As we all know, winter ends when I attend the Big East Tournament. It’s one of my favorite sporting events of the year. I went almost every year in whatever the decade before the 20s is called. And then I didn’t go in 2020. In fact, I haven’t had a blog post in March since 2020 when I lamented the demise of that college basketball season. I was supposed to go to three nights of the Big East Tournament that year (Thursday-Saturday). I had already decided not to go, but it ended up getting canceled on Thursday afternoon before any of the sessions I was supposed to go to. I’ve been wanting to get back to the Big East Tournament ever since then. I hadn’t really thought about it much this year until a few weeks ago. I typically went multiple nights to the Big East Tournament, but when I checked the prices, they were pretty high. Thursday night was reasonable though so I decided I would go if I could get somebody to go with me. My first text was to Vin who has attended many Big East Tournaments with me and he was in so I was getting back to the Big East Tournament and the winter that never ended was going to end. I’ve gone to many Big East Tournament games with Vin over the years. Of course, the last Big East Tournament I went to was in 2019. I went Thursday and Saturday that year and Vin joined me for the championship game when we saw Villanova beat Seton Hall.
My last indoor sporting event that I needed a ticket for was an NBA G-League game with the Maine Red Claws (now Maine Celtics) taking on the Long Island Nets in January 2020. Since then, the only indoor sporting events I’ve been to had been girls basketball games that I was coaching (we had our best season ever this year with a 9-4 finish and a loss in the semifinals) and a couple of volleyball games and boys basketball games at my school. It felt really good to be going up those escalators in Madison Square Garden again. We were seeing Creighton against Providence and Marquette against Villanova. I have pretty simple rules about who to root for in the Big East. I always root for Villanova because of their heroism in preventing North Carolina and Michigan from winning National Championships in 2016 and 2018. I root for Catholic schools against non-Catholic schools. I root for old Big East Teams except for UConn against new Big East teams generally. Now I have to root against St. John’s against any other Catholic school because of Rick Pitino (I’ve always wanted St. John’s to be good because that would definitely make the Big East Tournament more exciting, but I can’t root for Rick Pitino). And I root for Butler over UConn. I might make exceptions to those rules to root for results that would help get the Big East more teams in the NCAA Tournament (unless the team that might be helped was UConn). But in this case, my rules all lined up to root for Providence and Villanova. Creighton and Marquette were going to make the tournament. Providence and Villanova were bubble teams.
The first game was exciting. Providence led for most of the game. They had a double-digit lead in the second half. And then they let it slip away. It felt like they were going to lose, but they executed late and won 78-73 despite being even in rebounding and three pointers and Creighton making nine more free throws. Devin Carter had 22 points and 11 rebounds. Vin had to leave to get his ferry back to New Jersey after the first game. I stayed for the first half of the second game. Villanova led by one at halftime. I wanted to stay for the whole game since it was close, but I was already looking at getting home after midnight and I had to go to work the next day. In my younger days, I probably would have stayed. I missed an exciting finish. Marquette made a shot at the buzzer to seemingly win the game, but it was overturned (it didn’t look like it should have been overturned). Marquette ended up winning anyway in overtime 71-65. The game ended just shortly before I got home around 12:15. So that was a disappointing result.
My current phone definitely takes higher quality pictures than the one I had the last time I went to the Big East Tournament in 2019.
Actually almost everything after Wednesday in the tournament was a disappointing result. On Thursday afternoon, Connecticut won and St. John’s beat Seton Hall. It seemed like the winner of St. John’s-Seton Hall had a good chance of making the NCAA tournament and the loser probably wouldn’t make it. If Seton Hall had no chance of making the tournament, I could bring myself to root for St. John’s since they are a Catholic school that was a bubble team, but I’m not going to root for Rick Pitino to keep another Catholic school out of the tournament. Then on Friday, I was rooting for St. John’s because they were playing Connecticut and another win would solidify their position in the tournament. And I was rooting for Providence against Marquette because Marquette was definitely making the tournament and Providence was a bubble team. Well, Connecticut and Marquette won. And of course, I was rooting for Marquette over Connecticut in the championship game, but Connecticut won. So in the last seven games of the tournament, the only one that went the way I wanted was Providence-Creighton.
As it would turn out, Saturday and Sunday were disastrous for the Big East. They had three teams that were definitely in and four bubble teams. Of the four bubble teams, it seemed like Villanova was out and St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Providence had a chance. With all the upsets in other conference tournaments and bids getting stolen, none of the Big East bubble teams made it. Hopefully next year a Catholic school that isn’t St. John’s will win the Big East tournament and they’ll get more teams to the NCAA tournament.
It was great to be back at the Big East Tournament with Vin. Although I didn’t see Connecticut in person, this was my first tournament since Connecticut rejoined the conference. Obviously, Connecticut has strengthened the conference. Eleven teams seems like a weird number. I know it works well for scheduling since they all play each other twice. But 12 or 16 teams would make for a better conference tournament. Twelve would give you a full day on Wednesday. Sixteen would give you a full day on Tuesday and Wednesday with some pretty good games on Wednesday. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big East does expand at some point. When the ACC inevitably falls apart because the Big 10, SEC, and ESPN are committed to destroying college football, I hope Notre Dame stays independent in football and goes back to the Big East for everything else. That’s pretty much been my dream ever since we left. So we would be the 12th team. If we’re getting to 16, I would then add Syracuse (I despise them, but much like Connecticut, they belong in the Big East), Boston College (or Holy Cross because it would be funny to take them and not Boston College), Dayton, and some other Atlantic 10 team (VCU, Richmond, Loyola Chicago, Duquesne, or somebody).
Speaking of the Big Ten and SEC trying to destroy college football, it seems like they also might want to destroy college basketball. Greg Sankey has been talking about ruining the NCAA tournament. This is the one thing that everybody agrees is awesome about college sports. And the SEC commissioner wants to destroy it. If you’re going to do anything with the tournament, I would expand it slightly. I’ve heard the suggestion to go to 72 teams and have eight play in games with all at large teams. The argument is that it would make the play in games more interesting and any conference champion should get the experience of playing in the round of 64. If they did that, I would be totally fine with it. I am sympathetic to the idea that the worst team should get to be a sacrificial lamb for a 1 seed instead of losing a play in game. But if it was up to me, I would make it 72 teams with four play in games for at large teams and all four 16 spots determined by play in games. What I like about that idea is that it would improve the quality of 16 seeds a little bit because two teams that would have been 15 seeds under the current format would get bumped down to play in games. But I’d be fine with doing all at large teams in the play in games also. Either way, I think 72 is the right number and I would have a second play in site so that you could get two games going at once instead of having everything in Dayton.
So we’re into the NCAA tournament now. There are seven Catholic schools in the tournament. As I’m writing this, things are not looking good for Dayton (update: Dayton came back from down 17 in the second half so that’s awesome). It seems like Marquette, Creighton, St. Mary’s, and Gonzaga are the Catholic schools with a chance to make a run. But Duquesne already won their first game in the tournament in 55 years or something like that so that’s cool. Hopefully Micah Shrewsberry will have Notre Dame back in the NCAA tournament consistently soon. I’m optimistic as everybody said our team was going to be horrendous this year, but we had a pretty solid finish despite not having much talent. Until then, I’ll be rooting for the other Catholic schools.
And I’ll just finish with one other thought. The CBS college basketball music is very very good. But the best basketball theme music ever (maybe the best of any sport ever) is Roundball Rock. Of course, I grew up with it on the NBA on NBC in the 90s. It’s taken a little while, but I’ve gotten used to it being used as Fox’s college basketball theme. I wish Fox would use it just for one day with its lyrics (since it is a lyrics-first song):
There’s a lot not to like about Saturday Night Live, but sometimes they nail it (this season they had a George Washington skit that was absolutely fantastic). Anyway, even though the tournament isn’t on Fox, this is pretty much what’s been going on in my head ever since the conference tournaments started:
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