We break down the Week 16 action, and where all the teams stand in the last week of the Big East conference season.
Well, the Big East’s middle stays big. In the last week of the conference regular season — the last games happen this Saturday — just two games separate the six teams from 3rd through 8th in the Big East. The latest projections are mainly hovering between six and seven bids for the conference. Seven bids would be a windfall for the Big East, which hasn’t had more than six bids in its current configuration. But several near the bottom are hanging by a thread; all of Marquette, Seton Hall, and Providence are in Joe Lunardi’s Last Four in, and Xavier’s falling fast.
Let’s sort out the action from the past week, and what the league’s bubble teams will need to do to stay in the postseason hunt. We’re close, but not quite there yet.
Georgetown appears to have mentally pulled the plug on the season. Since last week’s rankings, they dropped a home game to DePaul (DEPAUL), couldn’t handle St. John’s in Madison Square Garden, and lost to Seton Hall. With a record that’s fallen below .500 and an abysmal 5-12 showing in the Big East, their season is cooked.
With the most recent mini-meltdown, John Thompson III’s job security has taken another blow. The student paper, students and fans have all joined the chorus for change, and it’s hard to blame them. Attendance is abysmal, the arena situation is in constant limbo, and the team hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament in the four seasons since the embarrassment of Dunk City. There haven’t been many positives. The university has expressed some support for JT3, but if he manages to survive this offseason, he probably wouldn’t get through another year like this one.
DePaul clawed its way out of the power rankings bunker for the week with the head-to-head victory over Georgetown. They followed the victory up with a strong showing at Seton Hall, though they eventually fell in a close game, 82-79. They lost again Tuesday to Providence, though.
It’s been a nice-ish stretch for the team in a desolate season. Their charge in the last few games has been spearheaded by the trio of Billy Garrett Jr., Tre’Darius McCallum and Eli Cain. While we’ve discussed Garrett and Cain in this space before, McCallum hasn’t gotten any digital ink here. The junior college transfer, currently in his first year of eligibility in D-I, has put together a nice little season as a box score stuffer for the Blue Demons. He leads the team in blocks, steals and rebounds, while he’s third on the team in points. The only thing he hasn’t managed to do is hit the 3 consistently, but an 80.4 free throw percentage points to potential improvement there. While he’s not a true underclassmen, he’s shown promise and has plenty of eligibility left.