February 22, 2009
Keeping Score
Taking the Measure of the Big East
By JONAH KERI
It’s the majority opinion in the men’s college basketball world: the Big East is the strongest conference in the country. But some of the sport’s leading voices take the argument a step further.
Speaking about the strength of the Big East recently, Notre Dame Coach Mike Brey said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Pittsburgh Coach Jamie Dixon was even more emphatic, saying, “I’ve said, since last summer, that this would be the best conference in college basketball history.”
As coaches of two of the conference’s glamour teams, Brey and Dixon may not be entirely objective.
After all, if the Big East is indeed the strongest conference in history, then Pitt will probably benefit from lofty strength-of-schedule ratings, improving its postseason résumé. Led by the space-eater DeJuan Blair and his do-it-all running mate, Sam Young, Pittsburgh was the top-ranked team in the country this season before brutal road losses against the conference opponents Louisville and Villanova knocked the Panthers from their perch. The Panthers have since roared back, knocking off top-ranked conference foe Connecticut last Monday. By walking the Big East gantlet, Pittsburgh has positioned itself for a No. 1 seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
Notre Dame can point to its beastly Big East slate as the reason for its recently ended seven-game losing streak. The Irish charged out of the gate as one of the most productive offensive teams in the country, led by the sharpshooting guard Kyle McAlarney and the bruising forward Luke Harangody. Notre Dame then went on its losing streak before recovering with a win against Louisville on Feb. 12. But the odds of the Irish making the N.C.A.A. tournament are long.
That the Big East’s schedule has tested the Panthers and battered the Irish should come as little surprise. The Big East’s expansion to 16 teams in 2003 merged some of the biggest powers into one superconference. Traditional powers like Georgetown and Syracuse now tangle with newcomers like Louisville and Marquette, causing tremors nationwide.
Results from recent seasons highlight the conference’s newfound depth. In 2006, the Big East set an N.C.A.A. tournament record by ushering eight teams into March Madness. In 2008, the conference tied its own mark with another eight-team showing. The latest edition of Joe Lunardi’s Bracketology at ESPN.com has seven Big East teams making the N.C.A.A. tournament this season. We could still have a record this year, though, as Georgetown, Cincinnati and Providence could also squeeze in.
“You could see this coming,” Dixon said. “The reorganization has made this the top conference, and it will continue to stay that way. Other conferences weakened themselves, not just in volume but also quality.”
The tougher competition has prompted Big East coaches to recruit even more aggressively, Dixon said. Top high school stars eager to test their mettle have even more Big East powers to choose as destinations.
“The strong have gotten stronger,” Dixon said.
Brey concurred. “I’ve been in this league nine years, I was an assistant at Duke before that, and I’ve never seen anything like this, coming at you, for six weeks in a row,” he said.
The latest rankings seem to bolster the Big East’s case. Connecticut will probably lose its status as America’s top-ranked team in the next Associated Press poll, but still have top-10 status. In fact, the latest A.P. poll showed 4 of the top 10 teams hailing from the Big East, with Pittsburgh, Louisville and Marquette also in the mix. Throw in Villanova and Syracuse, and 6 of the A.P. poll’s 25 spots belong to the Big East.
But an analysis by Ken Pomeroy, a writer and analyst for Basketball Prospectus, challenges the notion that this season’s Big East is the toughest conference ever. In fact, he finds the Big East is barely this season’s best conference.
Pomeroy ran a study computing the expected winning percentage of a hypothetical best team in college basketball, if that team played a double round-robin in each conference. The toughest conference would be the one that produced the lowest winning percentage for the hypothetical team. By setting up the study in this way, Pomeroy aimed to mitigate the impact of bad second-tier teams (like, say, a rebuilding Indiana team with just one win in Big Ten play entering the weekend) and overcome the issue of unequal conference size.
The results were surprising. The Atlantic Coast Conference, loaded with top teams like Duke, North Carolina, Wake Forest and Clemson, and containing fewer poor teams at the bottom, finished in a virtual tie with the Big East. A top team going up against the A.C.C. would garner an expected winning percentage of .803. In the Big East, its winning percentage would be .800, poorer by the slimmest of margins.
“An interesting footnote here is that the Big East becomes a slightly easier conference than the A.C.C. for teams that are slightly below power conference average and worse,” Pomeroy said in an e-mail message. “It would be easier for these poorer teams to get wins in the Big East because of the poor quality, and high quantity, of the bottom feeders of the conference.”
Pomeroy’s ratings underscore other shifts in the college basketball landscape. Despite the general perception that it’s a down season out West, the Pacific-10 hovers near the top of Pomeroy’s rankings at .810.
Most striking is the decline of the once mighty Southeastern Conference, which ranks below the normally lightly regarded Mountain West. A top opponent would beat SEC teams more than 89 percent of the time, according to the study.
Bracketology projects just five SEC teams to take part in March Madness. Louisiana State will probably be the only representative from the SEC’s Western Division.
The recent two-time national champion, Florida, the blue blood Kentucky and the upstart Tennessee are no longer part of the game’s elite, at least not this season. Not one SEC team ranks in The A.P.’s latest top 25.
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