ShareThisIn the span of just a few days last week, No. 2 Pittsburgh lost at home in a nail-biter, No. 9 Syracuse lost at home by 22 points and No. 8 Villanova was knocked to the canvas in the second half at Providence.
The initial reaction in many quarters was, "Geez, does the Big East have any really good teams?"
Good question. It's one we've been pondering for two months now. The answer is probably not really. Every supposed elite Big East team is filled with flaws, whether it's Pittsburgh's lack of offensive punch, Syracuse's soft inside game, Villanova's ineffective big men or Connecticut's youth.
But the question fans really have to ask is which teams around the country are indeed elite? We'll give you Ohio State and Duke, just for the sake of argument. Who's next? Kansas? Texas? Brigham Young?
The guess here is those teams are all good, but Pitt and UConn both beat Texas, which won at Kansas. Marquette, a second-tier Big East team, gave Duke all it could handle on a neutral court back in November and then St. John's pounded the Blue Devils on Sunday at Madison Square Garden.
BYU is the talk of the country this week, with good reason. If there is one must-see college player out there right now, it's Cougars guard Jimmer Fredette. The other night he slayed San Diego State with 43 points. The rest of his team totaled 28. He's averaging -- averaging -- 34 points a game in road contests. BYU is 20-2 but let's put things in perspective here: the Cougars lost at New Mexico (15-7) and at UCLA, which is 14-7 and South Florida took BYU to overtime on a neutral court.
So how good is the Big East? Extremely deep but probably not elite at the very top. The best teams can, and will, lose games, especially on the road. But the league could easily smash its own record of eight NCAA tourney bids.
"To me, it's the same way every year. There are a lot of good teams," said Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin. "If the last five days have taught us anything, you can't pencil in who you think is going to win every game. The teams in the first three spots of our league have all lost games. Syracuse lost three in a row, Pitt lost Monday, Villanova lost. Those three were the consensus top three by everyone in the Big East. So you just don't know what's going to happen. As a coach you just worry about winning the next game and trying to get better. If you aren't getting better you're in trouble because there are too many good coaches and players in this league."
(Contact Kevin McNamara at kmcnamar(at)projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Providence Journal
