Breakfast buffet: As usual, Xavier heating up entering March

Pull up a chair and sit down at the breakfast buffet, a daily assortment of all the freshest newsworthy college hoops stories on the net. To make a submission, contact me via email or twitter.

• Bubble teams from the Atlantic 10 may be falling left and right these days, but the top of this league is still strong as ever. Xavier snapped Richmond's eight-game win streak with a scintillating 78-76 double overtime victory, keeping the Muskeeters in a first place tie with Temple. "Just winning this game put the last two games and the rest of the season in our hands," Xavier senior Jason Love said. "We don't have to be looking up at the score to see who lost and who won. It's about us."

• Louisville got out-rebounded 50-22 and outscored 22-5 in second-chance points by UConn on Sunday, but, hey, who cares? The Cardinals secured a critical road victory over the Huskies thanks to a game-winning reverse layup from Edgar Sosa, giving them 10 Big East wins and putting them very close to wrapping up a tourney bid. "We don't have a dominating basketball team as you can see," coach Rick Pitino said. "But we're intelligent; we make good plays."

• From "a big silly dude" to Conference USA's most dominant center, that's how much Tulsa's Jerome Jordan has improved since coming to the U.S. from Jamaica as a 6-foot-10 basketball neophyte. "It gives me goose bumps," said Dave Wojcik, a Wake Forest assistant who recruited Jordan at Tulsa. "Big 'Rome looked like Bambi on ice when we first laid eyes on him."

• Marquette, snake-bit for months in close games, suddenly has nothing but good karma, winning its third straight overtime game on Sunday when Seton Hall's Jeremy Hazell had the potential tying jumper rim out at the buzzer. Crushing loss for the Pirates' fleeting NCAA tournament hopes, while Marquette has to feel pretty safe at 10-6 in the Big East.

• Nothing about Purdue's first post-Robbie Hummel performance was especially encouraging for Boiler nation, but The Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy offers a few thoughts on how the team can survive without its injured star. More offense from Keaton Grant and more rebounding from, well, anybody are at the top of that list.

• We've all spent so much time addressing how Purdue struggled without Hummel on Sunday that it's easy to forget about the team that actually won the game. Kudos to Michigan State for putting itself in position to share the Big Ten title with a crucial road victory despite an ugly eight-turnover performance from reigning conference player of the year Kalin Lucas.

• Syracuse fans are not thrilled that Kansas is still getting so much love for the top spot in the polls, but they do see one silver lining: More motivation for the seemingly always overlooked Orange. The one quibble I'd have with this post? The Big East is not "twice as tough" a conference as the Big 12. Deeper? Probably. But the upper half of both leagues is very legit.

• Temple remained in a first-place tie atop the Atlantic 10 with a win over LaSalle on Sunday. Why is that noteworthy? Well, it also meant the Owls cemented their status as best in the city of Philadelphia, capturing the famed Big 5 title with their first 4-0 mark since 1987-88.

• Please, Nike, say we've seen the last of these god-awful gray ... err silver ... jerseys that North Carolina, Georgetown and Cal each trotted out last week in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Air Jordan brand. I'm sure somebody somewhere must have liked them. I, however, did not.