The Holy Land of Hoops

A nice mix of schools grabbed Big East Conference Championships this season. Here they are:

Villanova (6): Men's Outdoor Track & Field, Women's Outdoor Track & Field, Men's Indoor Track & Field, Women's Indoor Track and Field, Women's Swimming, Men's Cross-Country
Marquette (3): Men's Soccer, Women's Soccer, Vollyball
Seton Hall (3): Men's Diving, Women's Diving, Women's Golf
St. John's (2): Men's Golf, Men's Tennis
Providence (2): Men's Basketball, Women's Cross Country
Xavier (2): Men's Swimming, Baseball
DePaul (2): Women's Basletball, Softball

Associate Members who won championships include: Denver (Men's Lacrosse), Louisville (Women's Lacrosse) and UConn (Field Hockey)

The only schools that did not win a conference championship were Georgetown, Creighton and Butler. Note the Big East has always named its "Champion" as the winner of the conference tournament. Thus Nova's regular season mens basketball finish and Creighton's baseball finish are not included in this thread.

Somewhat disappointing as a Creighton fan. Figured we'd win it in either soccer, volleyball or baseball. Oh well, on to next year...

Btw, there is an indoor and outdoor track and field??? Who knew!

I was looking at putting together a HLOH all sports trophy based on weighted regular season finishes for all sports. Personally, I think using conference tournaments to denote a champion is inappropriate (although I know that is how it is officially viewed). Rather, I would give some additional bonus for the tournament championship in the weighted sports.

Men's basketball is obviously the key sport for the Big East and would be weighted accordingly.

My thought was 10 points for 1st, 9 for 2nd, etc. For sports where < 10 teams participate, an adjusted scoring method would be used.

Men's basketball - weighted 5x (Villanova would get 50 points and so forth)
Women's basketball, baseball - weighted 3x
Men's/Women's Soccer, Volleyball - weighted 2x
Other sports - weighted 1x

Nice idea. I would probably add softball in the 2x weighted. It's definitely more valuable than tennis, track/field, swimming etc......Also, maybe give half the weighted maximum points for being tournament champion (Providence would get 25 for basketball + their regular season points)?

I think 5-10 points for a major tournament title is enough. I would suggest that you somehow combine all of the track and field (outdoor/indoor men/women) into a single category. These are hardly worth counting as 4 separate categories. Probably the same for swimming/diving.

The Friar women need an extra asterisk in cross country for winning the national championship.

If you win the conference championship you should get a bonus, and not just a token one. It is deemed to be the official champion and gets the auto bid to the NCAA .

redmen9194 wrote:If you win the conference championship you should get a bonus, and not just a token one. It is deemed to be the official champion and gets the auto bid to the NCAA .

Agreed. It would be like the Pacers getting more points than the Heat (if they win one more game & represent the East in the finals) for finishing 1st in the East during the regular season.

Kinda weird how conference tourneys work...the best teams definitely do not always win. See PC in men's hoops, Marquette in men's soccer, Xavier in baseball, etc.

Nova should have won in hoops, SJ/Creighton/SHU should have won in baseball, and Creighton/SJ should have won in men's soccer. SJ was ranked #12 at one point. SJ baseball was ranked #23 at one point. I believe SJ lacrosse was also ranked at one point and beat teams like Hofstra, Notre Dame, Stony Brook, etc.

For some odd reason it just seems that SJ squads fall apart when it really matters. Even when our teams cruise through the regular seasons, we always sputter come tourney time. I knew we had arguably the best baseball team in the conference, but I knew I didn't have to bother watching the tournament because we never seem to get the job done. Maybe it's just because I'm only 25 and haven't been a fan as long as many other Johnnies fans, but this is my perception as a young fan.

TheHall wrote:

redmen9194 wrote:If you win the conference championship you should get a bonus, and not just a token one. It is deemed to be the official champion and gets the auto bid to the NCAA .

Agreed. It would be like the Pacers getting more points than the Heat (if they win one more game & represent the East in the finals) for finishing 1st in the East during the regular season.

I couldn't disagree more. A regular season of head to head contests is much more indicative of the strength of a team compared to the results of a weekend tournament. Give some bonus to a conference championship, but not much.