The Big East is a big fraud. The basketball conference praised all year by ESPN experts Joe Lunardi and Doug Gottlieb has been throttled in the first three rounds of this year’s NCAA Tournament.
Eleven of the 16 teams from the country’s most overrated basketball conference received bids to play in the NCAA Tournament. An epically bad NCAA Tournament committee rewarded mediocre regular seasons by the likes of West Virginia, Marquette and Villanova while ignoring good teams from competitive conferences.
Entering this week’s Sweet Sixteen is the same number of teams remaining from the city of Richmond, Va., as from the Big East. All season, I had to listen to every sports commentator from here to Bristol, Conn., sing the praises of a conference without a dominant team.
Sure, Connecticut and Marquette both are still remaining among the tournament’s 16 teams. However, the reason they were able to make it to this point is because they defeated teams from their own conference in the third round.
Pittsburgh, a No. 1 seed from the Southeast region, showed the smarts of a recreational YMCA team in the final seconds against Butler. With the game tied and less than one second remaining, a Pittsburgh player inexplicably fouled Butler’s Matt Howard while pursuing the rebound after Pitt missed their second free throw.
In retrospect, maybe it was a good foul. Howard is one of the nation’s elite players when facing up 85 feet from his own basket with less than a second remaining.
No. 2 seed Notre Dame, a dark horse in many brackets to make the Final Four, looked helpless against a bigger, less-skilled Florida State team Sunday night.
A Louisville team led by Rick Pitino kicked off March Madness by losing to national powerhouse Morehead State.
Digressions aside, the “King of Sleaze” nonetheless graced the set of the CBS NCAA coverage with his analysis. Seeing Pitino squirm in his chair as Charles Barkley ripped into a conference he said had “no talent” was superb television.
Visibly angered, Pitino guaranteed Notre Dame would crush FSU. The Seminoles went on to pound the Fighting Irish 71-57. Barkley looked vindicated while Pitino sat in his chair after being embarrassed on national television.
This exchange topped off a nightmare weekend for East Coast teams that received a ridiculous amount of credit they never truly deserved. Sure, the Big East exhibited a great level of competitiveness. However, the perception of their strength was boosted by the conference’s ridiculous television contract with ESPN.
The Big East’s poor performance in the NCAA Tournament simply proves the selection committee snubbed a number of teams, namely Saint Mary’s, Virginia Tech and perhaps even the Cougars.
Their decision to pencil in USC and UAB in front of teams like the Cougars and Gaels displayed a level of incompetence I simply cannot come to terms with. Why USC squeaking by a mediocre Cal team in the Pac-10 Tournament’s play-in game made them a NCAA Tournament lock remains a mystery to me.
I acknowledge the fact that the Cougars blew a variety of chances to be a sure-fire NCAA team, but they never lost to Rider, Texas Christian University and Bradley University in their non-conference schedule like the Trojans did. WSU receiving a bid to play in the NIT Tournament was simply a reflection of a skewed national perception of a weak Pac-10 Conference.
Perhaps next year the selection committee will ignore national hype and evaluate teams fairly, but I doubt it.