It’s March and you know what that means. The NCAA Tournament starts in just a few days.
Back in the day, the conference tournament to watch was the Big East Tournament. But that wasn’t the case this season, and might not be again.
Two decades ago, the Big East Tournament may have been the biggest of all the tournaments out there. Eleven years ago the Big East split apart. Now, games between rivals like Georgetown and Syracuse, long the premiere matchup, barely matter.
When Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt, and Louisville left for the ACC, that essentially ended the Big East as we knew it.
Reaglinement mainly happened because of college football. That left colleges like Georgetown in the dust because they didn’t have major football programs.
It was always fun to watch John Thompson vs. Jim Boeheim and how Georgetown and Syracuse would go back and forth in the matchup normally for the Big East title or for a chance to play for the Big East title, but as a colleague and Syracuse grad remarked to me, now the game means nothing.
For many, the Big East is where real basketball was played from the playgrounds of New York City to DC, came a lot of well-known basketball stars who played in the Big East and their stage was Madison Square Garden.
You can blame the demise of the Big East partly on realignment but may also blame the lack of great coaches in the conference. Georgetown is a shell of itself as it tries to restart under a new head coach. Gone too are legends like Boeheim, Jim Calhoun, Rick Pitino, and Jay Wright.
The Big East’s lack of excitement was on full display on Sunday when the conference only got three teams in the NCAA Tournament (UConn, Marquette, and Creighton) while schools like St. John’s, Seton Hall, and Providence were on the outside looking in.
UConn is really the only current Big East school to still have sustained success these days, but even they are rumored to be interested in going to a bigger conference. It’s just sad to see a once-powerful conference like the Big East be regulated to a somewhat forgotten status.
The Beast of the East no longer exists and it will become a bad day in college basketball the day they announce that the Big East has officially disbanded.
