West breakdown

The last of four regional breakdowns heading into the NCAA tournament, which tips Thursday.

(Midwest | East | South)

* I have a long history with Syracuse. Growing up in a state without a major conference program and attending undergrad at a Patriot League school, there's no power conference team that is natural for me to root for. With that said, I grew up with only the Big East on CBS to slake my college basketball thirst, and the Orange seemed to be on every Saturday back then. As a result, I've always had a soft spot for Jim Boeheim's bunch.

Back in 2002-2003 (the Carmelo Anthony year), I said I thought that Syracuse had a real shot to win the national title (which, of course, they eventually did). That's the only time I've ever said that, so I took real notice when I found myself thinking the same thing while watching the 'cuse earlier this year. Now, I'm not so sure. Syracuse has an outstanding team, a squad that complements each other well and has real chemistry. But the last several minutes of their Big East quarterfinal loss to Georgetown revealed a real problem for the Orange; namely, where does the ball going during crunch time?

Arinze Onuaku's knee injury didn't help matters, but he's really not a guy you'd expect Syracuse to go to late. There are basically three options for that role on this team. Wesley Johnson, the transfer from Iowa State, has had an All-America quality year, but part of his effectiveness is that he doesn't need the ball to affect a game. He often ends up with the ball, but he's not the kind of guy you run a play for when you need a basket. Scoop Jardine, who technically backs up Brandon Triche but is the effective starting point guard in that he plays most of the end-game in close contests, is more than willing to take the ball in his hands late, but for all his improvement this season, he still needs to be reined in a bit. And Andy Rautins, who I considered the most reliable of the options, made several bad decisions as the Hoyas took the lead and then completely disappeared for the last seven minutes.

The 'cuse should have more than enough to get by Vermont in the first round (though it will be fun to watch UVM's Marqus Blakely try to find the open areas in SU's vaunted 2-3 zone). But beginning with a second-round matchup against either Gonzaga or Florida State, Syracuse won't have a sure thing the rest of the way. They're not in a terribly difficult bracket, but given Onuaku's balky leg and the fact that they only go seven deep anyway, there's precious little margin for error. I expect them to go down in the regional final, should they make it that far, to Kansas State and its pair of go-to guys, Denis Clemente and Jacob Pullen.

* Without having seen much of New Mexico, I can't say for sure that Pittsburgh is the weakest #3 in the tournament field, but to me, the Panthers top a relatively long list of over-seeded teams in this region, including Vanderbilt and Butler. I don't expect any of those three to survive the first weekend, with the latter two in real danger of losing their first-round matchups (to Murray State and UTEP, respectively).

* I'm not really sure what Florida is doing in the tournament. They are 21-12 overall and 10-8 in the SEC, but with a number of close wins, including one at NC State in which a guy hit like a 75-footer at the horn to win. They have a mid-50s RPI, one spot lower than Mississippi State, to whom the Gators lost in the SEC semifinals. Their strength of schedule is a bit better than the Bulldogs', and that's surely what gave them a bid over MSU. But I didn't see anyone with Florida in their projected brackets on Selection Sunday, and I certainly don't have them in my second round.

Back tomorrow morning with quick picks for the day.

Sweet 16 Breakdown: West and East

A lot of people lament the lack of upsets in an NCAA Tournament, and I agree that upsets are a big part of what makes it March Madness. But like last year, the first year in which all four No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four, the chalkiness of this year's Big Dance means we're in store for some great basketball over the next few weeks. The barrier broken this year is that it's the first tournament in which the top three seeds in each of the four regions survived the first weekend. There's really only one somewhat surprising team in the Sweet Sixteen (though yours truly's bracket correctly had them advancing), and Arizona, being more or less a basketball power over the last couple of decades, is hardly the dictionary definition of Cinderella.

WEST
#1 Connecticut vs. #5 Purdue. I had Washington here in Purdue's spot and am a little surprised at how well the Boilers played at times during the tourney's first weekend. They were a highly ranked team early in the year, however, before injuries hit Robbie Hummel, so perhaps this is just them living up to expectations.

Either way, I don't think they have enough to beat Connecticut. I don't think the Huskies are unbeatable, but I think that the team to beat them needs to have a very strong post player. Hasheem Thabeet dominates most opponents defensively, but is a bit of a shrinking violet when faced with an opposing post player of above-average caliber. (Witness his pedestrian performances against Pittsburgh and Georgetown this year.) Purdue doesn't have that trait.

#2 Memphis vs. #3 Missouri. I haven't seen much of Mizzou this year -- to the point where, late in the season, I looked at the rankings and exclaimed, incredulously, "Missouri is ranked tenth?!?!?" I know that they like to play up-and-down, they are deep, and they can score points in bunches. Memphis is like that, too, however, and in addition to being more talented and deep than Mizzou, they are also better defensively. That gives them the edge in what will be a frantic affair.

EAST
#1 Pittsburgh v. #4 Xavier. I picked North Carolina to win it all this year, mainly because I picked them at the beginning of the year and I see flaws with all the other contenders. Carolina has its flaws, too, including my pet flaw, the one that had me ranting all last year, which is that they don't play enough defense to win a championship. In large part due to my regret for selling myself out like that, then, I was remorseful for my selection and began convincing myself that Pittsburgh was the team to beat this year. Then they go out and barely squeak by East Tennessee State and a better-than-you-thought Oklahoma State team in the tournament's first weekend.

Ironically, I think Pitt's defense isn't quite good enough to make me confident that they'll win. It's ironic for two reasons: one, because that's why I'm not confident in my Carolina pick; and two, because defense was Pitt's calling card when they rose to national prominence under Ben Howland (now the head man at UCLA -- which had defensive problems of its own in getting pasted by Villanova in the second round). Because of that reputation, and because head coach Jamie Dixon was a Howland assistant, I think recent vintages of Panthers have gotten underserved reputations as good defensive teams. In fact, I think -- with no statistical backup -- that each successive edition of Pitt under Dixon has been a little bit worse defensively than the previous one.

It follows, then, that I don't think all that highly of this Pitt team defensively, and that is going to be a problem against any solid team, which means it's going to be a problem against any team left in this tournament. I don't know enough about Xavier to say if the Muskies are the team that will take the Panthers out, but I do know that I won't be terribly surprised if it happens.

#2 Duke v. #3 Villanova. This is the matchup I'm most looking forward to, a couple of guard-oriented teams with a star forward who can score inside (Kyle Singler for Duke, Dante Cunningham for Villanova). Both teams rely heavily on the three-point shot, and both have capable but limited role players up front (I give the advantage to Nova here). Duke is perhaps one player deeper in the backcourt and on the wing.

A lot of people would give the coaching advantage to Duke's legendary Coach K, but that does an injustice to Nova head man Jay Wright. Wright has had the same kind of team he has this year in previous years, and he has had great success in the past -- coming within a missed traveling call of upsetting eventual champion North Carolina in 2005, running into a juggernaut on a roll -- a juggernaut on a roll that was a particularly bad matchup for Nova's guard-oriented team -- in Florida the following year. Wright is every bit the coach Coach K is.

This game is really a tossup. If one team shoots well and the other doesn't, it'll prevail. (Duh.) If both teams shoot well, it could easily be "last possession wins." If neither team shoots well, it's a tossup. Both teams have guys who can get to the bucket and finish (Gerald Henderson and Nolan Smith for Duke; Corey Fisher and Scottie Reynolds for Villanova), which is imperative when the jumper isn't falling. It may come down to something like free throws, in which case I guess I like Duke by a thin margin, as I think Singler is better at drawing fouls than Cunningham and the officials always seem to send Duke to the line more than their opponents.

Pittsburgh 76, Connecticut 68

A whole month without posts in the middle of the season? Inexcusable, though I'll try: law school and my NBA blog are taking up most of my time. I'll try to do better down the stretch. And what better way to get back into it than a matchup of top-five teams battling for Big East supremacy?

The big story from this one lay in the stat lines from Pittsburgh's DeJuan Blair and Connecticut's Hasheem Thabeet: 22 points and 23 rebounds for the former; five points and four rebounds for the latter. Complete domination of the matchup from start to finish, starting with Blair flipping Thabeet onto his back, professional wrestling style, early in the game (highlights here).

I'm not willing to go as far as to say that that play set the tone for the evening, but it certainly summed up the matchup between this two well-regarded big men. Blair was tougher and stronger (and better) than Thabeet all night, capping the evening with a game-sealing block of Thabeet - a "stuff," really, with Blair essentially ripping the ball out of Thabeet's hands.

The ESPN highlight reel linked above focuses almost exclusively on the Blair-Thabeet matchup, and if you watch it, you'll see a diverse offensive arsenal from Blair that I frankly didn't know he had. Jump hook, turnaround jumper, lefty layin after a drop step. Even the one time Thabeet got the best of him, blocking an ill-advised fadeaway, Blair retrieved the ball and went right at Thabeet, driving into the land before stepping through for lefty layup. And the foul.

Another thing I hadn't seen before from Blair was his outlet passing. He threw at least three terrific outlet passes last night, including the one at the end of the highlight that followed his block of Thabeet.

Finally, I was very impressed by his conditioning. He's 6'7", 265, which is a lot of DeJuan Blair to be carrying up and down the court for 38 minutes. But that's how many minutes he did play, a game high, and he wasn't exactly just going through the motions out there. These were 38 minutes of rebounding and jumping and battling for position; 38 minutes of work. Blair is short for his position, which means he has to rely more on strength than a taller man would. Blair exerted himself for nearly the whole game, and was still fresh enough to register that block on Thabeet in the closing minute.

As for Thabeet, he seems like a consensus lottery pick, and while it's hard to quibble with his height and weakside shot-blocking ability, particularly in what should be a relatively shallow draft, I'm just not sure. I've now twice watched him be completely neutralized and outplayed by an opposing big man (December vs. Greg Monroe and Georgetown is the other), and while he had a respectable nine points and 11 rebounds against Notre Dame, it's worth noting that Luke Harangody had 24 and 15 for the Irish.

It just seems like every time Thabeet goes up against somebody halfway decent, he gets shown up. Sure, he can put up 25 and 20 with nine blocks against Seton Hall like he did the other day, but so what? The competiton in the pros is going to be tougher than it is now.

As far as Connecticut goes generally, losing Jerome Dyson for the year with a knee injury obviously hurts their depth, but anything that gives freshman Kemba Walker more court time can't be all bad. I really like this kid. Lightning-quick, good passer, plays within himself. With Walker, A.J. Price, and Craig Austrie, the Huskies should get plenty of production from their backcourt.

As for Pittsburgh: I'm impressed. Sam Young's a lot better than I thought he was, and I've grudgingly come to accept that if Levance Fields is not an elite point guard, he is the kind of point guard you can win a championship with. Takes care of the ball and steps up when it matters (witness the two threes he hit down the stretch last night -- his first two made field goals of the game.) I also think that the Panthers are better defensively than they have been in recent years. Pitt, of course, had a strong defensive reputation under Ben Howland, and when Howland left for UCLA and his assistant Jamie Dixon took over, that reputation carried over. But it seemed like Pitt's defense had actually gotten worse each of the past several years, as though the emphasis on defense decreased the more time elapsed between Howland and the program. They seem better on that end this year. Maybe that will translate to some March success.

Pittsburgh 70, Georgetown 54

I'm ack in DC for a few days and checked out this one with my cousin and a few friends. After Georgetown so thoroughly outplayed UConn in Storrs earlier in the week, I was expecting a better game than I got. If it weren't for DaJuan Summers hitting some very difficult shots -- he had 15 at halftime and finished with 22 -- it wouldn't have been much of a ballgame. As it was, the Panthers had it well in hand by the last several minutes. I was sitting right by the Pitt section -- those folks travel well. And they've been rewarded -- the Panthers are the nation's new number one team for the first time in history, after North Carolina's stunning loss to Boston College in Chapel Hill last night (so much for the undefeated season I had been predicting).

Sitting up in the 400 level -- "the Hill" as its known in the Verizon Center, a nod, of course, to Capitol Hill -- it was hard to appreciate just how dominant Pitt's DeJuan Blair was, so it was something of a surprise afterward to see his stat line of 20 points and 17 rebounds. His counterpart, Greg Monroe (who I raved about recently) had a decent game by the box score with 15 points and eight boards, but Blair thoroughly outplayed him. I don't want to say that Monroe needs to become more physical because I think his future is on the wing, but for Gerogetown's purposes, I'm sure they'd like him to bang a bit more.

Speaking of Monroe and Blair, after last Monday's performance against UConn, I was curious to see where Monroe ranked on the NBA draft sites, nbadraft.net and DraftExpress. Neither site had updated its mock draft since the game when I first checked, and neither site had Monroe listed.

I kept checking, and while I didn't find Monroe on nbadraft.net right away, I did find that Monroe had moved from off the board to number three overall on DraftExpress, while UConn's Hasheem Thabeet -- the 7'3" junior who Monroe badly outplayed -- had dropped a few spots, from (I think) five to eight. I can't tell if DraftExpress has updated its mock since Saturday, but Monroe is still at three and Thabeet is still at eight, with Blair at 20. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it moves further.

Over on nbadraft.net, and again, I don't know when the update occurred, Monroe is 20th, Thabeet's third, and Blair is 29th.

These rankings really don't mean anything, but I thought it was interesting to see Monroe debut so high on the DraftExpress board and to see him jump Thabeet.

You can catch Georgetown in action tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern at Notre Dame on ESPN. The Irish were surprise losers to St. John's on Saturday.

-I want to follow up on this post: Louisville lost at home to UNLV before squeaking by Kentucky on Edgar Sosa's bomb (video in link). I still think Louisville could be in a lot of trouble, but it would be even worse without a single respectable non-conference win. Sosa might've saved the Cardinals season with that shot. Anyway, the 'ville opens conference play on Wednesday at South Florida, then enters their toughest five-game stretch of conference play: at Villanova, home vs. Notre Dame, home vs. Pittsburgh, at Rutgers, at Syracuse. This just seems like a volatile group and a bad start could really be curtains for them.

Opening Night in the Big East

The Georgetown-Connecticut game marked the opening of ESPN's Monday night Big East coverage, although not technically the beginning of the weekly tripleheaders dubbed these many years Big Monday. The Big East is incredibly deep this year, with eight teams currently ranked in the ESPN/USAToday poll and a ninth -- West Virginia -- just two spots out of it after dismantling previously unbeaten Ohio State in Columbus on Saturday. (The AP poll has seven Big East teams in the top 25, though Marquette and West Virginia are Nos. 26 and 27, respectively). It's just going to be a fantastic season, with ten tournament bids a real possibility.

ESPN's Andy Katz wrote a nice breakdown of the conference, and he makes the point that if the league wants to get ten teams in, it won't be enough for those ten to get to 8-10 by virtue of beating the bottom six teams in the league (likely to be Rutgers, South Florida, Seton Hall, Providence, St. John's, and DePaul) seven or eight times. They'll need at least a couple of wins against each other.

For similar reasons, these non-conference games that are wrapping up (with a few exceptions) this week take on an increased importance in a year where the conference is so stacked. Let's take a look at the ten realistic contenders for tournament bids from the Big East, and see what their non-conference slates look like. I'll take them in the same order Katz did.

Cincinnati: The Bearcats 60-45 loss at Memphis (after the Tigers dropped out of the Top 25 for the first time in a few years) hurts, particularly since fellow Big East foes Georgetown and Syracuse have already beaten last year's national runners-up. Losing to Xavier is nothing to be ashamed of, though dropping a game to Florida State hurts. Still, they have wins at UNLV and against Mississippi State and UAB, so they're in decent shape at 3-3 against potential tournament teams from major conferences.

Connecticut: The Huskies will be fine, provided that they don't make their listless performance against Georgetown a habit. Victories over Miami (FL) and Wisconsin on their way to winning Paradise Jam, along with a win over Gonzaga in Seattle gives them a nice non-conference slate. They can get some insurance, not that they'll need it, on February 7, when they host Michigan (and old foe John Beilein, the former head coach at West Virginia).

Georgetown: Beating Maryland and Memphis more than offsets losing to Tennessee in a very hard-fought game at the Old Spice Classic in November. Given that the Hoyas already have a huge conference road win, they're in fine shape. Like UConn, they have one more out-of-conference test, January 17 at Duke.

Louisville: The Cardinals have a couple of really troubling losses, to Western Kentucky and Minnesota. They rebounded a couple of days ago with a convincing win over UAB, but the Blazers are down to something like six scholarship players, so that victory doesn't look as good as it might have at the beginning of the year. They don't have any other good wins, but they do have two more opportunities to make life easier for them once their conference slate starts. They play UNLV on New Year's Eve at 6 p.m. Eastern, and given that Cincinnati has already beaten the Rebels this year, the Ville could very well have to win that one to avoid needing to be better than .500 in Big East play -- which is more doable for them than it is for others, since they have seven games against the league's bottom six and only get the league's true heavies -- Pittsburgh, UConn, and Georgetown -- once each. They've also got Kentucky on January 4, and although the Wildcats beat West Virginia earlier this year, UK might be the kind of team where a loss to them looks worse than a win over them looks good, if you get what I'm saying.

Marquette: The Golden Eagles have a couple of decent wins against Wisconsin and North Carolina State, a good loss against Tennessee, and then kind of a bad loss to Dayton. That's not really anything to be ashamed of, but Marquette is done in non-conference play, and they're right on the fringe of the top 25 right now. What's more, they finish up with a wicked schedule. Check out this five-game stretch to finish up Big East play: at Georgetown, vs. Connecticut, at Louisville, at Pittsburgh, vs. Syracuse. Brutal. Given the emphasis the selection committee seems to put on the way a team is playing heading into the tournament, Marquette may not have done enough out of conference to survive losing four out of five to end the season, followed by an early exit in the Big East tournament. They haven't made things impossible for themselves, but they are going to have to play awfully well to feel comfortable on Selection Sunday. That loss to Dayton could loom large.

Notre Dame: The Fighting Irish nipped Texas by a point in the Maui semis, lost to Carolina in the final, and slipped up against Ohio State in Indianapolis in Luke Harangody's first game back after missing two with pneumonia. They are fine barring a major collapse in conference play, though a win at UCLA on February 7would certainly help.

Pittsburgh: No one win really jumps out at you. They won at Florida State, but beating the Seminoles, even in Tallahassee, is hardly the kind of win a team hangs it hat on. They beat Texas Tech and Washington State on consecutive nights in November in New Jersey, but I just watched the Cougars play terribly in a loss to LSU, and the Red Raiders lost to Lamar earlier this year and got beat by 45 at Stanford their last time out. Still, they've taken care of business, and honestly should be good enough in the Big East that their non-conference schedule won't matter. Incidentally, they are not quite done with out of conference opponents, as they've oddly scheduled a home date with Robert Morris for February 2.

Syracuse: Losing to Cleveland State at the Carrier Dome wasn't good, but for the first time in a couple of years, the Orange have done quite a lot in the non-conference. Beating Florida and Kansas back-to-back in Kansas City to win the CBE Classic was big, and they added a big win at Memphis on December 20. These teams aren't the same squads that are responsible for the last three national championships (and one national runnerup-ship), but they are good wins over name teams away from home. Syracuse just needs to stay the course in the Big East to get a bid.

Villanova: No bad losses for the Wildcats, their lone blemish being a nine-point defeat at the hands of Texas, then ranked No. 6. No spectacular wins, either. Monday's 62-45 win over Temple looks good if you consider that the Owls beat Tennessee on December 13; it becomes less impressive when you realize that Temple then lost to Long Beach State, and had previously lost to Buffalo and Miami (OH). Katz says that a November 19 triumph over Niagara is 'Nova's most meaningful win, which isn't likely to get too many people that excited about the Wildcats. They're out of non-conference opportunities, but have climbed high enough in the polls that something like .500 in the Big East should get them there.

West Virginia: It would have been nice to beat Kentucky and Davidson, but the aforementioned trouncing of Ohio State in Columbus this weekend makes up for a lot of that. The Mountaineers have two games against each of Louisville and Pittsburgh, which is tough, but it cuts both ways: It can just as easily be seen as two extra opportunities for a big resume win as it can be seen as an extra two automatic losses in conference.

Have a good New Year, all.