After a shaky rebirth and an offseason full of question marks, the Big East Conference, particularly in basketball, is on the verge of thriving.
Back in 2012, the “Catholic Seven” schools from the old Big East Conference chose to part ways with the fellow schools that played FBS football. It was a move that to this day is questioned by some media and fans, especially in a world where football money drives everything.
After adding fellow basketball-centric universities in Creighton, Xavier and Butler, the Big East was reborn in an image that much more closely resembled the original conference. It was a basketball conference full of schools with campuses in urban settings. Much like the original Big East, this new conference also had a TV deal with a new, up-and-coming sports network.
Year one of the new conference was a successful one, as two of the ten teams were mainstays in the rankings and polls for most of the 2013-2014 season. The conference championship tournament was won by Providence, an original Big East member. Villanova, a member of the Big East since the second year of the original conference, won the regular season title.
The conference qualified four teams for the 2014 NCAA Tournament and received another huge image boost by having the nation’s consensus player of the year – Creighton’s Doug McDermott – to market every night.
The 2014-2015 season began with many question marks. McDermott graduated and moved on to the NBA, while Marquette coach Buzz Williams left the program to take over at Virginia Tech. It seemed that Villanova, led by longtime coach Jay Wright, was the only “known” in the conference. Everything else was up in the air, as many had the new Big East rated among the worst basketball conferences in the nation – at least nowhere in the top five.
Through the first couple of weeks of the 2014-2015 season and non-conference play, it would appear that nothing could be further from the truth. As expected, Villanova has led the charge, posting wins over Virginia Commonwealth and Michigan. Creighton, to the surprise of many, chipped in with a big win of their own over then 18th ranked Oklahoma.
Providence has wins over both Florida State and Notre Dame, while St. John’s beat Minnesota and Georgetown took down Florida.
Without question, the Big East’s biggest win of the season so far was Butler’s upset of No. 5 North Carolina. This was a great sign for the conference as whole, as it needs Butler to be competitive to be perceived as a strong conference from top to bottom.
For now, it appears the Big East Conference is alive and well. With the fallout of the O’Bannon case and the official establishment of the “Power 5”, it looks like not playing big time football might actually turn out to be more of a blessing than a curse. In terms of recruiting, the conference has the aforementioned TV deal with Fox Sports 1 to lean on, offering potential recruits the opportunity to appear on nationally televised broadcasts, night in, night out.
As always, you also have the lure of playing in some of the biggest cities and more storied venues, including the conference championship tournament in Madison Square Garden. As the conference has stretched west and eclipsed the Big Ten region, the Big East has put itself in a position to recruit the same kids and sell them on playing in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. vs. some of the smaller, rust belt college towns the Big Ten has to offer. Using the same thought process, schools like Creighton and Marquette can recruit kids from Denver and Las Vegas with the promise of playing in those big time cities without having to move all the way across the country to do so.
Right now, the Big East Conference is plugging along just fine without the lure (and burden) of major college football. It has been successfully reborn as a basketball-centric conference full of quality academic institutions with rich histories of success on the court and in the classroom. It is still home to some of the nation’s most prestigious universities in some of the most beautiful urban settings.
Nobody knows what the future may bring, but for now, the Big East is in the mix and on the rise. Right now, Big East basketball is very much alive and well.
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