I’m nervous about the Big East.

Pittsburgh might have the right kind of profile to be snubbed. There’s nothing EVER wrong with beating Duke (Thank you again and again Mr. Maynor, too) - should Wake and Miami dance? - but that can’t be the only bullet point for Pitt to lean on. There’s other good wins, but they’re at home. The road/neutral record is reasonable at 5-6. I’d give them credit for “tough” losses at Marquette and Notre Dame if they’d kept those close. The real danger is if Pitt drops one of their remaining home games. I don’t particularly like their chances at Syracuse or WVU, so a flat performance against Cincinnati or DePaul could easily spell doom in the form of an 8-10 conference record and a 1-6 record to close the season. Even at 9-9, Pitt needs to show something in New York.

West Virginia should have an easier time of it - the stacked schedule is all but gone, leaving three games where they should be favored and a 4th in which close-game karma ought to swing back their way (against UConn). They should come out 11-7, with the superficially impressive 6-2 closing mark. I like their chances a lot better than Pitt’s.

Syracuse has lots of climbing to do (or, if you prefer bubbles, a Kentucky-borne breeze pushed their gossamer sphere awfully close to the dreaded thorn bush today). Their last chance to post a solid road win has come and gone. I think they can defend the dome against Pitt, but it’ll be close. Ditto for Seton Hall on the road and certainly Marquette. Even if they claw back to 9-9, the profile looks suspiciously similar to (and perhaps even worse given the disparity in conference records) last year - nothing good to speak of outside the Carrier Dome. One win against likely tournament teams. It’s just about necessary to run the table.

Villanova has exactly what it needs to have a chance - some momentum already building and a couple marquee matchups coming up. The Big East’s hottest teams are on deck and in the hole. Both Marquette and Louisville have been rolling for some time. Should Nova take one or especially both games, they look completely different. I like their chances to sneak up on one of the big boys in the next week. If they can carry that into a 10-8 finish, it’ll complete their own 6-2 finish to the season.

And that’s about it. I predict seven for the Big East - Syracuse will be left out this year (rightfully this time), West Virginia will cruise in and make me proud by upsetting somebody big, and Villanova will take Pitt’s place (they split a home-and-home this year in case you’re wondering). Cincinnati and Seton Hall, better luck next year.

Etan writes on a handful of political topics — why terrorists hate us (not because of our freedom, but because of our foreign policy), the death policy (which he is vehemently against), and Giuliani’s exploitation of 9/11.

Color me impressed. This warrants the very first web cartoon for Big East Hoops:

One of the beauties of the 2-3 zone is that you don’t have to work as hard as you do in a man-to-man. Rather than chase shooters all over the court, you stay in a particular area, cover who’s there, switch off when necessary, react in certain ways to certain types of ball movement around the perimeter, and converge around the hoop when a shot goes up. Of course it’s more complicated than that, but it’s indisputably an energy saver.

Perhaps they should expend a bit more energy on the defensive end.

Two nights ago, against a mediocre UMass squad, Syracuse gave up the most points at home since 1980. Most of the bloggers on this site were infants at the time.

I don’t mean to take anything away from UMass. They played a gutsy game and made shots when they needed to. But there’s the rub: if Syracuse is going to keep a lead in the second half, they’re going to have to play more intense, smarter defense.

To me, Andy Rautins’ season-ending knee injury was a tipping point with this team. They were at least 7 deep with Rautins.

Now? They play with 5…maybe 6 if Josh Wright is having a good week, mentally.

These young players are spending too much time on the court to expect them to play great defense for 40 minutes. Period. Good teams will exploit their lack of depth…actually, so will mediocre teams.

The silver lining in all of this is that the young core (Green, Harris, and Flynn) are getting invaluable experience by being on the court so much. They’ll be amazing next year and the year after.

For now, we have a shallow team with growing pains. Promise and upside abound.

But this is not their year. This blogger will be pleasantly surprised if they make the field of 64…

It turns out that former ‘Cuse sharp-shooter Jason Cipolla has been dating Soprano’s star Lorraine Bracco for over, like, 5 years now. Cipolla was a behind-the-scenes driver for the show; Bracco was on screen, playing the mob-boss’s psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Psychoanalyze this, though: Bracco is 52 compared to Cipolla’s 31.

Cradle robber or Sugar Momma? (not that the two are mutually exclusive)

We congratulate Jason. Though he couldn’t make the NBA, he chose the next best thing…the AARP.

Kidding, of course. Best to both. Love the show.