How do you measure success as a conference? Is it bids to the NCAA tournament? If so, the Big East has long been the standard for sending nearly half of the conference. In the 2022 and 2024 seasons it did that. If you prefer to measure by the metrics, the Big East was the second best conference in the nation as recently as 2023. Either way you cut it, the conference has been elite and been elite recently.
This year, it is not. By the metrics the Big East is the fifth best conference in the nation. Given that there are 31 conferences that sounds good, but in basketball there are five that really matter and then a drop off. Of those five, the Big East is fifth. The SEC, Big 10, Big 12, and ACC have all slid ahead of the BE this season. The Mountain West is a distant sixth, so there is no danger of sliding farther, but being the worst of the best isn’t exactly a glittering line on a resume.
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Perhaps more concerningly, the Big East is not currently looking at a plethora of at-large bids to the tournament. If the big dance were to start today UConn, St. John’s, and Villanova would be in. That’s it. Seton Hall is on the wrong side of the bubble and probably the third or fourth team out right now. Creighton looked good earlier this season when they were 9-5, but has since gone 3-6 and lost to Marquette by 24 (somehow). They followed that up by losing to Georgetown. Butler and Providence are probably trying to convince themselves that they are still in the hunt, but they both need a minor miracle.
So what happened to the conference? The knee jerk reaction is to blame NIL but, let’s be honest, these aren’t poor programs we are talking about. It isn’t so much the roster turnover as it is the teams haven’t had a very high hit rate. Still, Michael Ayaji, Tarris Reed, and Silas Demary are all transfers who are playing well. Xavier’s biggest acquisition hasn’t played yet (though Tre Carroll has been excellent) and Providence had an excellent return on offensive players, just forgot that defense is a thing. The Big East is probably getting outspent by a couple million by the SEC and Big 12, but not as much by the Big 10 and ACC. More on that later.
The Big East is also paying the price for recent hiring. Chris Mack, Jay Wright, Kevin Willard, Chris Holtmann, and Ed Cooley all left programs that they had turned into consistently high performers. Their schools all failed with their next hires. Travis Steele has an undefeated Miami team right now, but didn’t have that success at Xavier. The second era of Sean Miller led to two tournament bids, but he’s gone again. Villanova missed with Kyle Neptune, Shaheen Holloway hasn’t made a tournament at Seton Hall, Butler has fallen off the map, and Providence hasn’t had the success with Kim English that they did with Cooley. Georgetown, of course, also massively missed on the Cooley hire. Coaching continuity and success is a massive part of a conference doing well. Currently the Big East has at least six schools who haven’t had immediate luck in replacing a coach with someone who stuck and did well.
Things are also cyclical. The SEC has been fourth in the last five years, the ACC has been fifth, the Big 10 fifth, the perpetually sixth Mountain West was 11th in 2020. These things happen, the key is to keep a dip from becoming a trench. The SEC went from back to back fourth place to back to back first place. Of course, the SEC has roughly 63 teams in it, which helps. For the Big East to challenge for the best basketball conference it will need to add judiciously. Dayton and Saint Louis are absolutely not the move to accomplish that. Adding back a big name like Syracuse and adding in VCU would help. Then maybe a couple second tier teams.
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Finally, the Big East is about to add one thing that will help it a great deal: money. Revenue sharing is fully coming into play as the next season starts. Schools are obligated to split that money between teams and schools in the other major conferences will also divert a lot of that to football. The Big East, though? All basketball. The amount people think will get funneled into the basketball teams varies based on who you ask, but it will likely be over $2 million and got reach to double that. That’s not in any way an insignificant amount.
The Big East is unquestionably down this season. It seems most likely that the conference only gets three teams into the NCAA tournament this year. That’s bad. The good news is that more money is on the horizon, coaches are hopefully settling into new programs, and the natural cycle of college basketball will smooth things back out. This season won’t be fun, but good times are on the horizon.
