ranking the big east as of 12-21

[bmorex]

Uh, Xavier beat Alabama.

[redmen9194]

Here's how I would go, and note numbers 3-6 could be interchangeable.

1. Nova - they will hold this spot at least until Big East play regardless of what happens in the Dome next weekend.
2. Creighton - only two losses to San Diego State and GW. the GW one is not great but it's only one and they have beaten some decent teams.
3. St. John's - it hasn't always looked pretty but it doesn't have to. Three losses. Wisconsin which is currently undefeated and in the top 5, Syracuse which is undefeated and in the top five, and Penn State in overtime. The Penn State loss is the only bad one. They played Cuse very close and have outplayed every team they have played in the second half. No marque wins, but very few have those.
4. Xavier- three losses all to power conference teams although two of those were winnable. Nice win against a good Cincy team.
5. Providence - Losses to Maryland and Kentucky. Maryland not particulary good. Decent wins as well. Will be interesting to see how they get throughbtheir injuries.
6. Butler - not sure what to make of the Bulldogs so far but they are certainly holding their own.
7. Georgetown- one bad loss out of three, but nothing very impressive especially of late. The VCU win is losing it's luster and if you are a top team in this league, you can't get blown out in December by Kansas.
8. Marquette- Five losses. They were the on,unranked team in the pre-season and the league favorite. Five losses is tough as we get ready to enter the conference season.
9. DePaul - has four losses but all to power conference teams. This keeps them out of the basement for now.
10. Seton Hall - 1-3 against schools in New Jersey. The win is against Rutgers who is horrible. The losses are FDU, St. Peter's, and Mercer. I will just leave it there.

[stever20]

Here's how I would go, and note numbers 3-6 could be interchangeable.

1. Nova - they will hold this spot at least until Big East play regardless of what happens in the Dome next weekend.
2. Creighton - only two losses to San Diego State and GW. the GW one is not great but it's only one and they have beaten some decent teams.
3. St. John's - it hasn't always looked pretty but it doesn't have to. Three losses. Wisconsin which is currently undefeated and in the top 5, Syracuse which is undefeated and in the top five, and Penn State in overtime. The Penn State loss is the only bad one. They played Cuse very close and have outplayed every team they have played in the second half. No marque wins, but very few have those.
4. Xavier- three losses all to power conference teams although two of those were winnable. Nice win against a good Cincy team.
5. Providence - Losses to Maryland and Kentucky. Maryland not particulary good. Decent wins as well. Will be interesting to see how they get throughbtheir injuries.
6. Butler - not sure what to make of the Bulldogs so far but they are certainly holding their own.
7. Georgetown- one bad loss out of three, but nothing very impressive especially of late. The VCU win is losing it's luster and if you are a top team in this league, you can't get blown out in December by Kansas.
8. Marquette- Five losses. They were the on,unranked team in the pre-season and the league favorite. Five losses is tough as we get ready to enter the conference season.
9. DePaul - has four losses but all to power conference teams. This keeps them out of the basement for now.
10. Seton Hall - 1-3 against schools in New Jersey. The win is against Rutgers who is horrible. The losses are FDU, St. Peter's, and Mercer. I will just leave it there.

once again you focus WAY too much on power conference teams. I'm sorry, but the committee doesn't give a rip that VCU is in the A10 or Va Tech is in the ACC. I mean you are saying looking at this that PC's wins over BC and Vandy are good because they're power conference games, while Georgetown's win over VCU doesn't mean much because they're in the A10. That's a joke. Fortunately the committee does not look at things like that at all- they look at each team individually. Also, you are so inconsistent. DePaul lost to Wichita St, which isn't in a power conference according to you.

[XUFan09]

Agreed on the poor focus on power conference teams. Xavier lost to a bad USC team. I'd much rather have lost to Utah State or a team like that. My hope is that USC will break the top 100 (They're 106 in the RPI right now). Then Xavier just needs to sweep Seton Hall and DePaul to finish the season with no bad losses on the resume.

[Friarfan2]

Xavier with a nice comeback to keep them in the possible at large conversation. Still, the last place finish in atlantis (without even playing the two best teams) was real bad.

Stever, I like your analysis, but I would push all the conference wins up one. The only team I think can get in with fewer than 11 conf wins is villanova. The other teams in the conversation will need 11 wins to be on te bubble, 12 to be safe (although 10 might get them in the bubble conversation, it likely won't be enough absent a nice run in nyc).

[Friarfan2]

Here it goes people:


10. Seton Hall. Farleigh Dickinson, mercer, St Peter's, with no respectable wins. Really an embarrassment to the league at this point. I know they have good recruits coming in, but the guy at top clearly can't coach. I fear they are going to be bad for at least another half decade (by the time they fire willard, and then have to rebuild again)

Again, cut anybody else's roster down as badly as Seton Hall's has been and they wouldn't do much better. Assuming Edwin does indeed return of the game this weekend, that'll give the Pirates a whopping 7 available scholarship players. They started the year with a full 12 scholarship players and got cut down to 6 by injuries (top 3 players all missing significant time), a transfer, and maayan being forced to return to Israel for military duty.

Yes, the results on the court right now aren't pretty, but fair judgement should be held until the first choice team actually gets to spend a significant amount of time on the court together.

I don't care is seton hall is playing its bottom 6 players, you don't lose to mercer, fdu and st peters in the same season. That just should never happen. And all your players weren't hurt for all those games, and its not like you were missing all conference type players.

I fear seton hall's recruiting class if "fool's gold". Not good enough to really make an impact and get them over the hump (freshman really do take time to develop and have an impact, unless they are coupled by a strong upper classmen core). Yet seton hall will give willard a chance he has shown he does not deserve based on these recruits. I think that class is just prolonging the inevitable.

[Friarfan2]

Here is the thing with marquette:
Long term they will be fine. Great fan base, great support from their school, a quality program.
By the end of this seasonm they might be decent, and maybe they win the nit.
They lost a ton last year. They lost their three best players. Teams usually take a step back when that happens. It was the pundits fault for not recognizing this and picking them to win the league moreso than it is a matter of marquette not living up to expectations (although that have also disappointed a bit as well)
There was a lot of hype about buzz williams as the best coach in the big east this offseason. That is false. Jay wright is. There is not a nova fan on earth who would trade jay wright for buzz williams. Buzz is still a very good coach, but the hype got a little nutty last summer.

[stever20]

Agreed on the poor focus on power conference teams. Xavier lost to a bad USC team. I'd much rather have lost to Utah State or a team like that. My hope is that USC will break the top 100 (They're 106 in the RPI right now). Then Xavier just needs to sweep Seton Hall and DePaul to finish the season with no bad losses on the resume.

excellent example of USC. That loss is much worse than say Creighton losing to GW for instance. And Georgetown beating VCU is so much more impressive than them beating Kansas St. Teams matter. Conferences don't.

[HoosierPal]

Marquette is toast. Their marquee win is George Washington. ONLY if GW makes a top25 run will this win mean much. Too bad for Buzz that Texas has recovered this year. The option of running down to Austin may not be there.

[Xudash]

Uh, Xavier beat Alabama.

I love it when people start threads like this, then blow their credibility out of the water by making material mistakes.

1. Nova - Period.
2. Creighton - Existing resume plus expectations for this season. I know this is "as of" now, which, for purposes of my post I'm revising to as of 12/22, but forward expectations still factor into these lists for me at this point; I don't expect CU to tank.
3. Xavier - three losses in the islands hurt, but the Iowa loss should have been a W, and the UT loss was a revenge match for UT. Otherwise, wins against UT, UC and Alabama; 9-3; and beginning to come together as a team.
4. St. John's - Three losses to very good competition. No marque wins. I still don't see much structure and execution under Lavin, and I like him personally. That is why I flip Xavier and SJU - better coaching goes to Mack at this point.
5. Providence - Losses to Maryland and Kentucky combined with some good wins. Agree with seeing how Providence navigates their injuries.
6. Butler - Close wins against poor competition (Xavier could be accused of that as well in at least 2 cases) combined with some close losses to good competition. Can Butler pull together through the Butler Way with their available personnel?
7. Georgetown - The VCU win has to hold up; the blow out in December by Kansas is problematic, and certainly didn't help with near-term perceptions. The good news is that near-term perceptions are fleeting.
8. Marquette- Five losses. I watched the game last night. Nice comeback thwarted by NM imposing its will to takeover the game late.
9. DePaul - no comment.
10. Seton Hall - no comment.