Big East Tournament 2012: Underdogs Most Likely to Make Cinderella Run at MSG

The Big East Tournament has long fostered Cinderella stories ahead of the NCAA Tournament. Just ask last year's Connecticut team, which won five games in five days at Madison Square Garden before riding that momentum all the way to the National Championship.

In fact, only twice in the last nine years has the top seed emerged victorious at the end of the week in New York City.

So which teams in the 2012 field have the best chance to secure an automatic berth out of the nation's biggest and deepest basketball league?

UConn

Who better than the current UConn squad to replicate last season's spectacular run? The Huskies came into the 2011-12 campaign as decent pick to repeat, thanks to a stockpile of blue-chippers that included returnees Shabazz Napier, Jeremy Lamb, "Diaper Dandies" Andre Drummond and Ryan Boatright.

Kemba Walker's departure to the NBA and Jim Calhoun's on-again, off-again off-court problems proved to be a bit too much for the young Huskies to handle, especially up against the toughest schedule in the nation, from which they've thus far gleaned an 18-12 record.

Still, the talent and experience are both there. Winning five in five again will be no easy task, though a date with DePaul on Tuesday should get the Huskies off on the right foot.

Louisville

Speaking of talented teams that have disappointed this season, Louisville will hobble into MSG as the seventh seed in the Big East after dropping four of its last six games.

Granted, two of those losses came at the hands of top-seed Syracuse (both by single digits), but the fact remains that, at 22-9, Rick Pitino had hoped for much better from these Cardinals.

That being said, this week's tourney will provide The 'Ville with a golden opportunity to make good on its considerable promise. This year's Cards don't shoot nearly as well from three-point range (or any distance, for that matter) as Pitino-coached teams tend to, but the presence of battle-tested stars like Peyton Siva and Kyle Kuric should give this group something to hang its hat on when the going gets tough this week.

West Virginia

Meanwhile, eighth-seed West Virginia will hope that Kevin Jones can do this year what Da'Sean Butler did two years ago.

That is, carry the Mountaineers all the way to the top.

And if there's any one player capable of doing just that, it's Jones. The Mount Vernon native leads the Big East in scoring (20 ppg) and rebounding (11.2 rpg) and played a key role in WVU's first and only conference tourney title.

This will be Jones' last opportunity to pull it off again before graduation, just as it will be the final time that Bob Huggins' boys have the chance to own the Big East before bolting to the Big 12 this season. That sense of urgency should help to fuel a solid run for the Mountaineers in preparation for their trip to the Big Dance.

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