Nearly every power conference in college basketball has been facing questions about how good it’ll be this season: ACC teams not named Duke or Virginia Tech are struggling in general; the bottom of the SEC looks very weak; the Big Ten suffered an assortment of ranked losses this week; and the Pac-12 continues to do Pac-12 things. The Big 12 has yet to be tested too heavily.
And then there’s the Big East. I was all set to write a fawning intro about this conference, given its dominance over the Big Ten in the Gavitt Games, and with multiple teams entering the weekend with an opportunity to win marquee MTEs. And then Sunday came. Villanova blew another lead and lost to Purdue in the title game of the Hall of Fame Tip-off Classic. Marquette got rocked by St. Bonaventure at the Charleston Classic. And Creighton lost to Colorado State at the Paradise Jam.
So, there might be a little less fawning — but it’s clear the league as a whole is going to be better than we thought, especially those teams in the middle. Villanova remains the favorite, but Seton Hall and Xavier notched huge wins over Michigan and Ohio State, respectively, and look like legitimate top-25 teams. UConn does as well. Providence and Creighton both had road wins over Big Ten teams; Marquette beat Illinois, Ole Miss and West Virginia in a five-day span; and St. John’s took Indiana to the wire in Bloomington. Even DePaul — DePaul! — is 4-0.
This season’s Power Rankings weren’t expected to feature a whole lot of Big East teams. Villanova seemed far and away the favorite, but there didn’t seem to be another clear-cut top-25 contender in the league. Two weeks in, though, we’re a lot closer to four Big East teams in the top 20 than we are to just one.
Purdue established its early-season national championship hopes this past weekend, clearly cementing itself in the upper tier of the rankings alongside the likes of Gonzaga, UCLA and Kansas. The Boilermakers opened the week beating Horizon League title…
Source : espn
