Man, that Luke Harangody sure is tough. These guys know what I'm talking about.

Yes, Jay Wright sat down with The Sporting News' Matt Crossman yesterday (sheesh, is it already Thursday?) to discuss his team, the Big East, and the losses of DaJuan Blair, Levance Fields, and Sam Young. Standard stuff. Jay Wright's a savvy guy. Jay Wright eats interviews like these for breakfast. Sort of like Hitler ate milk and dry bread, right? HA! World War II reference! No?

Q: How brutal was it playing in the Big East last year?

A: It really was. All of us knew last year, playing everybody, as good as everybody was, it was just going to be a brutal year. You knew it was going to be brutal, but you didn't know until you went through it. By the time you came out the end of it, you looked back and said, "Wow. That was like a Bataan death march." Never a night off.

Oh boy. If I could somehow recreate that record screech that happens in movies on a blog, I would do it right now. That is record-screech-worthy. Failing that, this will work.

You know, I didn't have to play in the Big East last year. I had the luxury of watching, and man, was there some good college basketball to be had. Really great stuff. Like, remember when Sam Young dunked on the break against UConn and sent Pitt fans into a frenzy? That was awesome. And let's be real: That schedule was pretty brutal. A supposedly good team like Notre Dame got eaten alive before it had much of a chance to salvage its season. It was rough out there.

But I have to say, never during the course of last year's Big East slate did I observe anything that appeared as bad as this:

The march, involving the forcible transfer of 75,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war captured by the Japanese in the Philippines from the Bataan peninsula to prison camps, was characterized by wide-ranging physical abuse and murder, and resulted in very high fatalities inflicted upon the prisoners and civilians along the route by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan. Beheadings, cut throats and casual shootings were the more common actions — compared to bayonet stabbings, rapes, disembowelments, numerous rifle butt beatings and a deliberate refusal to allow the prisoners food or water while keeping them continually marching for nearly a week in tropical heat. Falling down or inability to continue moving was tantamount to a death sentence, as was any degree of protest or expression of displeasure.

That sounds just like having to play Louisville and UConn in back to back road games. Brutal!

I know it's just an expression, and Jay Wright didn't mean anything by it, so I'm not going to get all huffy. It's just that, you know, let's choose our words a little more carefully. The Bataan Death March was a uniquely horrible atrocity in the history of the world. It is to college basketball scheduling roughly as waging war is to fighting for a rebound under the hoop. Just sayin'.

Related: Big East Basketball, College Basketball Media