Bubble News: Big East Showdown Edition

Posted on February 8th, 2010 by jamiemac No Comments

Hungover from Super Bowl Sunday? Dreading the eventual withdrawals that will hit you like a ton of bricks as the slow realization of no football for months sets in? Well leave those fears behind and enter the college basketball world. We have five weeks to play before Selection Sunday. And the schedule makers have given us a great week for you to dive into the water with. Every night this week there’s a couple of matchups between teams in the thick of a league title race. With a slew of undercards for positioning on the ever fluid, hard to project bubble going along with them. But this week is for the bigtime showdowns instead as several league figure to see important swings in their races over the course of the next five nights. And, then Saturday and a full day of wall to wall buckets. Oh, and the first day of the Olympics. And, if you dont think we’ll be blogging the Vancouver Rain, er I mean, Winter Olympics, then you just dont know me. Right now, I’ve dispatched JCB Lars to the Norwegian speedskating camp to see if there’s any chink in their horse’s armor in advance of the 5,000 race this weekend. If we hear anything of value we’ll pass it on.

In the meantime, lets focus on the basketball courts the next couple of nights. This evening’s showdown includes the Big Monday battles Villanova at West Virginia and Kansas at Texas. We’ll discuss the Big East brawl now and the Big 12 game in a post later.

Villanova at West Virginia, 7:00, ESPN. Lines, WVA -4.5 O/U 150

The first question I have about the Big East showdown tonight is are there any sharp folks out there who have been riding Villanova and the Over in the Wildcats games this season? At 15-6 ATS, the Cats are also one the top five teams in the country in profit margin. But, there games have also rocked a 14-7 Over record for total players. Thats puts you in the good of 14.5 units if you’ve been playing along on both the way. If you’re the type to also parlay those outcomes together, you’d have 10 out of 21 wins, which is a damn strong parlay record. Putting a half unit of those bets, with the additional parlay payouts, you’d add another 8 Units to the pot. The profit this season rains with the phrase, Nova, Over and wrap them in a parlay. Can the trend hold my weight tonight? With the opposing Mountaineers a sad 9-12-1 ATS mark and a track record of winning, but not covering this season, it’s even more enticing considering when its all said and done you’re still betting on one of the best teams in the country. We had such a nice weekend, maybe we’ll throw our line out there tonight on that triumverate.

Hesitancy comes from wondering how much of Nova’s game was exposed just 48 hours ago when Georgetown really dismantled them from start to finish en route to 103 points. Top on that list was fouling and that’s trouble facing a West Virginia team thats attempted 30 free throws per game during their current six game winning streak. The WVA 2009 hoop rollercoaster dished more drama over the weekend in the win over St. John’s. After falling behind big going into intermission, the Mountaineers were still down 16 into the second half. But an explosive 35-point swing to close the game out gave WVA a 19-point win. That’s kind of been the ‘Neers calling card of late. Slow starts, but great closing speed. In their last 10 games, the ‘Neers have trailed at the half in five of them. In the five they did forge at halftime lead in, they took an average of under 7 points advantage into the lockerroom. Thats not a bad number, but its weighted severely by a pair of big double digit halftime leads over league lightweights Depaul and Rutgers. Perhaps noteworthy is the fact that in those same ten games, WVA has won nine second halves and tied the other. Avergage scoring margin of 12.7 points. Maybe we should play Nova in the first half and then pound whatever the second half line is in favor of West Virginia. Looks like we have a second strategy for tonight’s game. That’s what we’re here for. A full-fledged think tank.

Somethings got to give in this tempo free stat battle of stlyes. Villanova at over 71 possessions a game plays at the fastest pace of anyone in Big East games. At just under 64 possession of game, West Virginia plays at one of the league’s slowest paces. Whatever works. These teams are 1-2 in efficiency margin in conference games. It’s Villanova’s 2nd ranked nationally scoring offense versus West Virginia’s 35th ranked scoring defense. Pay close attention to the pace of this game for context clues on who may win the battle within those numbers when its all said and done.

The most interested third party tonight would be Jimmy Boeheim and the Syracuse Orangemen. A West Virginia win drops Nova a full game behind the first place Orange and into a tie for second with West Virginia. The Orange have the most manageable close to the season among the contenders, have beaten WVA in their only scheduled game of the year and host Nova in the Dome in on the final Saturday of the month. They would assume full command of the Big East driver’s seat if West Virginia holds serve with a win tonight at home.

Meanwhile elsewhere in the Big East standings a battle is shaping up for fourth place on the last double bye spot in the Big East Sectional next month in Madison Square Garden. Five teams are within a game of each other for the coveted spot on that bracket. As for the eventual March Madness tournament, the Big East bubble is shaping up to be as mean and tight as the race for the top spot in the league. Louisville, Marquette and Notre Dame are teams both on the bubble and part of the chase for the fourth spot in the Big East standings. Despite each being on opposite spots of the bubble from one another, if any of them emerge and grab that fourth spot, a tournament bid will almost certainly follow. The KenPom projection in this race is Marquette, who used its three-point arsenal to overcome a hot shooting Friar squad over the weekend.

Otherwise not much separates the Big East bubble teams that are hanging just in and just out of the Bracket Matrix field. And most of those teams have strengthened themselves over the course of the last week. Games involving these teams will prove as compelling as the games at the top of the standings. They are the regular season playoff games that you see in the final months of the professional hockey, football and basketball league.

The current, up-to-the-minute pecking order (it’s so fluid, it will have changed before the Nova/WVA tip off tonight. We’ll udpate this post accordingly as new mocks release their updates) reads as follows: Cincinnati, an 11-seed with 40 of 55 votes; Louisville, a 12-seed with 32 votes and then a lineup of UConn, USF and Marquette as the 1-2-3 teams last cut from the field with 17, 16 and 14 mock votes respectively. Seton Hall is also being nominated by 4 mocks, but have less than 10 percent of the vote. Notre Dame, despite being in the middle of the hunt for the coveted fourth place spot in the Big East, isnt on a single mock bracket. But, like I said above, if the Irish do win that chase and get the double bye in the BET they will have compiled a worthy enough record and will be in the field. So, dont fret about the bracketologists right now Irish fans, if your teams wins down the stretch, they’ll be there in the end. They would need to continue winning games at home, like the one they did yesterday where offensive efficiency in the clutch paved the win to gutty win over a surging USF squad. But they have to pluck out a couple road wins as well to finish as high as fourth. They have a great chance to get that chase off on the right foot Thursday with a challenging, yet winnable game at Seton Hall.

Beyond that, the immediate future of this pecking order will also be shaped by Syracuse as they host Louisville and UConn during over a five-day span beginning Wednesday night as bubble clubs try to upset the Orange and earn what would be the most impressive Big East win of any team so far in the league. Saturday’s clashes where Cincy travels to UConn and USF visits Marquette will be huge swing games even thought we’re still four weeks in advance of Selection Sunday.

Until those matches feast and enjoy tonight’s game between teams who would consider anything less than a Big East title and Final Four berth a disappointment.

Share this