Big East teams hurting each other; too much depth?

[GumbyDamnit!]

I don't think folks expected the BE to dominate, but to struggle the way we have this year is not good. We may be the 4th best conference- but getting 3 teams in would be not a good thing by any stretch. The group of Marquette, Georgetown, and Butler are further down this year than they have been in years. St John's didn't rise to the occasion this year yet. DePaul is well, DePaul. Seton Hall has done better but still have those incredibly bad losses in December. If it weren't for Providence doing better than anyone expected given their losses, it'd be even worse of a year.

Stever you are consistent as a glass is half empty guy. Struggle like we've done? We have 2 teams that few expected to be Top 10 caliber teams. Gtwn has beaten 3 teams OOC that have been ranked. SJU seems to be gaining momentum. We have the NPOY playing in our league. Our recruiting, league wide, is fantastic for next year and so far the year after. I will concede that Marq and Butler have been disappointing, and will counter that PC and Gtwn have been very unfortunate with suspensions and injuries. The year hasn't even played out. Who knows what's to come? If we get 3 teams in and they all lose first round then we can start crying. On the flip side if DM wins NPOY, we get 2 teams to the Elite 8 or 1 to the FF, I would say that's a pretty good start. Just let it play out before making these definitive statements, please. Every conference has its worts. Look at the RPI's at the bottom of the ACC. Northwestern who DePaul beat away is a middle of the pack B1G team. The SEC? Please. I just think people are trying so hard to compare us to everyone else. We have a good thing here. Sit back, relx and don't force yourself to have to quantify it.

Lastly if comparing to the A-10 what are we something like 14-3 (too lazy to look it up) vs them this year?

[marquette]

PC and Gtwn have been very unfortunate with suspensions and injuries.

Seems like a lot of our teams are snake-bitten this year. DePaul, Seton Hall, Providence, Georgetown, and Butler have all had pretty devastating injury problems. Creighton lost their starting point guard. Marquette has had our highly touted JUCO transfer, our point guard of the future go down for the year (before the season even started), our solid SG/SF combo player was too hurt to contribute serious minutes until two games ago. I think a couple of our close losses (ASU, SDSU, UNM, maybe even Wisconsin) could have very easily gone the other way if we were healthy and getting contributions from everyone we expected. 3 more wins in the non-con (would be 16-7) and we are having a conversation about how a solid Marquette squad is only in 5th in a surprisingly deep Big East. Unfortunately it's been one of those years where every team is having some measure of bad luck. I can't imagine our luck is this bad again next season.

[stever20]

I don't think folks expected the BE to dominate, but to struggle the way we have this year is not good. We may be the 4th best conference- but getting 3 teams in would be not a good thing by any stretch. The group of Marquette, Georgetown, and Butler are further down this year than they have been in years. St John's didn't rise to the occasion this year yet. DePaul is well, DePaul. Seton Hall has done better but still have those incredibly bad losses in December. If it weren't for Providence doing better than anyone expected given their losses, it'd be even worse of a year.

Stever you are consistent as a glass is half empty guy. Struggle like we've done? We have 2 teams that few expected to be Top 10 caliber teams. Gtwn has beaten 3 teams OOC that have been ranked. SJU seems to be gaining momentum. We have the NPOY playing in our league. Our recruiting, league wide, is fantastic for next year and so far the year after. I will concede that Marq and Butler have been disappointing, and will counter that PC and Gtwn have been very unfortunate with suspensions and injuries. The year hasn't even played out. Who knows what's to come? If we get 3 teams in and they all lose first round then we can start crying. On the flip side if DM wins NPOY, we get 2 teams to the Elite 8 or 1 to the FF, I would say that's a pretty good start. Just let it play out before making these definitive statements, please. Every conference has its worts. Look at the RPI's at the bottom of the ACC. Northwestern who DePaul beat away is a middle of the pack B1G team. The SEC? Please. I just think people are trying so hard to compare us to everyone else. We have a good thing here. Sit back, relx and don't force yourself to have to quantify it.

Lastly if comparing to the A-10 what are we something like 14-3 (too lazy to look it up) vs them this year?

I think part of it is how you view Georgetown. If you view them like the 3 OOC great wins, they've had a good season. But if you view them like they have 9 losses at this point and have gone 4-6 in conference- it's not as good. Would love to get that Northeastern game back(though it's weird, losing that game got us the Kansas St and VCU games, not sure if we would have been in the position we're in w/o those 2 games quite frankly!)

JT3 has lost more than 11 games at Georgetown 2 times(once his 1st year). Could easily be his 3rd time this year. When you combine with Marquette and Butler- you have 3 of the teams most projected as tourney teams missing the tourney potentially.

And head to head with a conference only tells part of a story. Would you rather be in the tourney shape of the A10 or Big East right now? A10 has 4 tourney locks just about, and could easily get a 5th in. BE has 2 tourney locks, 1 likely in Xavier, and then it's iffy after that.

My point though is simple, you can't just if we finish poorly just dismiss it as oh, it's just the first year. Similarly as you bring up, if we finish strong and get I think even 3 sweet 16 and 1 final 8 team- they can't dismiss that as oh just beginners luck.

[redmen9194]

I think one major thing that folks are saying that drives me crazy is that it's a guarantee that FS1 will grow like ESPN. It's not. Right now, it's a niche channel. If they don't get mainstream content fast, it's always going to be that UFC/Boxing/Motocross/Nascar channel. It's a lot different era now compared to back when ESPN was launched- ESPN didn't have an ESPN-like gorilla to compete against. I'm not saying FS1 can't be a sucess, but it's no guarantee by any stretch.

Also- Cable sports is a LOT different than especially cable news- and even network. Fox got the NFL yes, and then got lucky when American Idol came around. For cable news, everyone covers the same news events. But for sports- you have to have the TV Rights. IMO, Fox came around 2-3 years too late as now, almost all of the big events are locked up for years to come.

As far as recruiting is concerned, let's see how things are looking in 2-3 years. 1 year is nice, but after everything has settled down will be when the true impact of everything will be felt.

As far as the coaches, I think in a lot of ways, the era of the dominant coaches is over. Once Boeheim, Coach K, Williams, Pitino leave- I don't think you're going to see the dominant coaches like we used to see. Different era than before.

Recruits and their families don't care about TV ratings; they care about TV availability. The fact that every game is on TV is all that matters to them.

Bluejay hit it on the head. Who cares about Fox Sports 1 ratings at this point? Do you think that St. John's / Providence would have gotten better ratings if it was on ESPN? Our teams have 25 + games each on national television. Coast to Coast. Syracuse fans were annoyed that they were not getting some of their games on TV at all due to black-outs, availability only on ESPN3, etc. DePaul has more games shown in California than Duke. Many of our coaches recruit coast to coast. It is an extreme benefit to tell a recruit and his family anywhere in the country that they will be able to see 90% of their son's games in the comfort of their living room. With Fox, we are not competing with other leagues for air time. And if we were with ESPN, who would they favor? The Big East or one of the football leagues that gives them both fall and spring programming. The contract with Fox is huge and has been nothing but good for this league as far as money and exposure. During the Super Bowl there were two commercials featuring St. John's promoting the Big East as part of the Fox line-up. Don't be concerned about ESPN or bids or anything else at this point. Our league is better than fine. We are finding our way through season one with our new alignment. Wait until the Big East Tournament at the Garden (every game nationally broadcast with Gus and Raft). Nothing like crowning a conference champion on a Saturday night on the corner of 34th and 7th.

[BEwannabe]

Lastly if comparing to the A-10 what are we something like 14-3 (too lazy to look it up) vs them this year?

Sat 11/16/13 - Creighton 83 Saint Joseph`s 79
Sun 11/24/13 - Georgetown 84 Virginia Commonwealth 80
Sun 11/24/13 - Providence 71 La Salle 63
Fri 11/29/13 - George Washington 60 Marquette 76
Sun 12/01/13 - George Washington 60 Creighton 53
Thu 12/05/13 - Providence 50 Rhode Island 49
Sat 12/07/13 - Fordham 58 Saint John`s 104
Sat 12/07/13 - Villanova 98 Saint Joseph`s 68
Sun 12/15/13 - La Salle 52 Villanova 73
Sat 12/28/13 - Providence 67 Massachusetts 69

It's actually 8-2 and pretty easy to find but I'm not sure what conclusions could be drawn from this sample group. For starters, 3 Big East teams played 7 of the 10 games. If anyhting the games between VCU & Gtown, GW's games and UMASS game are some indicator-the top half of each league is good.

[Westbrook36]

The A-10 isn't getting more than 4 teams into the dance. You have St. Louis, VCU, GW, & UMass as sure things, after that what do they have? St. Joe's(15-7, 5-3), Richmond(15-8, 5-3), LaSalle(12-10, 4-4), & Dayton(15-8, 3-5) none of them are getting in.

[Bill Marsh]

The A-10 isn't getting more than 4 teams into the dance. You have St. Louis, VCU, GW, & UMass as sure things, after that what do they have? St. Joe's(15-7, 5-3), Richmond(15-8, 5-3), LaSalle(12-10, 4-4), & Dayton(15-8, 3-5) none of them are getting in.

None of those last 4 are getting in right now, but 3 of the 4 are on the bubble and could easily make a move up. Except for LaSalle, none of them can be ruled out right now.

[stever20]

The A-10 isn't getting more than 4 teams into the dance. You have St. Louis, VCU, GW, & UMass as sure things, after that what do they have? St. Joe's(15-7, 5-3), Richmond(15-8, 5-3), LaSalle(12-10, 4-4), & Dayton(15-8, 3-5) none of them are getting in.

None of those last 4 are getting in right now, but 3 of the 4 are on the bubble and could easily make a move up. Except for LaSalle, none of them can be ruled out right now.

look at their RPI's right now
Richmond 44
St Joe's 52
Dayton 61

Looking at it, Richmond has a great shot. They have 8 games left. Projected to go 5-3. If they can win at Dayton last game of the season, they are 21-10. RPI at that record is 41.4. That would be a very tough team to leave out. Lunardi had them as 7th team out yesterday. If they can maintain, they will move up just out of folks taking themselves out of the equation.

[Westbrook36]

I've checked those teams remaining schedules, they play each other a bunch plus they all have at least a couple of games against the top 4. Best case scenario for them, St. Joe's (21-9, 11-5), Richmond (21-10, 11-5), LaSalle (18-12, 10-6), Dayton (20-11, 8-8). None of them have any really impressive OOC wins, and secondly and most importantly none of them pass the eye ball test.

[Bill Marsh]

I've checked those teams remaining schedules, they play each other a bunch plus they all have at least a couple of games against the top 4. Best case scenario for them, St. Joe's (21-9, 11-5), Richmond (21-10, 11-5), LaSalle (18-12, 10-6), Dayton (20-11, 8-8). None of them have any really impressive OOC wins, and secondly and most importantly none of them pass the eye ball test.

All it takes is for one of them to get hot and run the table for the A10 to have a 5th school get in.