For the past several weeks, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has been projecting 11 teams from the Big East Conference will get into the NCAA basketball tournament.
While there’s certainly no argument that the Big East is the best college basketball conference in the nation, Lunardi is being extremely bold in predicting that 11 teams will make the tournament.
Never in the history of the NCAA basketball tournament has one conference sent that many teams to the big dance. In fact, the Big East holds the distinction of being the only conference to have the most teams from one league make the tournament.
In 2006 and again in 2008, the Big East had eight teams make the NCAA tournament. This year the conference should again set the benchmark for sending the most teams to the big dance, but the 11 bids Lunardi projects isn’t going to happen.
In all likelihood the Big East will receive nine or 10 bids for this year’s tournament. Eight teams from the conference are absolute locks: Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Villanova, Notre Dame, St. John’s, Louisville, Syracuse and Georgetown.
The three teams from the Big East that are considered to be on the bubble are West Virginia, Cincinnati and Marquette. Lunardi has all three of those teams receiving bids, but one or two of them probably won’t get invited.
Let’s look at the worthiness of each of the Big East bubble teams by comparing their conference records, good non-conference wins and bad non-conference losses, overall RPI, record vs the RPI top 50 and strength of schedule.
West Virginia is the team most believe will receive a bid to the tournament among the Big East’s three bubble teams.
The Mountaineers are currently 9-7 in Big East play and have an RPI rating of 20. They have big non-conference wins over Vanderbilt and Purdue, but terrible losses to Marshall and Miami (FL). West Virginia has a 6-8 record vs the RPI top 50 and has a strength of schedule rating of 3.
The NCAA selection committee might penalize the Mountaineers because they have only three wins against the best teams in the Big East – Georgetown, Cincinnati and Notre Dame – but their overall body of work is worthy of a bid.
Cincinnati is 9-7 in Big East play and has an RPI rating of 35. The Bearcats have only one good non-conference win over Xavier but they don’t have any bad losses. The Bearcats have a 4-7 record vs the RPI top 50 and a strength of schedule rating of 86.
Cincinnati’s biggest shortcoming in the eyes of the selection committee could be their non-conference schedule. When the Bearcats rattled off 15 straight wins to begin the season, only three came against opponents that had RPI’s lower than 100.
The Bearcats have three wins over the best Big East teams – St. John’s, Louisville and Georgetown – but their non-conference schedule could be what keeps them out of the tournament.
Marquette seems to be the most likely of the Big East’s bubble teams to be left out of the NCAA tournament. The Golden Eagles are 9-7 in Big East play and have an RPI rating of 51.
Marquette doesn’t have any marquee non-conference wins, but they haven’t lost to anyone they shouldn’t have. The Golden Eagles played a solid non-conference schedule that included games against Duke, Vanderbilt, Wisconsin and Gonzaga.
The Golden Eagles are 4-10 against the RPI top 50 and have a strength of schedule rating of 27. But like Cincinnati, the majority of Marquette’s non-conference wins came against teams with terrible RPI’s.
Despite the fact Marquette has one more win over the Big East’s best teams than West Virginia and Cincinnati, it probably won’t be enough for them to capture a bid to the big dance.
Joe Lunardi has a good track record for accurately predicting the NCAA basketball tournament field, but his assessment of the Big East getting 11 teams into the dance this year isn’t realistic.
The Big East Conference will get at least nine teams into the field and possibly 10, but no more than that.
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