Big East coaches pleading parity
Posted: Thursday, October 22, 2009 9:57 AM
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Big East
A year after arguments were made about the Big East being perhaps the best conference ever, the 16-team league is now talking about parity. How’s that for a one-year swing?
The conference’s coaches are giving fair warning: don’t expect more this year. You know, like three No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament, five teams in the Sweet 16 and four in the Elite Eight – all Big Dance firsts.
"Last year was the best year that I think any league has ever had in terms of teams top to bottom," said Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim.
Instead, last year’s top teams are gonna be a little worse, and the bottom feeders aren’t gonna be as bad.
“Now I think the top teams like us, Syracuse, Pittsburgh come to the middle,” said Louisville coach Rick Pitino, whose teams won the regular-season and conference tournament crowns. “And the bottom teams like St. John's, Cincinnati and South Florida are going to come to the middle, and we're all going to meet somewhere in the middle and compete.”
And to hear Villanova coach Jay Wright, whose team was picked to win the conference by both the coaches and the media, it’s going to be a fight even for the best teams.
"If we're the No. 1 team, we're not a dominant team," Wright said. "We're a young team, and we've got a lot of new players. There are a lot of really good teams that are really close. I think the team that wins this league is going to have a lot of losses."
So what counts as a lot of losses for a league champ? Eight? 10? 12? Maybe the Wildcats won’t match Louisville’s record from last season (31-6, 16-2 in the Big East), but it seems hard to believe they’ll come close to losing double-digit games.
Check out their schedule. I count 6 conference losses at worst; splits with Georgetown and West Virginia, and possibly losses at Louisville, Pitt, Syracuse and Cincy. Worst-case scenario, Villanova goes 12-6 in conference play – which would be worse than last season when it was 13-5.
And they’re going to win the conference in a down season with a worse record than last year? C’mon. That hasn’t happened since 2003 when the league had two divisions. Even if your etam lost good players, so did everyone else. Simple enough, right?
As for the worst teams, they’ll still be bad. DePaul, Rutgers and South Florida are still going to be easy wins.
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