Three meetings don’t seem like enough to create a rivalry. And yet, the few times we’ve played the Marquette Golden Eagles have been great games with all kinds of twists and turns and now we might be witnessing the formation of yet another “new” rivalry.

Yet after torching Connecticut, West Virginia and Louisville, one thing remained clear: Marquette is Pitt’s biggest threat for Big East supremacy this season.

In this age of an expanding Big East, we rarely see a head-to-head clash of this magnitude more than once — nor do we see one that heads to overtime like Sunday’s. Luckily for college hoops fans everywhere, the two programs meet again March 3 in Milwaukee, Wis.

“We are definitely looking forward to playing them at their place,” Pitt guard Antonio Graves said after Sunday’s loss.

So as both teams continue to stockpile talent and develop the programs, meetings like this will continue, manifesting themselves only every so often. And one thing became certain Sunday: Every ensuing contest between Marquette and Pitt will be a rivalry showdown — a must-see matchup at that.

We’re just finalizing the UConn-Pitt basketball rivalry in terms of both teams becoming great for a long period of time after playing them in all of those Big East Tournament finals. Pitt and Marquette are not anywhere near that stage so I’m not going to call this a rivalry quite yet.