Semifinals Edition
Following last night’s epic upsets and NCAA record-setting games, the Big East figures to be staged for an anticlimactic finale Friday and Saturday night. After 110 game minutes of hoops in the evening session left Syracuse and UConn jelly-legged and found the Huskies and Pitt Panthers bounced prematurely, it will be hard-pressed for the remaining teams to top the drama of a wild Thursday night. The final four comes down to a pair of teams seeking their first BET title and all looking to make big moves up NCAA bracketology come Sunday.
Can Louisville put an end to the upsets and make their first conference title game? Will the Orange overcome their 4-hour marathon to take down red hot West Virginia? Cardinal Empire previews the semifinals pairings.
#1 Louisville v. #4 Villanova (7PM EST, ESPN)
At least one side of the bracket has come through relatively unscathed. After DePaul shocked everyone by winning their first Big East game of the season Tuesday, the chalk has reigned supreme in the top half of the Big East tourney. But to do so, the Wildcats had to overcome a foul-plagued meeting with Marquette (42 total fouls, 66 free throws attempted) and dig deep after blowing a late 9-point lead Thursday. Dwayne Anderson made an uncontested lay-up at the buzzer, cutting behind MU’s Jerel McNeal for the game-winner after McNeal failed to convert a bucket with 21 seconds remaining that would have put the Eagles up three. Now Scottie Reynolds and company must prepare to face a Louisville team they nearly took down in similar fashion two months earlier, missing three point-blank attempts in the final seconds for a 61-60 regular season defeat. A relatively quiet night from Reynolds saw the Cards harass the junior point guard, allowing him just six field goal attempts and 11 total points in 33 minutes. And as goes Reynolds, usually so do the Wildcats. The Louisville pressure will be set to “Microwave” with Andre McGee and Preston Knowles once again doing their best to prevent Nova’s talented guards from getting into the paint or the charity stripe. If Samuels and Clark come anywhere near a repeat of their combined performance against Providence (46 points, 17 rebounds, 12 assists), the Cards should cruise into the championship game Saturday night. They won’t be as effective, but the Louisville bigs should play large enough to keep Dante Cunningham in typical first-half foul trouble and neutralize Nova’s inside-out threat.
Louisville 69, Villanova 63
#7 West Virginia, #6 Syracuse (9PM EST, ESPN)
How can these two teams possibly put together an encore resembling anything near what they accomplished in 6 ½ hours spanning Thursday night and Friday morning? After Devin Ebanks and the Mountaineers made far too easy work of what is assumed to be the nation’s #1 overall seed in the early session, Syracuse scratched, clawed, and persevered through six overtimes and multiple knockout punches to upend Connecticut in the longest DI basketball game in the shot-clock era. Now the Orange must return to MSG just 17 or so hours after they likely departed the locker room Friday morning, looking to knock off a very hot WVU squad for the chance to take home their sixth conference tourney title and third in the past 5 years. While the hot hands of Syracuse guard triumvirate (Flynn, Devendorf, Rautins) look almost impossible to stop at the moment, a combination of fatigue and the quickly maturing Ebanks may put West Virginia on top by night’s end. The talented product from nearby Long Island has come on strong down the stretch, averaging a Terrence Williams-like 13.3ppg, 11.6rpg, and 4.3apg in the team’s last seven. Syracuse knows what they are getting with established stars Da’Sean Butler and Alex Ruoff, but Bob Huggins’ secret weapon down low may prove once again the difference for the ‘Eers. With Flynn’s and Devendorf’s odometers likely to reach 130 game minutes in the past three days, the Orange just don’t appear to have enough gas for this one.
West Virginia 79, Syracuse 65
