"Terrence Williams figured no championship ever would be as easy.

Last March he and the rest of the Louisville Cardinals thought they would have an exhausted Syracuse team to kick around. The Orange had played the epic six-overtime game with Connecticut, then went into OT with West Virginia to advance into the final against Louisville.

This was going to be easier than reciting the ABC's. With the Big East tourney starting tomorrow, Williams, now with the Nets, has one memory of the 2009 Big East title game.

"How hard Syracuse played. They played that six-overtime game -- I watched that game. It finished like 2:30 in the morning. Then I was actually talking to Johnny [Flynn] throughout the night because he couldn't go to sleep," Williams recalled. "He cramped in that game and he had to get an ice bath, then he wanted to watch film and I'm telling him, 'Go to sleep.' "

Louisville eventually won, beating Syracuse, 76-66. But easy? No way.

For all the overtimes, for all of Flynn's near-insomnia and middle-of-the-night ice baths, the Big East title game turned out to be as simple as theoretical physics. In Greek."