article on pre-season thoughts of the 18 game BE slate

[spiral97]

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=2989850

[Big Papi]

There is too much crying over the 18 game schedule and the number of teams that made or did not make the big dance last year.  No matter how you slice it, the Big East had a down year last year and the right number of the teams went to the big dance.  If the conference wants more teams in the big dance this year than a lot of these teams better when the big games during their non conference schedule.  That is what cost the conference bids last year not the 16 conference games played.

[mu_hilltopper]

.. The article did raise some points I hadn't thought about .. and indeed, I think you're right, mufanatic .. the talk of 10 BE teams getting into the NCAAs .. I'd think the 9th and 10th team would be borderline .500 teams (9 wins against top teams could do that) .. but those 8th, 9th, and 10th teams "in" would surely need a decent OOC slate to improve their chance.

[muwarrior87]

Looking at the teams in the BE this year, I'd say that there are 9 or 10 that have a shot at the tourney.  I think every one of them would have to do phenomenally in their nonconference schedule and have a lot of close games against the other top teams in the BE. But I'd say if teams live up to expectations, 8 would be pretty nice.  The preseason bracketology seems a bit off though as of now. 7 Big Televen teams!? I would highly doubt if 4 or 5 make it this year and definitely not at rankings btwn 2 and 8 for all 4 of those teams.

[jmayer1]

18 games is really going to be a grind but I like facing each team at least once.  I think a great idea would be to get each team specific teams they are going to play twice each year or a rotation of teams guaranteed to play twice every other year; teams like Pitt, Louisville, ND, and Depaul.  But I guess some of the non-traditional basketball teams (like South Florida and Rutgers) have to play somebody twice so I'm not sure how well that would work.

[Marquette84]

Two things have to happen for the Big East to get 9 or 10 teams in.

First, the conference as a whole has to win close to 80% of the non-conference games.  The ACC won 80% and the Pac 10 won 78%--they both got more than half their teams in. The Big East and Big 12 were both below 75%, and both had fewer than expeceted teams.  The difference between 75% and 78% doesnt' sound like much, but we're talking about the margins anyway.

I know the popular thinking is that teams need to beef up their out-of-conference schedules, but that's individualistic thinking.  A good non-conference loss might help the team playing that game, but it hurts every other team in the conference. 

Second, the bad teams need to be REALLLY bad, only winning games against each other.  It would be better for the bottom 4 teams to share fewer than 10 wins between them than for them to be in the battle for the BET on the last weekend.