Last week in Florida, the Big East had its annual meetings. A lot of the issues concerned basketball. With 16 teams, there are a lot of issues. The coaches seem to be losing on a lot of them. On the issue of the Big East Tournament, 4 of the 16 teams will not even make the BET each year.
Because there are 16 teams, it’s possible to have a four-day tournament involving all of them. It’s also possible that if the league follows that course, it never will have another NCAA champion.
Commissioner Mike Tranghese advocated restricting the tournament to 12 teams and giving byes to the four highest seeds. The coaches opposed that because of self-interest and the possibility that a competent team could finish 13th. But Tranghese is right. If the best teams must play four games to win the championship, they will be at a disadvantage against champions from other leagues.
Say hello to increased job insecurity for all but a few coaches. Speaking of the NCAA bids,
But if this Big East were to enjoy a season equivalent to what the Big Ten produced in 2000-01 — when seven of its 11 teams made it — it would work out to 10 bids for the Big East. That’s nearly one-third of the at-large field, which would be hard for the rest of college basketball to digest — including selection committee members, regardless of their protests that they pay no attention to conference affiliation.
None of these are new issues. They have been discussed before, and will not go away.
Then there is the issue of schedules and placating the TV powers (Insider Subs.).
The first scheduling complaint from the 16 Big East coaches — a desire to play every league team once and one team twice to make up the league schedule — was rebuffed during meetings last week in Florida.
That’s not going to occur, at least not in this first two-year cycle of the 16-team conference.
Under the Big East’s television contract with ESPN, ESPN gets a crack at any matchup selected by CBS, according to Big East associate commissioner Tom Odjakjian. That means if CBS wants Louisville-Connecticut, then ESPN has a right to a second matchup between those two teams.
Given the number of high-profile TV games resulting from those arrangements, the only way to take care of playing every team at least once and still allowing for those matchups would be to raise the number of conference games up from 16 to 18, but the Big East coaches are against that.
So the schedule format will remain as planned, with each Big East team playing 13 of the other 15 teams once, three of those teams twice, and not playing the two remaining teams.
Pitt will be in an interesting place with their schedule next year. If Krauser returns, Pitt could find itself with a BE schedule that would get a lot of national TV time, but could kill them in the standings. Conversely, if Krauser leaves the team could be facing a much friendlier schedule against lower teams.
Additional reading, this story from the Connecticut Post (via Husky Blog).
Like everyone in his profession, Jim Calhoun was a rookie once, too.
To remind himself of such things, Calhoun likes to tell the story of his first trip to the Big East spring meetings. Less than a month after being named UConn coach on May 15, 1986, Calhoun vividly recalls walking into a hotel conference room with two of his fellow Big East coaching rookies.
The intimidation factor was rather high as Calhoun, Boston College’s Jim O’Brien and Pittsburgh’s Paul Evans strode into the room together and looked at the coaches who had already assembled.
Though he had already had considerable success at Northeastern in his hometown of Boston, Calhoun admits he was a little nervous as he scanned the room and saw some of the conference’s — and the sport’s — best. John Thompson of Georgetown, Rollie Massimino of Villanova, and Lou Carnesecca of St. John’s were already legends. Jim Boeheim of Syracuse and P.J. Carlesimo of Seton Hall were getting there. And old friend Rick Pitino, who like Boeheim would take his team to the Final Four in the upcoming season, already had a year under his belt at Providence.
It wasn’t enough to make Calhoun, O’Brien and Evans turn and run, but they were likely a bit in awe of the history represented in the room.
And only Calhoun remains of the 3. Not just in the Big East, but in coaching.
