How different would the Big East look if...

the following happened after the season:

1. Pitino leaves Louisville for STJ
2. Calhoun retires

and then a year or two from Now Jamie Dixon leaves Pitt for a huge West Coast job?

Would Uconn be able to recover losing Calhoun like this after a disappointing year.  Kemba could go with Robinson and Dyson.  If I was a Uconn fan I'd be worried. 

I don't think Pitt would be able to recover if they lost Dixon.  Louisville will always be at least solid, but would definitely take a step back.

WV would be losing Ebanks and Butler.  Nova would be losing Reynolds.  Syracuse loses Onuaku plus Wesley Johnson and Rautins.

I don't expect Pitino to come here, but I will continue to dream until it doesn't happen.

A number of those teams would develop new players.  But I do think that if a new coach comes in to St.J or Rutgers, they might find the league is different - U Conn's recruiting is falling off, Pitino's showing his wanderlust... though WV will be good and getting better with Huggins.  And Nova has a phalanx of awesome players who are playing this year - Armwood, Cheek, Wayns...

A number of those teams would develop new players.  But I do think that if a new coach comes in to St.J or Rutgers, they might find the league is different - U Conn's recruiting is falling off, Pitino's showing his wanderlust... though WV will be good and getting better with Huggins.  And Nova has a phalanx of awesome players who are playing this year - Armwood, Cheek, Wayns...

I'm not sure if I can identify an "awesome" team for next year.  Last year there were five or six awesome teams.  This year the Big East has, Cuse, Nova, WV, G'town....

I expect WV, Pitt, Cuse, and Nova to be top 25 caliber teams next year, but I'm not sure I can say with any degree of confidence that one will be a top five team.

I think the top of the Big East could be more up for grabs the next two years. 

This is why it's so important we get a good new coach in here.  I'm not going to even imagine about Pitino because no way the school lets him in with the abortion he paid for.  But a good new coach, this team has a chance to be up there in the big east and who know knows what recruits we can snag.  We already have a great start with Grace, there is no reason to think with a good coach and solid assistants that class won't be top 5 in the country.

the following happened after the season:

1. Pitino leaves Louisville for STJ
2. Calhoun retires

and then a year or two from Now Jamie Dixon leaves Pitt for a huge West Coast job?

[...]

I don't expect Pitino to come here, but I will continue to dream until it doesn't happen.

Here's another, somewhat less rosy scenario. Calhoun retires after this year and Pitino leaves Louisville for Uconn. Louisville hires Billy Gillespie as his replacement. J Dixon leaves for a huge west coast job and Pitt hires Sean Miller as his replacement. RU fires the Fred the Moleman Hill and replaces him with Fran McCaffery. Norm is fired and SJ replaces him with Tom Pecora.

And the moral is: If you can dream, you can have nightmares.

Why wouldn't pitt be able to recover? They transitioned pretty well from howland to dixon...

Calhoun retiring would be horrible for us if we actually fire norm and are willing to spend money.  No one in their right mind would come to st johns over uconn and don't give me that nyc bs. They have far better facilites and great access to nyc pipelines.

As we've seen with SJU, Nova and Gtown, once a HOF retires, it's very, very hard for a program to replace the legend.

We can only hope that Uconn suffers as greatly as we have, but it's also easy to see how not to do things after watching us make one mistake after another.

What will schools like Uconn and Syracuse do after their name retires? Syracuse is already making plans to replace Boeheim with a current staff member. Obviously a recipe for disaster. We'll see what Uconn does.

As far as next year, Syracuse has a lot of talent on it's way, and Mookie Jones waiting his turn to start at the 2. The name I hear is Fab Melo, and yes, that's really his name.