Villanova not the only ranked team to be upset on a wild and wacky Wednesday in college hoops

Hey, Nova Nation: While you were disappointed that your team lost in an upset against St. John’s, you can take some small consolation in the fact that four other ranked teams were stunned by unranked opponents on a wild and wacky Wednesday night in college basketball.

At least the Red Storm entered the game on a four-game winning streak and had been playing well. How do you explain fifth-ranked Houston, leading the nation in points allowed (56.0 per game) and field-goal percentage defense (36.2%), losing by 82-73 to an East Carolina team that hadn’t won since Dec. 22, with five losses and three postponements during that stretch?

Another surprise came in the Big East where Georgetown, 10th in the conference standings, won at No. 15 Creighton, 86-79. The other two upsets were at Pitt, 83-72, over No. 16 Virginia Tech, and by South Carolina, 72-66, over No. 22 Florida in Gainesville.

Crazy.

» READ MORE: Horrific night of turnovers and missed shots halts Villanova’s nine-game win streak

We still can’t get over that East Carolina win. The Pirates hadn’t defeated a ranked team since upsetting Dwyane Wade and Marquette in 2002. Since then, they were 0-33 against ranked opponents and 0-14 all-time vs. the top five.

Houston hadn’t allowed more than 65 points to any opponent all season, and had won each of its last four games at East Carolina by double digits. But Wednesday night in Greenville, N.C., the Pirates shot 47.4% overall from the field and 45.8% from beyond the arc, knocking down 11 threes, and led for the final 12-plus minutes.

The Cougars shot 8-for-31 in the second half and 39% for the game.

“Rarely do we get out-competed or other teams play harder than us,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “We hang our hat on being tough, but we weren’t any of those things tonight.”

As for Georgetown, which will visit Finneran Pavilion on Sunday, it did not show any hint of its standing as the poorest-shooting team (41.8%) in the Big East. The Hoyas hit 50% of their tries with 10 three-point baskets in improving their record to 2-0 since a 21-day pause resulting from positive coronavirus tests.

“They beat us in every facet of the game,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said.

A North Carolina-Duke matchup almost always ranks as the game of the day, and often the game of the year. But when the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils clash Saturday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium, it will mark their first meeting as unranked opponents since the 1959-60 season.

The season-long hurdle that both the Tar Heels (11-6, 6-4 ACC) and the Blue Devils (7-6, 5-4) have tried hard to manage is inexperience. North Carolina usually plays a nine-man rotation, which includes five freshmen and two seniors. Duke typically goes with seven players, and four of them are freshmen, with one senior.

The Tar Heels struggle with putting the ball in the basket — 289th in Division I in three-point shooting, 327th in threes made, 280th in free-throw accuracy. The Blue Devils are 287th in field-goal percentage defense.

Carolina scored a season-low for points in a 63-50 loss Tuesday night at Clemson, taking only 44 shots, committing 17 turnovers and going 11 of 21 from the line. The Blue Devils lost a 77-75 decision Monday night at Miami, converting just 5 of 18 attempts from three while the Hurricanes shot 52.5% overall.

“I didn’t think we competed,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “I thought we were soft and I saw it in practice and tried to take steps to change that and we were not able to change it. I’m really disappointed in our team.”

In NCAA Tournament mock brackets, neither ESPN’s Joe Lunardi nor CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm currently includes Duke in the field. Lunardi has the Tar Heels in his “last four byes” column, while Palm has them as one of the first four teams out.

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Twins Julian and Justin Champagnie grew up together in Brooklyn planning to play college basketball on the same team. While it didn’t work out — Julian wound up at St. John’s, Justin at Pittsburgh — the two brothers have developed into stars about 400 miles apart.

They lead their respective conferences in scoring. Julian, who had 14 points and a career-high 13 rebounds in Wednesday night’s win over Villanova, tops the Big East with a 19.5-point average. Justin has scored at a 19.3-point-per-game pace to lead the ACC.

Justin Champagnie also is No. 1 in the ACC in rebounding. His brother shoots 85.1% on free throws, second in the Big East.

“Yeah, I think it was the right decision,” Julian Champagnie said in a story on the Big East website. “I think we were great together, but we’re even better apart. We were allowed to grow by being away from each other and we’ve become our own people.”

No. 10 Alabama at No. 18 Missouri (noon, ESPN): The Crimson Tide (15-4, 10-0), who have replaced Villanova as a No. 1 seed in the latest ESPN mock bracket, lead the SEC by four games over the second-place Tigers (12-3, 5-3), and again head to the Midwest one week after losing at Oklahoma.

No. 19 Wisconsin at No. 12 Illinois (2:30 p.m., Fox29): The crowd at the top of the Big Ten standings is made up of six teams separated by 2½ games, which means the fourth-place Badgers (14-5, 8-4) and the second-place Fighting Illini (12-5, 8-3) want to keep pace.

Pitt at No. 14 Virginia (4 p.m., ESPN): The Cavaliers (12-3, 8-1) have won five straight games against the Panthers (9-5, 5-4) by an average of 19 points, but Pitt is coming off an upset of No. 16 Virginia Tech.

Osun Osunniyi, who played at Mainland High School and garnered third-team All-South Jersey honors from The Inquirer during his senior season, has been an inside force for Atlantic 10 Conference-leading St. Bonaventure. The 6-foot-10, 220-pound junior from Pleasantville, N.J., is second in the league in rebounds at 9.6 per game and third with 2.1 blocked shots per game while averaging 10.5 points. He won Atlantic 10 first-team all-defense recognition in his first two seasons.

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