…or, Them Hoopies is fer real!!!

Beating Oklahoma earlier this season was impressive, but knocking off no. 3 Villanova certainly implies that West Virginia’s roundballers are ready for Big East play. Both games, it should be noted, were also road wins for the ‘Eers, which, to my mind at least, makes them all the more impressive.

On a larger scale, this win, coupled with Marquette’s victory over UConn last Tuesday, their subsequent loss to Cincinnati and ‘Nova’s victory over Louisville last Thursday, point to the Big East starting to live up to its expectations as being THE basketball conference. No one team, not even pre-season favorites for winning the conference, looks dominant right now. Good. I’d rather have a Pitt team that’s in the running but has to play its collective ass off almost every game than one that can rest on it laurels. Our guys, IMHO, seem to raise their level of play when the pressure’s on. In the long run, any tough conference loss will only make us better come tournament time.

But enough with the Captain Obvious bit. I’ll leave the deeper analysis of this issue to Chas. In the meantime, I’m off to mark my calendar so that I can actually remember the time I posted twice in the same week. Peace, yinz.