Fox Sports 1 Big East Previews All 5 Games: top 99 players with all eight key stats for eachFox Sports 1 tips off momentarily. We have run the www.valueaddbasketball.com (http://www.valueaddbasketball.com/) numbers just for Big East players (the database will have the numbers prior to Christmas. In addition to ranking the players based on their Value Add per game (which shows Luke Fischer as the second most valuable player in the conference to date), we provide the eight biggest factors the ratings for each player (shooting, offensive and defensive rebounding, assists, turnovers, blocked shots, steals and fouls drawn). Players with a Value Add of 0.00 are not included - exactly 99 have brought some value to their team.
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11 a.m. - St. John's favored by 2 1/2 over Seton Hall - You hate to be missing your point guard against St. John's pressure (Isaiah Whitehead, ranked 32nd). St. John's #15 Sir'Dominic Pointer comes into conference play ranked No. 1 in Value Add per game - worth almost nine points a game. Seton Hall's Sterling Gibbs actually shot up briefly to No. 1 in the nation after a 40-point outing against a pretty good Illinois State team, but he has not scored 20 in any game since then.
1:30 p.m. - Butler 11 point underdog at Villanova - Butler has been the sweetest surprise of the Big East early start, but Nova looks so tough with three of the top nine players in the conference and nine players in the top 30.
4 p.m. - Marquette 4 1/2 point favorite at DePaul - In Luke Fischer's four games he has been worth more than eight points a game to Marquette (8.07 Value Add per game) making him the second most valuable player in the conference. Meanwhile DePaul has really fallen off as the one weak team in the conference with no players in the top 40 in the conference. Still, DePaul won on this floor against Stanford. Matt Carlino ranks 14th and Juan Anderson 23rd, and Duane Wilson has become the additional offensive threat in rising up to 38th.
6:30 p.m. - Creighton 5-point underdog at Providence - Creighton pulled the great upset over Oklahoma early, but really looks like they need a year to reload. Providence incredible Top 10 duo of Kris Dunn (6th) and LaDontae Henton (10th) looked shell-shocked for a couple of games after the Kentucky loss, but other than that this tema looks like a contender.
9 p.m. - Georgetown 5 1/2 point underdog at Xavier - Georgetown capped the incredible non-conference season for the Big East with the comeback win over Indiana. Georgetown's #4 D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera has been a Value Add favorite, ranking in the top 10% in 2013 and top 2% of all players the two years since, including ranking 3rd in the Big East.The player right behind him at 4th in the rankings is Xavier's #40 Matt Stainbrook, who was top 5% of all players last year and is even better - and a floor general even from the front court.
More: Fox Sports 1 Big East Previews All 5 Games: top 99 players with all eight key stats for each (http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2014/12/fox-sports-1-big-east-previews-all-5.html)