| | NEW YORK -- In five of the last six Big East tournaments,
Connecticut was seeded No. 1.
The conference's team of the decade won the tournament three of
the last four years, including last season when the Huskies
captured the national championship.
The 2000 tournament will have a different No. 1 -- Syracuse.
Connecticut won't even have a first-round bye.
No team has ever reached the championship game without having
the first round off. But if there's a team with enough confidence
to pull off such a run it's the fourth-seeded Huskies (22-8, 10-6).
"We are coming in off a terrific win," Connecticut coach Jim
Calhoun said of Saturday's 69-54 victory over Syracuse that kept
the Orangemen from winning the regular season title outright. "The
kids responded well in that game, and that's the kind of response
we'll need going into March."
The Huskies took the first step Wednesday, defeating Boston College 70-55 behind 16 points from Jake Voskuhl.
Since Khalid El-Amin's buzzer-beating drive beat West Virginia
to snap a two-game losing streak and start the season-closing
three-game winning streak, the Huskies have looked more like the
group that returned three starters from the NCAA title team and was
the national preseason No. 1.
"We heard no team could have a perfect road record in this
league and we did it last season," Voskuhl
said before Wednesday's game. "We heard we'd never be able to right things at the end of
this season. Now people say no team can win four games to win the
championship. The stage is set."
Already in the books is ninth-seeded Georgetown's 70-67 win over eighth-seeded West Virginia (14-14) on Kevin Braswell's 3-pointer with .2 seconds left in the game. The Hoyas (17-13) advance to face top-seeded Syracuse.
There's also fifth-seeded Seton Hall
(19-8, 10-6) against 12th-seeded Providence (11-18, 4-12);
seventh-seeded Notre Dame (17-13, 8-8) against 10th-seeded Rutgers
(15-14, 6-10); and sixth-seeded Villanova (18-11, 8-8) against
11th-seeded Pittsburgh (13-14, 5-11).
No. 12-ranked Syracuse (24-4, 13-3), second-seeded and No.
23-ranked Miami (20-9, 13-3) and third-seeded and 19th-ranked St.
John's start play with Thursday's quarterfinals.
Seton Hall's last game was a Feb. 29 loss to St. John's, the
Pirates' fourth straight to close the conference season. They were
off since, a rare eight-day break leading to postseason play.
"Time will tell if it's been good for us," Seton Hall coach
Tommy Amaker said. "We needed to get healthy and it did allow us
time get to rested as we were a little tired.
"We also needed the time to improve some areas where we've
fallen off because we haven't been decent guarding people and we
don't score enough to outscore people."
The top five teams in the Big East are almost assured NCAA
tournament bids. Villanova and Notre Dame are high among those
considered bubble teams.
"This is the most wide open it's been," Syracuse coach Jim
Boeheim said. "The last couple of years Connecticut was the most
dominate team going in and they proved that. The top couple of
seeds have won this tournament a lot. But, in my mind, there are
five, six teams that could legitimately win it." | |
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