I post it in its entirety because I know some of you are too lazy to click to read things, while others of you may not be able to see the link (not sure if its subscriber only).
Enjoy!
The Big Brutal Story
By Jack McCallum
It had been a rough week for Syracuse junior forward Paul Harris, one of many tough ones in the meat grinder known as the Big East Conference. He had played a mediocre game in a 102-85 loss to Villanova on Feb. 7 and a far-less-than-mediocre game in a 63-49 loss to the nation's No. 1 team, Connecticut, on Feb. 11, both on hostile courts.
One-on-one powwows during the week with his coach, Jim Boeheim, had not exactly lifted his spirits and certainly didn't take place at Harris's instigation. On perhaps a dozen occasions, on the court or in the locker room, Boeheim had gone after Harris for hanging his head after bad plays and, as the coach saw it, disregarding instructions.
One example: Boeheim thought that Harris had repeatedly -- and unwisely -- challenged UConn's 7' 3" center Hasheem Thabeet when the big man had space to make a block or change a shot. This went against a game plan that strictly admonished, You must get into his body in order to attack him. You have to take it through his face.
But now it was three o'clock last Saturday afternoon, and a 98-94 overtime win over Georgetown before 32,000 orange-wearing loyalists at the Carrier Dome was a few minutes old, and Harris was smiling. Sort of. "To be honest with you, having Coach Boeheim on me all the time is hard," said Harris, whose full-court inbounds pass to junior guard Eric Devendorf all but sealed the game with 18 seconds left in OT after the Orange had blown a 16-point lead in the final eight minutes of regulation. "It doesn't do any good debating with him, because you can't win. He gets me thinking too much about mistakes." Harris paused. "But I'm going to keep going because that's what you gotta do. This is the Big East, right?"
Copy that, as Jack Bauer says. The victory stopped an unnerving Syracuse skid -- six losses in the previous eight games, all to Big East opponents -- that showed how hard it is for a good but not great team to gain traction in a conference that offers precious few soft touches. Just ask Georgetown, the only team to have beaten UConn this season, until the Huskies fell on Feb. 16 against fourth-ranked Pitt. The Hoyas, who were once ranked as high as ninth in the country, were in 12th place in the Big East at week's end. Playing the nation's second-toughest schedule, they had lost eight of their last 11 conference games and, at 13-10 overall, will probably need to win at least five of their last six to get an NCAA bid. Georgetown is spinning in what Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun calls "the washer, a cycle of losing with seemingly no way out."
Over the last three weeks Notre Dame has gotten Maytagged too. Ranked as high as seventh six weeks ago, the Irish (11th- most-difficult schedule) lost six league games in a row, and chances are that its surprising 90-57 rout of then fifth-ranked Louisville last Thursday will not persuade the NCAA selection committee to award the Irish a tournament berth.
"Our bottom teams would be middle to top tier anywhere else in the country, including the ACC," says Pitt point guard Levance Fields, whose Panthers are ranked fourth behind UConn, Oklahoma and North Carolina in the latest AP poll. "Quality teams like Georgetown and Notre Dame are struggling because of how tough the league is."
Boeheim, now in his 33rd season as Syracuse's coach, agrees. "This is the best our conference has ever been," he says. The primary reason, Boeheim and others say, is experience. West Virginia's Joe Alexander and Syracuse's Donte Green were the only Big East players of note to bolt school early for the NBA last year, leaving behind such seasoned talents as UConn's Thabeet, Notre Dame's Luke Harangody and Marquette's Jerel McNeal.
Playing my-conference-is-better-than-your-conference is part of the charm of college hoops, particularly as Selection Sunday (March 15) draws nigh. The whir of propaganda machines on college campuses and in conference offices as always provides the background music around this time of year. But the Big East -- overloaded with talent, toughness, tenacity and, for that matter, teams (16, the most in the country) -- would seem to have a strong case for being the nation's best, which is all the more remarkable since it looked in danger of extinction five years ago when Boston College, Miami and Virginia Tech took flight to the ACC for the sake of football. As things stand, the Big East is a good bet to get eight teams into the NCAA tournament, as it did in setting a record last season. But that's still only half the conference; if the ACC gets seven (also a good bet), that's 58% of its 12-team league.
On the other hand, playing 18 conference games (schools elsewhere play 14 to 16) all but guarantees that even a good Big East team might have more losses at the end of the season than a comparable team in another league (though 24-2 UConn and 24-2 Pitt, who threw down on Monday night in Hartford, don't seem to recognize that).
But rather than just crunch the numbers, SI examined the Big East by spending a behind-the-scenes week with Syracuse as it ended a brutal run of games against elites UConn and Pitt; almost-elite Louisville and Villanova; and dangerous (though inconsistent) West Virginia, Notre Dame, Providence and Georgetown (twice!).
FEB. 7, PHILADELPHIA
Big crowds, big cities
Sophomore point guard Jonny Flynn bops onto the Syracuse bus outside the team's hotel in Philadelphia for the trip to the Wachovia Center and bumps fists with all aboard. Earlier he had rhapsodized to a reporter about his Big East bona fides.
"I been hearing about the big, bad Big East my whole life," says Flynn, who comes from Niagara Falls. "My pops [Reverend William Flynn] used to go on and on about it. Chris Mullin. Patrick Ewing. Derrick Coleman. I got it from a young age."
Flynn, a Niagara Falls High teammate of Harris's, remembers the first time he came to the Carrier Dome in Syracuse on a rec-league trip. "Seeing that many people in one place," he says, "is something that never left me. Coming to school here was a no-brainer."
It's hard to overestimate the effect that Syracuse's domed facility (capacity of 49,000, which essentially translates to endless for basketball) had on the growth of the Big East after it opened in 1980. Architecturally a white elephant to some, it had one overarching factor in its favor: Recruits loved the idea of routinely performing in front of 30,000 sets of eyes. Couple that with a season-ending appearance at Madison Square Garden, where the conference tournament has been held since '83, and the combination can be irresistible. "No matter what kind of year you've had," says Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who is retiring at the end of the season, "you get the chance to redeem yourself in New York City in prime time. Recruits love that."
The problem for Syracuse on this day, however, lies in Philadelphia, where the 21,000-seat Wachovia Center is filled to capacity. Boeheim warns that Villanova is undersized but scrappy, qualities that become evident from the tip-off. Syracuse, particularly shooting guard Devendorf (seven turnovers), can't handle the Wildcats' relentlessly aggressive trapping and ball hawking, and loses 102-85.
Afterward Boeheim is asked whether he was surprised by the number of fouls -- 29 on Villanova and 24 on the 'Cuse. "No," says Boeheim, "I was more surprised by the 25 that weren't called."
FEB. 9, SYRACUSE
Hard play, no whining allowed
Sarcasm aside -- and Boeheim does sarcasm as well as anyone -- his team's inability to match Villanova's physical play is a major concern for the coach, particularly with top-ranked UConn looming two days hence. The league has always had a tough, urban edge to it, man-to-man being the defense of choice, Syracuse's 2-3 zone notwithstanding. "Most kids want to play a physical style," says Boeheim, "and if they don't, they think they do."
Boeheim detects a lackadaisical bent to practice at the Dome on this Monday afternoon. With Thabeet in mind, the coach comes down hard on Harris for flipping up a layup rather than going strong. "The big guy blocked 10 last year," Boeheim shouts. "You want him to get 12 on Wednesday?" (Actually, Thabeet blocked seven shots in UConn's 63-61 win last February.) Then the coach turns his attention to Flynn. "When you put your hand under the ball, that is a carry," he says after his sophomore leader is called for traveling, a rarity in practice. "Do you want to learn or not?"
Later, Boeheim gathers his players and lectures them about their propensity for making excuses and pointing fingers. "The only way to get through this is together," he says. "This is too tough a league to do it as individuals." To a man, the Orange players insist that they will stay together. Besides, says guard Andy Rautins (whose father, Leo, starred for Boeheim in the early 1980s), this tough stretch of games is exactly "what we signed on for when we came to the Big East."
FEB. 11, STORRS, CONN.
Colorful coaches... with a few concerns
Four hours before tip-off, Jim Calhoun relaxes courtside and declares that he's feeling "better than ever." That's saying something, considering that seven months ago the UConn coach was finishing a six-week course of almost daily radiation treatments after doctors removed 36 lymph nodes, initially feared to be malignant, from his neck. His taste buds were dulled and he lost 24 pounds. "As a diet, I don't recommend it," he says, "but I like the end result." He has been pronounced cancer-free.
The Big East rose, in part, through the entertainment value provided by an array of coaching characters in the '80s, originals who, instead of the magisterial gravitas of a Dean Smith or a Mike Krzyzewski, exhibited a streetball intensity that hammered home the blue-collar ethos of the league. There was Boeheim, bookishly bespectacled but prickly and competitive; Georgetown's John Thompson, towel over shoulder, scowling and mysterious; Villanova's Rollie Massimino, roundish and fun-loving but able to go volcanic in an instant; St. John's Lou Carnesecca, impishly lovable but ready to steal your shoes if you turned your head.
Calhoun -- tall, formidable, challenge ever-present in his tough-guy, Braintree, Mass., stare -- fit right in when he joined this colorful group in 1986. Within a couple of seasons he had lifted the Huskies into that magic circle of Big East perennials. During his tenure, Boeheim has kept the 'Cuse there. Relative newcomers Mike Brey (Notre Dame), Jamie Dixon (Pitt), John Thompson III (Georgetown) and Jay Wright (Villanova) have lifted their programs to a similar level. The bench presence of Rick Pitino, competitive and dapper as ever, will almost certainly assure that Louisville, now in its fourth year of Big East play, is annually near the top of the heap. And look for West Virginia to get better under Bob Huggins, now in his second season in Morgantown.
"Part of the whole thing about the Big East is the coaches," says Syracuse's Flynn. "You really know those guys."
So there is Calhoun, 66, two NCAA titles and three bouts with cancer (prostate in 2003 and skin in '06) behind him, feisty and ready to go, pronouncing this season's team as one of his alltime favorites. "It's a blessing to coach these guys," he says.
Still, there are worries. After the football defections, the Big East restocked but ended up with some geographically quizzical matchups (anyone think Marquette-South Florida screams Big East?) and an unwieldy conference tournament that this season features a double bye for its top four teams. "I don't even like one bye," says Calhoun, "so you can imagine what I think about two." He also feels for the bottom-feeders in a 16-team conference. "You can do a great job of getting better," Calhoun says, "but look at how many really good teams you have to pass to get near the top."
The top is where Connecticut is, though, and on this night the Orange is no match. In the Huskies' 63-49 victory Boeheim's players don't take the ball through Thabeet's face; instead he sends it back in theirs. The center finishes with seven blocks and 16 rebounds, guard A.J. Price has 17 points and the sharpshooting that the Orange needs is not there -- Flynn, Devendorf and Rautins are a combined 13 of 35 from the field.
Syracuse is now 18-7 and skidding fast, and Boeheim decides that it's time to "talk big picture for a minute" as he addresses his team in a graveyardlike locker room after the game. "We're 6-6 in the league. We'd all like to be better. But our whole purpose this year is... what? Paul?"
"Get to the NCAA tournament," mumbles Harris.
"Right," says Boeheim. "The important thing is to get in. We have six games left. We can't give one away. And it starts Saturday. Georgetown is good, no matter how much trouble they've had lately. But if we play well, we will beat them. O.K.?"
Heads nod. Hands come together. Voices raise. But there is a sense of uncertainty in the room as everyone prepares for a 70-minute flight back to Syracuse that will seem like an eternity.
FEB. 14, SYRACUSE
The league that TV built
Tip-off on ESPN is noon, one of 10 starting times for Syracuse this season, which is not atypical. "The league is TV-oriented or TV-mandated," says Pitt coach Dixon, "whatever you want to call it." Either will do.
In 2006, Tranghese struck a six-year deal that puts every Big East game on television, either on CBS or one of the ESPN outlets, resulting in a schedule that is, well, squirrelly. "Because of TV, we play on so many different nights of the week that it's hard to keep track," says Dixon. "We had a stretch of one game in seven days, then four games in nine days." Syracuse played four games from Jan. 10 to Jan. 19 but will have eight days off after today. Calhoun, whose teams had four games from Jan. 15 to Jan. 24, isn't exactly complaining -- after all, who can complain about too much TV, since TV brings in the recruits -- but he does wonder if the combination of the tough league, the schedule and the seams-bursting conference tournament might have the Big East "eating its young."
At any rate, Syracuse looks ready for a minivacation as it bumbles its way into overtime against Georgetown by surrendering 30 points over the final 6:30. But in the extra session two momentum-changing three-pointers by Devendorf, superb point guard play by Flynn (six points, two assists, one rebound) and the Boeheim-designed out-of-bounds play that gets Devendorf a layup combine to turn the tide.
"I'm getting too old for this," the 64-year-old Boeheim says as his team jubilantly gathers around him after the game. He wants to acknowledge the game's importance in the run-up to the NCAA tournament but stops short. "I'll tell you what. This is the game that... well, all we really know is that it gets us going again and probably knocks them out." In truth, Syracuse's 19th win all but locks up a bid.
The coach stays positive for a minute or two but, being Boeheim, just can't keep himself from turning gloomy. "If we would've blown this game," he says, "it would've been the worst loss in the history of Syracuse basketball."
A chorus of groans follows. "No, seriously," he continues. "Are you kidding me? A 16-point lead at home. It would...."
In the back of the room, Flynn stands up. "Hold it, Coach. We've heard it all before," the point guard says, waving his arms. He raises his hands to bring the team together, leaving a smiling Boeheim shrugging his shoulders and effectively ending the lecture. Man, how Harris would've liked to have done the same thing a few times during the week.
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