The Big East rolls into New York City this week for its annual postseason tournament with two Final Four contenders, a possible No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, a handful of bubble teams and the prohibitive favorite for national Player of the Year honors.
It sounds as if very little has changed for the powerhouse conference, but so much has. You won’t see Syracuse, Pittsburgh, UConn, Louisville and Notre Dame at the Garden this week. No Rick Pitino, Jamie Dixon or Jim Boeheim.
Instead, newcomers Creighton, Xavier and Butler will make their Big East Tournament debuts, as the new 10-team league caps off what most coaches feel was a successful first season.
“It’s never going to be the old Big East, but it’s going to be something that’s different and really special,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said. “Being a guy who grew up with the old Big East, I have to be honest. I was going in with my eyes wide open, trying to see what it would be like and missing the old Big East because that’s all I knew. But I’ve been really impressed with how important basketball is at every venue we go to.”
Indeed, the basketball-centric league doesn’t have to worry about football defections, which ripped apart the old conference. But it also will be interesting to see what kind of interest its marquee event draws without so much star power. There are still individual tickets available, but a source said the league “is in good shape” with the amount of seats it has already sold.
Villanova and Creighton have carried the conference, the Wildcats a top-10 fixture and the newcomers from Omaha, Neb., ranked between 10 and 20 much of the season. Both are in the top seven in RPI, which ranks teams based on win-loss record and strength of schedule, and the Wildcats could land a No. 1 seed if they are the last team standing at the Garden.
Traditional powers Marquette and Georgetown, picked to finish atop the league during the preseason, have struggled, and the Golden Eagles appear headed for the NIT barring a big week. St. John’s, an early sleeper to win the league, got off to a slow start, but has played its way into contention by winning 11 of its last 14 games. The Johnnies are on the NCAA Tournament bubble as a result, along with Xavier, Georgetown and Providence.
“I think there’s a different buzz this year,” Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard said. “Everybody feels they can go in there and win it. I don’t think you could say that in years past.
“If you can get half your league in [the tournament], that’s pretty darn solid. Everybody was saying, ‘you’re not getting eight anymore.’ But that was 50 percent when we had 16 teams.”
CBS college basketball analyst Seth Davis still expects the league to land four to five teams in the field of 68, though many prognosticators have only three teams in currently. Davis said the Big East is just another good league now, whereas it was previously considered the standard. The league will be watched close once the NCAA Tournament begins to see how it stacks up.
“I think there’s going to be a microscope on teams,” Wright said. “It will definitely be dissected.”
With veteran-led teams such as Creighton and Villanova likely to take a step back next season, Davis said St. John’s is paramount to the league’s success moving forward, primarily because of the New York City market.
“If there’s one program in the league that you need to have be relevant nationally, it’s St. John’s,” Davis said.
Creighton’s Doug McDermott has said he returned to school in part because of the opportunity to play in the Big East. The NBA prospect and nation’s leading scorer will be the tournament’s biggest draw this week.
“The only place you’re going to see Doug McDermott playing next week is Madison Square Garden,” Davis said. “It’s incredibly fortuitous. They have the [likely] national Player of the Year. That may not happen again for a long time.”
First-year commissioner Val Ackerman said she is pleased with the first season of the new league. Though she admitted there is a possibility of expansion down the road, Ackerman said the league’s presidents favor the 10-team, round-robin format in which everyone plays each other twice during the regular season. Aside from a handful of blowouts, games have been extremely close. Seton Hall, which finished eighth, has lost four one-point league games while ninth-place Butler has lost three overtime games and dropped five other contests by single digits. The league is No. 4 in the country in conference RPI, behind the Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12.
“We’re among the best [conferences in the country],” Ackerman said.
She said she expects this week to build on the memories the Big East Tournament created over the years, and establish new rivalries in the years to come. That all four quarterfinal contests Thursday have bubble implications — some consider St. John’s against Providence an NCAA Tournament elimination game — only adds to the excitement.
“We’ve got our own mini-March Madness,” Ackerman said. “With the relative importance of these games for some of the tournament aspirations of our schools, I don’t know what more you can ask for as far as great basketball atmosphere.”