Cain works out of Leitao's doghouse
By Whitelaw Reid / Daily Progress staff writer
March 7, 2006

Jason Cain's trip to Siberia - a.k.a. Dave Leitao's doghouse - is apparently over.
The Virginia big man played a season-high 39 minutes against Maryland on Sunday. He had nine points and 11 rebounds.

The performance was an extremely good omen for Virginia, which plays Virginia Tech in the first round of the ACC Tournament on Thursday at 7 p.m.

"That's what we need in order to be successful," said Leitao, Virginia's coach, during his teleconference on Monday. "We can't rely - and sometimes we've had to - on just one or two guys."

In the first half of the loss at Clemson on Feb. 25, Cain was removed after a turnover against the Tigers' full-court pressure. As he walked to the bench, he appeared to have a disagreement with Virginia assistant coach Steve Seymour.

Cain, who had been averaging 28 minutes per game, wound up playing only nine against Clemson.

In the loss at North Carolina, he logged just six.

After the UNC game, Cain said he had no idea why his playing time had suddenly diminished. Leitao would only say that it was a "coach's decision."

Now, Cain and Leitao have some answers.

"I can't really blame anyone but myself for the playing time I was getting," Cain said. "I wasn't working hard, so I can't really knock anyone but myself. I wasn't working hard in practice."

Leitao said Cain's failure to follow assignments in the gameplan contributed to his riding the pine. It was his energy level that led to increased minutes against Maryland, according to Leitao.

"It was because he was a little bit more active, a lot more active, in and around the basket," Leitao said. "He came up with 11 rebounds, which is something we have not only come to expect, but need from him.

"There are some things he could have done better. I know he didn't finish around the basket as well as he would have liked - and as well we would have liked - but give credit to Maryland for their defensive pressure and shot blockers."

It's been a rollercoaster year for Cain.

The 6-foot-10 junior from Philadelphia came into the season with career averages of 2.2 points and 2.0 rebounds.

Initially, it seemed unlikely that he would be able to eclipse even those numbers. Cain couldn't beat out freshman Lauris Mikalauskas for a spot in the starting lineup.

In the first four games of the season, Cain had more fouls and turnovers (15) than points (14).

Cain was yelled at so intensely by Leitao - in the middle of games -that one couldn't help but feel bad for him.

In the season opener against Liberty, Cain turned the ball over, and then allowed an easy basket just before the end of the half when he failed to box out. Leitao chased after Cain and berated him as the teams headed into their locker rooms.

However, in Virginia's game at Georgia Tech - the teams' ACC opener on Dec. 4 - things started clicking for Cain. He notched his first career double-double, recording 15 points and 11 rebounds.

In the next game against Fordham, Cain had 16 points and 15 rebounds. He earned a spot in the starting lineup at Gonzaga, and has been there ever since - 21 straight games.

Cain, who finished seventh in the ACC in rebounding (7.9 rpg), was pretty consistent until Virginia's upset win over Boston College on Feb. 21. In that game, he had no points and six rebounds in 22 minutes before fouling out.

Then came Clemson and North Carolina - and Cain's trip to Siberia.

Cain, who is averaging 7.8 points this season, said he knows what he has to do to prevent a return trip.

"Keep working hard in practice," he said.

 

The NCAA's head bracketologist
Virginia athletic director Craig Littlepage returns to his coaching roots as chairman of the NCAA tournament selection committee.
BY DAVID TEEL
247-4636
March 8 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- The Indianapolis meeting adjourned, Craig Littlepage was free to return home to Virginia. Hang with the family; catch up at the office; just chill.

But no. Littlepage aimed his rental car east on I-70 toward Ohio and basketball bliss. First stop Bowling Green, 230 miles away, where the Falcons were hosting Northern Illinois; a few hours later, Littlepage zipped 25 miles up I-75 to Toledo for an evening game between the Rockets and Kent State.

That was January 2003, and Littlepage was a rookie on the NCAA tournament selection committee. Three years later, Littlepage chairs the 10-member panel convening tonight to begin deliberations that conclude with Sunday's unveiling of the 65-team field.

Now as then, Littlepage, the University of Virginia's athletic director, has attempted to make the committee more accessible, especially to the "mid-major" conferences. It's those leagues, the Colonial here in the East and the Mid-American in the heartland to name two, that feel jilted by the committee because most of the tournament's 34 at-large bids annually go to teams from major conferences such as the Big East and Littlepage's ACC.

Hence, Littlepage's Mid-American doubleheader in 2003 and dozens of appearances since. Why, the night before the ACC football championship game in Jacksonville, Fla., in December, Littlepage drove across town to watch two bad teams: Jacksonville and North Florida of the Atlantic Sun Conference.

Littlepage's appreciation for all levels of basketball comes from his background. He was a head coach in the Ivy League (Penn, his alma mater) and Atlantic 10 (Rutgers before it jumped to the Big East), and an assistant coach in the ACC (Virginia) and Big East (Villanova). He wants folks to know that tournament bids are doled out not by pinheads beholden to the big-money conferences and computerized Rating Percentage Index, but by basketball people who watch games, in-person and on television, with educated eyes.

"I like coaches. I've been a coach my entire life," Littlepage says. "I want to go out and see some of these teams and learn a little more about them and their program. ... The feedback I got as a result from just being there (was positive). I wasn't doing anything other than watching the games, sitting courtside, picking up stats and a media guide. But they were comforted in that we are not just relying on RPI and these quantitative measurements. ...

"Dave Odom at South Carolina, Tubby Smith at Kentucky, the coaches in our league: They don't need the same sort of love, if you will, because they're on TV 20 times a year. They know that the committee will be seeing them. It was the conferences that don't get the exposure, particularly the national exposure, that needed that sort of attention from my viewpoint."

Each committee member, except the chair, monitors three or four conferences. Among Littlepage's assignments during his first three years on the panel were the MAC and Colonial Athletic Association, and he asked the NCAA staff and his committee colleagues for permission to observe those leagues up close.

Permission granted.

"The good news is the coaches in those leagues really appreciated it," Littlepage says of his NCAA-financed travels. "The bad news is it set a standard that in some cases the other conferences that I wasn't covering (said), well, 'Littlepage is doing this with the Mid-American or the Colonial, am I gonna get the same props from my committee representative?'

"Unfortunately not every committee member, A, would have a comfort level in doing so, and B, would have the time to do it. I was just fortunate enough to have a great staff here. But it did build somewhat of an expectation that that's what all committee members should do. ... But there's not an expectation or requirement. You do what you feel is best under your circumstances. ... I'm not grandstanding. I'm not trying to pre-empt anybody. I enjoy doing this, and I'm trying to be thorough and I'm trying to do this to help our overall process."

Littlepage's junkets have not translated to additional at-large bids for mid-major conferences. Only once in the last 10 years, 1998, have such leagues combined for more than eight at-large bids.

But as Littlepage and the committee hunker down at the Indianapolis Westin Hotel this weekend, they survey a unique landscape. With three teams among the top 35 on the RPI, the Colonial Athletic Association is positioned to claim an at-large bid for the first time in 20 years; the Missouri Valley Conference could send a conference-record four, or more, teams to the tournament.

"I don't think it stops at Craig," CAA commissioner Tom Yeager says. "I think there's a very noticeable outreach" by the entire committee. "I think they all recognize the heavy responsibility membership on the committee entails."

This season Littlepage has wandered to games at venues such as Villanova, George Mason, Bowling Green and Charlotte. He pondered a whirlwind junket to Northern Iowa and Wichita State during BracketBusters weekend last month but opted to stay home, where he watched 21 games on television.

The NCAA provides satellite TV to panel members, and Littlepage's is connected in his basement. Other televisions are scattered throughout the house, ideal for TiVo-ing and taping games available on network and basic cable.

If Littlepage isn't watching a game, he's wearing out his cell phone, asking coaches for their impressions of potential tournament teams. He takes minimal notes, committing much of the coaches' input to memory.

"There's a buzz when he makes those calls," Missouri Valley commissioner Doug Elgin says. "I know when he calls one of our coaches, I hear about it."

Littlepage is the third U.Va. athletic director to chair the committee, joining Dick Schultz (1986 and '87) and Terry Holland ('97). Soon after his term expired, Holland approached Littlepage, then the school's associate AD, about possible membership.

Littlepage was ambivalent, but the more they talked, the more interested he became. When Holland resigned as Virginia's AD in 2001, Littlepage succeeded him, and during ACC meetings in January 2002, Littlepage received a call from NCAA vice president Tom Jernstedt welcoming him to the committee.

"I didn't even know I had been formally nominated," Littlepage says.

Each of the 34 Division I conferences can nominate one of its own for a five-year term. But the NCAA mandates the panel's makeup: five members from Division I-A and five combined from I-AA and I-AAA (non-football-playing schools or conferences).

Committee members select the chairman, and colleagues first approached Littlepage about the position before last season. But Littlepage suspected, correctly as it turned out, that he'd be searching for a new basketball coach at Virginia, and he didn't want the added distractions of the chairmanship. Nor did he want the job next season, his last on the panel, since it would conflict with the Cavaliers' first season in John Paul Jones Arena.

So it was this year or never, and at the committee's 2004 summer meeting at Colorado's Beaver Creek ski resort (the NCAA does not select low-rent venues), members chose Littlepage as chairman. He is the first African-American to hold the position, a distinction he was unaware of but believes carries added relevance during this "Glory Road" season.

"Glory Road," the book and movie, celebrates the 40th anniversary of Texas Western's national title. The Miners were the first champions to start five black athletes.

"Forty years is not that long ago in some ways," Littlepage writes in an e-mail, "but in others, it seems like a different world. If you consider the dimension of where the state of Virginia (massive resistance) and U.Va. (all male and essentially all white) were at that point, the combination of being the chair running this national tournament and being AD at U.Va. are rather humbling thoughts."

Littlepage, 54, will run this weekend's meetings, and after CBS unveils the bracket Sunday night, he will face the annual ire over inclusions, exclusions and seeds from media, fans and coaches. A committee member from 1999-2002, Elgin saw some chairmen freeze in those crosshairs.

"You talk about pressure," he says. "You're coming out of an exhausting weekend and you're looking at passionate people both ways, those who got in and those who didn't. Craig has been there, done that, on the public stage as a coach and administrator."

Littlepage leans hard on his Virginia staff as he meshes daily committee business with his day job. And his basketball work has become a family affair, with his wife, Margaret, and their three children well-versed in bracketology.

Margaret and Craig Littlepage were newlyweds during the 1982-83 season, Craig's first as Penn's head coach. On the opening day of the NCAA tournament, he went to the office, returned home and found Margaret watching games on two televisions, one network and one cable.

"I started going to games when Craig and I began dating," Margaret says. "He was recruiting Ralph Sampson at the time, and I fell in love with the game."

It's not unusual, according to Margaret, for their youngest, 15-year-old Erica, to burst into a room saying, "Dad, did you see that play?"

Chances are, he did.

Coach’s work ethic speeds Cavs’ ACC turnaround
U.Va. players have grown accustomed to Leitao’s’ booming voice, often from close range. He doesn’t hesitate to get in their faces. MATT GENTRY | THE ROANOKE TIMES
By ED MILLER , The Virginian-Pilot
© March 8, 2006

On South Sixth Street in New Bedford, Mass., where Virginia basketball coach Dave Leitao grew up, there’s a grassy lot that takes up two city blocks.

Leitao, 45, was raised across the street, at 87˝ South Sixth. When he was a kid, the lot was the site of a factory that manufactured drills.

Every day, Leitao and his four older sisters saw workers coming and going from the factory. Every night, they watched their mother, Irene, head off to work at another nearby plant, a Goodyear factory that produced bicycle tires.

New Bedford is an old mill town, about an hour south of Boston. Before it became a manufacturing center, it was known as the whaling capital of the world, the port Herman Melville shipped out of a decade before he wrote “Moby Dick.”

Leitao’s forefathers emigrated from Cape Verde, off the coast of Africa, to work as harpooners and steersmen on whaling ships. But by 1977, his mother was ready to pull up stakes in New Bedford.

Factories were cutting back or closing down. Irene had been laid off from Goodyear for two years, after 23 years of service. Her father, who’d worked on a whaling ship as a young man, had recently died. Four of her five children were grown and gone. Only Dave, with a year of high school remaining, was still at home.

She decided to move to California, where two of her four daughters were staying, and left her son behind, in the care of a niece, who was 12 years older than Dave, more of a mother than a first cousin.

Some 28 years later, the kid from South Sixth was introduced as Virginia’s first African-American coach in any sport. He led Virginia, picked to finish last in the ACC, to a surprising 7-9 finish in the conference. The Cavaliers play Virginia Tech in an ACC tournament first-round game Thursday.

“If you knew my background, where I came from,” Leitao said. “I’m probably not supposed to be here.”

Actually, the more you learn about it, the more sense it makes.

You can hear New Bedford in Leitao’s voice, in the R’s that are dropped off the end of some words and added on others, in the Eastern New England style.

“Bigger and better” comes out “biggah and bettah.” “Sports hernia” comes out “sports hernier.”

Virginia players have grown accustomed to Leitao’s’ booming voice, often from close range. At 6-foot-7, he towers over many of his players and doesn’t hesitate to get in their faces.

He’s been credited with instilling discipline and toughness in a Virginia team that lacked both. That’s not surprising, considering those same traits were instilled in him back on South Sixth.

Visit New Bedford today, and you’ll find a quaint, revitalized downtown with cobblestone streets and loft apartments. When Leitao was growing up, gentrification was decades away.

“It just had a lot of hardworking kind of people, no-frills kind of people that just went to work every single day,” Leitao said.

His mother was one of them. She worked 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. at Goodyear, then got her five children off to school. She’d catch a nap and then feed them lunch. At 3 p.m., they were home again. She’d feed them dinner and catch a little sleep before heading back to work , leaving her father to watch them overnight.

Leitao’s parents divorced when he was a year old. His father, a chef on merchant marine ships, was gone for months at a time.

Irene ran a strict household. Saturday was chore day. Anyone unsure of what was expected need only check the schedule posted on the refrigerator. No one could go out until the work was done.

And don’t dare complain that you were tired.

“Tired? You don’t know what tired is,” Irene would respond.

“My kids couldn’t wait until they were 18 to get out of the house,” she admitted.

But Saturday was also family day. Neighbors and family members would gather around a pot of cachupa, a Cape Verdean stew of spareribs, hominy and beans. Leitao’s house was built on the same lot as one owned by his aunt, and located directly behind it. Neighbors were in and out of each other’s homes all day.

It meant something to be Cape Verdean in New Bedford.

“We’re a different kind of people,” said Irene, who is 76 now and goes by her maiden name, Tavares. “We’re different colors. But we’re good people, helping each other.”

Cape Verdeans are indeed different colors. Leitao has first cousins with light, straight hair and blue eyes.

“They look white,” said his sister, Dianne. “If you saw a family album you wouldn’t believe we were related.”

As a University of Massachusetts study put it: “The Cape Verdean-American family experience gives keen insights into multi-culturalism and a race-blind world.”

That’s why Irene wishes they had said something different that day in Charlottesville when they introduced her son.

“They said African-American, because of the tone of his skin,” she said. “They should have said Cape Verdean. That’s what they should have said.”

Outside of New Bedford and a few other places where Cape Verdeans have settled, few people would have known what that meant. Cape Verde is a small country, about the size of Rhode Island, an archipelago of 10 islands about 300 miles west of Senegal, in the North Atlantic.

The Portuguese discovered and colonized Cape Verde in the 15th century. Its location on major north-south shipping routes made it a trading center for African slaves. Most Cape Verdeans today are descendants of white Portuguese settlers and African slaves. About 70 percent of the population is designated as Creole, or mulatto.

Cape Verde’s strategic location also made it a coaling and resupply stop for whaling ships. New Bedford whalers stopping in Cape Verde engaged locals as crewmen. Many settled in New Bedford, and sent for their families. White Portuguese immigrants came, too, and New Bedford became known as the Portuguese capital of the U.S.

On whaling ships, Cape Verdeans, Native Americans and men of European ancestry worked side by side.

According to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, “The community found aboard Yankee whaleships was not replicated anywhere else in America in the 19th century.”

More than a century later, New Bedford still prided itself on being a diverse place. Growing up there, in the largest Cape Verdean community in the country, gave him “two positive identities,” Leitao said.

“When you went out in the world you were proud to represent what you were, to be black, or African-American. You didn’t have time to necessarily explain, because nobody knew where Cape Verde was.

“When you were at home, there was a certain amount of pride, whether it was the language, or what you ate, or whatever it was that was part of your culture.”

Sports gave Leitao another identity in New Bedford. Two of his sisters earned basketball scholarships, and Leitao shot up from 5-foot-10 to 6-3 in one summer, much to the surprise of his family. His parents were both 5-7.

“Around here, he was the biggest, because most of the Portuguese people were small,” said Eric Britto, Leitao’s former next-door neighbor.

Said Leitao: “I stood out like a sore thumb.”

You certainly couldn’t miss him coming down the street. By the time his mother moved, Leitao was a rising star at Holy Name High. Britto’s father, Peter, who ran the local youth basketball leagues, had become like a surrogate father to Leitao. A priest at Holy Name took him to dinner each Friday. Aunts, uncles, cousins weren’t far away.

Here’s the thing: Leitao’s mother didn’t just leave him in the care of his niece, she left him in the care of New Bedford. And in those days, that was a warm embrace, indeed.

“It was a safe and nurturing place,” said Rita Ribeiro, the cousin who took Leitao in. “This city’s always been like that.”

“David was well taken care of,” said his sister, Dianne, who was just down the road at Providence College.

Leitao found another family when he played at Northeastern University. Keith Motley, an assistant to coach Jim Calhoun, took a liking to the young man who could jump higher off two feet than most players could off one.

“He had all the right things going for him,” Motley said. “He had manners, he listened, he was coachable. Every time they tried to bring in a guy to take his place, he wouldn’t let it happen.

“He glued it all together for us.”

In Leitao’s senior year, 1982, Northeastern enjoyed its best season in years, and faced Villanova in an NCAA tournament second-round game.

Leitao missed a shot that would have won the game for the Huskies, a 15-footer with five seconds left in the first overtime. He grabbed his own rebound, then missed a follow-up attempt. Villanova won the game in triple overtime. Leitao played 54 of the game’s 55 minutes.

It was a heartbreaking defeat for Northeastern, and not exactly a storybook way to end a college career. But if someone had to miss the shot, the Huskies’ coaches were glad it was Leitao.

“We knew he could handle it,” Motley said.

Motley and head coach Calhoun had taken to calling Leitao “observant Dave” for the way he hung back and took everything in, then put it to use on the court.

Over the years, through two stints as an assistant coach under Calhoun at Connecticut, observant Dave morphed into take-charge Dave, no-nonsense Dave. Today, Leitao is a tall man with a short fuse, when it comes to the sin of not playing basketball the right way — boxing out, defending, leaving it all on the floor.

“Dave Leitao has really got a work ethic into his team,” Maryland coach Gary Williams said.

He’s got one in his DNA.

 

CAVALIERS FIND SECURITY IN GUARDS
Singletary, Reynolds give Va. one of the nation's best backcourts
BY JEFF WHITE
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Mar 8, 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE On a basketball team that averages 69 points per game, they've supplied 49 percent of the scoring. They've contributed 63 percent of the assists, 46 percent of the steals and maybe 80 percent of the leadership.

Where would Virginia be without guards Sean Singletary and J.R. Reynolds? That's not a question first-year coach Dave Leitao cares to ponder. He remembers what happened Dec. at University Hall. A hip injury sidelined Singletary that night, and Fordham stunned U.Va. 62-60.

Fortunately for the Cavaliers, that's the only game Singletary has missed this season. The 5-11 sophomore from Philadelphia teams with Reynolds, a 6-2 junior from Roanoke, to give U.Va. one of the nation's better backcourts. On an undermanned team that gets little scoring from its big men, the stellar play of Singletary and Reynolds has kept Virginia, which was picked to finish last in the ACC, competitive.

U.Va. (14-13), the No. 7 seed, meets 10th-seeded Virginia Tech (14-15) tomorrow night in the ACC tournament's first round at the Greensboro Coliseum.

"Obviously, as a backcourt tandem, we're blessed to have them," Leitao said.

Singletary, the first Cavalier since Bryant Stith in 1992 to make the all-ACC first team, ranks fourth among conference players in assists and free throw percentage, fifth in scoring and ninth in steals.

Reynolds, a third-team all-ACC selection, is the conference's eighth-leading scorer. In the regular-season finale Sunday against Maryland, his spectacular performance helped the Cavaliers overcome an 18-point second-half deficit. With Singletary a spectator for most of the half because of foul trouble, Reynolds scored 19 of his season-high 30 points after intermission as U.Va. nearly pulled out an improbable victory.

Singletary is technically U.Va.'s point guard, but Reynolds' ability to run the offense has improved as the season has progressed. Leitao calls him a "1.5 guard," meaning Reynolds can play both backcourt spots. So can Singletary.

"We just feed off each other," Reynolds said, "no matter who has the ball."

Seven times this season Reynolds has scored 20 or more points. Singletary has done so 10 times, with a season high of 35 points (at Gonzaga).

"It's amazing what they have accomplished, because the defenses of the other teams have been aimed at stopping those two guys," North Carolina coach Roy Williams said. "For them to be able to be as productive as they have, it means they've done a heck of a good job."

When Leitao took over as the Cavaliers' coach in April, he expected to have 11 scholarship players in 2005-06. Since the start of classes in August, however, three players have left the program. With every departure, more responsibility fell onto Singletary and Reynolds, the team's co-captains.

"But I think if you spend any time around either one of those two guys, you find out they have exceptional intestinal fortitude and understanding mentally beyond their years," Leitao said. "And so it became apparent that they may not be able to give you 25 points a night, but they're going to give you their best effort, and that's the only thing you can ever ask for out of them or anybody."

Leitao has long praised Singletary's ability to act as a coach on the floor and in the locker room with his teammates. Singletary's running mate has similar qualities.

"Once I blow the whistle to start practice, I can guarantee there's one guy's eyes that are beaming right on every single word I say, and that's J.R. Reynolds," Leitao said.

Virginia Tech's Jamon Gordon, in an interview with a Roanoke reporter last month, touted himself and teammate Zabian Dowdell as the ACC's best backcourt. In Greensboro, the Hokies' guards will try again to frustrate Singletary and Reynolds. U.Va. beat Tech 54-49 at Cassell Coliseum in January and 81-77 in overtime at U-Hall last month.

"Their backcourt and our backcourt again, for the third time, will be a great matchup," Leitao said.

 

Power Ball
All season long, the Big East, Big Ten and ACC have claimed to be the best. Which is? Well ...
By Mark Berman
981-3125

In some seasons, the argument about which conference is the best in Division I men's basketball begins with the ACC.

Not this year.

The 16-team Big East has the most members in the Associated Press Top 25 poll and among the top 50 in the Rating Percentage Index. The Big Ten tops the list of the RPI's conference rankings. Those leagues seem to have bragging rights over the ACC this season.

Not so fast, said Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg.

"Top to bottom, I'd say probably our league and the Big Ten" are the best, Greenberg said. "Our league is as good as any."

When the bids to the NCAA tournament are passed out Sunday, the Big East will likely lead the pack. Big East members Connecticut and Villanova are expected to be No. 1 seeds. ESPN.com predicted Monday that the Big East will get eight bids, compared to seven for the Big Ten, six for the Southeastern Conference and five apiece for the ACC and upstart Missouri Valley.

"It's very, very clear that this is the best conference in the country, top to bottom," Villanova coach Jay Wright said of the Big East. "If you take any of the [12] teams that go to the Big East tournament, I think they would fare well in the NCAA tournament."

Maryland's Gary Williams isn't sold, though.

"If you have a lot of teams, you're going to have some good teams, but that doesn't mean your whole league is up to a certain level," Williams said. "The Big East definitely has some good basketball teams. How many, that's what's debatable."

This week's AP poll includes No. 1 UConn, No. 2 Villanova, No. 15, Pittsburgh, No. 19 West Virginia and No. 23 Georgetown.

Through Sunday's games, nine Big East teams are among the top 50 in the RPI, according to Collegiate Basketball News. The RPI is a formula the NCAA tournament committee uses to help it select teams; it takes into account such factors as record and strength of schedule. The NCAA committee's weekly RPI rankings will come out today.

The Big East was 4-4 against the ACC this year, including Georgetown's win over Duke. Other notable nonleague wins by Big East teams were UConn's wins over Gonzaga, LSU and Indiana; Cincinnati's win over LSU; Pittsburgh's win over Wisconsin; Seton Hall's win at North Carolina State; Villanova's win over Oklahoma; and West Virginia's wins over Oklahoma and UCLA.

"I think that our league, there's no match for it because the depth in maybe the top 12 spots, top 13 spots is incredible," WVU coach John Beilein said.

The Big Ten also has reason to boast. The Big Ten is No. 1 in the RPI's conference ratings, with the Big East second and the ACC third.

Illinois coach Bruce Weber said the Big Ten has "a step up on everybody" this year.

"We have older teams this year. We have great balance," Weber said. "Our top seven are very good, I think Minnesota's not very far behind and even the other three have been very competitive."

The AP poll includes No. 7 Ohio State, No. 9 Illinois and No. 20 Iowa. Seven of the 11 Big Ten teams are among the top 50 in the RPI.

Penn State assistant Hilliary Scott said the Big Ten is the best, noting that regular-season champ Ohio State had four league losses.

"This year, anyone can be beaten on any given night," said Scott, an ex-Roanoke College star. "From top to bottom, it's just been a very competitive league."

The Big Ten is 6-4 against the Big East this season and 6-6 against the ACC. Among the Big Ten's nonleague victories of note are Illinois' victories over North Carolina and Georgetown; Iowa's win over N.C. State; Ohio State's win over LSU; and Michigan State's win over Boston College.

The ACC has won all seven ACC-Big Ten Challenges, though, including winning six of the 11 games in this year's series.

"Several of those years, the Big Ten has gotten more teams" in the NCAA tournament than the ACC, Williams said. "I don't quite understand how that works, that the Big Ten gets more teams in the NCAA tournament if in head-to-head competition we've proven we're the best league."

The 12-team ACC is represented in the AP poll by No. 3 Duke, No. 10 UNC, No. 11 BC and No. 25 N.C. State. There are five ACC teams among the top 50 in the RPI.

"The ACC does not have to take a backseat to any conference in the country this year," North Carolina State coach Herb Sendek said. "Our league is really tough top to bottom."

Notable nonleague wins by ACC teams include Duke's wins over Memphis, Indiana and Texas; N.C. State's victory over George Washington; and Wake Forest's win over Wisconsin.

One reason the ACC has had a subpar year is that former national heavyweights Georgia Tech and Wake Forest are two of the league's worst teams this season.

ESPN.com predicts Maryland (18-11, 8-8) will miss the NCAA tournament for the second straight year, but Williams hopes that isn't the case.

"Hopefully we'll be the team that gets talked about this week a little bit as having an opportunity to make the tournament, but at the same time, there's a lot of teams out there, a lot of leagues, that have done a lot of talking about their teams," Williams said.

Williams would like to see the ACC do a better job of self-promotion.

"There's a lot of other leagues out there that really work a lot harder at pushing teams into the NCAA tournament than, say, 10 years ago," he said. "Maybe we can find a way to promote the league better."