The weather folks, the ones who call sunny with a chance of clouds an actual prediction, like to debate whether the month of March will come in like a lamb or a lion. The theory being that the month that starts cold and nasty will right itself and finish nicely. OK, so weather logic doesn’t work in basketball. In 1993, Rider played Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The Broncs were the 16-seed, Kentucky the No. 1 seed. Rider star Darrick Suber was writing a diary for the local paper I worked for at the time and wrote that as he walked onto the court at Vanderbilt University, a Cat fan in her Southern drawl called down, ‘Here come the lambs.’ And that’s the thing about being a basketball lamb in the month of March. Rarely do you find your roar. Instead you usually head to the slaughter (Rider lost 96-52). But with just three days left in February, there are more than a few teams that are limping their way into March. And more than a few who are finding their voice. THE LAMBS Villanova Wildcats : With the 81-68 home loss to St. John’s, the Wildcats are now 21-8 overall and 9-7 in the Big East. The same team that started the season 17-1 and climbed to No. 7 in the polls has now slunk down the rankings and is 5-7 in its past 12 games. Worse, with road games at Notre Dame and Pittsburgh, odds favor the Wildcats finishing with two more losses and a pedestrian 9-9 record in the conference. That has more than a handful of folks in Philadelphia sensing some uncomfortable déjà vu. Last season, the Wildcats started with a 20-1 record and climbed all the way to No. 2 in the country. They ended up losing four of their last six in the regular season. They lost their first game of the Big East Tournament, nearly lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Robert Morris and were then booted by Saint Mary’s in the second round. Most concerning, somewhere along the way Corey Fisher has lost his shot and his confidence. He is 4-of-26 in his past two games, both losses. Texas Longhorns : All things relative here following the free-for-all slide that characterized the Longhorns a season ago. Certainly two bad losses does not a disastrous season make, but Texas, once a solid No. 1 seed, certainly has knocked itself off of that line for now after sandwiching losses to Nebraska and Colorado around a pedestrian win against lowly Iowa State. Worst of all is how the Longhorns — a team praised for their defense — lost to the Buffs by blowing a 22-point lead. Texas surrendered 58 second-half points to a team that had lost seven of its previous 10 games. Arizona Wildcats : Like the Longhorns, the Wildcats aren’t bandaged and damaged heading into March, but this certainly was a lost weekend in SoCal. The loss to USC was bad; the 71-49 mauling from UCLA was atrocious. Once in position to win the Pac-10 title outright, instead Arizona already has ceded at least a share to the Bruins. On lamb alert: Connecticut Huskies: There were enough excuses to explain away their most recent loss — NCAA punishments meted out, no head coach — but the loss to Marquette on Thursday was merely the latest stumble for the once red-hot Huskies. Connecticut has dropped five of its past eight and on Sunday takes on the newest hot team in the Big East, Cincinnati. With a game at West Virginia and home against Notre Dame to finish, the once lionish Huskies could be baa-baaing into March. THE LIONS St. John’s Red Storm : Steve Lavin might want to have his white sneakers bronzed. The coach insists he’s wearing the casual shoes for comfort not superstition, but the Red Storm, which beat Villanova on Saturday, are 8-1 since Lavin and his staff donned the sneakers as part of Coaches vs. Cancer awareness. The well-coiffed Lavin doesn’t strike as the type to wear his Easy Spirits, so we’re going with superstition. You’d be hard-pressed to find a team more impressive than the Red Storm in the past month. Of those eight wins, four have come against top-25 opponents and three were on the road. In a season of ‘first since,’ the Red Storm racked up two more when they upended struggling Villanova. It was the Storm’s first win against a top-15 team on the road since they beat Duke in 2000. The six victories against ranked opponents is the school’s most since the 1999-2000 season. With winnable games at Seton Hall and home against South Florida, the Red Storm could literally storm into Madison Square Garden on an eight-game tear when the Big East tournament begins. Dwight Hardy : When Lavin told me last week that he thought Hardy ought to win Big East Player of the Year, I admit I thought he was insane. So now either I’m equally insane or he was right. As Connecticut and Kemba Walker fade down the stretch, Hardy keeps coming. On the heels of his buzzer-beating, circus-shot winner against Pittsburgh, Hardy dumped 34 points on Villanova.

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So who’s a lamb and who’s a lion?