Being able to try and being able to succeed are two very different things.
Oh goodness please expound
And almost all of those teams have also been successful and made NCAA tournaments in that span, I'm not sure what your point is. Even the majority of the Big East teams have been successful at some point in the last 5 years
Let's see. I don't think they aren't financially committed (although Pitino did call them out), it's simply that I think all the more attractive P4 schools are too. Perhaps there is a titanic shift, but I doubt it.
The part you're missing is the BE total inability to attract/recruit top HS talent. There are floods of exciting talent all over the P4 that make it exciting to watch.
He'll tell you that's all in the past, the game has changed and it's all about the transfer portal now and who can buy players. You'll point out the Big East does well in the transfer portal team rankings. He'll then say it's all about freshmen for next season while also repeatedly saying next season's freshman class stinks. He'll tell you it's bad a 2-9 Big East team is firing their coach because that team has the talented players who can be pros.
Rick Pitino has gone on record saying he's not recruiting high schoolers, he had the #1 transfer portal class this season and the #4 portal class last season. Nova has a new coach. Xavier has a new coach.
First off that's decidedly false. Secondly as you say all the time it's all about the portal now, an area where Big East teams have objectively been doing very well
How is that false? There is an epic class of freshmen out there this year - how many are in the BE? The BE has one top 50 kid coming in next year outside of us.
Because you just arbitrarily pick and choose cutoffs to spin your argument, that's why it's false. We already had this exact discussion where you talked about Alex Costanza being the only other top 50 recruit in the Big East outside UConn.
So you think the BE is knocking it out of the park on the recruiting front? And you expect them to recruit like the rest of the P4?
I was not doing a side by side comparison with Gonzaga. Or the NBE and WCC More of an example of the relationship between top teams and the rest of their conferences. There is one major national player. One borderline one and them a bunch of mediocre to bad ones. On a relative basis it fair to say we are better than Gonzaga, though it is close and could change year to year, St John’s is better than St Mary’s. But that wasn’t the point.
The point is they never actually won. MSU in 2000 was the last. They do have a few recent runner-ups.
Ok, sure. Now would you say the Big Ten is in trouble and their basketball programs can no longer be competitive with other conferences?
No, but they haven't won in any player's lifetime (I think). Luckily, they are flush with cash, and they'll be winning as soon as were irrelevant.
I really think that Hurley's template is as close to perfect as it gets. He blends a group of returners that are drive the system/culture, splashes the portal with strong multi year availability transfers to fill in gaps at key spots (PG & Center). Then brings in a high end freshman OAD to keep the talent level up, along with 1-2 more developmental kids to be the next class of returners. The only issue I have right now is that it would be nice to have 1-2 twitchy athletes out there at any given point (Ajx/Steph) to be sparkplugs.
Nobody was saying they're in trouble. I was merely pointing out that claiming someone is trying does not mean they will succeed.
The challenge for even a top tier team is that just getting to the NC is going to require going through at least 3 plus teams to get there. The top 4 seeds in any region are going to be very good.
Everyone “arbitrarily” sets cutoffs. The NCAA does it. What is the cutoff for a quad 1 win? If you beat a team ranked 78 on the road it’s a quad 2 win but is that team really any different than the #75, which would be q1? Probably not. But somebody set a limit that is pretty arbitrary. They even gave it a name to make it sound less arbitrary. Calling it a quad implies it is in the top 25% which seems less arbitrary than it in fact it is.
Moderately arbitrary - if you look at the HS ranking and generally what the cutoff is in terms of where the most pros and difference making talent comes from, it's typically top 50ish, likely closer to 40.
It doesn't guarantee you'll succeed, but when they've been successful in the past and are continuing to invest in basketball there's no reason to think they won't succeed again. Which is what the comment I was replying to was about why there's reason to think the Big East can be successful again
