I don't know if Marquette wanted to see what its national relevance was, or if they just wanted to slip this past people, but the Golden Eagles hired their new head coach on the night of the NCAA Tournament Championship. Assistant Buzz Williams was promoted for the now departed to Indiana, Tom Crean.

Williams was an assistant for one year at Marquette. Before that he was the head coach at the University of New Orleans for a single season before leaving the job. He was at Texas A&M the prior two season as an assistant and the lead recruiter for Billy Gillispie. Williams' biggest strength is that he is an excellent recruiter.

"He is a tenacious guy," Gillispie, now the coach at Kentucky, said last month, referring to Williams' ability to recruit. "He's very, very well-organized. He just goes after it. Everyone likes him. If they don't start out liking him, he forces them to like him.

"And he's not only a good recruiter, he is a very, very good basketball coach. He . . . is a total basketball coach and a guy that gives you the best chance to win over the long haul."

This hire seems in part to try and keep Marquette's excellent incoming recruiting class in tact. Already, a couple players have asked out of their Letters of Intent (LOI).

After 9 years at Marquette, Tom Crean left for Indiana. He was formally introduced at a press conference in Bloomington, Indiana. He spoke glowingly of his time at Marquette, but said it simply came down to the chance to coach Indiana.

FanHouse checked in with Cracked Sidewalks, the best Marquette blog out there. Tim Blair, who posts under the moniker of "NY Warrior" regarding Marquette's next move and Tom Crean.

Chas Rich (CR): So, now Crean has left after several years of seeing his name floated for nearly every job opening. Amazingly, this one seemed to come out of no where.

The first question has to be the feelings of Marquette fans on what seems like a sudden event.

Tim Blair (TB): Sadness, anger, and surprise.

CR: There seemed to be some increasingly mixed feelings about Crean emerging in the past couple years from MU fans. I'm guessing it was due to the mix of Crean's name showing up on the annual coaching carousel, Marquette redoing his contract every other year, the performance in the Big East and NCAA Tournaments. Was there anything else?

TB: The annual coaching carousel was not much of a factor, but winning in March was an issue for some fans.

ESPN is reporting that Indiana University is "on the verge of" hiring Marquette head coach Tom Crean as its next head basketball coach.

According to the report, the deal is all but set, and Indiana will announce it tomorrow assuming Crean signs his name on the dotted line as expected. Dan Dakich is Indiana's interim head coach but has never been considered a serious candidate for the job on a permanent basis. Indiana's first choice, Washington State coach Tony Bennett, declined the Hoosiers' offer over the weekend.

Crean has a 190-96 record in his nine years at Marquette. He reached the Final Four in 2003 and is coming off a second round Tournament loss to Stanford. Two years ago he signed a lucrative contract extension through the 2017 season, but Indiana appears prepared to give him more money and more prestige.

Crean will have a very difficult job, as there's a good chance that all five starters from this year's Indiana team will be gone next year, and that Indiana will be on probation for the NCAA violations committed by former Indiana coach Kelvin Sampson.

Stanford coach Trent Johnson was calm and collected in addressing the media after his team beat Marquette Saturday, a victory he watched on the locker room TV after he was ejected in the first half:

Although most commentators have said Johnson should not have been ejected, Johnson made no complaints and no excuses.

"There was no profanity or anything like that used but I had been warned prior to that, and I put our team in a bad position, and that's unacceptable," Johnson said, before crediting assistant Doug Oliver for leading the team the rest of the way: "I'm very thankful and I'm fortunate to have guys like Doug."

It's a credit to Johnson that he isn't looking to blame the referee who tossed him. I wonder if he'd be quite so calm about it if his team had lost.

Trent Johnson's questionable ejection from today's Stanford/Marquette game could have sunk Stanford's season, but the team's two best players simply wouldn't allow it to happen. The Brothers Lopez combined for 48 of Stanford's 82 points in their overtime win over Marquette, including Brook Lopez's difficult leaner with 1.3 seconds left that gave the Cardinal the win.

Referee Curtis Shaw's ejection of Johnson had a huge effect on this game, although it's difficult to say who was given the bigger edge. The Cardinal got a lot of calls in the second half of this game, which gave them 20 free throws (in comparison to three for Marquette) in the second half. The twins certainly force their fair share of fouls in any game, but this large disparity suggests that the referee's might have made some makeup calls after the break.

Then again, Trent Johnson might have made some better coaching decisions in this game than the ones by assistant Doug Oliver. With Stanford up six points with 11:18, Oliver sat both Brook and Robin Lopez for the next 4:18. When they returned, Marquette had a one-point lead. Now, the decision to take them out was probably a good one given that they seemed on the verge of picking up technical fouls (and Robin had already picked up one of them), but sitting them for so long turned the momentum back to the Golden Eagles. It's tempting to think that Johnson would have brought at least one of them back sooner.

If you're one of those fans who loves college basketball in March because you love upsets, well, you haven't missed anything if you've been stuck at work all day.

The first half of the first day of the NCAA Tournament is almost completed, and it looks like we're going to have an upset-free afternoon. Xavier beat Georgia, Kansas beat Portland State and Michigan State beat Temple in the first three games. And Marquette is beating Kentucky, UNLV is blowing out Kent State, Pittsburgh is pummeling Oral Roberts and Purdue is destroying Baylor in the second group of four games.

That's not to say there hasn't been any good basketball. Xavier-Georgia was a better game than the 73-61 final score would indicate. And Kentucky could still pull off a fantastic finish and shock Marquette. (UPDATE: Marquette won, 74-66.) So far, it looks like a very good Tournament for people whose brackets are full of safe picks.

Conference: Big East
Record: 22-8, 11-7 in conference
RPI: 20
How They Got In: At-Large
Seed/Bracket: 6/South

Mascot: Golden Eagle. This past season, they re-designed their Golden Eagle to look more like Southern Mississippi's. They won a national championship as the "Warriors," but there was no getting past the connection to Native Americans from the Milwaukee area and eventually the school moved to their presently semi-generic Golden Eagle. Despite huge donations being offered conditioned on changing the name back to Warriors, the school wouldn't bite. There was an ill-fated move a few years ago, to simplify things. No, not "Eagles." They thought "Gold" was the better option. Within a few days, the hue and outcry forced a reversal.

Big Wins: Notre Dame (x2), at Wisconsin, Pitt

Notable Loss: at Syracuse (by 15 points)

Player You Should Know: Jerel McNeal is Marquette's best defensive player. Last year, he went down with a thumb injury just before the post-season and Marquette went out of the Big East and NCAA Tournaments with a whimper. He is healthy and ready. He has also become their offensive spark plug in the last two weeks.

Outlook: Everyone always talks about how you can't win in March without guard play. Marquette is one of those teams that takes it a little too far. Their frontcourt has some shooting talent, but not much strength. Getting to the Sweet 16 would be doable, but not much more than that.

Pitt Coach Jamie Dixon claimed that Pitt was starting to play its best basketball coming into the Big East Tournament. Hard to believe since Pitt was only 3-4 in its final 7 games. Pitt's defense had been getting torched, and the offense had been inconsistent.

Turns out that Pitt is playing its best basketball of the season. They won their 3d straight in the BET knocking off Marquette 68-61. Pitt became only the second team in the history of the Big East to win an OT game and win their next game. The only team to do it was Syracuse in 2006, which won the Big East Tournament that year.

This is Pitt's 7th trip to the Big East Tournament Championship game in 8 years. Pitt has only won it once, and this is also a rematch of last year's BET Championship game that Georgetown won by 23.

It's going to be a big question about just how much Pitt has left. The Championship game will be their 4th in 4 days. Pitt rarely goes much deeper than 7.

Georgetown had a first round bye and goes about 9 deep. They have looked very strong and only Jonathan Wallace has played 30 minutes or more in their first 2 games.

Going into the Big East Tournament, there were two historical themes. Georgetown has never lost a single game -- ever -- in the Big East Tournament as the #1 seed. The other being that only once in the 27 years of the Big East Tournament has a team won the BET playing 4 games in 4 days.

After Thursday's action, Georgetown looks like it is in great shape based on those two trends. The Hoyas are the #1 seed in the BET. They are also the only team that didn't play on Wednesday that will play on Friday. The 2, 3 and 4 seeds all lost on Thursday.

Georgetown actually blew an 11 point halftime lead against Villanova, before exploding late to crush Villanova 82-63. Villanova falls back on the bubble with a bad, ugly loss. Georgetown won going away despite Roy Hibbert finishing with 0 points and only 4 rebounds. Hibbert was saddled with foul troubles the whole game, and only played 14 minutes. Georgetown won big because they were unstoppable on the perimeter. They shot 17-28 on 3 point shots. Mind-boggling to watch.