Hopefully those who were quick to say the BIG EAST suffered from a “down year” are as quick to admit that they were not wrong—but not quite right either.
Because after months of claiming the basketball-centric conference’s inferiority to the “Power Four” (that is, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC), two of those conferences are without a team in the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four—while one from the BIG EAST is in.
With two-seeded UConn’s improbable East Regional Semifinal win over Duke—a member of the ACC and the tournament’s top overall seed—the Huskies punched the last remaining ticket to the Final Four, where they will face three-seeded Illinois, while two top-seeded heavyweights in Michigan and Arizona will “duke” it out on the opposite side of the bracket.
That means that this year’s Final Four will feature two programs from the Big Ten, and one each from the Big 12 and BIG EAST—further meaning that, despite combining for ten spots in the AP’s final Top-25 poll of the season, the ACC and SEC will have no representation in the final week of this year’s March Madness.
This comes in spite of the NCAA Tournament Committee's apparent anti-BIG EAST bias, as was on full display on Selection Sunday: The conference was granted just three-bids, with St. John’s, UConn and Villanova all making the cut, and Seton Hall men’s basketball being excluded. Despite winning both the conference’s regular season and tournament titles, St. John’s was given the East Region’s fifth-seed, while UConn was a two-seed, likewise in the East Region (for whatever reason).
Meanwhile, teams in the Power Four who accomplished similar feats, like the Big Ten’s Purdue Boilermakers, earned higher bids than the The Red Storm in their respective regions.
Not long after the NCAA revealed their 68-team field in all its anti-BIG EAST glory on Selection Sunday, The New York Posts’ Ryan Dunleavy shared to X NCAA Tournament Committee Chairman Keith Gill’s response when he asked Gill why the Johnnies’ conference tournament championship win didn't count as much as it did for Purdue.
“Certainly we watched the BIG EAST Tournament and certainly took it into account, and they played well and certainly that's a big win over UConn,” Gill said. “But it really is a full body of work. So when we're thinking about it, we're looking at how these wins and losses impact a full resume.”
“One of the things I would say about St. John's is their results in the non-conference did not have the same depth and quality as some of the folks that are ahead of them,” Gill added.
The irony here, of course, is that Purdue’s performance in nonconference play wasn’t perfect either, with the Boilermakers, as the AP's No. 1 team in the country, suffered a 81-58 blowout loss at home to then-No. 10 Iowa State on Dec. 6.
This emphasis on nonconference play also ignores the fact that, although St. John’s went 8-4 in their non-league schedule, they then lost just two of 20 games in conference play, while Purdue went 13-7 in the same amount.
But St. John’s wasn’t the only BIG EAST team to suffer from the NCAA’s flawed logic: SHU, who conversely went 10-1 in nonconference play, were not rewarded for their non-league performance. Instead, the Pirates were penalized for their “lack of quality wins” in conference play, largely because of this notion that the league was in the midst of a “down year."
Towards the end of the regular season, SHU head coach and unanimous BIG EAST Coach of the Year Shaheen Holloway refuted this very notion, calling it a “crazy narrative” while saying that the conferences’ teams are way better than the standings may have indicated at the time.
“I’ve seen a lot of teams with 19 wins, and they’re ‘locks’ [in March Madness],” Holloway said about other conferences following the Pirates' win over Georgetown on Feb. 21. “Like, 17 wins, they’re ‘locks.’ We got 19 wins, they talk about how bad the league is—the league is really good, it's just very competitive.”
“In some of the other leagues, the top is good, the bottom is not,” Holloway added. “[So] I just want to make sure that the narrative is crazy about how the league is down—[because] the teams are good.”
And look no further than UConn as proof of such—and for proof that such has been the case for quite some time.
This year’s Final Four appearance for the Huskies marks their third in the past four years, and the BIG EAST’s sixth overall in the past decade (Villanova also amassed three). More importantly, if UConn advances to the National Championship, they will have the chance to win their third of such in the past four years, and the conference’s fifth in the past decade (Villanova also contributed two).
Even further, a UConn National Championship title would be the 12th of such in conference history—tying the SEC for third-most, trailing only the ACC and Pac-12, who are tied for first with 15 titles each. Such a win would thus help the conference return to a four, five, even six-bid league, as well as its case for the expansion of the Power Four into a “Power Five” (as if that shouldn't already be).
So, for the betterment of the conference’s standing in men’s college basketball, there’s only one thing left to say (although it pangs me to do so): Go Huskies!
Zachary Mawby is the head editor of The Setonian’s Sports section. He can be reached at zachary.mawby@student.shu.edu.
