Down Goes Penn; Nova, La Salle, and St. Joe's Play on

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We interrupt these Fall 2012 Big East football updates to discuss Big East basketball that's actually happening now. 
But first, our hearts go out to (now official: Ivy League Player of the Year) Zack Rosen and the Penn Quakers. With their loss to Princeton last night, they fell just one win short of a one-game playoff with Harvard that would have given them a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament.
Like the Drexel Dragons before them, the Quakers dealt Philadelphia a second-straight night of Championship Week heartbreak. If you missed the game, or simply want to re-live the pain, check out (uber-depressed Penn-head) Dave Zeitlin's postgame recap on CSNPhilly.com.
Really, this quote from Penn forward Rob Belcore (courtesy of Zeitlin) says it all:

“I never thought for a second we were out,” Belcore said. “With the guy sitting to my right [Rosen], he’s going to need a month off for how tired his back has got to be. As long as he was taking the floor with me … I thought he could carry us through the whole way. And he almost did. I think we let him down, the other 14 guys.”

Coach Jerome Allen wasn't pleased the other 14 either:

“[Princeton] didn’t have anything to play for other than to be the spoilers,” Penn head coach Jerome Allen said. “How can a team that’s playing for nothing play harder than the team that’s supposedly playing for something? And that’s really what blew my mind.”

Ours, too, coach.
But as we pointed out yesterday, and we'll keep pointing out until Sunday at 6 p.m., Champ Week rolls on.
We'll be back in the coming days with an Atlantic 10 tournament primer to walk you through Temple, Saint Joseph's and La Salle's Friday matchups and their respective roads to the championship game. In the meantime, you can take a look at an updated bracket here and read about La Salle's win over Richmond and SJU's thumping of Charlotte here and here.
And now onto to the Villanova Wildcats and their 9 p.m. Wednesday night matchup with the University of South Florida Bulls. We know it's been a rough day for you 'Novaheads, but you can go back to this post from yesterday and take comfort in knowing we thought you actually would beat Rutgers. 
So can you forgive us for preferring that Penn play for the NCAA than watching you guys make a run for the CBI? We'll assume that's a "no."
Anyway, should you be so interested once the Big East is done detracting from its own basketball tournament by introducing a convenient football addition, Nova and USF will close the octofinals later this evening. You can watch the game on ESPN or online at ESPN3.com.
The remaining Big East bracket below:

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