Was the first year of the new Big East a success?

As a newcomer, Creighton was great.  Xavier also brought something to the table.  Villanova, one of the old guard, was also great.  Marquette and Georgetown had down years and St. John's fell a bit short of where they should have been.  A couple more wins by St. John's and/or Georgetown and/or Marquette and we would be looking at 6 or 7 bids.  That would have been phenomenal.

TV coverage was great, in that all of the games were televised.  Fox Sports 1, in its first year, left a bit to be desired production wise.  I expect them to get better.  As was pointed out, the old Big East and ESPN started and grew up together.  Fox was light years ahead of where ESPN was in its first year.  They will continue to get better and be seen by more people.

It is unfortunate that the Big East, as we knew it, broke up.  This one is fine, with depth and quality programs.  We can't judge it against the old BE
.  It will never be that.  Barring another cataclismic change, such as the BCS conferences breaking away from the NCAA, things will be ok.  Just in a different form.

Quote from: boo3 on March 17, 2014, 02:00:45 PM

One other thing...As much as I absolutely despised John Thompson and, to a lesser degree Jim Boeheim, back then , I came away with much more respect for them as coaches and leaders of men after watching that documentary.    Love the fact that JT and JB hated each other back in the 80s..

You need true hatred amongst rivals to have a great league..Somhow, and I don;t know how, the BE needs to get that back... Unfortunately, I think that was a once in a lifetime thing, the old big east..  Football destroyed it.. God,  I hate college football.

Speaking of Boeheim, who I hate, how can he NOT be blamed for Syracuse's demise this year?  After their first loss to BC, they play a close controversial Duke game that ends with and because of him running on the court like an insane person and getting 2 Ts and getting ejected.  From that point on, Syraucse has sucked.  Not just against good teams, but against everyone.  In the defining moment of their season where they could rebound from their first loss by showing they can still beat a top 10 team in one of the toughest places to play in basketball, he lost his cool, and his team has never regrouped.  Have to consider that to be the turning point of their season, and their leader set a bad example of let's complain about shit if it doesnt go our way rather than lets be tough and show the world we are the best team in the country and annihilate everyone.

For all our knocks against Lavin, I can tell you if Lavs pulled with Boeheim pulled here in an amazing season and we downward spiraled after that, I'd want his head.  Boeheim obviously has a lot of goodwill as he deserves, but just pointing out even the country's "best" coaches are really damn stupid sometimes and can trainwreck their team's season in a variety of ways.


The technical by Boeheim was a good move.  ACC refs traditionally favor DUke over everyone else and they had just made a poor call to decide the game.  He sent a message to the league that he will not put up with home-jobs.  Caoch K constantly bates the refs and has one of the foulest mouths in college hoops, yet rarely gets a T.  Boeheim had never been thrown out before and I think the move may have been somewhat calculated,  much like Al McGuires tirades at Marquette.   

Fwiw, Wilpon on pti, has creighton going to final four.

As a whole the conf was 14-23 vs tourney teams but the conf got hurt by Sju and marq the most because those teams were supposed to help carry the league and went 0-8.  In particular, marq, who was 0-6.  If anything you can look at two sides of the spectrum and say that one team led to the biggest down fall by under achieving but you can also say the others picked up the slack by winning a respectable amount of games against tourney opponents OOC which raised the conf rpi to an impressive 4th overall in rpi.

Novas loss to Uconn just magnifies how weak the Big East was this year.  Nova built their record and ranking on Big East competition which wasn't much.  The Big Easts last hope for respectability is Creighton.  They have a tough game vs. Baylor.

This also magnifies how truly disappointing St. John's season was.  Here was a year, where the usual good teams like Georgetown and Marquette had down years, Nova was bogus Creighton was a one man team and Providence lost much of their team to injuries, and defections, yet Lavins crusaders had a below par season as well with an 0-5 start.

Yet with all this  evidence of Lavins poor  performance as a coach and program leader, there are still posters on these sites that feel he deserves to stay? There are no recruits on the horizon, one in the past two recruiting classes but that's not enough evidence of failure? 

However what Lavin is great at is excuses.  He leads the nation in that category. But what excuses could he have?  We had no major injuries, no players quit, he had an abundance of talent, experience and depth, a highly paid assistant coaching staff and a pre-season European trip to get the kids ready fir the season.

I will continue to hope for a change so that the team I root for has a chance to succeed cause if no changes are made in the staff, the situation will only get worse, bet your house on it.

Quote from: Tha Kid on March 17, 2014, 02:27:14 PM

Quote from: boo3 on March 17, 2014, 02:00:45 PM

One other thing...As much as I absolutely despised John Thompson and, to a lesser degree Jim Boeheim, back then , I came away with much more respect for them as coaches and leaders of men after watching that documentary.    Love the fact that JT and JB hated each other back in the 80s..

You need true hatred amongst rivals to have a great league..Somhow, and I don;t know how, the BE needs to get that back... Unfortunately, I think that was a once in a lifetime thing, the old big east..  Football destroyed it.. God,  I hate college football.

Speaking of Boeheim, who I hate, how can he NOT be blamed for Syracuse's demise this year?  After their first loss to BC, they play a close controversial Duke game that ends with and because of him running on the court like an insane person and getting 2 Ts and getting ejected.  From that point on, Syraucse has sucked.  Not just against good teams, but against everyone.  In the defining moment of their season where they could rebound from their first loss by showing they can still beat a top 10 team in one of the toughest places to play in basketball, he lost his cool, and his team has never regrouped.  Have to consider that to be the turning point of their season, and their leader set a bad example of let's complain about shit if it doesnt go our way rather than lets be tough and show the world we are the best team in the country and annihilate everyone.

For all our knocks against Lavin, I can tell you if Lavs pulled with Boeheim pulled here in an amazing season and we downward spiraled after that, I'd want his head.  Boeheim obviously has a lot of goodwill as he deserves, but just pointing out even the country's "best" coaches are really damn stupid sometimes and can trainwreck their team's season in a variety of ways.

The technical by Boeheim was a good move.  ACC refs traditionally favor DUke over everyone else and they had just made a poor call to decide the game.  He sent a message to the league that he will not put up with home-jobs.  Caoch K constantly bates the refs and has one of the foulest mouths in college hoops, yet rarely gets a T.  Boeheim had never been thrown out before and I think the move may have been somewhat calculated,  much like Al McGuires tirades at Marquette.   

Update.......... we don't have a football program, the bcs football schools rule the ncaa. As much as it sucks we took the best deal available, got good money from fox and are aligned with schools in a similar situation. I'm so tired of hearing our league this and that, it is what it is. I'm a fan of the program regardless  and i'll hope for the best, weather its Lavs at the wheel or whoever takes the helm after.

Quote from: erickthered on March 23, 2014, 01:15:02 AM

Update.......... we don't have a football program, the bcs football schools rule the ncaa. As much as it sucks we took the best deal available, got good money from fox and are aligned with schools in a similar situation. I'm so tired of hearing our league this and that, it is what it is. I'm a fan of the program regardless  and i'll hope for the best, weather its Lavs at the wheel or whoever takes the helm after.

Couldn't agree more.  Listen, the schools did what was in their best interest to do.  You had 2 options: stay in the former Big East and just wait for the UConn's and Cincy to leave you for football conferences.  Or branch off and do your own thing.

I mean we can talk all we want, but the Big East lost the consistently best teams in the conference.  Syracuse, Pitt, UConn, Louisville.  They were the top teams year after year.  Outside of Georgetown, Villanova, and Marquette all of the remaining teams have been garbage for quite a long time (and that very much includes us).  Those schools got a great TV deal and now are flush with cash.  So it is up to the AD's and coaches to make these programs better.  There is no reason why the St. John's and Providence and DePaul's of the world can't be very good programs.  Just have to build your brand and be consistent about it.  It's really not rocket science.

And if the conference wants to get more aggressive about expansion, then go do it.  There are teams out there that are very worthy of getting a look (Dayton, St. Louis, St. Joe's, Richmond, VCU, etc.).  And if not, then keep your 10 teams and really work on bringing them to the next level.  Get aggressive with scheduling.  Try to make pacts with the bigger conferences on OOC games.  Hell, make pacts with smaller conferences like the MVC.  Wichita St., Southern Illinois, Northern Iowa are all solid programs.

Was this a successful year?  I'd say so just from the sheer POV that you did something that many people didn't think you could do.  Now go out there and trying to continue to build on it.

I mean look at the A10, they had six teams in, everyone was talking about the strength of the conference this year and the only team that made it to the Sweet 16 was the last team that got in out of that conference. ACC could have two Sweet 16 teams or could have zero.

Anyway, I like the team team round robin format for league play but basically what the league needs is at least two more teams. Been saying that for a while.