It's one of the best 3-4 conferences IMO-------but this is an unusual year in that you can look at about 20 teams and say they have a shot at the Final 4.
Big 12 IMO is the best league-----ACC , Big Ten and Big East are 2,3,4 in some order.
I would be surprised if Iowa or Indiana got to the Elite 8-----not so Md or Mich St.
I agree with Patrick and Bac
And btw when was the last time a bball only school won the Nat'l Championship?
40 or 50 years ago it would not have been a big deal to see a small private school win the NC (or NIT back in the day). Nowadays it will be, and it hasn't happened in a long time. The divide between the football and non football schools will continue to grow. It has happened already, the dichotomy will increase given time.
The PAC 12 is certainly no better than ACC or B1G or Big 12...Typical dangerous East Coast bias. PAC 12 deepest and best conference.
I agree with Patrick and Bac and Srru86
Duke isn't Catholic but they're small and private.
Butler has been in 2 Finals recently----Nova made the Final 4 in the last 5 years.
Schools like Creighton , Nova , PC, Marquette and Xavier have tremendous fan bases and consistently fill their Arena .
You can toss Dayton in there from the A-10 .
The PAC 12 is certainly no better than ACC or B1G or Big 12...
it is all inflated--they are beating teams in their league, like Nova did last year, and what happened.
Let's see since the split we were told how much we needed the so called big time programs. Since then we are going to be going to our third straight March madness. Ranked number ten in the country and just announced plans for a thirty eight million dollar practice facility. We were not able to achieve any of this when in the so called old Big East. In the mean time schools like Pitt and Syracuse are no way near the powers they once were. Almost seems like they needed us more then we needed them.[/QUOTE)
Or just amazing what a good coach and two superb players can do to keep a program relevant,
I agree with Patrick
this decline was never happening overnight, good lord some of the same players are there from when RU was in the Big East. Its a gradual decline that will happen and you wont see it right away. What you do see is less coverage of the Big East...quite frankly if the old Big East had 3 schools in the top 10, it would be talked up to the hilt. Being on Fox rather than ESPN hurts the conference. Hate ESPN all you want but that's the channel everyone tunes into. The BE tourney attendance is going through a gradual decline.
To me I see it being very top heavy and then a big chunk of middle. They will end with 4 or 5 in the tourney..most likely Butler but they are falling off a bit and then possibly but no guarantee of one of a grouping of Creig/SHU/Gtown/Marq that can distinguish themselves
So you're saying there's hope in the future for RU.This is what will ultimately happen.
UConn won the national championship from the American Conference, but that was the first year of the new name for the former Big East conference, and it was technically still a BCS conference.
Prior to that, the last time a non-BCS (P5 conference plus old BE football schools) team won the national championship was more than 25 years ago when UNLV won the 1990 championship. And prior to that was Villanova in 1985, more than 30 years ago. Since that time, the only other non-BCS schools to even play for the championship have been Georgetown (1985), Seton Hall (1989), Utah (1998), Memphis (2008), and Butler (2010 and 2011). So of the 62 schools that made the championship game since 1985, only 8 have been non-BCS schools. And of the 32 schools that have made the championship game since 2000, only 3 have been non-BCS schools.
------------The New Big East will fold up like a cheap suitcase? Last time I looked they had 3 in the top 10.