Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese was in attendance when the West Virginia football team gave the conference a much-needed shot in the arm by defeating Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
Was Tranghese smiling? Sure he was, as if he had coached the team to victory himself. That, however, was but a preview of the good mood to come this winter. The 16-team Big East has blown everyone away in men’s basketball. It could threaten to repeat its 1985 performance by advancing three teams to the Final Four.
Following are excerpts of an interview with the head of the nation’s best men’s basketball conference:
Q: How pleased have you been with the season?
A: We thought, when we put this together – not just for this season, but for the long term – we had a chance to really make a mark. We just have so many programs that have been successful. I think this year is just the start of it. I just don’t think this is an aberration. These are the kinds of seasons we’re going to have.
Maybe we have a lot of teams in the top 15, and that’s not always going to be the case. But I have little doubt that we’ll always have a lot of teams ranked around the top 30 in the country, and a lot of teams that the NCAA will consider for the tournament. But having three teams in the top six of the RPI just adds to it. It’s been a pretty interesting year.
Q: But could you have envisioned this level of success?
A: Yeah, I think we did. We knew how good Connecticut and Villanova were. We knew West Virginia had everybody back after their run (in last year’s NCAA Tournament). I think the surprise has been Pittsburgh, but it’s not a total surprise. I felt very strongly that Pitt had enough coming back to be a top-20 team, but I think they’ve gone beyond that. They are a very, very good team.
Q: How much has basketball’s success eased the negative perception of football?
A: I think where it helps us is the overwhelming success of basketball probably helps us politically. It probably helps us perception-wise in the eyes of the public. But when you’re talking about football, the most important thing in football for us was that West Virginia beat Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. That just doesn’t change. Ultimately, football will be judged on its own merits, and basketball will be judged on its own merits.
Q: Coaches have spoken out about the imbalanced schedule. What are your thoughts on it?
A: When we put together the conference, we had a contract. The contract called for us to do certain things. We knew that in order to continue to do those things we had to create an unbalanced schedule. So we’re doing this for this year and next year. After that, we’re negotiating new TV contracts, and we’ve already instructed our coaches and our presidents have instructed me that what they want is a scheduling format that has everybody playing everybody. I don’t know if we’ll ever have a perfect schedule, because once you get past nine (teams), you can never have a perfect schedule. To me, the only perfect schedule is double round robin.
But I think that the so-called imbalance will get significantly reduced then. I remind people that the Big 12, the SEC, the Big Ten and the ACC don’t have perfect schedules. Ours is exacerbated because not everybody is playing everybody.
Q: Will there be changes to allow all 16 teams into the Big East Tournament?
A: I guess presidents can change it. But I’m the one who put 12 on the table. I know it (increases the) pressure, but I’m more convinced now than ever that it’s the right thing. If you watch our games, we’ve gotten as much attention as to what’s occurring at the bottom of our league as we are at the top.
In the past, when everybody was going to get to New York, you get to the last month of the season; whether a team was going to finish 13th or 12th or 11th was irrelevant. It’s just incredible, the attention and the focus that is now on, is our team going to get to New York? I’m from the old school. I think the regular season needs to mean something, and I think it does.
Q: How important is getting Georgetown and St. John’s to the top of the Big East?
A: I feel that long term the two schools that needed to get revitalized for us to really maximize our full potential were Georgetown and St. John’s. They are two of the old guards, but they also come from two very important markets.
The New York market is so important – not just to us, but to college basketball in general. And New York does not get really energized unless St. John’s is doing well.
Q: Did you instruct coaches not to talk too lovingly about the conference?
A: At the beginning of the year I said we’ve had a lot of success through the years, and the one thing we haven’t ever been is arrogant. You don’t talk about ever being the best at anything. You just don’t. That’s the public’s job to determine. You can promote the conference; you can talk about how good it is; you can talk about how tough it is. But we just don’t get out there and ever boast because it’ll come back to bite you. It always has. We operate in large media markets, and I’ve seen it – you get out on a limb and you start feeling your oats, it’s just going to come back and bite you.
I just said, all I’m recommending to you is that as we have success, that what we talk about, just temper it. Don’t go over the edge and be boastful about it. Because the public and the media will determine who’s best.
Q: If no team out of the Big East gets to the Final Four, is the season still a success?
A: Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the barometer is always how you perform in the (NCAA) tournament. So I guess if we got into the tournament and don’t perform to the expectations in the eyes of the public, we haven’t had a great year. But we’ve accomplished what we wanted this year. I think everything we now do is all gravy. It’s all gravy.
