The Big East has tabled any expansion talk and clearly won’t be growing beyond 10 members anytime soon. The reasons are simple: 10 is the perfect basketball scheduling number, the 10-member Big 12 has shown that that number of schools can work splendidly in hoops, and TV partner Fox isn’t demanding any change in inventory.
What PC’s Driscoll says the league is planning on doing is juicing up Fox’s offerings in the nonconference portion of the season. The recently announced Gavitt Tipoff series with the Big Ten is a great start, and sources said Fox was working to broker a similar partnership between the Pac 12 and Big East.
“Instead of expanding, we want to emphasize playing more high-profile games that will help us with TV and get more teams into the NCAA Tournament,” Driscoll said.
The Big East isn’t too small to succeed in basketball. It just had a very average first season with only four teams — Villanova, Creighton, Xavier, PC — making the NCAA Tournament.
But Georgetown and Marquette won’t stay down for long. The 10-school Big 12 offered the perfect template last season by finishing first in the RPI with seven top-50 teams and earning seven NCAA bids.
http://www.providencejournal.com/sports/content/20140607-kevin-mcnamara-rhodys-instrastate-schools-maintaining-their-distance-in-basketball.ece