West Virginia 60 Georgetown 58: Last night, West Virginia won the Big East tournament, defeating Georgetown. WVU's Da'Sean Butler is deemed "Da Man" by the Post—Butler had 20 points, including the game-winning shot with 4.2 seconds left—and he said, "It means the world to me. I grew up around this area.... That's my favorite team, the New York Knicks. I grew up watching this on television. To play so well here since I've been a freshman, it means the world to me." more ›

A candidate for Governor of West Virginia has threatened to make Mayor Bloomberg's out-of-state gun busts illegal. State Sen. Jeffrey Kessler says Bloomberg has gotten too involved in West Virginia politics, so he wants to pass a bill that would ban the Mayor from using private investigators to catch Mountain State gun dealers who violate federal laws by selling firearms to unqualified buyers. more ›

This past Saturday, one of the Obama posters Shepard Fairey added to the cityscape was taken down by graffiti writer MARTY -- who Razor Apple reports "has been holding down that corner for years." more ›

Hilary Clinton won tonight's West Virginia primary with about 66% of the vote, handily defeating Barack Obama (he had 27%) as expected. The NY Times reported "racial considerations emerged as an unusually salient factor as Mrs. Clinton drew strong support from white, working-class voters who have spurned Mr. Obama in recent contests." Interesting note: John Edwards, who exited the Democratic presidential race a while ago, got about 7% of the vote. more ›

• Too bad Knicks games aren't this exciting or well-played. The busiest -- and best -- day of the Big East schedule got started with Georgetown's record-setting win over Villanova, which is now squarely back on the NCAA Tournament bubble. The Hoyas won without any points from Roy Hibbert. Those tournament-record 17 3-pointers -- on 28 attempts -- helped more than cancel it out in a 83-62 win.
• The Hoyas will get the Moutaineers of West Virginia, which rode Joe Alexander's 34 points -- two of which came on a sick dunk over Stanely Robinson -- in its win over Connecticut. That game was the first in which won by the team in the darker jersey -- the lower seed. If Bob Huggins' team wasn't in good shape for the NCAA Tournament, it is now. The Huskies, however, lost a chance to help their seeding.
• The first night game had perhaps the most local flavor. Louisville has its share of New York players, and coach Rick Pitino was born in the city and went to St. Dominic's High School in Oyster Bay. Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon loves to recruit around New York and loves to bring his Panthers to New York. Maybe St. John's should get relegated, because the Panthers, including Brooklyn product Levance Fields perform better at the Garden than does the Red Storm. With Thursday's overtime win, they're now 4-0 there this season, with wins over Duke, St. John's and Cincinnati on Wednesday coming earlier.

As of 11:45 p.m., Hillary Clinton and John McCain are projected to win their New York primaries. The Democratic primary distributes NY delegates proportionally, so the final total will be important in determining how many will go to Clinton and how many to Barack Obama. more ›

The Princeton Review released its annual "The Best 366 Colleges" rankings, and NYC college schools make some interesting showings. The New School is number 1 for "Best College Town" (Barnard, Columbia, and NYU are also in the top 10), while Queens College is the third most sober. more ›

Swoon returns to Rivington, after her last piece there got wrecked. More at Streetsy. more ›

How often does college football matter to a New York-area team? Rutgers's game against Louisville garnered enough attention the Empire State Building was lit up in scarlet. It was the biggest local game in recent memory. But despite all the hype, the Scarlet Knights were heavy underdogs to the Cardinals, even at home. A last-minute field goal by Jeremy Ito stunned the No. 3 Cardinals and capped a shocking 28-25 Rutgers win. The result effectively ended Louisville's national title hopes and kept Rutgers, which still has to play three more games -- including at West Virginia -- in the discussion. That's right. Rutgers is in the national title discussion. more ›

The polls in New York close in a half hour, so the media won't be reporting returns until then. But it's still exciting and heartbreaking to watch the other states' elections returns. For starters, Bob Casey ousting Rick Santorum for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania? That's exciting. Heartbreaking would be reports of bugs and intimidation at the polls. more ›

In May 2005, a Cessna single-engine sightseeing plane crashed on a Coney Island beach, killing the pilot and the three tourists from West Virginia aboard. Now, the victims' families are suing plane's company for $45 million, claiming that the plane was never intended as a sightseeing vehicle. The Post reports that a NJ flight school had "advertised the flight as instructional time for potential student pilots," even though the West Virginia father, teenage daughter, and daughter's friend were told it was an "hourlong sightseeing tour." The lawsuit claims that the pilot was inexperienced and that Air Fleet Training Systems was negligent in hiring him. more ›

For a week, the Syracuse Orange used a label of "overrated" to motivate their run to the Big East title. Now, as Big East champions, they'll sit and wait to see how much they helped their seeding with a win over Pittsburgh in the championship game. Last year, West Virginia, like Syracuse, sat on the Big East bubble entering the conference tournament. The runners-up got a seven seed, and Gothamist thinks Syracuse can do better than that. West Virginia clearly proved better than its seeding, and Syracuse could easily make the Sweet 16. more ›

Syracuse could have taken it easy after knocking off Connecticut, confident a win over the nation's top-ranked team secured them an NCAA tournament berth. Pittsburgh could have rested after taking care of archrival West Virginia in their quarterfinal game. Even with nothing meaningful to play for except a bump in seeding, both underdogs lived to fight another day in the Big East semifinals Friday. Syracuse rallied to top Georgetown 58-57, and Pittsburgh crushed second-ranked Villanova. The two teams play for the Big East championship on Saturday to cap what has been a upside-down tournament. more ›

Gerry McNamara won a national title in his freshman year at Syracuse and he wasn’t going to miss the tournament in his senior year. McNamara hit a game tying three-pointer with 10 seconds left to force overtime in Syracuse’s 86-84 upset over UConn in the Big East Tournament. more ›

If it wasn't a big enough spectacle before, the Big East tournament now has even more power to its punch. Starting today at Madison Square Garden, the league's top 12 (out of 16) battle it out for the conference's tournament title and the berth in the NCAA tournament that comes with it. Of course, most of the teams are playing for seeding, but a few are on the bubble. more ›

To beat Villanova at home, a team would have to play flawless basketball, or at least close to it. When West Virginia knocked off the Wildcats earlier this year, they used scorching three-point shooting. St. John's didn't play perfect basketball, and their shooting ended up far from accurate in a 65-52 loss at Villanova Wednesday. The Red Storm did a good job of keeping it close, but not of making Villanova sweat. They'll need a win over Rutgers on Sunday to have a shot at making the Big East tournament. Twelve of the 16 teams advance. more ›

As conference play continues, St. John's Big East conference continues to make its claim to the title of best conference in the country. Given the talent of the teams at the top, the Red Storm have played well. Unfortuantely for Norm Roberts' squad, playing well was not enough for the second straight game. West Virginia held off St. John's Sunday days after the Red Storm hung with top-ranked Connecticut on the road Wednesday. more ›

After stumbling through the non-conference season, St. John's finally picked up a victory it can be proud of when the Red Storm defeated Louisville at the Garden Tuesday night. Louisville may have been worn out from battling a tough Pitt team this past weekend, but St. John's still deserves plenty of credit for taking down the 17th-ranked team in the country. The Red Storm still figure to struggle in Big East play this year, but they didn't struggle Tuesday night. more ›

Online, the Post's cover headline for the terrible West Virginia mining accident is "CHAOS" to mark the tragedy of twelve of the thirteen miners being found dead. But on our subway commute, we were momentarily confused when we saw a Post with the headline "ALIVE!" Clearly, at least some of the print run was printed after the original, mistaken announcement that the miners were found alive. UPDATE: It seems the Daily News made the same mistake! The problems with going to press during an evolving news story (long live the Internet?)! more ›

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Loyal Gothamist readers will notice that there is little change in our rankings this week - there simply weren't many upsets or games involving top 25 teams last week. That will certainly change this weekend with several top matchups including LSU vs. UGA, Aub vs. Tenn, and Purdue vs ND. It will be a great weekend for college football junkies/coach potatoes! Naturally Gothamist will be watching every televised game from Noon until 2 am in order to provide you with rankings slightly more accurate than a dart throwing monkey! more ›

Justin S. brings us his 3rd weekly ranking of the NCAA Division 1A teams. No movement in the top 5 from last week's rankings. more ›

As some of the top teams begin to play each other (FSU-Miami), we can finally begin to gain some insight into how good (or bad) they are. Some teams are without comments this week - if you blow out a cupcake, there's not much to say about that. Also, as you will see, our rankings can fluctuate from week to week - unlike the "real" polls, just because you win doesn't mean you won't drop in the rankings if your performance is unimpressive. See last week's poll. more ›

With the first full week of college football now over, Gothamist Sports proudly unveils our first Top 15 ranking for college football. Ranking the top 15 this early is obviously a crap-shoot, but that's never stopped anyone before. It's difficult to rank teams early in the season, but we gave it a shot, so don't take it personally if your team is lower than you think they should be. more ›

Many Ask Gothamist readers have written to us recently with questions related to politics, current events, and the upcoming Republican convention and Presidential election. So Ask Gothamist is going to be bringing you non-partisan advice over the upcoming weeks and months about participating in the democratic process. Whatever your political leanings, it's a good idea to vote in the upcoming election, educate yourself about local and national candidates and issues, and make sure that your voice is heard. more ›

Several thoughts came to Gothamist when we first heard this plan. When are they going to have the game? It would have to be before New Year's so it doesn't interfere with the "first-tier" bowls or New Year's Eve events in New York. If it is earlier, that would the possible teams that come could be no-names or teams that aren't that good and does New York really want to host a second or third-tier game? The question of who wants to play in New York when it's cold isn't a problem as long as it's not a B.C.S. Bowl. Hell, if you can have the Humanitarian Bowl on blue artificial turf in Boise, you can have a game in the New York winter. Lastly, what the hell are they thinking? Showcase for Big East football? That's the biggest joke we've ever heard. more ›

Clay Shirky more ›

Gothamist went to the Big Apple Blogger Bash last Friday at Siberia. Organized by Paul Frankenstein, BABB was filled with some of the hardest working bloggers in New York. Like Jason Kottke. Paul says the next one won't be until September, so Gothamist is trying to convince him to organize a baby-BABB before then. more ›