A couple more stories.
Despite the Pitt loss (or in part helped by), this turned out to be a good weekend for the Big East on a national level. The NY Times said so (hat tip, Steve).
When St. John’s tapped into some of its old glory by handing No. 9 Pittsburgh its first loss of the season Saturday, it was just part of a special day for the Big East.
With No. 12 West Virginia’s victory at No. 18 U.C.L.A. and unranked Georgetown’s upset of top-ranked and previously undefeated Duke, the Big East cemented its status as the top conference in college basketball. Although the league, with its 16 teams, may be twice as large as it was in its halcyon days, the enduring quality is that every game is grueling.
“It’s very obvious,” Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim said. “There’s nothing I need to say. You can just look around and see what we’re doing.”
In Big Twelve country, there is recognition as to where the best conference is:
This year, however, The Beast is bigger and perhaps better than ever. The Big East is the deepest basketball conference in Division I, and that’s not simply because it has expanded to a sweet 16.
The Big East has eight teams with 13 or more victories (the 12-team ACC has five). With six weeks of regular-season play remaining, all of those teams are in excellent shape to earn an NCAA Tournament spot.
Georgetown is 12-4 following its upset of top-ranked Duke. If the Hoyas are on the NCAA bubble, their defeat of the Blue Devils could be a deal maker.
Sure, it’s an advantage to have a 16-team league if it leads to landing a record number of teams in the field. The Big East figures to best the previous record of seven teams from one conference. But it’s not just a numbers game.
The Big East has legitimate Final Four contenders in West Virginia, Villanova and Pittsburgh. Georgetown will be a dark horse.
St. John’s, picked to finish 10th, defeated Louisville and Pitt last week. The Mountaineers won at UCLA the same day Georgetown ended Duke’s perfect start.
And Connecticut, likely to be the new No. 1, is the national championship favorite. (Sorry, Duke fans, but the Huskies are more talented than the Blue Devils.)
The Georgetown win over Duke will keep them in the NCAA (or at least on the bubble) for the season.
Dick Weiss at the NY Daily News, agrees about the beast and sees the potential for 10 teams.
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said late Saturday night that he could make a case for at least 10 teams from the conference making the NCAA Tournament field.
He didn’t get specific, but here’s how it breaks down: There’s a solid case for UConn (16-1), Villanova (13-2), Pitt (15-1), Syracuse (15-4), West Virginia (14-3), Marquette (14-5) and Georgetown (12-4) as teams that should be in the field of 65. Louisville (13-5), Cincinnati (14-5) and maybe even Rutgers (12-6) also could be in the mix come March.
It’s hard to know what the selection committee will think, especially since some of these teams will have losing records in cannibalistic conference play. Right now, for example, Louisville – a Final Four team last year – is 1-4, but the Cardinals’ last two league losses have come without star guard Taquan Dean, who is nursing a high ankle sprain.
There may be backlash from committee members who will rationalize that no league can be that good. But this is the deepest Big East in memory since 1985, when three teams – Georgetown, St. John’s and eventual national champion Villanova – threw their own block party at the Final Four.
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But no one – not even UConn, which lost by 15 at Marquette – is safe in this league. Underrated, improving teams like Georgetown and St. John’s sprinted out of the shadows with huge wins. The Johnnies silenced previously undefeated Pitt, 55-50, early Saturday afternoon at the Garden. Then, Georgetown made the biggest statement for the Big East, stunning top-ranked Duke, 87-84, at the MCI Center in D.C.
In Weiss’ top-10 at the bottom of the column he has UConn #1, Villanova #5, WVU #7 and Pitt #10. Sure he’s biased to the BE, but that isn’t totally unplausable. Right?
Turning back to tonight’s Syracuse game, the ‘Cuse players are not shying away from its importance for them.
For Syracuse, it is exactly the wrong time to play Pittsburgh, which has turned into quite an Orange nemesis in recent years. The Panthers have bullied SU in winning seven of the last nine meetings.
But the Orange has earned wins in five of its last eight trips to Pittsburgh. And it so desperately needs a victory tonight.
“It definitely is a must-win right now,” said junior Terrence Roberts. “I start to look at the future here as far as the NCAA Tournament goes and I think we need these quality wins against these ranked teams. But I think we need these wins more than anything just for ourselves to show that we can compete with these teams. We’ve got to stop coming out here and getting blown out because this is really not us.”
Both teams need this. Not to get into the NCAA, but to show they are an upper-tier team and they need the big wins if they want the higher seeds. A lot at stake early in the season. That is, however, what happens when a conference is as tough as the BE is. Every game has meaning and deeper significance.
