In Big East, bloodiest battles are below surface

[Brad]

In Big East, bloodiest battles are below surface

By TONY BARNHART

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 02/14/06

As the coach of the nation's top-ranked team, Jim Calhoun knows a thing or two about tough games. His Connecticut Huskies get everybody's best shot.

But if you want to see some real blood-on-the-floor basketball, Calhoun says, don't look at the top of Big East standings, home to five of the nation's top 17 teams. Instead, look at what's going on at the bottom of this 16-team mega-conference.

"For those guys," Calhoun said, "every night is a war for survival."

With nine teams in the top 33 of the latest RPI standings, no one can deny the Big East is college basketball's best conference. If the NCAA tournament field were chosen today, history says it would have an unprecedented nine teams among the 65 chosen. No conference has sent more than seven.

"I've been in the league 20 years, and this is the most competitive that it has ever been," Calhoun said.

But this excellence has not come without a price.

The Big East became a 16-team conference because of football expansion by the ACC. Using math that only makes sense in college athletics, the Big East responded to the loss of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College by adding five teams — Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, DePaul and South Florida. The Big East was left with a still respectable football conference — remember West Virginia, Georgia fans? — and a basketball league some are saying has the potential to be the best in the history of the sport.

If, that is, the league can hold itself together against the adversity that's about to come.

At the insistence of commissioner Mike Tranghese, the popular Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden will be limited to 12 teams. That means four of the league's members will see their seasons come to an abrupt end in early March. And right now, the pressure to avoid being one of those four teams is tremendous.

"I know because I'm sitting in the seat," said Notre Dame coach Mike Brey, whose team is 14th in the Big East after a string of close losses. "I think about last year when West Virginia [which started 1-5 in the Big East, then reached the Elite Eight] was struggling. They could close the door to the coach's office and say, 'At least we're going to New York.' Now we may not have that."

The stigma of finishing 13th through 16th and not making it to the Garden, several coaches said, will be significant. Fans of those schools who are used to having multi-day vacations in New York every March won't be happy.

"You're basically looking at two sets of standings," said DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright, whose team is 15th. "You're looking at who's winning our league, but you're looking far more at the bottom of the league. It's something we talk about every day."

"In this league, the difference between finishing fourth and not going to New York could be one bad weekend," said Andy Kennedy, Cincinnati's first-year coach.

Given the downside to not making the conference tournament, most of the league's coaches, athletics directors and presidents wanted to include all 16 teams when they met to discuss this issue last May. Tranghese advised against it.

"It would have created a whole host of problems that I wouldn't like," said Tranghese, whose league has produced three national champions since 1999. "One of the rewards for our top four teams is to get a bye [in the first round] and have to win only three games to win the tournament.

"Inviting all 16 teams means they would have to play four games. That is not what you want to do to get your teams ready to play in the NCAA tournament."

Tranghese prevailed, but by no means does he think the argument's over. He knows that if there's a Big East tournament in New York without Louisville, Notre Dame or St. John's, the fallout will be significant.

"I'm not going to be surprised if the coaches come back and yell and scream," Tranghese said, "but my job is to convince the presidents that this is the right thing to do for our conference."

There are other issues Tranghese must address. Because of a scheduling structure tied to the existing Big East TV contracts, some teams don't play others at all. This unbalanced scheduling may make for huge headaches if tiebreakers are needed to determine who goes to New York and who stays home. That scheduling structure will not change until the 2007-08 season when the new TV deal kicks in.

"The way we're scheduling now is not the right way to do it," said Tranghese, who said the league might go from 16 to 18 conference games when it changes in two years. "We are committed to having everybody playing everybody else at least once."

Some basketball observers wonder if, given all these pressures, Tranghese can hold this 16-team monstrosity together for more than another year or two.

"The positive is that it's a tremendous league with incredible depth," analyst **** Vitale said. "But if Louisville and Notre Dame don't make it to New York, that would be a real negative. If you're a coach, how can you go out and sell your program if you don't even make it to your conference tournament? This is a real challenge for Mike Tranghese."

There has even been talk that the eight football-playing schools might go off and form their own all-sports league.

"I feel better about [keeping the league together] than I did six months ago," Tranghese said. "From what I hear from the coaches, basketball recruiting is going great. If we handle this right, the league has a chance to be something really special.

"And if it's something special, I just think people are going to have a hard time walking away from it."

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[smazza]

usf has been dead all year  

usf's blood has been long sucked out

all teams should go to conference tourney with top 4 teams getting a bye in first round

[bulls96go]

win and you are in!