Huggy Bear gets beat...

[xavierj]

by St. John's at home. Huggy pulls a Mick and says "you don't think St. John's would win the A-10?" Well no since they are 0-2 against A-10 teams and they lost to freaking Fordham.

[Power]

by St. John's at home. Huggy pulls a Mick and says "you don't think St. John's would win the A-10?" Well no since they are 0-2 against A-10 teams and they lost to freaking Fordham.

WVU just isn't very good in comparison to the rest of Big East.

[xsteve1]

The Big East has about 5 good teams the rest are average. UConn has 1 player, Uof L lost to frickin Drexel. Seton Hall is 0-5 against the A10. DePauls blows goat chuncks. Syracuse is good, Pitt is good, Georgetown is pretty good, Nova is decent.

[xavierj]

WVU just isn't very good in comparison to the rest of Big East.

That's another gem of a post. Maybe WVU is more like the majority in the conference and not like the minority. The conference has maybe 2 teams that could challenge for a spot in the final 4. You then have about 6 or 7 other possible NCAA teams and the bottom 8 in the conference blow donkey balls. The two best teams in the league both lost to a bad Tennessee team and St. John's lost to freaking Fordham.

[bleedXblue]

Big East is a great BB conference, you can't deny that. They'll put at least 5-6 schools in the tourney every year it seems like.

Whats interesting is that since they schedule so poorly (out of conference) early in the year, you really dont know what they have until about mid way through the conference schedule.

[Masterofreality]

Big East is a great BB conference, you can't deny that. They'll put at least 5-6 schools in the tourney every year it seems like.

Whats interesting is that since they schedule early in the year to game the RPI so that they can fake out the Selection Commitee in cahoots with their TV pal B-Espn (out of conference), so you really dont know what they have until about mid way through the conference schedule.

Fixed that for you.

[Power]

Of all the things to talk about the validity of the Big East should not be one of them. 5 teams in the Top 10. Come on now guys. Hate UC. Talk about how UC isn't all that good but when you claim the Big East isn't that good it makes you look jealous of the conference. It is easily the best conference in America.

[Xman95]

Of all the things to talk about the validity of the Big East should not be one of them. 5 teams in the Top 10. Come on now guys. Hate UC. Talk about how UC isn't all that good but when you claim the Big East isn't that good it makes you look jealous of the conference. I am easily the most misinformed poster in America.

Another post fixed!

[Xpectations]

Of all the things to talk about the validity of the Big East should not be one of them. 5 teams in the Top 10. Come on now guys. Hate UC. Talk about how UC isn't all that good but when you claim the Big East isn't that good it makes you look jealous of the conference. It is easily the best conference in America.

I agree it's a great conference. However, they would more consistently be the top ranked conference by excellent ranking systems such as Pomeroy and Sagarin if they were easily the best conference in America.

They are currently 3rd in Pomeroy and are on top of Sagarin this year. The Big East has been ranked between 3rd and 5th as a conference (never #1, or even #2) in each of the previous four full seasons.

They are up there and are certainly in competition this year for Best Conference honors; but to say they're easily the best is a bit of an exaggeration.

As I've said before, the Big East is too often identified as being represented by its top 4 or 5 teams each season. And then somehow that becomes how the entire conference is perceived, rather than people also recognizing that teams like DePaul, St. John's, Providence, South Florida, Seton Hall, Rutgers, and even UC in past seasons, also represent the conference.

We can say with complete confidence that it is easily the Biggest Conference of All-Time.

[BandAid]

One things for sure - TCU is going to be a basketball power! The rich get richer...

[xavierj]

Of all the things to talk about the validity of the Big East should not be one of them. 5 teams in the Top 10. Come on now guys. Hate UC. Talk about how UC isn't all that good but when you claim the Big East isn't that good it makes you look jealous of the conference. It is easily the best conference in America.

That conference is so tough that the 18 members that make up that mega-conference have won 3 championships in the last 20 years and 10 total championships in 70 years. They have not won the championship in the last 6 seasons and they are behind the Pac 10, Big 10, ACC, and SEC and tied with so called mid-majors as far as # of championships since the tournament started in 1939. Clearly that conference is heads and shoulders above the rest of the pansy conferences across the country. By comparison the ACC has won the National Championship 5 times (3 different teams) since 2000. I would say that the facts show that the ACC is the best conference but who wants to let facts get in the way.

[CinciX12]

Of all the things to talk about the validity of the Big East should not be one of them. 5 teams in the Top 10. Come on now guys. Hate UC. Talk about how UC isn't all that good but when you claim the Big East isn't that good it makes you look jealous of the conference. It is easily the best conference in America.

Sure. It is easily the best conference. Oh wait I'm sorry I thought you said Big Ten.

[Masterofreality]

That conference is so tough that the 18 members that make up that mega-conference have won 3 championships in the last 20 years and 10 total championships in 70 years. They have not won the championship in the last 6 seasons and they are behind the Pac 10, Big 10, ACC, and SEC and tied with so called mid-majors as far as # of championships since the tournament started in 1939. Clearly that conference is heads and shoulders above the rest of the pansy conferences across the country. By comparison the ACC has won the National Championship 5 times (3 different teams) since 2000. I would say that the facts show that the ACC is the best conference but who wants to let facts get in the way.

Outstanding analysis.

This despite the inflated numbers of bids to the Dance because of the "game the RPI" scheduling philosophy and the incessant B-Espn pimping.

I re-post a great analysis of just how the Big Greased has gamed the system over the years from last March after the first two days of the NCAA Tournament and before Xavier beat Pitt:

"The Big East Games the RPI System
The Big East games the RPI system in two ways. Until just a few years ago, the RPI failed to take home court into account at all, a ridiculous omission in a sport that features a massive home court advantage. The RPI added some recognition of home/away in recent years - but not nearly enough. Big East schools, all basketball powers with huge home courts and a lot of money tied up in ticket revenues, play almost exclusively home schedules in their non-conference schedule. Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pitt played zero true road games this season (2009-2010). Villanova, West Virginia, UConn and Marquette played one true road game each. Georgetown, to their infinite credit, played two. I didn't look up all 16 teams, but I think you see a pattern emerging here. But as they say, there are no home games in the NCAA tournament.
In addition to playing ridiculously home heavy pre-season schedules, their pre-season schedules tend to be simply ridiculous. Pitt's best non-conference win was against Wichita St. Louisville's best non-conference win was against Arkansas. Notre Dame's best non-conference win was against St. Louis. That's three Big East team's that made the NCAA tournament that do not have a single quality victory outside of conference among them.
So what you say? They beat good Big East teams during the conference season, and in that way they proved that they were among the best 64 teams in the nation. But what if the emperor has no clothes? What if the Big East isn't really that good, so that a victory in conference isn't worth as much as we thought? Oh and, isn't that what these first couple of days have shown us - that the Big East isn't really that good?
Let's get back to the RPI, because I brought it up for a reason. If you're still with me, you're saying that the cupcakes on these teams' schedules should be hurting their RPIs since they don't have great records, and you're right. When Pitt beats Binghamton and Eastern Kentucky and Youngstown St. and New Hampshire in non-conference games it does nothing to help their RPI - it may even hurt it. But when Pitt builds up a ton of pre-season wins, it helps every other Big East team's RPI. Because with more than half of a Big East team's schedule coming against other Big East teams, their opponents, AND especially their opponents' opponents are dominated by Big East schools. And this is the genius of their approach - it wouldn't work if only Pitt played a schedule of patsies. But since the vast majority of Big East schools run off a bunch of pre-season home wins against cupcakes, the effect of all those wins compounds in the RPI formula. Think about it - during the Big East conference schedule, someone has to win all those games and someone has to lose them. It's the non-conference wins that differentiate the league. And they all win their non-conference games, primarily at home against terrible teams.
To be sure, the Big East is a top notch basketball conference. Schools like Syracuse and Pitt are perennial powers who recruit great players and they may end up doing very well in this tournament. But it doesn't change the fact that the conference is gaming the system.
Returning to this year's tournament, the Big East got those record eight bids. Their seeds were a 1, two 2's, two 3's, two 6's and a 9. Looking at the conference standings, the teams that finished first through fourth in the regular season all won their first round games. The teams that finished fifth through eighth all lost, despite the fact that three of them were playing against double digit seeds. Is a 4-4 first round a respectable showing for a conference? Not at all; not when they were the lower seed in 7 of their 8 games, and their four wins came against a 14 seed, two 15s and a 16. Essentially, they only won the games the committee giftwrapped for them - and they even lost one of those.
I'd like to think that the committee would look at these results and maybe think about how they use the RPI, and maybe give a little more consideration to the smaller conferences in the future. But I know they won't. It will be business as usual on the 2011 Selection Sunday.

[Cheesehead]

Upper half of Big East pretty darn good. Lower half not so good. Just like a lot of conferences.

Problem is Big East does get pimped up a bit and is not as good as some folks make it out to be.

BTW: Marquette is decent this year too. Have some good talent but are still finding out who they ar as a team.