Thoughts on your draw?

[H.U.S.T.L.E.]

I think, so far, Buzz's assessment of the Big East's prospects has been proven wrong. Is there a specific quote though? It's been discussed in other threads that the new Big East had growing pains during its first couple years, and that seems to have been the same opinion Buzz held.

The only passages I could find quickly were from the following sources, and neither has a direct quote:

Washington Post

Steve Roccefort, a longtime friend who would later join Williams’s staff at Virginia Tech, believed Williams had been put off by an NCAA measure to grant autonomy to the “Power 5” conferences, granting benefits Marquette and the Big East wouldn’t have access to.

CBS Sports

He made five NCAA Tournaments (in his first six seasons), advanced to the Sweet 16 three times and the Elite Eight once before the age 40, and most young coaches would become intoxicated with that success. Not Williams, though. He instead identified it as the bar set, then assembled "facts and data" in an attempt to determine whether it was reasonable to expect to maintain that level of success in a less-attractive Big East while playing league games off of ESPN and on Fox Sports 1. He concluded it probably wasn't. And what would happen if he didn't? Answer: Williams would fall out of favor with his own fans the same way Ben Howland once did at UCLA, the same way most coaches who stay too long at any basketball-centric school eventually do. Consequently, Williams determined it was wiser to jump while he was still ahead, and though his contract at Virginia Tech is technically for less money on a per-year basis, it's a seven-year deal with an automatic rollover clause that will never allow it to be less than a five-year deal, meaning the security provided makes it a better deal for a man openly planning for the day he's fired.

I don't consider that to be trashing the Big East, but instead someone who was reading the tea leaves and trying to project the trajectory of the conference at the time. Granted, I'm reading those quotes with 4 years of additional data, but let's not overlook the fact that a fair amount of media types were questioning whether the new Big East could maintain elite status in the college basketball world. Hindsight has shown this notion that the new Big East was doomed to fail was false since those articles were published.