Big East faces key season with shifting college landscape

College Basketball

By Zach Braziller

There was a celebratory vibe to Big East media day Tuesday morning.

In terms of the big year ahead.

In terms of the league’s survival up to this point.

In terms of what has transpired from the time the conference had to rebrand itself until now.

While college football has created waves and waves of realignment, leading to the formation of super conferences and the destruction of the Pac-12, the Big East hasn’t just survived. It has begun to thrive.

Three of the last seven national champions have come from the league. It has three preseason top-10 teams in Marquette, Connecticut and Creighton. Two of its top brands, St. John’s and Georgetown, hired program-building coaches in Rick Pitino and Ed Cooley, to infuse energy and excitement into their previously flatlining programs. Most experts believe seven of the Big East’s 11 teams are NCAA Tournament-caliber.

“If college basketball has a soul,” commissioner Val Ackerman said in her prepared comments to kick off the day, “you’ll find it in our league.”

There is no doubt this is the healthiest this new version of the Big East has been. There is a very real argument that it will be the best conference in the country this year, at least before the ball is tipped on Nov. 6. And, yet, there remains uncertainty about how long this version of the conference will last in the ever-evolving landscape of college athletics.

Connecticut, which returned to the Big East three years ago, openly flirted with joining the Big 12 to prop up its independent football program. The invite never arrived. Athletic director David Benedict told The Post, “we’re excited to be a member of the Big East … we feel like we’re in a great situation right now.” But it would be silly to suggest Connecticut would turn down an invitation to join one of the big conferences if that opportunity presented itself. That said, Benedict thinks there could come a time when football becomes its own entity, and the rest of college sports returns to geographically appropriate conferences. But that day is not here yet.

Already, the Big East has indirectly been hurt by all the movement that has taken place recently. There was an agreement in principle between the Big East and the Big Ten to continue the Gavitt Games next year, the series of non-conference games pitting the best teams from the two conferences against one another. But the Big Ten backed out, Ackerman said, because it is unsure how many conference games it will play now that it will have 18 teams next winter. Strong non-conferences schedules are vital to NCAA Tournament résumés, and losing these games certainly isn’t beneficial for the Big East.