Big East Tourney, here we come. Be sure to check out Tony Francavilla’s great recap of Georgetown’s victory yesterday here.

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

Jesse Sapp had 16 points and Austin Freeman added 13 on Saturday against Cincinnati to put the Hoyas back on top of the Big East standings. ‘Nova took down UConn too, so if Pitt can manage a win over Louisville on Sunday, it’ll stay that way. (I wouldn’t count on it though—the game’s at Pitt, but the Panthers are coming off back-to-back loses to Marquette and Notre Dame.)

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

The goaltending call over WVU? Close, but the refs made the right decision. Wallace being fouled with 0.1 seconds left? Not at all close, and the refs made a horrible call. Still, there’s no such thing as a bad win, especially in a conference as tough as the Big East. Tony Francavilla has the story here.

The Hoyas next face off against Syracuse on Saturday.

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

Big news from the Big East tonight: Pitt’s Ronald Ramon, his team trailing the West Virginia Mountaineers by two, pulled a Sapp and hit the clutch three with seconds left to pull away for the one-point win. Final score: 55-54.

Sound familiar?

The game helps Pitt’s chances of making to the big dance come March and is WVU’s 3rd loss in its past four games. The moral of the story? Don’t talk smack about Roy.

Photo courtesy ESPN.com

If political pundits have taught us anything this primary cycle, it’s that we shouldn’t be listening to political pundits.  McCain, now the G.O.P. front-runner, was declared dead over the summer (his campaign, that is—he’s not that old), the press all but pronounced Hillary the Democratic nominee earlier this year, and the New Hampshire Democratic polls were about as wrong as wrong can be.

Fortunately, Mike Madden over at Salon.com has found one indicator that has been consistently spot-on: our very own Georgetown Hoyas.

As it happens, the Hoyas have been a near-perfect predictor of McCain’s fortunes this year. The last time Georgetown lost a game was the night before the Michigan primary, when Pitt beat them 69-60; the next day, Romney beat McCain. The day of the South Carolina primary, where McCain narrowly beat Mike Huckabee to avenge his 2000 loss to George W. Bush, the Hoyas crushed Notre Dame.

Madden wrote this before the Hoyas played last night and before the primary results came in, so he had a little prediction.

So who do the Hoyas play tonight? Big East bottom-dwellers South Florida. Playing in D.C., the Bulls are probably bigger underdogs than Romney is (though his loss to Huckabee in West Virginia, orchestrated by McCain strategists at the last minute, doesn’t bode well for him). If they can pull off the upset, surely Romney can, too. But if the Hoyas hang on to win, as expected, McCain might do the same. Tipoff is at 7:30 p.m. Eastern — just in time for the polls to close.

Prescient, Mr. Madden.

The system will really be put to the test on Saturday though, when the Hoyas play at Louisville and Kansas, Louisiana, and Washington all have their primaries.  Given their recent romps of Marquette and Rutgers, I imagine that Louisville is going to put up quite a fight.  But rest easy, Senator McCain.  No one can stop Big Roy.

Via The Van Buren Boys

So maybe the match-up last night between the best team and the worst team in the Big East should have been a blow-out. But, as JT III said at the press conference after the game, “I don’t know that there is a bad win.” Next up: Louisville on Saturday. That one’s going to be tough.

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

Despite committing 21 turnovers and shooting 43% from the field, Georgetown held on for the win on Saturday against the Seton Hall to extend their conference record to 8-1.

Photos by Nicole Bush, Staff Photographer

I couldn’t have asked for a better (or worse) performance from the cheerleading squad after the column I wrote in last week’s issue.

The comedy of errors began when the flag-bearer failed to unravel the flag before running out onto the court at the beginning of the game with fairly embarrassing consequences (given his past performances, at least he didn’t hit anybody with it).  It got worse during “Deal or No Deal” when one of the cheerleaders read the prize as “Two tickets to see the Harlem Glob-trotters,” to the horror and resounding boos of about 15,000.  To top it all off, the squad came out for its main routine (at a pivotal moment in the game with the Hoyas up four and in foul trouble) and stood looking very confused when the music would not play.  The fans happily bailed the cheerleaders out and instead of suffering through another sad performance we were treated to one of the more emphatic “We are Georgetown” chants of the night.

Is there a Voice reader working the sound system for the basketball games?