Vinny Pezzimenti Moment -- Week 15

The Wildcats broke out of their slump this week with two wins over Top 50 RPI opponents. The 'Cats rolled the Moutaineers on Wednesday night, and then jumped out early and hung on against a streaking Connecticut team on Saturday. The Nova Nation buzzed with NCAA talk, all but silenced by the 5 game losing streak earlier. Will the talk continue through the end of the season and BET? That depends on this week, as Nova faces Marquette in their third and last game of this homestand tonight, and then take to the road to face Louisville on Sunday...

My Big East Blogger Poll for this week:

1 - Louisville
2 - Georgetown
3 - Notre Dame
4 - Connecticut
5 - Marquette
6 - Pittsburgh
7 - West Virginia
8 - Cincinnati
9 - Villanova
10 - Syracuse
11 - Seton Hall
12 - DePaul
13 - Providence
14 - St. John's
15 - South Florida
16 - Rutgers

Who's Up...Who's Down...
Georgetown, Louisville and Notre Dame kept on rolling this week. Those top three had a combined 6-0 (453-391) against their Big East competition this week. Of the top four from last week only Connecticut stumbled (the Huskies lost a squeaker at Villanova). I switched the Irish and the Huskies. I left the next quartile much as it was last week. Marquette pounded two teams from the bottom of the conference while Pittsburgh, West Virginia and Cincinnati each went 1-1. Was Cincinnati's 20 point loss at Georgetown "better" than West Virginia's 22 point loss at Villanova? Maybe, but with their conference records knotted at 8-6, the Mountaineers have an advantage with a better overall record (18-8 versus 13-13), and have a better Pythagorean Winning percentage, both overall and in conference play (the Pythagorean percentage in conference play is 0.677 versus 0.479). In the next quartile I had Villanova and Syracuse swap spots. The Orange lost 2 games even as the Wildcats won two. I also swapped the next 2, Seton Hall and DePaul. The Pirates stopped their 5 game slide against...the Blue Demons. The bottom four continue to struggle, but Providence remains "in contact" with DePaul.

This week's OWs...
Kyle McAlarney of Notre Dame is my POW. The previous post explains why. He posted some amazingly efficient numbers against Syracuse on Sunday. The ROW was a tougher call, as DaJuan Blair (Pittsburgh), Jeremy Hazell (Seton Hall) and Corey Stokes (Villanova) all posted scoring totals in the mid-to-high 30s over two games last week. I picked Stokes for 2 reasons
1. Villanova won both their games, while Pittsburgh (Blair) was 0-2 and Seton Hall (Hazell) went 1-1.
2. Blair and Hazell each had a very good game coupled with a very average effort. Stokes' two games were both very good efforts. He scored 16 points against the Mountaineers on Wednesday and came back Saturday to post 18 points against the Huskies. All three by the way, scored very efficiently. For Stokes the numbers were 1.31 (PPWS) and 64.6 (eFG%). Blair's 34 point efforts were coupled with 24 rebounds, which made him, in my opinion, a very strong alternative to Stokes.