South Florida 57, Marquette 56? Seriously??

Incredible play by Dominique Jones to win it. Horrendous loss for Marquette. No way can you hang in the Best-Team-In-The-Conference conversation with Connecticut if you're going to go down to Tampa and lose to South Florida. UConn, in case nobody else has noticed, is a rabid steamroller right now. You think Jeff Adrien would tolerate a loss to South Florida at this point in the season?

Look, Marquette's having a great year, and surely you're allowed one bad loss. But who could have seen this coming? With 11:48 left, Jerel McNeal hit a three to tie it at 40-40, and I thought (actually said to my wife, who could care less), "Okay, here they go. This is what they did to Providence. They'll rain threes the rest of the way and win by 15."

But they didn't! They missed all their threes! They attempted seven threes the rest of the way and missed every single one of them. And as a result, they lost. Cracked Sidewalks has a brief, angry breakdown that keeps it as simple as it is -- Marquette lost this one because they couldn't hit their shots, even from the free throw line.

Good for Jones and South Florida, because everybody should get to win a big game every now and then. But for Marquette...yucko.

Saturday slate, as indicated in an earlier post, features the first of two big Villanova-Syracuse games as its highlight. I enjoyed chewing my way through the preview on Villanova by the Numbers.

We'll check in sometime Saturday, our mood of course dependent on the Hoyas' ability to get revenge against Cincinnati.