PRISM Press Group was for­tu­nate enough to have recently come into con­tact with Mike Fratto, a free­lance reporter that for the last two years spent time cov­er­ing Navy foot­ball and women’s bas­ket­ball for The Wash­ing­ton Times, and this week is ben­e­fit­ing from his pres­ence at the 2010 Big East tour­na­ment for men’s basketball.

The fol­low­ing is Fratto’s inau­gural piece for PRISM Press Group and cov­ers today’s first round match up between the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida and DePaul University.

All mate­ri­als included in this piece remain the sole prop­erty of Michael and PRISM Press Group and may not be repro­duced with­out the per­mis­sion of Mike, obtain­able by email­ing mikefratto@qmail.com.

The sce­nario for South Florida was clear enter­ing the Big East tour­na­ment. By beat­ing Con­necti­cut in their regular-season finale, the Bulls got them­selves back in the bub­ble dis­cus­sion. But they still had plenty work to do this week at Madi­son Square Garden.

So while the Bulls were get­ting ready to head north, senior guard Chris Howard approached Stan Heath with a sim­ple message.

“He told me, ‘Coach, make sure you bring five suits.’ And I did,” Heath said. “We can’t leave things to chance. We had some other oppor­tu­ni­ties we let slip through our fin­gers this sea­son. The best thing you can do is win and con­trol your own destiny.”

The Bulls got one step closer Tues­day with a 58–49 dis­patch­ing of DePaul in the first round of the Big East tournament.

They jumped out to an early 8–2 lead and never really looked back. The lead bal­looned to as much as 17 points in the first half, and at one point, first team All-Big East guard Dominique Jones was outscor­ing the Blue Demons by himself.

But the foun­da­tion of the Bulls’ lead was built on the defen­sive end. They held DePaul’s top two scor­ers — Will Walker and Mac Koshwal — to a com­bined 11-for-32 from the floor. And as a team, the Blue Demons shot a mea­ger 29.9 per­cent for the game.

“Every­body just wanted to get our first win at Madi­son Square Gar­den and start the Big East tour­na­ment well,” Jones said. “We know that Koshwal and Walker were really good play­ers so we had to buckle down on them, double-team them and stay dis­ci­plined on defense.”

Jones led the Bulls with 20 points, with most of his work com­ing early on. DePaul played more zone in the sec­ond half and dou­ble teamed Jones to try to limit his oppor­tu­ni­ties. He only took five shots in the sec­ond half, but had more than enough help from his teammates.

Thanks to their 15-point half­time lead, the Bulls were able to sus­tain a pair of DePaul runs in the sec­ond half and even­tu­ally pull away with the com­fort­able victory.

“I thought we brought a lot of energy the first 20 min­utes,” Heath said. “The advan­tage for us now is we have time to go back to the hotel, relax a lit­tle bit and pre­pare for our next oppo­nent. We’ll get a good night’s rest and I like that.”

But await­ing the Bulls tomor­row is George­town, which will surely pro­vide much more resis­tance than the sixteenth-seeded Blue Demons did. South Florida didn’t make a three-pointer while dis­patch­ing DePaul, and the dom­i­nance the Bulls enjoyed in the paint, where they scored 50 of their 58 points, won’t be so eas­ily achieved with George­town star cen­ter Greg Mon­roe around.

But nonethe­less, the Bulls’ spir­its are buoyed by the mem­ory of the teams’ only other meet­ing this sea­son, when they upset the Hoyas 72–64 at Ver­i­zon Cen­ter in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Jones led the way with 29 points that night, ignit­ing a second-half surge in which the Bulls erased an 11-point half­time deficit and outscored the Hoyas by 17 in the game’s final 20 minutes.

“I think the team feeds off what I do,” Jones said. “I think when I turned it up [in the sec­ond half against George­town], every­body turned it up. Coach’s mes­sage to us was that we need to play with high energy. We need to get steals, deflec­tions we need to get out in tran­si­tion — and that’s some­thing we’re going to try and do tomor­row for sure.”

But it’s no stretch to fig­ure George­town is going to do every­thing it can to keep Jones from burn­ing them again. He’ll have to deal with occa­sional dou­ble teams and find a way to be a facil­i­ta­tor, impact­ing the game in other ways than scoring.

This is when the real test begins for the Bulls. But even though they are rely­ing on a deep run this week for a chance at mak­ing the NCAA tour­na­ment, Heath said his team isn’t stress­ing. Instead, they are enjoy­ing the moment.

After all, this is only their sec­ond appear­ance in the Big East tour­na­ment and today was their first tour­na­ment win. What do they have to lose?

“We’ve never been here before, so in a lot of ways we’ve accom­plished things we’ve never accom­plished. I don’t think there’s a lot of pres­sure on us,” Heath said. “It’s just doing some things we really want to do. We all want to go to the NCAA tour­na­ment, so we just need to go out and play at a high level.”