It will be a successful 1st year in the NBE if my team...

[ElDonBDon]

Call me crazy, but I think, given the choice, I would have traded Marquette's BE regular-season championship for winning the conference tournament instead. Especially considering that it was the last one with all the core members.

[ElDonBDon]

And all I need for a successful year is both of the following

1) At least make it to the Sweet 16
2) Stay in the top 25 all year round

Everything else is icing, IMO

[Westbrook36]

So if Marquette doesn't win the BE reg. title it's not a successful year for them? That's a really high standard to hold, and if true MU fans have an excellent chance of being really disappointed come Feb./March. Georgetown, Villanova, St. John's, and Creighton all are gearing up for runs at the BE reg. title and have the same ambitions.

If Villanova finishes top 3 in the BE I'll call it a successful conference year, if we win the reg. season title it will have been an outstanding year.

[ElDonBDon]

Well in fairness to Boxer, he did say "if" and did not say "only if." That is, a BE championship is sufficient for a successful season. Im not sure if he thinks it's necessary.

[aughnanure]

I hope that not all the fans feel that way, I can't even begin to explain how important the BE tournament is in the success of the BE. Winning the BE tournament is everything, always has been and hopefully always will be. Now I know the question was what would be considered a successful season, but honestly winning the tournament is everything.

I prefer to show we were the best team during conference play than to show we got hot for a weekend. That along with the fact that Marquette has never been good in conference tournaments really gives me a sense of apathy towards it. That not to say I don't love going but care less than a regular season championship. But since you care so much about it you can win the big east tournament while we kick ass in the regular season and then go farther in the ncaa tournament, I mean the big east tournament is "everything" so you'd have your goal for the season.

On principal I agree but it's not reality about how successful BE seasons are rated. CBB as a whole puts less value on regular season champs for every conference & there's a good reason...because it's the same way national champions are crown. It's who's the hottest team over the final 6 (less likely 7) games of the cbb season.

Completely disagree. How is the regular season of less value and what is the actual value of the conference tourney? Marquette lost in the first game of the BE tourney last year and it did zilch to our seed.

Unless you need the auto-bid, who cares?

[aughnanure]

Call me crazy, but I think, given the choice, I would have traded Marquette's BE regular-season championship for winning the conference tournament instead. Especially considering that it was the last one with all the core members.

No. I'd rather be called "Conference Champions" than "*tourney* Conference Champions". It's like an asterisk.

[stever20]

Hate to say it but most folks when they say conference champions mean the conference tournament champions and not the regular season champs. I think especially in the past several years where it's not a true round robin- where luck in who you avoided can make a huge difference. Things may change a bit now quite frankly with the tru round robin competition- though for a lot of folks, the conference tourney still is what matters.

[TheHall]

Hate to say it but most folks when they say conference champions mean the conference tournament champions and not the regular season champs. I think especially in the past several years where it's not a true round robin- where luck in who you avoided can make a huge difference. Things may change a bit now quite frankly with the tru round robin competition- though for a lot of folks, the conference tourney still is what matters.

Great insight. If the question is which championship means more to you (tourny or reg seas) then it comes down to individual preference. But in reality cbb is clearly slanted towards tourny champions. Last year the Big East had 3 reg season champions, but there was only one tourny champ. And it's not just about auto-bids, it can be the difference in NCAA seeding also. The NFL is the same way, the champion is hottest team in the playoffs, not necessarily the best regular season team. Actually cfb is the only major sport I can think of that regular season even matters that much. And I wouldn't downplay how hard it historically has been to win the BE tournament.

[Daffron24]

I think the conference tournament is less important than the regular season tournament in terms of overall success because it take is an entire season of success rather than winning a few games. Not to slight the conference tourney, but I just think when you look at your schools program you would rather have a regular season championship rather than conference. In terms of seeding I think the conference tournament can be huge for a team, but if you win the regular season and flame out in the conference tourney you probably will drop 1 seed at most.

In order to have a successful season for Marquette:

Realistically:

1.) Big East Championship
2.) First or Second in the BE conference Championship
3.) Minimum Elite 8 Appearance

What I'm hoping for:

1.) BE Championship
2.) BE conference championship
3.) Final Four
4.) Marquette player on 1st team BE and some sort of all-american (1st, 2nd, 3rd, honorable mention) (Davante Gardner, Jamil Wilson)
5.) BE rookie of the year (Jajuan Johnson, Deonte Burton)

[OutlawWales]

I'll be curious to see what fans of Creighton, Butler, X, think of this question.

As a Creighton fan, I know that my personal perspective over the years has been that a season isn't particularly successful without either a regular season or conference tourney championship. When playing in a conference viewed as mid-major, there is so little room for any kind of error -- losing to almost anyone can be perceived as a "bad" loss, can ruin your chances of getting into the NCAA tourney or at least ruin chances of a decent seed, etc., that teams like Creighton, Butler (when in the Horizon anyway), and maybe X (though the A10 was a bit different) really had to set the bar pretty high to measure "success." I would imagine fans of Gonzaga would feel similarly -- if Gonzaga doesn't win the regular season and tourney, in that conference, I would guess most fans would not consider the season a success.

Creighton fans have debated the regular season title vs. the tourney title for years. In the MVC, the Jays absolutely dominated the conference tourney -- people renamed it the Bluejay Invitational! The Jays were pretty consistently considered a threat to win that title in most years, even doing so when not finishing in the top 2 in the regular season. Wichita State, on the other hand, was more consistent at maintaining throughout the season and winning the regular season, only to choke in the tourney time after time after time. In the MVC, that distinction was especially important because the tourney winner got the auto bid to the NCAA tourney, and the conference could never feel safe that its regular season winner would get in. For that reason, most Jays fans would say that they favored the tourney title because it meant more in the sense of carrying that auto bid -- but many also longed for more regular season titles, because they arguably show a better measure of the program over the course of the entire season. Now the NBE will also be a round-robin conference where everyone plays everyone home and away, I suspect some of you will come to view the regular season title with more reverence than you might have under the older scheme. And that isn't to take anything away from what is typically a grueling conference tourney that is a great litmus test for NCAA performance.

Now, with the higher quality of teams across the board, and hopefully a more forgiving perspective by national media, etc., the measures of success can really be reevaluated for some of us "new" guys. It's huge to be in a conference where finishing in the top 3 can be considered a great season and can still lead to NCAA bids, decent seeds, etc.

For me, for this year, I think Creighton fans have to set the bar pretty high, though. We've got a lot of great players coming back, including a pretty rare 2 time All American, and will be entering the season ranked and projected to compete for the conference title. After this year, we lose quite a few key components. That's when new recruiting, etc., will come into play and there will be a lot of uncertainty. So in some ways it's kind of a make it or break it year for Jays fans -- if we don't compete and have a great year this year, it could be a while before we do. So I think for this to be a successful first year in the NBE for Creighton, the Jays need to finish no lower than third in the regular season race (and need to be within a game or two, tops, of the top spot), need to make it to at least the semi-finals of the conference tourney, and need to break at least the Sweet 16 (and more likely get to at least the Elite 8). Those are pretty lofty, but when considering what a season of underperformance this year might mean for the near future, I think it's fair.