FanHouse Georgetown Basketball

The Big East Tournament gets underway Tuesday, and this year the Big East Tournament (BET) matches the construction of the conference -- oversized, a bit confusing and very clearly divided.

The Big East at this point has seven teams that are definitely going to the NCAA tournament and one team that lies way out on the fringe of the bubble. This year, the BET is all about teams trying to improve or maintain their projected seeding for the Big Dance.

Georgetown has missed every opportunity in February to claim a spot on the NCAA Tournament bubble after falling apart in January. Naturally, after all hope had apparently been lost, they pull out a big road upset over Villanova.

Georgetown turned the ball over 25 times. They shot 17 fewer free throws than Villanova and were outrebounded. Yet the Hoyas came away with the win.

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College basketball has gone past the halfway point of the conference season. Now every game takes on greater importance for the teams that are trying to make the NCAA Tournament. FanHouse will take a look at the teams that find somewhere between the NCAA or NIT.

Team: Georgetown Hoyas

Record: 14-12 (5-10 Big East)

Good Wins: Maryland (neutral site), Memphis, Syracuse, at UConn

Bad Losses: At Seton Hall, Cinci, at Cinci

Comments: The Hoyas climbed to eighth in the polls in early January. They had lost only once in the non-conference schedule. They opened Big East play by beating UConn in Hartford. At that point, the Hoyas were 12-1. The question was not if they were an NCAA team, but how silly the preseason prediction of Georgetown finishing 7th in the Big East. Talk about peaking too soon.

Up 16 with 8:12 remaining in the second half, it looked like Syracuse would coast to an easy victory in their Big East showdown with Georgetown. The Hoyas had other ideas though, as a flurry of points -- 15 in the last 2:12 of regulation -- sent it into overtime. But Johnny Flynn and Eric Devendorf combined for 14 of Syracuse's 15 points in the extra five minutes, and the Orange hung on for a 98-94 victory.

Flynn got off to a quiet start, and was actually held scoreless for the first 16:27 of the first half. But that was soon forgotten, as he started getting to the rim, and very frequently getting to the line; he made 15 of 16 free throws on the afternoon. Flynn scored six of his 25 points in OT, including two FTs that essentially sealed it for the Orange with four seconds left.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics as soon as the polls come out.

Headlining: It's obvious, right? Duke tops both polls for the first time since the end of the 2005-06 regular season and we're all depressed ecstatic! I want to say that it's hard to like this Blue Devil team, but when is it easy to like Duke? (Answer: When you're a Duke fan. Or when the Blue Devils are playing Carolina.) That being said, the 2008-09 incarnation isn't nearly as hate-able as previous teams.

For the better part of three seasons, Notre Dame's ability to handle business at home was less a statistical trend and more a law of physics.

The Irish would rack up a score higher than a Saturday golfer at Augusta, mix in a pinch of defense and march on to the next game.

Expecting otherwise would be like biting into a popsicle only to scald your tongue. It simply didn't make sense. Forty-five times in a row it worked to perfection.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics as soon as the polls come out.

It shouldn't come as a tremendous surprise that the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, the nation's only remaining undefeated team, are the consensus number one team in the nation. Oh wait, what's that? They're not the consensus team? Interesting.

They are close though -- Duke garnered four AP first place votes and six votes in the coaches poll to lock up the second overall ranking in both polls, while Connecticut and Pittsburgh rounded out the top four. Perhaps Coach K's media scathing resonated with more than just the News & Observer.

This is, the first time that Wake has been No. 1 since Chris Paul graced the hardwood of Lawrence Joel, but it's an interesting change because this is a completely different Deacon team, and one that's dominated by a youthful demeanor.

Despite Georgetown outshooting Duke from the floor (in terms of percentages anyway), Duke's defense managed to stifle the Hoyas just enough for Gerald Henderson's 23 points and Kyle Singler's double-double to be the difference in a top-15, Saturday afternoon matchup that resulted in a 76-67 Blue Devil win.

The box score doesn't necessarily indicate that Duke's defense was draped all over the Hoyas, but if you watched the game, you realize they were; particularly late in the first half -- and early in the second -- where Georgetown failed to score for over 8.5 minutes at one point.

A run by Georgetown brought them back within striking distance, but a pivotal technical foul on freshman Greg Monroe -- a highly contested recruit whose decision came down to spurning Mike Krzyzewski for the Hoyas -- gave Duke enough momentum to surge back to a large lead and finish off the game.

Georgetown freshman Greg Monroe couldn't have been more of a Duke guy if he'd been born with a birthmark shaped like the Blue Devil and given the middle name Krzyzewski.

He's pocket-protector smart, graduating with a 3.75 GPA from Louisiana's Helen Cox High School, so composed you could yell fire in a theater and he'd tell you to get of the way of the Paul Blart trailer, and grew up among that percentage of the population dwindling faster than an analog television set, those who like Duke basketball.

Heck, the guy probably helps old ladies to their seat during television breaks.

After a 16-1 start for the Orange, there was a spreading meme that Syracuse had improved a lot on defense. While the Orange have been better defensively than they have for the past couple years, they are still not a patient defensive team. They looked very good in the non-conference slate with excellent wins over Florida, Kansas and Memphis. Then they started 4-0 in the Big East. What might have been missed is that they did it against Seton Hall, South Florida , DePaul and Rutgers. The teams at the very bottom of the Big East.

Georgetown also started strong in the non-conference schedule and came out in the Big East schedule with the huge road win over UConn. Then they got hammered by Pitt and beaten by Notre Dame. They didn't look bad, but they definitely looked young and inconsistent. They found the consistency against Syracuse Wednesday, as they pounded the Orange 88-74.