Technically, it is underway, but since the Big East Tournament is a pure TV event if it isn’t being aired anywhere but over the internet I’m not so sure that it has really started.
Anyways, just for quick scanning, here’s a sampling of some of the Big East Tournament previews.
Philly paper, no surprise, is pulling for a run from ‘Nova.
This one is just capsules on each team. Grouping by favorites to teams likely to be gone before the favorites even arrive.
Capsule summaries are popular things. Especially with 16 teams to have to preview.
This preview piece thinks Pitt won’t make it the championship game, because this year Pitt should be going deeper in the NCAA. At least that seems to be what it is saying.
Still, Pitt has to be considered the favorite, both because of what they keep doing in the BET and the way they are playing.
In Mike DeCourcy’s preview, he doubts that Pitt will be looking to do anything but try to win the whole thing.
Following Pitt’s victory Saturday over the Huskies, coach Jamie Dixon was asked how the Panthers would approach this tournament. They won it a year ago and spent so much energy they hadn’t much left for the NCAAs. And with a shot at a top seed and the kind of NBA-type talent they’ve lacked in the past, this could be their best chance in years at NCAA Tournament success.
Dixon said the Panthers would go to New York looking to improve. He figures they’ll have to keep getting better to excel in the NCAAs, and he doesn’t see how that’ll happen if they don’t deliver the best possible effort at Madison Square Garden.
Of course, the mantra this year is that Pitt wants more than just the BET.
“We’re looking at the Big East,” senior forward Sam Young said Saturday afternoon after Pitt defeated Connecticut in the regular-season finale at the Petersen Events Center. “We know it’s here, and we’re focused on it. But at the same time we’ve got our eyes on the prize. Pitt has had trouble getting past the Sweet 16, and we feel like we’re the team that can finally do it. The sky is the limit for us.”
Oh, yeah.
so is dixon going to limit the minutes of the big 3 throughout the BET?
1) Providence doesn’t just need wins, it needs quality wins. Cinci was of better quality than DePaul could provide.
2) It further damages Providence’s RPI numbers. They beat DePaul once, but Cinci twice. Cinci was already killing them with the slide they’ve been on. This was bad for Prov to have Cinci lose to a team as bad as DePaul
If St. John’s beats Georgetown, I might move John Thompson III below myself on my list of BE Coach of the Year candidates. He’s already slipping below Jerry Wainwright.
Anything can happen in March.
SJU is on the doorstep of underscoring that very point and rendering Georgetown’s concern over the ignominy of an NIT invitation entirely moot. Does anyone know if they’re having that third, goofy tournament that they made up last year? Maybe Georgetown and Cincinnati could go lose there too.
St Johns and DePaul have forced ESPN to show all 5 rounds next season.
Also, Thompson III found a way to lose to St. John’s twice in the past three weeks, an event not duplicated since Digger Phelps’ Notre-Dame-Who-Beat-UCLA-to-End-Their-88-Game-Win-Streak team managed it, back in 1687.
Finally, JT3 does indeed fall below me, Panthoor, carmen, schoey, CalvinHobbes, TJ, my boy Stewart, Jimbo Covert’s My Dad, Keith, Mike from Card Chronicle, Troy Nunes, Bob Smizik, Matt Doherty (OUCH), Tom Crean, Carrot Top, and at least two Jonas Brothers all the way to 259,035,106 in the BE Coach of the Year standings.
