A detailed look at what to expect from the Big East conference this coming college basketball season
The Big East is a conference that is well known for its love of basketball. For several years, it was home to some of the best basketball in the nation, renowned for its toughness and physicality, and treasured for the connections between the sport and the student body. Conference realignment ushered a sea of change, though, sending many of the league’s premier programs to the Atlantic Coast Conference as a new Big East was born.
Despite the changing of the guard, expectations in the league haven’t changed and last season shows was a helpful reminder of why. Half of the Big East’s ten teams made the NCAA Tournament in 2015-16 and the conference compiled the second-best winning percentage of any league in March. The Big East is also home to college basketball’s defending national champion, the Villanova Wildcats.
Villanova will be pushed at the top of the conference by Xavier, a two-seed in the 2016 NCAA Tournament and league runner-up last season. Behind the top tier, Butler, Creighton, Georgetown and Seton Hall will all have a chance to make their case to be included in the field of 68 come March. With a conference once again full of talent and depth, things are shaping up to be just like they once were in the old Big East.
The Favorite: Villanova Wildcats
If you’re bringing back three starters from a team that is just a few months removed from winning a national title, then it’s likely that you’ll enter the season as the favorite to win your league’s regular season title. Such is the case with the Villanova Wildcats.
Fresh off of his heroics at the Final Four, Kris Jenkins will be back in a Villanova uniform for his senior year. As a 6-foot-6, big bodied forward, Jenkins gives the Wildcats a ton of versatility in the frontcourt. Most notably, his ability to step out beyond the three-point arc creates driving lanes for all of Villanova’s talented guards. Jenkins knocked down 38.6 percent of his team-leading 259 three-point attempts last season.
Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart will also be back to join Jenkins in the starting lineup, but the key to Villanova maintaining a sustained level of success may lie in the hands of sophomore wing Mikal Bridges. Bridges flashed enough talent off the bench last season to get himself on NBA Draft radars. At 6-foot-7, he has excellent length on the wing, and with some added weight, he should be a versatile defender for the Wildcats. Bridges is also an excellent slasher on offense, able to get to the rim by reading defenses and making himself available. In order to take Villanova to the next level, he’ll need to knock down outside shots with more consistency in his second season. If he does, Villanova could be poised for another Final Four run.
The Dark Horse: Creighton Blue Jays
It’s hard to imagine anyone in the conference breaking into the top two of the Big East standings next season. Villanova and Xavier are simply a cut above what the rest of the league has to offer, but in terms of talent, the team best positioned to crack the ceiling is Creighton.
All of the action for the Blue Jays will funnel through their two guards who will make up one of the top backcourts in all of college basketball, not just in the Big East. Maurice “Mo” Watson Jr. will return to Omaha for his senior season after leading the team in scoring in 2015-16 at 14.1 points per game. At 5-foot-10, Watson is on the smaller side for high major point guards, but his quickness allows him to attack the rim with ease where he finished 63.0 percent of his chances as a junior. Joining Watson in the backcourt is Kansas State transfer Marcus Foster. As a freshman, Foster lit the Big 12 ablaze, averaging 15.5 points per game while making nearly 40 percent of his three-pointers. The 6-foot-3 guard had a falling out with head coach Bruce Weber as a sophomore, leading to his transfer, but now he should be rejuvenated as he looks to inject a bit of life back into his NBA prospects.
In the frontcourt, Creighton gets 6-foot-8 Cole Huff back for his senior season. Huff is a versatile power forward who can open up space for Watson and Foster to attack the basket off the dribble. The Blue Jays will also add former top 100 recruit Justin Patton to the frontcourt rotation. Patton redshirted in his first year with the program and should have the added bulk to compete at a high-major level after a year of training.
With plenty of talent on the roster, Creighton seems like the Big East team with the best chance of pushing Villanova and Xavier to their limits.
The Overrated Team: Butler Bulldogs
Last season, Butler flipped the script. The Bulldogs went from one of the nation’s best defensive teams in year one of the Chris Holtmann era to one of its most efficient offenses in year two. Seniors Kellen Dunham and Roosevelt Jones provided the team with steady hands on the offensive end, finishing as the first and third leading scorers, respectively. With both of them now gone, Butler will be in need of significant retooling despite being ranked in the top 25 in various preseason polls.
The Bulldogs will no doubt have one of the top frontcourts in the league with Kelan Martin and Andrew Chrabascz returning to school. Both players averaged double digit points last season and the duo should be the focal point of Butler’s offensive attack in 2016-17. The bigger questions lie in the backcourt where there is just one player who earned double digit minutes with the team left on the roster.
Former North Carolina State transfer Tyler Lewis will see an expanded role this season after averaging 19.1 minutes per game in 2015-16. Lewis has great potential as a facilitator, but will need to showcase it over a larger sample size now. He’ll be joined by 6-foot-3 combo guard Kethan Savage, another transfer from George Washington. How Lewis and Savage mesh will be important for the Bulldogs. Their offense doesn’t play at a fast pace, so maximizing points per possession will be critical and having a stable backcourt to provide to the frontcourt will be key.
Player of the Year: Josh Hart
As Villanova works to defend its national title, Josh Hart will be looked at to take another leap forward as an individual player. As a junior, Hart evolved from the Wildcats’ sixth man into one of its most important pieces as a two-way wing who was one of the country’s best perimeter defenders and also one its most efficient scorers. Hart was one of only two major conference players in the country last year to average better than 15 points and six rebounds per game with a true shooting percentage above 60 percent. The other, Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine, split National Player of the Year Honors with Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield.
Now, as the Wildcats’ senior leader, Hart will be asked to play a slightly bigger role without former starters Ryan Arcidiacono and Daniel Ochefu around. Hart should run away with Big East Player of the Year honors unless someone like Edmond Sumner makes a massive jump or Marcus Foster lights the conference on fire in his first year at Creighton. Whether or not the 6-foot-5 guard can maintain his efficiency on a couple of more shots per game could make the difference, though, as Hart chases National Player of the Year honors himself.
Newcomer of the Year: Marcus Foster
In most conferences, the Newcomer of the Year award is doled out to a flashy five-star recruit who figures to make an immediate impact for a league contender, but in the Big East, there are no such prospects. Not one team in the conference landed a five-star recruit this season, but there are still a few players who figure to have a big impact on the Big East’s landscape.
Creighton’s Marcus Foster may be set to have the largest one, though. Foster entered college at Kansas State as a three-star recruit who wasn’t even ranked in the top 200 nationally , but exploded onto the scene by averaging 15.5 points per game on a solidly efficient 54.6 true shooting percentage. His scoring ability combined with his potential to develop as a facilitator landed Foster on NBA radars before he faltered as a sophomore.
Perhaps the bright lights got to the young star, but in his second season, Foster regressed significantly, averaging 12.5 points and shooting worse than 40 percent from the field. He was both suspended and bench by his head coach during the regular season and then dismissed at the end of it.
Now, looking for a fresh start with the Blue Jays after sitting out a year, Foster has the potential to impress a new league. The talent is there, but Foster will need to be mentally focused in order to have the kind of impact that he’s capable of.
The only things that seem like a safe bet in the Big East this season are that Villanova will finish atop the conference with Xavier not far behind. The Musketeers are talented enough to hold off the next group of competition, but with Jalen Reynolds leaving school last spring, it’s tough to imagine them topping the Wildcats.
Now the middle of the conference is where things get interesting as there are four teams — Butler, Creighton, Georgetown and Seton Hall — that all figure to be relatively equal competitors throughout the regular season. Here’s a look at how we project things to shake out:
- Villanova
- Xavier
- Creighton
- Georgetown
- Butler
- Seton Hall
- Marquette
- Providence
- St. John’s
- DePaul
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Creighton is our favorite to finish third in the conference behind the stellar backcourt play of Maurice Watson and Marcus Foster while Seton Hall could fall into the bottom half of the league without Isaiah Whitehead on the roster running the show. Marquette and Providence both figure to struggle with their best players off to the NBA while St. John’s and DePaul bring up the rear. Both schools are several years away from competing to be in the top half of the league standings.
Still, the Big East should earn several NCAA bids come March and put on one heck of a show for its fans this season.