Andy Katz kicked off the coverage by telling us that in the eyes of Connecticut head coach Jim Calhoun, last year’s five wins in five days Big East championship was more meaningful to him than winning the national championship. If Calhoun’s words don’t seem plausible, then ask yourself this: Would Ohio St. head football coach Urban Meyer be chided for saying beating Michigan is more important than winning a national championship? Sometimes beating your rivals on the biggest stage is the most satisfying thing you can accomplish. How many kids in Philadelphia dream of winning a national title in a dome in San Antonio? Almost certainly there are more city kids whose dream is to step on the floor at Madison Square Garden and win the ultimate East Coast championship. Whether that dream will continue in the future remains to be seen, but for at least one more year, the Big East tournament remains the big stage.

DePaul vs Connecticut

- In case you’ve been living under a rock, at 8-10 in the Big East, Connecticut needs to win this game if they want to earn an at-large NCAA bid.

- Early in the game DePaul’s Royal Clahar wacked Alex Oriakhi in the nose. Oriakhi shoved him out of the way and earned a flagrant foul. After looking at the monitors, the officials decided Clahar’s face slap was innocent and only Oriakhi was punished.

- I thought the game was decided when the score was was 19-15. DePaul’s Jamee Crocket, who was on fire against Seton Hall, had a deep but open look from the top of the key. His three pointer rimmed off. DePaul’s best chance of an upset was if Crocket had another hot day shooting and when his shot was off, DePaul’s chance at an upset bid went from slim to none.

- Doris Burke asked a fair, but biting question about the job Oliver Purnell is doing at DePaul. “Is his system (full court pressure and high-pace) destined to fail in the Big East where there are so many great ball-handlers? Is DePaul simply becoming a repeat of Providence under Keno Davis, with no defense and great offense?” This is a tough call for me. I think what Keno Davis wanted to do and what Oliver Purnell is doing is about upgrading the overall level of talent. You can use a high-pace to help sell the program as a fun place to play. The problem for Keno Davis was that his best players kept leaving. If Oliver Purnell can upgrade the talent level at DePaul, I think he will be willing to play half-court basketball more often, and use pressure more selectively. But when you know you are over-matched in the half-court, why play that style?

- UConn started 7-for-7 from three-point range with Ryan Boatright hitting a corner three, and yet the lead was only in the single digits. Finally Andre Drummond blocked a shot out to center court which led to a Boatright lay-up and the lead was double digits.

- Just before halftime, Jeremy Lamb drove to the basket and went over 1000 points for his career. Lamb had 17 in the first half and 25 in the game.

-The lead ballooned to 63-40 before Connecticut got a little lazy, and you can’t play against DePaul’s pressure defense when you aren’t attacking. But the outcome was never really in doubt. Last year’s first round win was a little more impressive for Connecticut, but the important thing for the Huskies is that they advance to play another game.

- Of note in the final minutes, DePaul’s Krys Faber fouled Andre Drummond who was 0-4 from the line and shoots 31% on his free throws this season. But Faber wasn’t making a legitimate basketball play, (he just hugged Drummond under the basket), and so the strategy back-fired. Faber was called for a flagrant foul, and even though Drummond did miss both free throws, UConn got the ball back.

-Kemba Walker’s mom was in attendance and she remains the team’s good luck charm as Connecticut won 81-67.

St. John’s vs Pittsburgh

-Pittsburgh fans everywhere had to be extremely annoyed early in the game when Andy Katz had a four-minute interview with Steven Lavin. Lavin is certainly loquacious, so ESPN can’t get all the blame for the interview going long, but to ignore the action when the game was competitive early seemed like a bad decision by ESPN’s production team.

-At the end of the first half, a St. John’s player lost the ball and it hit the stantion, (the big arm the backboard hangs from). That should have meant the ball was out-of-bounds, but the officials missed it and Pitt was off on the fastbreak. I rarely blame officials for missing calls, but that seemed like a pretty hard thing to miss.

- As Pittsburgh began to pull away Doris Burke noted, “St. John’s essentially only has two players that can score, Moe Harkless and D’Angelo Harrison.” That’s a harsh assessment, but it really makes Harkless' production all the more impressive. Everyone knows Harkless is going to get the ball and he still scores.

- With Pittsburgh pulling away, the conversation turned to a discussion of the new early entry rules. Essentially players have to decide immediately after the draft whether to declare and that is really going to make for some tough decisions for players like Moe Harkless.

- I felt bad for God’sgift Achiuwa. He had a fabulous day grabbing offensive rebounds but he could not make a bucket to save his life. He missed a number of point blank shots and was 1-10 from the field. Pittsburgh prevailed 73-59.

Seton Hall vs Providence

- Many people believe Seton Hall needed to win this game and beat Louisville to have any shot at the NCAA tournament. Bilas put it this way in the pre-game, “Like most bubble teams, Seton Hall has proven that they can lose games.” 

- After losing to DePaul last weekend, here is how the Seton Hall blog South Orange Juice described Seton Hall’s NCAA chances. “D-E-A-D. Present me as many ridiculously absurd, unconventional Big East Tournament miracle scenarios that you can think of. Seriously, it will be COMICAL. After an 86-58 loss at DePaul on Saturday evening, the Pirates do not even deserve a berth to the BIG EAST TOURNAMENT.”

- And I am guessing the folks at South Orange Juice had some very uncomfortable moments early in this game. Seton Hall came out very tight, failing to score a point in the first 5 minutes of the game. But after falling behind 9-0, eventually the Pirates got hot and won by 32.

- Bad Pun Alert: When Patrick Auda picked up his 3rd foul in the first half, Bilas noted, “Is he Auda his mind doing that?”

- With Seton Hall up by 27 points in the second half, Andy Katz interviewed Rick Pitino. Unlike the Lavin interview, this was a much more appropriate time to distract from the action, and it provided a nice bit of comedy. According to Pitino, Seton Hall is now officially “in” the NCAA tournament, and they don’t need to win tommorrow’s game (against Louisville) to prove it. Pitino also noted that Ralph Willard (his former assistant and father of the Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard) had only smiled once the whole game despite the Pirates leading by 27. Seton Hall eventually prevailed 79-47.

Rutgers vs Villanova

- Sean McDonough started the game with a complaint about how the Round of 64 in the NCAA tournament is now called the Second Round and how he thinks that is misleading. “Now people read the record books and see a team lost in the Second Round and think they must have won a game in the tournament! It’s like when the NCAA got rid of Division 1AA because that was somehow viewed as inferior. People still don’t know what FBS and FCS stand for.”

- Late in the first half Rutgers took the lead and the ESPN scoreboard broke. The time and score disappeared. Rutgers took the lead by hitting 5-of-5 threes to end the first half, but the 34-30 halftime lead was short lived. Rutgers started the second half 2-for-20 from the floor and couldn’t mount a serious charge down the stretch.

- It would have been a blowout earlier if not for some mistakes by Villanova. At one point Mouphtaou Yarou stole a pass and Rutgers’ Kadeem Jack was called for the intentional foul in the full-court breakaway. But just when Villanova looked like it could blow the game open Yarou missed two free throws and Villanova failed to score on the ensuing possession. Even with Villanova’s own struggles, they eventually prevailed 70-49.

- In the second half Sean McDonough fit in one more random complaint, this time about how the Big East tournament is too big with 16 teams and how they will have to reconfigure things when there are 18 teams in the league. For the record, I think the Big East can have 18 teams, let everyone play, and still fit the tournament in 5 days. Assuming as when there were 13 teams, they can fit five games in a day, the bracket structure would look like this:

Day 1 – 9 vs 18, 13 vs 14, 12 vs 15, 10 vs 17, 11 vs 16

Day 2 – 8 vs 9/18, 4 vs 13/14, 5 vs 12/15, 7 vs 10/17, 6 vs 11/16,

Day 3 – 1 vs 8/9/18, 4/13/14 vs 5/12/15, 2 vs 7/10/17, 3 vs 6/11/16

I am in favor of inviting everyone to conference tournaments because it gives bad teams a reason to try to get better, and it makes the NCAA tournament a true bracket of 300, not a bracket of 68. But Tuesday at the Big East tournament was a bit dull. Of course, that’s the beauty of college basketball, quantity eventually leads to quality. The number of major conference teams in action is only going to increase over the next few days and the best is yet to come.