With the NFL season coming to a close, the college basketball season is starting to heat up. All across the nation, conferences are trying to stake their claim as the best conference in America. While the ACC has the defending NCAA champion (North Carolina) and the current No. 1 team (Duke), and the Big 10 has four teams in the Top 25, the Big East has shown through the first couple of weeks of 2006, that it is the best conference in college basketball.
Led by No. 3 Connecticut, the Big East has six teams currently ranked in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll. They also have three teams, with No. 7 Villanova, and No. 9 Pittsburgh joining Connecticut in the top 10 of that same poll. The conference also is home to one of the last three undefeated teams in college basketball. The conference has really been elevated by the additions of the five schools from Conference USA.
Cincinnati, South Florida, Marquette, DePaul, and Louisville have elevated the Big East to a 16 team "Super Conference." Louisville has already pushed Pittsburgh to the brink of defeat before the Panthers won 61-57 on Sunday. Marquette has showed that it can play in the Big East by giving the Huskies of Connecticut their first defeat of the season, a 94-79 thumping on January 3rd. Steve Novak had 41 points and 16 rebounds in that game, putting him in elite company as he joined only Allen Iverson and Troy Murphy as the only players to score 30 or more points in their Big East debut.
Add this to the returning core teams of the Big East (Connecticut, Syracuse, Villanova, Pittsburgh, West Virginia, etc.) and it gets rather easy to see why some analysts say that the Big East has a shot to get 10 teams into the NCAA tournament in March. Syracuse has won 12 straight coming into their showdown with the Huskies on Monday night, while West Virginia is first in the conference having handed Villanova their first loss of the season back on January 8th.
The conference also has a group of rising teams that give the conference the balance that separates the Big East from the other conferences. These teams include Rutgers, who has a tough home arena (ask Villanova) and a streaky guard in Quincy Douby, Georgetown, who are trying to restore the glory days with sophomore Jeff Green and John Thompson III, and Notre Dame, with Colin Quinn and their three-point shooters.
The Big East conference also has a shot to get multiple teams into the Final Four this year, as several teams have postseason experience that will come handy in March. Louisville was in the Final Four last year, while West Virginia made it to the Elite Eight. Connecticut won the tournament in 2004, while Syracuse won the title in 2003. Marquette also participated in the Final Four that year.
There are the optimists who say that once the Big East gets into the meat of conference play that the Big East teams will begin to cancel each other out as they defeat each other. Indeed, there will be a lot of defeats within the conference, but why is that going to be looked at as a bad thing? Is a conference stronger or weaker by having one dominant team or an overall great conference where if you don’t bring your top game every night you will lose? That is a question that the NCAA tournament committee will have to ponder come March.
January 19, 2006
Jeff:
What you talked about in the last paragraph is what I was thinking the entire time reading this. There’s no doubt that they’re a good conference, and you’re probably right that they’re the best in the country (it’s hard not to be with 16 teams to choose from) but as it has happened to the ACC in the past, some teams will begin to fall from the top ten or the top 25 in the rankings. They will most definitely get multiple teams in the tourney at the end as they will be very deserving, but 10 is pushing it. It most definitely will be an entertaining conference to watch for the next two months, though.