Leading off and playing... oh wait, that's next month. Anyway, start with Dick Jerardi's weekend wrapup, which tells you about Villanova-Georgetown and Drexel-Creighton, among other things.
Villanova plays the early Big Monday game tonight at Marquette. I'm still completely convinced that the Wildcats are in the field of 65, but enough people aren't that the Daily News' Dana Pennett O'Neil asked around to see what the team thinks. The Inquirer's Shannon Ryan reports that "must-win" is "a don't-say term" on the Main Line, so Curtis Sumpter said something else.
Penn notched two impressive wins this weekend, over Columbia on Friday and Cornell on Saturday. A columnist was not asleep on press row and says the Quakers won with defense, which might also serve them well next month.
The Delco times declares this a "satisfying" season locally, even if it's not as spectacular as the last few have been.
Duquesne gets the New York Times treatment about their truly amazing season. It might well be the best story in all of college basketball this year, and maybe they'll start getting some more attention as March draws near.
After criticizing the refs in Texas Tech's loss at Oklahoma State earlier in the week, Bobby Knight asked that reporters "write up that that tonight the officiating was fantastic, unbelievable" in the Red Raiders' win over Colorado.
The top-ranked Duke women clinched the ACC regular season title and spoiled Maryland's senior night with a resounding 69-57 win in College Park yesterday. Elsewhere on the women's side, the Inquirer's Mel Greenberg takes a shot at filling out a field of 64.
Vanderbilt could be out $25,000 because the student section rushed the floor after the Commodores beat Florida. Which is no easy task in that gym, given that the court's elevated above some of the seats.
And finally, a Syracuse Post-Standard writer and blogger accuses Joe Lunardi of being biased towards Philly teams in putting Villanova in the field but not Syracuse. I will rebut this later.
