West Virginia @ Syracuse

The Orange rebounded nicely from their loss to ND last weekend with a win over Cincinnati. The Mountaineers were routed by St. John’s at the Garden on Wednesday. Go with the Orange to take this one at home.

Georgetown @ Pitt

Although Pitt was able to pull out their first BigEast win against Providence and look better with Trey Woodall scoring 17, the Hoyas have been very consistent this year and will edge the Panthers in this one. If GTown can force Pitt to be careless with the ball they may have an easy win here.

Louisville @ Seton Hall

The Hall has been determined to fire up too many 3′s and cut Herb Pope out of their offensive plan. Pope seemed to lose interest against Notre Dame Wednesday and fouled out with 3 points. Louisville was able to hang on in a tough game against Villanova. The Cardinals will prevail in this one.

Marquette @ Villanova

Nova has been getting better and gave Louisville all they could handle for 30 plus minutes this past week. They should be tough at home but Marquette is on a roll and should be able to pull this one out. Look for Jouhnson-Odom and Crowder to overpower the Cats in a tight contest.

Cincinnati @ Rutgers Cincinnati is coming off 2 losses in a row but Rutgers lost to DePaul Wednesday night after leading for most of the game. Even though the Knights are tough at home they may not be able to stay with the Bearcats in this one. Look for Yancy Gates to have a monster game against Biruta and Cincinnati to take the victory here.

Notre Dame @ UConn

The Irish are coming off two big wins including the home victory over #1 Syracuse. The game against Seton Hall was ugly and the Irish jumped on the cold-shooting Pirates in the second half. ND has already lost to UConn at home and don’t figure to do much better here. If the Husky guards get into foul trouble the Irish have a chance. If not take the Huskies by 10 or so.

Providence @ USF The Friars are the worst team in the league. USF has been using outstanding defense to gather some wins including 5 of their last 7. USF will have much too much for the hapless Friars in Tampa.

I’ve watched most of UConn’s last 11 games and can say this about Butler: last night’s defensive scheme against UConn was the best I’ve seen in these 11 games. Given that UConn’s only been at their best for the last month, it’s reasonable to say Butler defended them better than anyone did all year. They tended to rely on two tactics (by the way, credit Brad Stevens for successful ideas that pundits didn’t predict), (1) shut down Jeremy Lamb–Nored was featured on Lamb for large stretches, not Kemba as expected–and (2) contain Walker with other guards and plenty of double-team help. UConn was forced to score through Oriakhi and Okwandu or via jumpshots from players not named Lamb or Walker. Seems like a simple defensive plan, but the key is Butler executed it. No one else has been able to do the same. Calhoun made some adjustments, and UConn willed themselves to more points in the 2nd half, but Butler’s execution defensively did not waver much.

When you compare and contrast the 2010 and 2011 championship games, only one key difference emerges: Butler couldn’t make shots this time. Offensively, UConn and Duke were not so different. Both games were slow: 60 possessions in 2010 and 57 last night. Duke shot better; UConn rebounded better. Duke managed 1.01 points per possession to UConn’s 0.92 ppp. That difference is all of two made baskets in 40 minutes. An argument can surely be made that Butler is a year older, a year wiser, and two buckets better defensively than they were last year, even without Hayward. That’s a reduction, but the point is, last year’s “seal-of-approval” champion only scored marginally better against Butler than this year’s “worst-ever” champion.

It would be easy to reduce UConn’s postseason to this one ugly game. It’s also easy to watch the last five minutes of movies. Neither act is fulfilling. The story of UConn 2011 can only be understood from the full-season perspective. Credit a bunch of freshmen for filling big shoes and making this a complete team. Credit Kemba for willing his team to victories and his teammates to maturity. Credit Calhoun for his finest coaching in some time. If you only saw UConn’s last few games, you won’t understand.

There’s some interesting arguments discussed in Will’s weekend post-mortem. Here’s a few worthy of responses:

Media bias certainly CAN affect the power rankings by overvaluing intra-conference play… If West Virginia (for example… not picking on WVA) is overrated, then the boost a team gets in the power ranking is magnified when they beat them, and the loss to them is not as damaging to the power ranking. — RTP

RTP was responding to my assertion that sagarin, kenpom.com, and the RPI justified the Big East’s bids. Certainly, media-driven power rankings like the polls or ESPN’s “Power 16″ have their effect on the selection process, but the ratings systems like sagarin, kenpom, and the RPI (as awful as that is) are media-agnostic. The teams could be blindly named A, B, C, etc, and the ratings systems would spit out the same rankings. What matters is (a) who you play, (b) where you play, (c) when you play, (d) if you win, and (e) how much you win by. There’s subjectivity in how or if all these parameters are used, but there’s no “Big East fudge factor” or any fudge factor in favor of certain teams.

The Big East is no better than any other conference at gaming the ratings systems. The only way to “game” them is to win–it’s not gaming at all. It’s a simple fact: on balance, the Big East achieved better results out of conference than the rest of the country, and that distinction bears out in the agnostic ratings systems. I could care less what the polls say and have long ignored them. So yes, I see justification for 11 bids in the ratings systems. The Big East’s 11th ranked teams in sagarin (St Johns, 34th) and kenpom (Georgetown, 43rd after the tournament loss, mid-30s before) were well within the at-large range.

The Big East has good teams, very good coaches, and rabid fans but not a lot of great players, NBA type players. When you play teams w/ better athletes and better players, you get shown the door.

Does anybody believe that Arizona would still be dancing if Derrick Williams was just a solid 1st team All Pac 10 PF and not a NBA lottery pick? UK, Arizona, Ohio St., KU, UNC, SDSU, BYU, FSU, Richmond, Duke, Wisconsin, and Florida all have pro prospects that project higher than anyone in the Big East except Kemba Walker. Lo and behold, UConn is still dancing. Villanova and Mouphtaou Yarou may be the one anomaly.

VCU and Butler, also anomalies in my argument, have more heart and desire than most of the field and that worked for them. But I doubt either gets out of the Sweet 16. — Don Stone

Here’s a less tactful response: perhaps all these NBA prospects from other conferences (and I acknowledge that there is better individual talents in general this year from other conferences) are very NBA ready: they don’t try very hard unless it REALLY counts. The Big East’s top half beat those teams and players more often than not during the season.

The better response: it’s reasonable to say that these teams with more NBA-ready talent are probably younger and probably improved more during the season. By tournament time, they’ve caught up to older teams that achieved so well all season. UConn is again the exception for the Big East: they are the youngest team still alive (3 Fr, 1 So, 1 Jr starting). The other candidates for that distinction are Kentucky (3 Fr, 2 Jr) and UNC (2 Fr, 2 So, 1 Jr).

Don’t forget that pundits generally described the Big East as upper-middle heavy throughout the season: tons of very good teams bound for middling at-large seedings, but maybe one title contender in Pitt. There was media acknowledgement that the Big East lacked top-shelf talent. Despite that, they overachieved out of conference all year; doing so cast the Big East as better than they were in general. Middling teams got higher seeds than their talent should have justified, and the Big East’s mediocre teams (Marquette, Villanova, Cincy, Georgetown, St Johns) got into the tournament instead of other power conferences’ mediocre teams.

The “problem” for other power conferences was an inability to go out and beat the Big East enough during the season. If Duke had beaten (or even come close to) St Johns, perhaps the trickle-down effect gets Virginia Tech a bid. If Texas had beaten UConn or Pitt, perhaps Colorado gets in. If Kentucky had beaten UConn, perhaps Alabama gets in.

Losing in the NCAA tournament tarnished some great seasons for the Big East, but it doesn’t erase the whole season.

…your conference tournament is just all wrong. It’s a 16 team league. No need for any byes. Why reward anyone for league play when it is unneccessary! The reward is in the seeding for regular season. That’s plain and simple, but the Big East has that wrong as well. — GurualaKing

Here’s the steps to explaining the Big East Tournament:

1. With 16 teams and no byes, there’d be eight first-round games. That necessitates playing over two nights, which gives half of the teams the advantage of a day’s rest, or splitting the round into two concurrent sets of four games at two sites, which moves 1/4 of the games away from MSG. Neither option is acceptable. The Big East tournament’s purpose is to showcase each team two at a time in MSG.
2. The next option is to cut the number of tournament teams to 12 and have four byes like most major conferences. That denies four teams a chance to play their way in. That’s not acceptable.
3. Next, how about starting with the 12-team tournament with four byes, but add the other four teams in: have the bottom eight teams play for the final four spots in the tournament. Ding! Ding! Ding! That’s exactly what the format is.

You can view the Big East tournament as a 12-team, 4-bye tournament formatted like everyone else’s tournaments, except there’s four play-in games to earn the final four tourney spots.

8:20 pm EST: The clock just stopped. How is this a regular occurrence? It’s a freaking clock. Not rocket science here. I bet it’s human error.

8:24 pm EST: Question — when was the last time UConn had a white, american-born guard? Seriously. I think it was the 1980s. Niels Giffey is from Germany, FYI.

8:27 pm EST: Kemba Walker fouled again at the 3-point line.

8:34 pm EST: The problem with watching games at work is that sometimes people want to talk to you about work stuff.

8:37 pm EST: My personal opinion: Marquette is the school that has most well-integrated itself into the “old” Big East. Perhaps it’s because of its name: Marquette doesn’t evoke any geographic locations.

8:39 pm EST: Buycks has unbelievable hands. And apparently his name is pronounced Bikes. Yuycks.

8:47 pm EST: UConn’s offense: let Kemba dribble aimlessly and then send everybody to the offensive boards.

8:50 pm EST: Most common surname in the Big East. Perhaps Butler? Jimmy Butler. Caron Butler. DeSean Butler. Any other Butlers?

8:51 pm EST: Same UConn offense. See item two bullets above. This time Giffey with the putback.

8:57 pm EST: Kemba Walker has taken the last four first-shot-attempts. Ridiculous. Who does he think he is…Kobe Bryant?

8:58 pm EST: This time, nobody touched the ball except Kemba Walker. #gettingridiculous

9:00 pm EST: Marquette: take the ball strong. No jump shots. This game is totally winnable for the Golden Eagles.

9:02 pm EST: You can’t make this shit up. Walker double-teamed…dribbles around. Picks up his dribble. Instead of passing, he calls a timeout.

9:04 pm EST: Now we’re tied, going into overtime. I don’t believe a single UConn player has dribbled the ball in the last five possessions other than Kemba Walker. And I can’t believe any of the commentators aren’t pointing this out. Props to Marquette: totally winnable game.

9:12 pm EST: Nasty crossover from Buycks. Crowder with a nice tip. Johnson-Odom with a lefty jumper. Marquette plays like a team.

9:14 pm EST: Awful shot by Walker. Johnson-Odom with a nice left jumper. Walker travels.

9:19 pm EST: Marquette 74, UConn 65. 25.4 seconds left in overtime. People in the stands leaving. Great win by Marquette. Johnson-Odom is the man.

Basketball’s been around since 1891 and there have been a bunch of “innovations” in individual offensive moves: the layup, set shot, jump shot, hook shot, spin-move, dunk, cross-over and the turnaround-fadeaway. In the past 10 years, though, I’ve noticed a couple of new, highly-effective offensive moves being used by ball-handlers:

1. The floater
2. The eurostep
3. “Pushing” the ball through to split a double

Some may say that that I’m full of it — these moves have been around for ages. I disagree (but want your feedback) — these are moves that are gaining popularity and are extremely effective. Most players in the past didn’t have these and were worse offensive players for it (although they probably had better jump shots).

I believe the popularity of the floater can be traced to Tony Parker and the eurostep to Manu Ginobli (and people wonder why the Spurs have won 4 championships!). What I mean by “pushing the ball through to split a double team” probably isn’t clear, but there’s a video below. I don’t know who to trace the popularity of this move back to, although I may begrudgingly have to say Kobe Bryant.

The floater is a great shot that allows offensive players to get a quick shot off with little space (often a jump shot or going into a full shot allows a defender to block it):

The eurostep is Manu Ginobli’s signature move (and Dwyane Wade does a pretty good job of it, too). In the following video, he also shows the double-team split. It’s a beautiful video and you really see Manu’s beautiful sense of the game coming out:




So am I full of it (or do I just have a really bad memory)? Were basketball players in the 70s-90s doing these same moves? Or are they actual “innovations”?