No Easy Road - 1 more from the NH Register

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

Posted on Fri, Jan 25, 2008 

No easy road in Big East 
By David Borges, Register Staff 


Leave it to the ever-colorful Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez to best crystallize the difficulty Big East teams have faced this season winning conference road games.

While fretting about the possibility of fans "screaming at me in Italian" and "throwing food at me from Federal Hill" prior to the Pirates' visit to the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, R.I., Thursday night, Gonzalez listed several reasons why Big East teams were just 13-36 on the road in league play.

"I think, No. 1, because you've got 16 schools geographically spread out, you're traveling from South Florida to South Bend, Ind.," he said. "No. 2, you've got great coaches that prepare their teams well. Plus, everybody in college basketball is good at home. I hear very little about bad home teams. You shoot the ball better at home. And, road games are so difficult that coaches know the home games are monumental. You've got to protect homecourt."

Entering Thursday night's action, seven Big East teams were still searching for their first conference road win. Georgetown, Pittsburgh, UConn and Louisville had each won twice away from their respective home floors.

"The best teams in the league win on the road," Gonzalez explained. "If you're the best teams in this league, you're one of the best teams in the country. So you've got to be one of the best teams in America to win on the road. And I don't mean win one game, I mean winning two out of three (over a three-game stretch)."

There was a break from the norm on Wednesday night, however, when three teams — Louisville (at South Florida), Pittsburgh (at St. John's) and UConn (at Cincinnati) all won on the road.

"(Wednesday) night might have been the beginning of the conference season, when you look at the wins on the road," said Marquette coach Tom Crean.

Strong in Sagarin

The Big East has 10 teams in the top 56 in this week's Sagarin Rankings. They are: Georgetown (No. 9), Pittsburgh (11), Marquette (14), West Virginia (17), Notre Dame (29), UConn (30), Louisville (34), Providence (42), Syracuse (55) and Villanova (56).

Real funny

Some juvenile prank callers sabotaged the weekly Big East media conference call Thursday morning. Every few calls, someone identifying themselves as a writer for a paper (some real, some fictional) asked coaches questions that would get big laughs in junior high school.

"I wish some people would get some lives," UConn coach Jim Calhoun remarked.

A similar incident happened on the Southeastern Conference women's basketball call Tuesday.



David Borges can be reached at dborges@nhregister.com.