Bulls looking to get back on winning track

Stan Heath is relatively mild-mannered compared to some of his fellow Big East men's basketball coaches, but there are losses, and then there are blood-boiling defeats.

Such as Saturday's when Heath kicked the Bulls out of the locker room as soon as they showered and dressed following the home loss to St. John's.

"I didn't want to see them," the University of South Florida coach said. "We needed to get away from each other."

When the Bulls reconvened for practice Monday afternoon, Heath held a short team meeting to discuss what's ahead, starting with tonight's game at No. 7-ranked Villanova. For the Bulls to have any shot of earning an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, they need to win their final four regular-season games.

To do that, they must avoid any more lethargic performances such as Saturday's 74-58 loss to the Red Storm that prevented the Bulls from climbing back to .500 in the Big East.

"We just laid an egg, and we're not very happy," Heath said.

USF's defense was lackadaisical at times against St. John's - the Red Storm shot a season-high 58.7 percent - shots weren't falling, passes weren't crisp, and Heath said there was too much "individualistic" play going on for the Bulls to win.

"That's not a winning formula for us," senior guard Mike Mercer said.

In the aftermath of the deflating loss, USF is attempting to rediscover some of the magic it had during a school-record four-game Big East winning streak earlier this month, one that included victories against Pittsburgh and Georgetown, two of the top teams in the conference.

A good place to start would be a victory tonight at Villanova, a program the Bulls have not beaten since joining the Big East five seasons ago. While Saturday's loss was costly to USF's bid to qualify for March Madness for the first time in 18 years, all is not lost.

If the Bulls can win their final four games: at Villanova, at home against Providence, at DePaul, and at home against Connecticut, they would finish 10-8 in the Big East, considered by most analysts to be good enough for an automatic bid since the Big East is considered the toughest conference in the nation this season.

"There's still a logjam of teams where we are," Heath said.

Still, it won't be easy considering the Bulls are trying to make a late-season adjustment by adding forward Augustus Gilchrist back into the lineup after a two-month layoff. To make matters worse, junior guard Dominique Jones has cooled off thanks to extra attention from opposing teams. Jones is shooting just 32.3 percent over the past four games, three of those losses.

While Jones and Gilchrist are USF's most talented offensive players, role players such as center Jarrid Famous and Mercer must elevate their games as well.

At Monday's team meeting, USF's third-year coach urged the Bulls to focus on "what we need to do to get ourselves back on track."

"This is a pivotal game," he said. "We've got to bring a much better defensive effort, a much better offensive performance, and really get back to where we were a few weeks ago."