Missed a couple more articles that are worth noting.
Andy Katz thinks that the Big East made the case for 9 teams.
Pick Pitt and Syracuse to advance in the NCAA Tournament bracket next week and you would probably be making a smart move.
The thinking here is that no set of teams will be better prepared for the NCAAs after this grueling four days.
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said unequivocally that the Big East conference was the best, the toughest, not even close.
Pitt’s Jamie Dixon echoed those thoughts.
Think about it: Two teams that played on the first day of this 12-team tournament are in the Big East tournament final.
Gone are the top two teams in the country in Connecticut and Villanova. The next two top seeds — West Virginia and Marquette — are also gone. The Big East has never crowned a tournament champ that played on the first day, a team that had to win four games for a title. That streak will end Saturday night.
“Our conference has prepared us better than any other conference since I’ve been around the Big East,” Dixon said. “I’m not surprised how it has played out because of how many good teams there are here.”
Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe really liked what he saw in Pitt.
His presence might not have made much of a difference in the second half last night, however. Pitt was the better team, beating Villanova at its own guard-oriented game with superb outside shooting and intelligent ballhandling. Anyone walking into the Garden unaware of just who was whom would have assumed that Krauser, Levance Fields, Antonio Graves, and Ronald Ramon were the wondrous guard quartet he or she had been reading and hearing about.
Pitt is a dangerous team. It is surely a fearless one, because it plays off the big-hearted Krauser, who will go down in both Pitt and Big East history as one of the toughest, most competitive guards ever. And in the rugged Fields, the Panthers might have his heir — both physically and emotionally. Fields, a freshman from the Bronx, has a mailbox body and a wicked crossover dribble, and he acts as if he would just as soon run over his defender as go around him.
The Big East Basketball Blog previews tonight’s game and goes with Syracuse and McNamara’s magic.
8 pm tonight.
