Louisville Wins 2012 Big East Tournament Championship

Louisville and Cincinnati met in the Big East Tournament final for a title bout. Instead, the two dog-tired teams played a game that was short on style points and long on satisfaction for the Cardinals, who prevailed in a 50-44 contest.

The game was the lowest-scoring Big East Tournament final ever.

He’s probably demonstrating a point to his bench or yelling at someone in the GIF below the jump, but I like to think of it as an interpretive dance. Or better yet, he is actually demonstrating a point to his players: How to properly call a player out on strikes. Basketball and baseball collide!

Steeeeerike three. Not sure which player he’s calling out here, but his form needs work.

2012 will be the last year of the Big East Tournament in its current format, thanks to a slew of changes to the college athletics landscape driven by football. It’s sadly fitting, then, that the Big East Tournament final has looked more like a Big East football game, and that Louisville leads by a football score, 24-14, over Cincinnati at the half.

For more on the two teams, head over to Cincinnati Bearcats blog Down The Drive and Louisville Cardinals blog Card Chronicle. For more on the entire tournament, head over to Big East Coast Bias and keep it on our Big East Tournament StoryStream.

For the first time since the inception of the conference, the Big East Tournament championship game will take place without at least one of the league’s founding members being involved. That doesn’t mean the two participants aren’t familiar with one another.

No team has played Louisville more times than Cincinnati, a series that dates all the way back to 1911. The Cardinals and Bearcats have traveled through several conferences together and squared off 95 times, with U of L currently holding a 53-42 advantage.

Cincinnati has been excellent in their last two games, winning close contests against Georgetown and likely No. 1 seed Syracuse. They have already improved their NCAA Tournament seed by a couple of lines with those two victories, but they’ll rise even further if they can win the tournament title. Louisville has been inconsistent this year, but they’re getting hot at the right time. They have three wins against quality teams in this tournament already as they had to go through Seton Hall, Marquette and Notre Dame to get here.

Game Date/Time: Saturday, March 10, 9:00 p.m. ET

Notre Dame shot 25 percent from the floor in the first half and did well in the second half to push their overall field goal percentage to 35 percent. They were a terrible 2-17 from behind the arc. Meanwhile, Louisville shot 56 percent from the floor and created high-percentage shots throughout the game.

Louisville moves on to face Cincinnati in the Big East final, where the winner will likely get a massive boost in seeding for the NCAA Tournament.

The Bearcats couldn’t have come out any hotter in this one, making eight of their first 10 three-point attempts, doubling up the Orange 34-17 more than 10 minutes into the game. Head coach Mick Cronin’s players picked apart the patented Syracuse zone with ruthless efficiency, moving the ball around the perimeter, hitting the open three-pointers and using the open spaces in the floor to knock down mid-range jumpers. They compiled 10 assists on their first 11 baskets, which helped them amass a 12 point lead at halftime.

The second half seemed like it was going to be a different story at first, as the Orange, fueled by what might as well have been a home crowd in Madison Square Garden, started to hit some shots and get stops, but they weren’t able to close the gap very much, as they were still down 10 with 10 minutes left in the game. Eventually though, the Orange’s shots started to fall.

SB Nation’s Dan Rubenstein took to the streets of New York during Big East Tournament week in hopes of receiving an education from the league’s fans.

The result was some enlightening bits of knowledge dropped by professors from Scalper State and the University of Crazy Hobo. Also, Dan can no longer visit Pittsburgh.

The Big East Tournament is down to four after Thursday’s quarterfinals chipped down the field once more. Three of the top four seeds survived to advance to the semifinals, but one team is notably missing despite playing its first game of the tournament on Thursday.

Marquette is the missing team after its loss to Louisville. The Cardinals seem to be peaking at the right time, and are now just two wins away from the auto-bid. They’ll face Notre Dame on Friday night after the Irish won an incredibly ugly game over South Florida that we should probably erase from all our memories.

Notre Dame’s 57-53 win over USF in overtime was anything but pretty. But it got the Irish to their third consecutive Big East Tournament semifinal.

For more on the two teams, check out Notre Dame blog One Foot Down and USF blog Voodoo Five. For more on the 2012 Big East Tournament, visit Big East Coast Bias and SB Nation New York.

Marquette began to chip away at the lead in the second half despite foul trouble by Big East Player of the Year Jae Crowder and, well, pretty much everyone. Louisville was in the bonus with 12 minutes left in the game, making it even more difficult for Marquette to come back. The Golden Eagles brought the game to within four points, but couldn’t get any closer than that.

For more on these two teams, visit Louisville blog Card Chronicle, Marquette blog Anonymous Eagle, and Big East Coast Bias. For a complete bracket of the Big East tournament, click here.

Well, this didn’t take long. Just minutes after the first man hit the deck, probably because of the gigantic Big East logo, the decal claimed even more victims. And this time it was a two-for-one! Two players, one logo, one giant pileup at midcourt. It was like Friday afternoon on the 405.

I have no idea how this even happened, but it almost looked coordinated. A quick cut by the ballhandler coupled with two Louisville defenders trying to change directions combined for one superb GIF. It gets better after they go down as two other Louisville players have to hurdle their fallen comrades.

These conference tournament logos are just getting out of hand. For instance, the WCC shrunk its logo earlier this week after it took up basically every inch of space between both three-point lines. These logos are slippery and potentially dangerous!

Yesterday it was UConn’s Shabazz Napier, and today, unfortunately, the Big East Tournament logo claimed its second victim. Watch as a Marquette player trips all over himself and hits the deck.

Whatever the message was, Dieng thought it was funny. Unfortunately for Dieng, television cameras were zoomed in on as he reacted to Pitino’s talk. He tried to hide his laugh as Pitino walked away, even attempting to bury his face in his shirt, but it just didn’t work.

First, a photo.

It’s been an infamously up-and-down season for Gates, who was suspended for five games earlier in the year for his role in Cincinnati’s on-court brawl with rival Xavier. Thursday was likely the high point of Gates’ year, as he scored a season- and game-high 23 points on 10-of-19 shooting.

For more on this game, be sure to check out Down the Drive (Cincinnati) and Casual Hoya (Georgetown).

For more on the two teams, check out Connecticut Huskies blog The UConn Blog and Syracuse Orange blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician. For more on the Big East tournament, visit Big East Coast Bias and SB Nation New York.

Georgetown will look to avenge that early-season loss on Thursday afternoon when they tip-off with the Bearcats in the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament. The game is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. ET, barring an overtime game between Connecticut and Syracuse, and can be watched on ESPN.

The winner of Thursday’s game will play the winner of the Syracuse-Connecticut game in the semifinals on Friday.

Connecticut made a miraculous run through the Big East tourney last season on its way to the NCAA title and is hoping for deja vu all over again this year. A big step in making that happen will take place Thursday when it tips-off against the Orange at noon on ESPN.

The Huskies showed resilience in overtaking West Virginia in overtime on Wednesday, but the Orange represent a more difficult task. On their way to earning the top seed in the Big East and a No. 2 ranking in the country, Syracuse swept the season series -- though they barely escaped Storrs, Conn., with a 71-69 victory on Feb. 25.

The quarterfinals of the 2012 Big East Tournament begin Thursday afternoon, and that means it is finally time for the top four seeds of the tournament to step onto the court at Madison Square Garden. After receiving double-byes, these teams should be fresh and ready to go.

Below is a complete schedule for Day 3 of the Big East Tournament, as well as an updated bracket:

The Wildcats entered Wednesday averaging 71 points per game, which ranked fifth in the Big East. The Bulls’ defense limited Villanova to just 17 first-half points as the Wildcats were ice cold from the floor all night, shooting just 17-of-51 from the field, and three-of-16 from beyond the arc, in the loss.

For complete coverage of the 2012 Big East Tournament, stay tuned to this StoryStream or visit SB Nation’s dedicated NCAA basketball hub. For more on all the teams in the Big East tournament, visit Big East Coast Bias and SB Nation New York. For news and info on the Villanova Wildcats, head to The Nova Blog. For updates on the South Florida Bulls, check out Voodoo Five.

The Cardinals limited the Pirates to just 17-of-52 shooting from the field, including three-of-19 from beyond the arc. Louisville head coach Rick Pitino praised the effort of his defense after the game.

“I’m proud of our guys,” Pitino told ESPN’s Beth Mowins. “They’ve played awesome defense the whole year. We’re a work in progress offensively, but we did a lot of good things going inside to out down the stretch.”

Siva came up with a steal and found himself alone on a break. His dunk was actually pretty standard -- a two-handed jam -- but it was enough to breathe some excitement into the game.

You’ll want to see the GIF of Siva’s dunk, but more importantly, you’ll want to watch the reaction of his father.

For complete coverage of the 2012 Big East Tournament, stay tuned to this StoryStream or visit SB Nation’s dedicated NCAA basketball hub. For more on all the teams in the Big East tournament, visit Big East Coast Bias and SB Nation New York.

For more on this game, be sure to check out The UConn Blog and The Smoking Musket. For complete coverage of the 2012 Big East Tournament, stay tuned to this StoryStream or visit SB Nation’s dedicated NCAA basketball hub.

A day after finding out that he had not been named Big East Player of the Year, West Virginia’s Kevin Jones is apparently out to prove the league’s voters wrong.

Jones leads all scorers with 13 points and has his eighth-seeded Mountaineers in front of No. 9 Connecticut by a score of 30-26 at halftime.