A couple things of note.

Pitt appears to have only one shot at winning a game in the Big East/SEC Invitational.

The future of the Big East-SEC Invitational is on “life support” and the event is unlikely to continue after this season, a college basketball industry source told FanHouse.

The Big East-SEC Invitational began in 2007. The format has the leagues playing four games each season with a pair of double-headers split between a Big East and SEC venue.

Multiple sources told FanHouse the future of the Big East-SEC Invitational is bleak because the conferences are not committed to making it work and they don’t feel like they gain much by making it a priority.

Well it was a joint effort at stupidity by the Big East and SEC, so I can’t totally blame this on the Big East. Only 4 games on two nights in semi-neutral settings. Guaranteeing little interest and poor turnout. Rather than make it a real series for home and away match-ups, they would rather give-up.

Outside of Kentucky, the rest of the SEC only cares about basketball insofar as their fans have  a sense of entitlement to have good teams because of the money the conference rakes in and something to do between the end of bowl season and spring practices (see also, Longhorns, Texas).

The Big East, though, does deserve a fair amount of blame. The Big East had the ACC challenge going before the Big 10/11/12 got into it. The Big East coaches at the time, though, constantly fought and whined about playing a tough non-con game on the road every other year and worked to end it. That makes it two conference challenges that the Big East will have played and now killed.

It’s not that the ACC-Big Ten challenge is that great, but it is compressed, easily followed and well publicized by both conferences. The Pac-10/Big 12 mess has everyone playing but so spread out that it is more of an agreement for teams to get good non-con games than any sort of challenge.

Over at Rush the Court, they have a (subjective) list of the top-20 Big East players for the upcoming season.  Ashton Gibbs is on the list at #7 and Brad Wanamaker checks in at #13. That’s it for Pitt players.

At first I had the knee-jerk reaction: typical underrating of the individual talent at Pitt even as the squad is expected to compete for the top spot. Except it isn’t. There’s a fair amount of respect for Pitt players.

With 16 teams in the conference, individual talent is spread. The list contains players from 12 of the programs: Georgetown (3), Villanova (3), Syracuse (2), Marquette (2), Seton Hall (2), Pitt (2), ND, UConn, WVU, USF, St. John’s and Cinci.

No Louisville players on the list. Guys like McGhee, Oriakhi (UConn), Siva (Louisville), Jardine (‘Cuse), Famous (USF), and Stokes (‘Nova) couldn’t get there. There may be a bit of guard bias in the list but it gives you an idea of just how deep and tough it is to have a 16-team conference.