A well thought out response to my criticism of the Big East.
A poor tournament performance doesn’t make the Big East overrated. The simple fact is that, overall, the Big East CRUSHED its non-conference opponents this season.
Here’s a list of notable teams who were Big East victims this year (in the regular season) … Texas (2x), Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State (2x), Wisconsin, Butler, Tennessee, UNLV, Gonzaga, Xavier, UCLA, Georgia, Temple, Vanderbilt, BU (2x), Bucknell [these teams all made it to March Madness] …
Other solid teams who didn’t make it to March Madness & who were also Big East victims: Alabama (2x), Maryland (2x), Oklahoma, Northwestern, Saint Mary’s
Also consider:
1) Two Big East teams were inevitably going to lose when UConn played Cincy & Syracuse played Marquette in the second round.
2) DJ Kennedy (St. John’s) was not able to play in the tournament due to knee injury
3) Chris Wright (G-town) was playing with a broken hand
4) Pitt lost on a bizarre foul with 0.8s to a team (Butler) that played for a national title last year.
A tournament flop (if you can call 2 teams in the Sweet 16 a flop) only indicates that B.E. teams either a) happened to play poorly in a recent stretch of high-stakes, win-or-go-home games, or b) B.E. teams just got unlucky this year. Or maybe it’s some combo of (a) and (b).
Either way, the records (and the victim list) don’t lie — regardless of their tournament performance, all 11 of the Big East teams who were selected this year had a very legitimate claim to be there.
freddy from boca
during the regular season the big east was a far superior conference than the acc. so more teams were worthy of an invitation to the ncaa. sometimes form doesn’t hold up in one and done situations.
· 11/12/2019