Bracketology: Big East is crashing toward another disappointing Selection Sunday

One of the biggest shocks of last year's Selection Sunday bracket reveal for the 2024 NCAA Tournament was the amount of disrespect the Big East received. Despite entering the weekend with six viable tournament teams, the conference received just three bids, with Seton Hall (who went on to win the NIT) and St. John's being among the most notable snubs from last year's field.

The selection committee pointed to bid thieves as an impediment for the Big East, but the league gained a measure of revenge as UCONN dominated the field to become the first back-to-back national champion in almost two decades. Despite high hopes entering the preseason, it appears that the Big East is trending towards another disappointing bid total for the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

How many Big East teams will go to the NCAA Tournament?

As of Feb. 7, ESPN's Joe Lunardi is projecting just four Big East teams make the field, with the highest seed being a No. 3 for Marquette. Current Big East leader St. John's is on the 5-line in Lunardi's bracket while UCONN is holding a 7-seed and Creighton is in an 8-9 game.

The only Big East team with a reasonable bubble argument right now is Xavier, who sit among Lunardi's first four teams out of the field thanks to a relatively mediocre 14-9 record with questionable metrics (a NET ranking of 53 with a 1-8 record in Quad 1 games). A combination of underachievers (Villanova/Providence/Seton Hall), teams that are a year early (Georgetown/Butler) and perennial disappointments (DePaul) have the Big East staring at another year where it doesn't get a ton of representation in the field of 68.

Unlike last season, when the conference was clearly disrespected, this year's total feels more accurate. The Big East's top four teams have all delivered tournament-caliber resumes and should be safe barring an unprecedented collapse down the stretch, which would mark an increase over last season's three bids, but there isn't much the league can do to produce a fifth guaranteed bid short of another team snagging the automatic bid from the Big East Tournament.

Perhaps Xavier (which has won at Marquette and against UCONN already) can improve its bubble case now that it is done with most of the league's big dogs, allowing them to stack victories and get close to 20 wins by the time the conference tournament rolls around. Villanova has the talent to get hot at Madison Square Garden to snag a bid (likely at Xavier's expense) if they get a good draw in the conference tournament. Apart from those two, it feels likely that Big East fans will spend another year complaining about the lack of respect their league gets from the Selection Committee, particularly if the similarly mediocre ACC gets more bids again.