bryanw1995
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RE: 2023 NCAA March Madness 2nd Round Thread
(03-20-2023 09:20 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: (03-20-2023 02:26 PM)JRsec Wrote: (03-20-2023 01:36 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (03-20-2023 01:10 PM)bill dazzle Wrote: (03-20-2023 12:57 PM)JRsec Wrote: The Big East has consistently been the strongest basketball conference over the long haul for 1 reason which neither the Big 10 nor ACC can claim. It is the one conference where basketball remains supreme. That counts in a culture where basketball players are the Big Men on Campus. Culturally it fits the region as well.
At those schools athletic money goes to basketball as "the" revenue sport. That's not the case in the Big 10 as much as they love the pine, nor is it true everywhere in the ACC where there is a lack of unity between football first, basketball first, and lets play both mindsets.
The ACC raided the Big East of some key programs, and look, the Hoops Hydra grew new heads. I say kudos to the Big East! They know who they are, what they want, and they support it! IMO, they are, and have been, the best basketball conference. I also give props to the Big 12 which knows it is football first but manages to balance their approach to sports more equitably than other conferences. The Big 12 is competitive in football, baseball, softball, track and field and just about anything else it does.
People give way too much historical credit to some of our major conferences, even after the echoes of past glory have faded.
This is a very important point.
I've noted in various posts that one of the reasons the Big East is so strong in men's basketball is because its member schools seemingly funnel almost all their attention and resources into that one sport. There is no Big East football; only eight of the 11 Big East members sponsor baseball (a so-so sport for the league in terms of national success); and BE women's basketball is surprisingly mediocre in relation to BE men's hoops. In short, it is "easier" for the Big East to be strong in men's basketball than would be the case were the league more conventional in its approach.
Throw in the big city locales of the BE members (lots of college basketball players have cultural backgrounds that lend themselves to the appeal of urban places) as a recruiting lure and the strong history/tradition of the BE schools collectively and ... boom, you've got a strong league in men's hoops.
Having said this, Big East men's hoops deserves full props for capitalizing on its "built-in advantages."
I guess I see it differently. First, regarding JR's point, I am a strong Big East partisan but I do not think the BE has been the consistently strongest basketball conference over the long haul. It is a very good conference, consistently the 3rd or 4th best, IMO, but not the best in any year and I would not say it has been best in any decade since the 2000s. The ACC raids did not kill Big East hoops but IMO it is not as strong as it was 10+ years ago, when we had Louisville, Syracuse and Pitt in the fold.
Second, IMO the Big East schools are at a big disadvantage vs the P5 schools, because those schools have football revenue, revenue which can be spent on basketball. And with the massive SEC and B1G deals, this will get even worse, IMO.
The SEC currently has five hoops coaches making more than $4m a year. The Big East has zero - Providence is paying their coach $3.8m a year, that's our tops. The SEC made a commitment 7-8 years ago to emphasize hoops and it is paying off. BE schools just can't compete with that, I don't think.
The PAC and B1G both have three schools paying more for their coach than any BE team, and the Big 12 has two such schools. The ACC has only one, which might be why they are slipping.
I do think the hoops-first culture of Big East schools helps somewhat, in that there is always a focus on hoops, but the revenue disadvantage is big, IMO.
1. Most years the Big East is viable in the tournament.
2. You made my point for me from the backside. They have less and still do more than the Big 10 and often enough they do more than the ACC, which denies it is slipping though it clearly is. The ACC has managed final four appearances and won some championships, but the number of ACC schools competing at the highest level of the sport has been in decline for some time now and this year it bit them in the rear the way it used to when the SEC counted on only Kentucky and they had a down year in that era before we emphasized improvement of basketball. This year UNC didn't make it in and Duke was hardly dominant.
3. This board continues to act out the old Episcopalian joke about how many does it take to change a light bulb. Baptists declare the old bulb lost, and new bulb is installed by 1 person and salvation is proclaimed. The Methodists require the Trustees to declare the old bulb blown, the finance committee to approve the purchase of a new bulb, and building and grounds puts it in. The Episcopalians do all that the Methodists do, but form another committee to recall and celebrate the accomplishments of the old bulb. We spend way too much time on this site praising the history of conferences and programs which haven't done a damn thing in decades. And then we build up a mythology (how glorious they were / accomplishments of the old bulb), if not methodology (by our statistics lovers) to keep the praise alive, ignore the decades of mediocrity, and deny young risers the praise they deserve. It's downright pathological!
4. So here you are decrying the Big East, when clearly they have the best record in this tournament to date, have had I suspect, more titles in the last 20 years than any of the other conferences, but because they don't have football money and are extremely regionalized, we will dismiss them and talk about how deep the Big 10 is in basketball. Priceless!
For the record, NCAAT championships by conference over the past 20 years:
ACC 7
Big East 6 (although Syracuse & Louisville have now moved to the ACC)
B12 3
SEC 3
American 1 (UConn has now moved back to the BE)
The Big East has been impressive in this year’s tournament.
Unfortunately, the ACC has slipped significantly during the past few years. There’s a lot of transitioning as hall-of-fame coaches have moved along.
Lose the Trifecta of K, Williams, and Boeheim... that would hurt any conference.
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2023 NCAA March Madness 2nd Round Thread
