you are taking bets on some of the first coaches to go, look to New Jersey.

Once, the Big East basketball tournament announced itself across the marquee on Seventh Avenue boldly and brightly, a glimmering proclamation worthy of the stars descended on Madison Square Garden. Those days are promising to return again next season, when the conference’s best recruiting class in years includes Louisville’s Rick Pitino and Cincinnati’s Bob Huggins, with Marquette and DePaul bringing hot young coaches and dazzling prospects.

Everything is getting bigger, better and bolder in the Big East, except the two programs across the Hudson River. As Seton Hall left the floor Wednesday night, blowing a big, late lead to lose, 56-51, to Georgetown, the Pirates would’ve been wise to take a good, long look around the Garden, because it could be a long time before they make it back for a Big East tournament. Rutgers is an even longer shot to qualify in the new Big East, where the bottom four teams each year will be left out of the tournament bracket.
…
As one Big East assistant coach said: “Those two teams are in a lot of trouble, because I don’t think those staffs can keep up the recruiting pace they’re going to need moving forward right now. As it is, they’re treading water.”

And that sort of thing will add to the pressure to split the conference. Programs suffer as some teams remain on the bottom — costing the athletic departments money in lost tickets, merchandise, etcetera. Then the pressure to fire the coach — and the inevitable buy outs. More money lost, and the lack of national exposure — unless you are one of the top teams when expected — all will drive the split.

Like I’ve said, the BE will last about 5 years in the format. Here are the coaches that will be fired in that time: Gary Waters, Rutgers; Louis Orr, Seton Hall; Tim Welsh, Providence; whoever is the coach of South Florida; and Mike Brey, Notre Dame. The majority will find the pressure to win significantly increased. The only safe coaches are: Jim Calhoun, UConn; Jim Boeheim, Syracuse; Bob Huggins, Cinci; Rick Pitino, Louisville; Tom Crean, Marquette. Everyone else is somewhere in the middle.

Sure Philly is only a few hours away, but with a 2 pm (give or take) start, I don’t expect the crowd at MSG to be too large or too partisan.

I know, I want this match-up, if for no other reason than to see if Pitt really has learned anything about defending an inside-out forward like Curtis Sumpter. Whether Pitt really is playing better, or was it just on a little streak fueled by some desperation. It doesn’t mean I’m not worried. It kind of makes me nervous that Pitt is talking about revenge and externalities, while the Wildcats are just talking about it being a tough game.

It appears, Troutman will be matched up on Sumpter once more.

Villanova is the archetypal team that has given Pitt loads of trouble this season. The Wildcats have a stable of outside shooters who can rain 3-pointers down on opponents. Allan Ray made five in the first meeting against Pitt, Mike Nardi and Curtis Sumpter had three apiece. Villanova was one of six Big East opponents to make 10 or more 3-pointers in a game against Pitt. The Wildcats were 12 for 23 from behind the 3-point arc.

“They’re going to shoot 3s and make some,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said. “They made some tough shots against us. They’re going to shoot them from 25 feet. They have really good range. They had four guys who were shooting well that game. They’re very hard to guard when they have four guys who are shooting well from the perimeter.”

Sumpter, a 6-foot-7, 223-pound junior who can play inside and outside, poses some matchup problems for the Panthers. Troutman guarded him the last time without much success and got in foul trouble.

Troutman, Pitt’s best defender, said he is confident he will have more success this time.

“I just have to guard him better than I did the last game,” Troutman said. “I didn’t see too much tape on him before the first game. I feel like I’ll be better this game. I never really thought he was a hard person to guard until last time. I just feel like I was overplaying possessions and trying to make something happen.”

I’m not wild about Troutman trying to guard him. Troutman is better when he doesn’t have to run all over the floor. When he can stay on one side, or even better, just inside. I’d rather see DeGroat try and shadow him and let Troutman be waiting inside. Kind of how they shut down Dudley with BC.

For this Villanova team, the success is to some degree, simply living up to the expectations. The team is hot. Riding a 7 game winning streak. Last year at the Big East Tournament, Villanova came in as a team that couldn’t finish. Streaky, talented, but self-destructive. Then they upset Seton Hall and things changed and carried over.

Yet it’s not overstating it to say that’s what happened for Villanova 365 days ago at Madison Square Garden. The Wildcats went from a group that couldn’t buy a break, couldn’t win a close game, couldn’t steal a victory to a team that figured out how to win and make its own luck.

The Villanova team that heads back to the Garden for a 2 p.m. quarterfinal date with Pittsburgh today is completely revamped from the 2004 edition. Whereas those Wildcats limped to the tournament, having lost seven of eight, these Wildcats storm New York with a run of seven consecutive victories.

Whereas those Wildcats needed two wins to secure a spot in the NIT, these ‘Cats are assured a bid to the NCAA Tournament.

And whereas those Wildcats, as a No. 11 seed, were a longshot at best to make the conference finals, these Wildcats, a No. 4 seed and the No. 19 team in the country, are a bona fide contender for the tournament crown.

“That Seton Hall game, yeah, I think that was the one where we really turned the corner,” guard Randy Foye said. “We knew we could play with anybody and handle anything that people threw at us.”

What changed? Just about everything in those 22 seconds.

Pitt had “the run” in 2001. That carried over and helped change Pitt’s program from a confidence standpoint. Villanova seemed to figure out how to win games. The Big East Tournament can change a team.

Now this Villanova team thinks they can win the Big East.

A couple other articles to note.

Ron Cook now decides to start worrying about the Pitt team for next year — whether Krauser is leaving. The timing is odd. You’d think he’d save this kind of column for later. Maybe break it out in the time period between the end of the BE and the NCAA Tournaments. Running it now just indicates you don’t really care about the games — just storylines. That’s the kind of piece that is speculation and you run as filler.

Speaking of filler, John DeGroat gets his background fleshed out a little more. Not exactly an easy life.

Seton Hall-Georgetown
Is it just me, or did Georgetown just look tired. I mean, just worn out. Could that be part of it. G-town is a young team, with a short bench. Did their guys just hit the wall early this season. They run a style of Princeton offense that takes a toll mentally and physically. Seton Hall, just imploded with the game in hand.

Rutgers-ND
Digger Phelps can make all the claims he wants about how ND has done enough, but nobody is listening now. It’s funny, Rutgers had the lead for the entire first half, and I didn’t believe they would win. RU kept it up in the second and I still figured they would find a way to lose. ND just has no heart. Francis could beat up the lesser players inside, but give RU credit for playing great perimeter defense. Fair or not, Chris Thomas leaves a legacy of underachieving at ND. That entire ND team was the complete anti-clutch. Finding new and exciting ways to blow games.