I know it's the Big East, and I'm sure Jay Wright will tell us that this is the nature of the thing. But even if all the other teams around here are are just as prone to have games where they shoot 6-for-26 from three, that was a bad loss for Villanova last night.
After what Penn did at Miami, seeing the 84-76 final score from Chicagoland was the last thing I needed when I got off the plane late last night.
Granted, it's early, and if the Wildcats beat Pittsburgh on Sunday (which they should, given the Panthers' injuries), it wouldn't surprise me if they're still ranked in the AP poll come Monday. Then again, it wouldn't surprise me either if they aren't ranked.
And it's not like one game does too much damage to Villanova's NCAA Tournament hopes either, especially as it's only their second loss of the season. But it does increase the need to take care of business at home, and maybe grab an extra win or two somewhere along the way.
The Holy War would probably take care of that in terms of RPI (it's technically a road game), as would the trip to Syracuse on Jan. 19.
It certainly makes it imperative to win in Cincinnati a week from tomorrow. The Bearcats are bad, but did beat Louisville at home on New Year's Day.
By the way, there might just be some hope for those of you who will be going through the Philadelphia airport soon.
It took 18 minutes from the time I hit the bottom of the escalator that leads to the AirTran baggage claim to the time that my bag arrived, which isn't the best I've ever seen but is a far cry from the horror stories we hear about PHL -- and a really far cry from the 45 or so minutes it took to get my bag in Miami because the baggage handlers were in the middle of a shift change when my flight landed.
The only problem I ran into here was that an R1 train was pulling up just as my bag hit the conveyor belt. But I was able to run across the street to the platform just fast enough to beat the conductor by half a second.
I'm a terrible basketball player (I wouldn't even bother trying to get into the weekly Palestra media game), but I'll put last night down as one of the better fast break plays I've pulled off in quite a while.
