College basketball

Picked last, USF ready for Big East

By GREG AUMAN
Published October 27, 2005

NEW YORK - USF basketball players Melvin Buckley and Solomon Jones took in the city for the first time Tuesday night, walking through Times Square and seeing scenes they'd only seen before in movies like Spider-Man.

Wednesday's preseason Big East media gathering at Madison Square Garden gave the Bulls representatives two major motivations: It made them want to earn a trip back to "The World's Most Famous Arena" for the league tournament in March, and more immediately, it made them want to get home to their teammates.

"We're so eager just to leave this place and get back to practice, get back on the court," Jones said. "There's an excitement to win something, to show them we're tough, that we'll play hard. That we're not just a bunch of losers."

Wednesday's event was the first time the Bulls could feel like part of their new basketball league. But Buckley and Jones saw the crowds of reporters huddled three-deep around Connecticut's Jim Calhoun and Louisville's Rick Pitino, compared with a scattered few reporters asking them questions. Again, more motivation to take back home to practice.

"The only way we're going to get respect is if we come in and we earn it," Buckley said.

TOP TO BOTTOM: The league's preseason coaches' poll was released, and as expected, USF was picked to finish last of 16 teams. The Bulls, picked to finish last in Conference USA last season, are eager to prove a new set of doubters wrong, and other league coaches said there's too much guesswork in preseason projections.

"To ask us to accurately predict, it's a crapshoot," Providence coach Tim Welsh said. "The league, every year I've been in it, has been competitive. If you take the team that's in last place in the middle of the season and you've got to go to their building, it's going to be a war. If you ask Villanova if they're going to like going to South Florida, they're going to tell you they expect a tough game."

Villanova edged Connecticut as the preseason favorite, getting nine first-place votes to the Huskies' seven. That's a bonus motivation for Calhoun, who shared the regular-season crown last season with Boston College, which is now in the ACC.

"(My seniors) have only won 80 games in the past three years," Calhoun said. "They do have some things going for them. ... I still believe we have a good enough team that you have to come through Storrs, Conn., ... to win the Big East championship."

STARTING ANEW: The league is deep enough that perennial power Cincinnati was picked to finish ninth, which could be attributed to the departure of coach Bob Huggins.

"That's human nature. We're all doom and gloom and the sky is falling," said interim coach Andy Kennedy, a Huggins assistant for four years. "Cincinnati basketball is (still) aggressive, competitive, playing extremely hard, being prepared. The only difference is when you see the guy standing up, it's a guy with approximately 550 fewer wins and approximately 500,000 fewer hair follicles. Everything else, I hope, is pretty similar."

Count Pitino among those who believe the Bearcats will finish higher than ninth.

"I think people probably are underrating Cincinnati, maybe because they lost a legendary coach," Pitino said. "Andy Kennedy is a terrific coach and they have four seniors. It would not surprise me to see them win this conference."

MORE HONORS: Syracuse senior guard Gerry McNamara and Connecticut sophomore forward Rudy Gay were named as the league's preseason co-players of the year by the coaches, and Syracuse guard Eric Devendorf was picked as preseason rookie of the year. The league's 10-player preseason all-conference team included three players from Villanova, guards Randy Foye and Allan Ray and forward Curtis Sumpter. Sumpter is out indefinitely after he aggravated a knee injury last week in practice. He'll have surgery Nov. 11. "Are they going to give us an asterisk?" coach Jay Wright said of his team's status as preseason favorite.

[Last modified October 27, 2005, 01:28:19]