This ignores the fact that St. John's is a much better team than they were at that point in the season. They had a lot of new faces who took some time to fit together. You're correct that they are a very bad three-point shooting team, but it works and they keep beating people. This could prevent a deep run in the NCAAs, but as much as I can't stand him, I'll never count a Pitino team out. But they're certainly better than Oregon and, really, Illinois, which never impresses me. Washington stinks, too.
The Big East is more down this year than it has been, but it's no cakewalk. It never is. It doesn't have the sheer volume of teams the Big Ten does, so it won't appear as deep (and is, in fact, not this year), but aside from Seton Hall and DePaul, there are no automatic wins. Butler, Providence, and Georgetown are all wildly inconsistent but look very good sometimes. Those teams are very much like the Big Ten from, say, Oregon or Ohio State on down. The Big Ten does lack any automatic wins, as even though Penn State, Washington, and Northwestern stink, they still have all had moments this year.
But the sheer volumes of Big Ten programs notwithstanding, which provides the illusion of clearly superior quality, the leagues are pretty similar from year to year, aside from the Big Ten's quarter-century national championship drought and the fact that the Big East has won four of the last eight of them.
I tend to enjoy your posts and very often agree with them, but this has been a theme of yours for years and it's never really been borne out by the evidence.
