By Zach Braziller
One by one, each Big East coach spoke optimistically of the new league on its media day, championing its depth and quality, its present and future.
It came off as coach-speak, overly optimistic hyperbole that was met with quizzical looks and slight smirks.
Those 10 coaches are the ones smiling now, for the time being at least. They knew what everyone else is just finding out: The Big East, with all its question marks and unknown commodities, is better than advertised.
Forget top-ranked Kentucky and its platoon system. The Big East has been the story of the early season, carrying a stunning 41-5 record into Black Friday. The basketball-centric league, with just one preseason nationally ranked team — Villanova — already has defeated five ranked opponents, three more than any other league.
“It doesn’t surprise me what these guys are doing,” Villanova coach Jay Wright told reporters Tuesday night. “I think that this league is going to be much harder than last year.
“I never want to be in New York and say that I don’t miss the old Big East because I do, but in the same breath I’m really excited about this new league.”
Wednesday was a banner day for the conference, arguably the biggest one since the new league was created.
Butler, picked to finish seventh, stunned No. 5 North Carolina in the Battle 4 Atlantis opener, thoroughly outplaying the loaded Tar Heels. Georgetown edged No. 18 Florida on D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera’s clutch jumper with 3.4 seconds remaining, also at the Bahamas tournament, and nearly upset No. 2 Wisconsin on Thursday.
And St. John’s — which the league desperately wants and needs to emerge as a tournament team this season because it’s a major-market team — rode a dominant second half performance to knock off Big Ten foe Minnesota in the NIT Season Tip-Off, earning a major opportunity Friday night against No. 10 Gonzaga at the Garden.
Seton Hall and its heavily hyped freshmen class won the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands, and 12th-ranked Villanova knocked off two top-20 teams, No. 14 VCU and No. 19 Michigan, to claim the Legends Classic in Brooklyn this week, which likely pushes the Wildcats into the top 10 when the next AP rankings are released.
Providence has shown it may be top 25-caliber, carrying a 5-0 record and impressive victories over ACC teams Notre Dame and Florida In the Hall-of-Fame Tip-Off into a Sunday showdown at No. 1 Kentucky.
Creighton, expected to take a major step back after losing Doug McDermott and picked ninth in the league, has gotten off to a 5-0 start that includes a win over Oklahoma, ranked 18th at the time, that enabled the Bluejays to break into the AP rankings at No. 23 last week.
This is still a small body of work, a handful of games that doesn’t tell us anything about what will happen next week, next month or next year, but it is significant nevertheless.
This is the time of year when conferences separate from one another, when résumés for March get built.
The selection committee takes notice.
March, of course, is when the league really will be judged. The Big East needs a better showing this year, after receiving just four bids and failing to advance a single team past the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
But this is a start. The new Big East had to begin somewhere.
http://nypost.com/2014/11/27/forget-kentucky-the-big-east-is-the-story-of-college-basketball/
