NEW YORK – The first round of the Big East Tournament is in the books, with two quick games on Tuesday night. One came right down to the end with overtime, the second saw the winning team pull away and in a game with much more scoring. Two full days of action are ahead, Providence and Cincinnati opening up Wednesday’s action at noon.
Some quick hitters from Tuesday night’s games:
- Seton Hall’s 46 points ties a Big East Tournament record for the fewest points by a winning team in a game. In 2003, Georgetown beat Villanova 46-41, but that wasn’t an overtime game like this one was.”A win is a win,” said Seton Hall forward Eugene Teague, who posted a double-double with 14 points on 6-7 shooting and 10 rebounds.
- Fuquan Edwin has struggled of late for Seton Hall, shooting below his season field goal percentage (44 percent) in six straight games including Tuesday’s, where he was 7-17 from the field. He was quiet for a lot of Tuesday’s game before he took over at the end of regulation and then overtime to finish with a game-high 17 points.”I couldn’t find my shot through the whole game,” Edwin said.
- Amazingly, South Florida point guard Anthony Collins had nine assists in a game where his team made 16 field goals and shot 24.2 percent from the field.
- South Florida head coach Stan Heath was dismayed at his team’s shot selection, notably the 26 three-pointers they took, including seven of their 11 shots in overtime. The Bulls averaged a little over 19 per game coming in and were making less than 32 percent of them.”We definitely took way too many three-point shots for the game but especially in overtime,” Heath said. “We’re not a great three-point shooting team, so I don’t know why we kind of went to that as our way to finish.”
- Rutgers pulled away from DePaul in the second half of the nightcap, breaking it open quickly and then responding when the Blue Demons tried to rally. The game was played within a seven-point window in the first half, but Rutgers quickly ran their largest lead past that in the second half.
- Early in Big East play, DePaul looked like they might be ready to make a leap in the Big East, especially when they nearly started off 2-0 with a close loss to Seton Hall and a win at Providence. But defense was a bugaboo throughout conference play, as Big East opponents shot over 50 percent from the field against them and out-rebounded them by over seven per game. This showed up again on Tuesday, as Rutgers shot over 61 percent from the field and out-rebounded them 36-20.”We just weren’t a good defensive rebounding team,” said Purnell, “so when we did stop a team, we gave them a second opportunity, and when we started getting second opportunities in the lane, the shooting percentage has a tendency to rise.”
- The other defensive problem for DePaul was an inability to force turnovers in Big East play. Their style is predicated on that, and Rutgers turned the ball over just four times in the second half after doing so 11 times in the first half. They force over 15 per game, but in Big East play that number dropped.
- Early in Big East play, one had reason to believe that DePaul might be a year away from doing something with the core they have. But after a 2-16 showing in conference play and a 19-point loss to Rutgers in the tournament, one might have to re-think that.”We’ve got a number of guys back,” said head coach Oliver Purnell. “We clearly can’t stand pat even though I felt like we were really close. Being really close and standing pat doesn’t work, I don’t think. So the first thing I told the guys was that we all need to look in the mirror and see what each individual could have done better, and that starts with me.”
- Rutgers really hurt DePaul with close baskets, posting a 50-28 edge in points in the paint.
