The Big East Is Making A Case To Be College Basketball’s Sec

[Hoya Hoya Hoya]

The ACC is clearly going to have more teams in the 2017 NCAA Tournament than any other league in college basketball, but the Big East is again proving that the term “power-five” is dead when it comes to hoops.

This conference currently has four teams — Villanova, Xavier, Creighton, and Butler — that have won early season tournaments and each of those four teams have earned quality victories before Dec. 1.

The defending national champions own arguably the season’s best road win when they won at Purdue in the Gavitt Games and Creighton followed that up the next night with a convincing win over Wisconsin.

Xavier hasn’t been at full strength, but the Musketeers have still won games against Clemson and Northern Iowa (twice) while Butler earned a huge triumph last Friday against Arizona in Las Vegas.

These four teams make the Big East in contention to usurp the Big Ten and Big 12 as the sport’s second-best league.

Kansas and Baylor have been terrific to start the season, but the Big 12 doesn’t look nearly as strong at the top as it was last year after the personnel defections at Iowa State, Oklahoma, and Texas.

The Big Ten meanwhile, is still finding itself a bit at the top as many of its teams have suffered several early season losses.

If Georgetown, Seton Hall, and either Providence or Marquette show signs of life, then things could really be interesting in terms of the national perception of the Big East this season.

This conference took a major step last season when Villanova became its first program to win a national title following realignment.

It can take another this year if it keeps performing at the level it has thus far out of the gate.

http://www.fanragsports.com/cbb/rothste ... ntire-sec/

Big East = Power Conference

[marquette]

I read a CBS sports article the other day that referred to the Big East as a "Power 5 conference." I'm not sure who got demoted.

[Edrick]

Big East is third right now, after third last year, and 2nd in 2015. Maybe this got lost in the Drafts awhile?

http://kenpom.com/conf.php?c=BE&y=2015

[Bill Marsh]

This guy obviously didn't consult with Stever before writing his article.

Just teasing, big guy. No offense intended.

I like the sentiment of the article, but it's just way too early for this kind of thing IMHO. The best coaches don't coach just to win games at this time of year. These early games are teaching opportunities as much as they are contests on the record. Not saying they don't want to win. Just that they don't want to win at the expense of getting the team where they want them to be in January.

Izzo is the perfect example of a coach who focuses primarily on continuous improvement and who insists that his players execute what he's trying to teach them. If the team learns what he's teaching, the wins will take care of themselves. It's why his teams almost always do well in the tournament (7 FF & 13 Sweet 16) in the last 18 years). He gets them to peak at the time of year when the games mean the most.

[stever20]

this year is funny. Big East for the first time is very top heavy. You have 4 dominant teams, but then the rest of the pack isn't quite as good. Now, I don't think there's an issue with that at all- if the season ended with Big East only getting 4 tourney teams, but all 4 were top 4-5 seeds, I'd say that's light years better than any of the other 3 years- yes to include a few years ago when the conference got 6. You are measured by your top teams, not your depth.

Also, I wouldn't say it's really all that early any longer. I mean, of the P5 games plus good ones left like Cincy or Temple- Big East only has like 23 of those left. We are now about half way thru the OOC- and all but DePaul have played their exempt tournament now. so it's a lot later than one would think. By Sunday we'll be at 80/126 OOC games played.

[Jet915]

More ESPN love...

http://www.espn.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/116551/big-east-touting-quality-over-quantity