FanHouse Big East Basketball

Tonight is the opening night for college basketball. Defending champion North Carolina tips off at 7PMtonight on ESPN, followed by Syracuse. Plus teams like California and Ohio State start their season as part of one of the "Coaches vs. Cancer" Tournaments. All with little hype despite being on one of the ESPN family of networks.

So, the quiet start kicks off what has become the annual lament among college basketball writers. There are no festivities. There is no "celebration." There is no coordination. There is only a quiet and disjointed start to college basketball.

The reasons are familiar. Both external and internal. Pro and college football are dominating most of the market. The NBA and NHL have been underway for a few weeks, as well. Plus the NCAA and basketball programs do themselves no favors with teams no organized start to the season. Teams kicking off their season with no rhyme or reason (other than planning around on-campus football games). College basketball just gets lost in the shuffle.

There could have been bigger upsets Tuesday night. Mike Bloomberg could have lost the New York mayor's job to Stephon Marbury. Or "The Jay Leno Show" could have won its time slot.

If you were caught up watching those returns, you may have missed the biggest upset in the history of mankind, or at least New York.

Move over, Joe Willie. Step aside, Miracle on Ice.

Give it up for Le Moyne!

Le Who?

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NEW YORK -- Last season, Pittsburgh made the NCAA tournament's Elite Eight. This year, the Panthers aren't even picked to finish in the top eight of the Big East Conference.

Such are the occupational hazards of playing in the biggest and baddest basketball league in the land.

"You can go from first to 10th in this league in one season," Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin told FanHouse. "Pittsburgh went to the Elite Eight last year and they're picked to finish ninth in the league this year.

"Not only is it hard to climb in this league, it's just as easy to fall."

There are days that make you question why you put up with the things you do as a fan. For Syracuse fans, Tuesday was that day. The continuing fallout from the football team's best player abruptly quitting (ahead of an apparent second suspension) has been tough enough.

Now the basketball team drops an exhibition game to a Division II school, 82-79. This was not just losing to a D-II program, like Michigan State and Ohio State both did two years ago. That's embarrassing enough. This was losing to the Le Moyne Dolphins, a D-II school located right in Syracuse. It really doesn't get any more humiliating than that. Bragging rights in town for the year.

NEW YORK -- Whether it was Villanova's Final Four trip last season or his bench demeanor, Wildcats coach Jay Wright has made a big impression on a majority of the Big East players.

Wright was the top vote-getter in FanHouse's poll of the league's players asking which coach, other than their own, they would like to play for. Wright, who received 29.7 percent of the votes, edged Syracuse's Jim Boeheim, with 24.3 percent.

Two weeks ago at the Big East's media day, FanHouse polled 37 players representing all 16 schools that attended Madison Square Garden on a variety of subjects. The players were guaranteed anonymity for their responses with only one stipulation: they could not vote for their coach, a teammate or their school in any of the categories.

While the players voted for Wright as the coach they would like to play for, Seton Hall's Bobby Gonzalez (24.3 percent) edged UConn's Jim Calhoun (21.6 percent) as the "opposing coach that screams the most."

Part of the beauty of college basketball is that it isn't like college football. The top teams don't have to be afraid of playing a tough opponent; worried that risking a single loss would derail a season's worth of effort.

Instead, the best teams in college basketball want to cut their teeth on one another, learn from their shortcomings, shore up before spring, or build a resume for the NCAA committee by collecting wins against stiff competition.

The following is a list of the top five schedules in women's college basketball this season. These teams are going to do it the hard way. And you gotta admire that.

NEW YORK -- Despite recent revelations that Rick Pitino had an extramarital affair and then an alleged $10 million extortion attempt against him, the Louisville coach said those concerns have not been an issue with recruits.

"What you failed to realize in recruiting, it hasn't come up one time in one phone call," Pitino said. "Because you're [media] interested in it, because it's your job ... [but] the players and the recruits are not interested.

"All they're interested in are their futures, making their lives better for their families some day, becoming the best player they possibly can be and winning games. And that's really what they're tuned into."

I do not think anyone is quite sure what Louisville coach Rick Pitino hoped to accomplish with his rant press conference decrying the media coverage of his looming extortion trial and all the tawdry, salacious and crazy details.

If, as he claims in the press conference, it is an appeal to people to ignore any media reports and just wait until the trial so that all will be adjudicated, he failed. He all but guaranteed a new wave of talk, blogging, tweeting and ruminating about the matter on a national scale.

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Yes, I know, nothing but Rick Pitino news. If it isn't his attorney trying to split hairs about whether Pitino directly paid for an abortion, a Louisville campus right-to-life group unsurprisingly calling for his firing, or the lady with whom he had the affair giving a credibility-free interview to the New York Post, this has stayed at the top of the sports news cycle all week.

Primarily, the story has generated speculation. Lots and lots of speculation.

How is his reputation? How damaged is it? Can he really recruit effectively? (Brief pause. Of course he can. The kids Pitino recruits are blue-chippers looking to the NBA. Pitino's ties to the NBA and track record of sending kids to the pros was not damaged. That's why present recruits are sticking with their verbals.)

Every time news breaks, like the Rick Pitino imbroglio did Tuesday night, I always feel a little twinge of sympathy for the lawyer who ends up hurling a semantic argument into the whirlwind of 24-hour news coverage. These days news coverage has room for two opinions: you're right or you're wrong. The shades-of-gray approach doesn't sell.

But that doesn't mean lawyers don't try to split hairs. Think Bill Clinton asking what the meaning of is, is. Inevitably, these hair-splitting defenses blow up. Which brings me to this, according to his lawyer, Rick Pitino didn't pay for Karen Sypher's abortion. Heavens no. What he did was pay for an uninsured woman to get health coverage .... which she then, oh by the way, used to have an abortion. That's a great story except for one flaw, pregnancy is a preexisting condition. So adding health insurance doesn't cover an already existing pregnancy.

Oops.

Bad excuse. But not as bad as the 10 excuses for the $3,000 the legal team considered and rejected. Read on for those.