We can all stop feeling sorry for the Big East now.
I remember back in 2005, when commissioner Mike Tranghese was college athletics’ tragic figure. Like pirates looting a village in the middle of the night, the ACC pillaged the Big East of Miami and Virginia Tech. The next year, Boston College fled. Suddenly, the Big East was down to five football schools and held a status slightly better than the Mid-American Conference.
Turns out, Tranghese might send the ACC a thank-you note instead of a letter bomb. What Tranghese did to replenish the Big East has helped turned the league into one of the best in college basketball history.
In 2005, Tranghese added Louisville, Marquette, Cincinnati, South Florida and DePaul. Louisville is No. 5 and Marquette is No. 10, giving the Big East three of the top five, five of the top 13 and six in the top 23, topped by No. 1 Connecticut at 24-1.
Nine teams have cracked the rankings. Eleven of the 16 have received votes. Some bracketologists speculate that the Big East could get nine NCAA Tournament bids.
How deep is the Big East? Notre Dame entered the season ranked ninth. It moved as high as seventh. Now, it’s 11th in the conference.
“Interesting — when we lost the football programs we focused on rebuilding, but this was also a chance to make a very strong basketball league even stronger,” Tranghese said in a phone interview from his office in Providence. R.I., last week. “Marquette. Cincinnati. We added those teams to ones we already had, and suddenly Villanova and Georgetown got real good.
“This is a hard league.”
Is it the best ever? Think of a better one. The ACC, particularly Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, points to 1985-86, when Jay Bilas-led Duke was No. 1 the last three weeks, Georgia Tech with Mark Price and John Salley were in the top 10 from start to finish, and so was North Carolina, with Kenny Smith and Brad Daugherty. All three were No. 1 at some point that season. North Carolina State was in the top 20, and Maryland, with Len Bias, was good.
In 1984-85, six of the Big East’s nine teams made the NCAA Tournament, and Georgetown, St. John’s and Villanova made the Final Four.
But no other league has ever had 11 teams this strong. The Big East schedule is a two-month-long forest fire. Look at Syracuse’s stretch from Jan. 19 to Saturday: At No. 4 Pittsburgh, No. 7 Louisville, at Providence, West Virginia, No. 13 Villanova, at No. 1 Connecticut and Georgetown. No wonder the Orange went 2-5 in that stretch of league play.
Cincinnati (17-9) isn’t ranked but had won seven of its last nine entering the weekend. Last week I listed Providence (16-9) as one of the five most surprising teams in the league, and even lowly South Florida rose up to beat Mar- quette.
What’s helped the Big East this season is the number of veteran players. Only four Big East players were drafted last year and only two came out early: West Virginia’s Joe Alexander, who went No. 7 to Milwaukee, and Syracuse’s Donte Green, who’s wallowing in the D-League.
But players such as Connecticut’s Hasheem Thabeet, Pitt’s Sam Young, Louisville’s Terrence Williams and Marquette’s Jerel McNeal, all of whom could be making NBA coin this season, chose to return.
If they don’t eat their own too much, Selection Sunday could be a historic day for the Big East.
“They said we’d never get more than six in,” Tranghese said. “Then we got seven. They said we’ll never get eight. Then we got eight twice. The year a ninth team deserves it, we’ll get a ninth.”
