While most college basketball conferences are being run by a few powerhouses - Duke in the ACC, Texas in the Big 12, Ohio State in the Big Ten - there is one conference where parity abounds: the Big East. There are 11 teams within five games of first place in the conference, and it seems that there's a monstrous upset in the Big East every week. Now that most college basketball fans have passed the title of "Best College Basketball Conference" from the ACC to the Big East, I wonder - what is behind the mystique of the Big East?
In the Associated Press top 25 poll, the Big East holds eight spots, with five teams ranked in the top 15. The No. 2- and No. 3-ranked RPI conferences, the Big Ten and the Big 12, respectively, only have seven teams in the top 25 combined. But rankings only can characterize a conference so much. What really counts, especially in college basketball - where a one-and-done tournament decides the national champion - is how you fare in March.
So let's look back to last March and see if the so-called "super-conference" lived up to its hype. The Big East sent eight teams to the 2010 NCAA Tournament - more than any other conference - and matched its record output from the 2006 and 2008 tournaments. Of those eight teams, four lost in the first round, and three of those four were ranked considerably higher than their upset-minded opponents. After needing overtime to beat No. 15 seed Robert Morris in the first round, Villanova was manhandled by a bigger and stronger St. Mary's team in the second round. One of the tournament favorites, Syracuse, lost in the third round to mid-major Butler, while No. 3 seed Pittsburgh lost to Atlantic-10 foe Xavier in the second round.
The only Big East team that moved past the third round was West Virginia, which advanced to the Final Four before losing to eventual champion Duke. The depleted Pac-10, which sent only two teams to the tournament, went 2-0 against the Big East. Five of the Big East teams in the tournament lost to mid-majors, and the Big East finished the tournament with an 8-8 record overall - the lowest winning percentage of the six major basketball conferences.
But there must be some valid excuse as to why the Big East did so poorly in last year's NCAA tournament if they are to be considered the best conference in college basketball. Maybe they were just tired from a long and hard-fought conference schedule. But if that were the case, why were teams from the Big Ten or the Pac-10 not tired? The 18-game Big Ten and Pac-10 conference schedules are just as long as the Big East's, and the 16-game ACC, Big 12 and SEC conference schedules are only two games shorter. Do two games make that much of a difference?
Maybe I'm not looking at a sufficiently long time frame to gauge the real strength of the conference. But then why have there only been two Big East teams - Connecticut in 2004 and Syracuse in 2003 - that have participated in the national championship during the last decade? Duke, Florida and North Carolina have all won two national championships each during that span. Even the Big Ten, a conference not known for being a basketball powerhouse, has sent five teams to the national championship during the last 10 years.
Perhaps the Big East is a better conference from top to bottom. But consider that of the five teams the Big East sent to the National Invitational Tournament, only two advanced from the first round - both of whom ended up losing in the second round. The NIT, affectionately nicknamed the "Not Invited Tournament," allows teams at the middle-to-bottom of their respective conferences that didn't make the Big Dance to play in a postseason tournament. Some think the tournament doesn't matter and the teams don't care, but I have a hard time believing that South Florida, the best team from the Big East to get left out of the NCAA tournament, didn't care about being beaten by North Carolina State, the fourth worst team in the ACC.
I'm not saying the Big East isn't a great basketball conference, because it is. And I'm definitely not saying there aren't a lot of great teams in the Big East, because there are. But the Big Dance is right around the corner, and I can sense that Joe Lunardi and ESPN are beginning to rev up the Big East hype machine. Lunardi put an unprecedented 11 Big East teams in his latest NCAA bracket projections. So before anybody else jumps on the Big East bandwagon, make sure to wait and see who's still dancing come April. After all, greatness is counted in championship rings.
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