By Nina Mandell
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Despite heading into the Big East tournament with a No. 3 seed, New Jersey native Da'Sean Butler and his West Virginia team came into Madison Square Garden with the odds stacked against them.
All day they watched as each of the other top-seeded team who earned a double-bye into the tournament's quarterfinals — No. 1 Syracuse, No. 2 Pittsburgh and No. 4 Villanova — were handed upsets.
Forty minutes later, Butler forced a crucial turnover off Cincinnati guard Dion Dixon with seconds remaining in their quarterfinal matchup. Then, as the buzzer sounded, he hit a game-winner over Brooklyn native Lance Stephenson as Dixon sunk to the floor, dejected.
"He called it," Stephenson told the Charleston Daily Mail. "He said, 'Bank.' I said, 'What?' and I looked and it went in."
West Virginia will take on No. 7 Notre Dame at Madison Square Garden Friday at 7 p.m., while No. 5 Marquette will face No. 8 Georgetown at the Garden at 9 p.m.
Meanwhile, the Big East tournament brought heartache for another New York-area hoops figure.
Norm Roberts, the embattled coach of St. John's, will be fired by the university if the Red Storm doesn't reach the NIT tournament after a loss to Marquette on Wednesday, the New York Post reported — a move that players protested.
"I definitely feel like we should have a voice," St. John's junior D.J. Kennedy told the paper. "From what I was told, from where he brought this program from, it was in a deep hole."
