Notre Dame After back-to-back losses in the Paradise Jam by a combined five points, Notre Dame has rebounded with four straight victories to improve its record to 6-2. Tuesday night, at the Jimmy V Classic in New York, the Irish downed Kansas State 68-59 behind strong performances from sophomore forward Luke Harangody, who finished with 19 points and a career-high 14 rebounds, and junior guard Kyle McAlarney, who added 18 points of his own, including the final nine of the game. Kansas State’s sensation freshman guard Michael Beasley, who leads the nation in scoring with 26.8 points per game, scored 19 points but was held to just two in the second half thanks to a strong defensive effort by the Irish. The husky Harangody, who looks like he could help the Notre Dame football team with his 6-foot-8, 250-pound frame, leads the Irish this season in scoring and rebounding with 17.5 points per game and 8.9 rebounds per game. Pittsburgh It’s a new season with the same results for No. 12 Pittsburgh, who is 8-0 for the sixth consecutive year. The first seven victories were easy, but number eight required some work as Duquesne stayed with the Panthers until the end when junior guard Levance Fields’ four points in the final minute put the game away at 73-68 on Wednesday night. Junior guard Sam Young led the way with 23 points and five rebounds in 36 minutes. Pittsburgh jumped out to an early 14-0 lead in the first three minutes and 30 seconds before giving the Dukes the opportunity to close the gap. Not skipping a beat with the loss of last year’s star center Aaron Gray, the Panthers have been 8-0 to start the season in each of Head Coach Jamie Dixon’s five years at the helm of the program. Wednesday’s game was the first away contest for Pittsburgh but was only two miles away at the A.J. Palumbo Center on Duquesne’s campus. Louisville Louisville has managed to win two games in a row since Brigham Young University upset the preseason national title contenders last month, but neither win came very easy for the No. 14 Cardinals. The Cardinals edged past Miami of Ohio 47-44 on Saturday at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky. Miami’s deliberate attack kept it in the game and gave it a 42-41 lead with 3 minutes left in the game. It was, however, Louisville forward Earl Clark who scored the game’s final four points to give the home team the lead and victory. Clark, who is averaging a double-double this season with 14 points and 11.8 rebounds per game, led the way for the Cardinals with 10 points and 11 rebounds. Louisville suffered the loss of senior center David Padgett, who fractured his right knee cap and is out for at least another two months and could possibly miss the whole season. Padgett, who hit his knee in practice and then again in a Nov. 18 game against Jackson St., has a history of injuries and is already in his fifth year after redshirting. Louisville will now prepare a home game this Saturday against perennial Atlantic 10 Conference Championship contender Dayton, which is 6-1 this season. Syracuse With 20 points and 10 rebounds in a 70-68 road win over Virginia Wednesday, freshman forward Donte Greene demonstrated why he was named the Big East preseason co-rookie of the year. To go along with his first career double-double, Green blocked three shots while helping the Orange’s sixth win of the season. Greene leads Syracuse in scoring with 19 points per game, and the Orange have had no trouble filling the hoop this season. As a team, Syracuse is averaging 81 points per game and has five players scoring in double figures. The problem for Syracuse has been on the defensive end. In one of their two losses, the Orange allowed Massachusetts of the Atlantic 10 conference to hang 107 points on them. No team had ever scored that much in the Carrier Dome since it was opened in 1980. The Minutemen posted a whopping 59 points in the second half – by comparison, Georgetown had not allowed 59 points in the entire game until Alabama scored 60 two nights ago. If Syracuse wants to play with the big boys in the Big East, they will need to start getting stops on the defensive end. Rutgers While the women at Rutgers are nationally ranked, the less-heralded men have flown under the radar with a 6-2 start to their season. Wednesday night, the Scarlet Knights downed Lafayette 90-79 behind a career-high 26 points from junior forward J.R. Inman and four other players in double figures. The Scarlet Knights shot particularly well against the Leopards, connecting on 19-of-21 from the free-throw line and knocking down 11 threes. Inman leads the Scarlet Knights on the year with 17.8 points and 9.3 rebounds per contest, while Hamady N’diaye, a sophomore center out of Senegal, has been a force on the defensive end, blocking 29 shots in just eight games. Rutgers’ two losses have come against two-time defending national champion Florida and to St. Peter’s, marking the first time Rutgers lost to St. Peter’s since 1978. The Scarlet Knights have the biggest test of their non-conference season when they play host to No. 1 North Carolina on Dec. 16. If Rutgers has any aspirations of having both men’s and women’s teams in the NCAA tournament this year, an upset of the top-ranked team in the land would go a long way in the minds of the NCAA selection committee. West Virginia After Georgetown snuck away from Alabama in Birmingham, Ala., Bob Huggins’ West Virginia squad walloped Auburn to the tune of 88-59. The Mountaineers continued the Big East’s dominance in the inaugural Big East-SEC Invitational, shooting a blistering 61 percent from the field en route to the blow-out win. Leading the way was junior guard Alex Ruoff, who posted 28 points on 10-of-12 shooting and 6-of-8 from beyond the arc. Ruoff is averaging 16.7 points and 3.0 assists per game this year. West Virginia is no stranger to big wins this season, as they lead the nation in scoring margin and are 6-1 on the year. The 65-point margin they had in their 106-41 rout of Prairie View A&M on Nov. 18 seemed ridiculous at the time but was topped by the Mountaineers’ 110-44 shellacking of the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore just nine days later. West Virginia’s only loss was a 74-72 nail-biter against then-No. 7 Tennessee. The Mountaineers have no more currently ranked opponents on their non-conference schedule, but the going will get tough as soon as the Big East season starts – West Virginia opens at Notre Dame, returns home to face off against No. 11 Marquette, followed by a tough match at No. 14 Louisville to conclude its first week in the Big East.