Xavier

Many fans and pundits alike felt that Ohio State's trip to Madison would be the point where they'd suffer their first loss of the season. But after a first half that didn't do much to separate either team those prospects didn't look good as Thad Matta's group went on a 23-6 run to push their lead out to 15 points with 13:21 left in the game. Thankfully for the Badgers Jordan Taylor and company had other ideas, answering with a 30-8 run of their own and eventually going on to win 71-67 at the Kohl Center.

A lot of the talk leading into Tuesday's matchup between Kentucky and Tennessee at Rupp Arena surrounded the return of Bruce Pearl to the Tennessee sidelines after an eight-game SEC suspension. The Vols won five of eight with associate head coach Tony Jones in charge but there's something to be said in regards to the comfort level a team has when their head coach is on the bench. But the return to normalcy means nothing if you get outworked and that's exactly what happened to the Vols, ultimately falling 73-61 to the 18th-ranked Wildcats.

Tuesday night marks the return of Bruce Pearl to SEC play, and it's just in time for an important matchup between his Tennessee (15-8, 5-3) Volunteers and the Kentucky (16-6, 4-4) Wildcats. The winner remains in the hunt for the SEC East title, and while the loser won't be finished per say with both teams already owning losses to first-place Florida they'd be in a bit of trouble. John Calipari's Wildcats have done what most young teams do: struggle on the road while getting the job done at home, owning a home record of 10-0 on the season.

The lesson learned this weekend: almost anyone can be had. And that should make for an exciting month of March if results like the ones we saw become the norm. Twelve ranked teams went down on Saturday, but it should be noted that four of the losses came to opponents who were also ranked and eight of the twelve lost on the road. How does one narrow these results down: ask the simple question of which losers may be in some trouble at this point in the season. One such victim has to be Syracuse, who has now dropped four straight and has to play at Connecticut on Wednesday night.

In his latest installment in the "Coaching Greats" interview series, CHN writer Jon Teitel spent some time with Pete Gillen. Coach Gillen led programs at Xavier, Providence and Virginia before moving over to the media side of things to call games for CBS College Sports. At Xavier Coach Gillen led the Musketeers to six conference titles and seven NCAA Tournament appearances in nine seasons at the school before moving on to Providence.

Jon Teitel: Your first coaching gig in college was as an assistant at Hawaii, where one of your fellow assistants was Rick Pitino.