Big East bubble picture as of today | Page 3 | The Boneyard

Big East bubble picture as of today

FfldCntyFan said:
While I am not happy about this being the case, I am convinced that the powers that be will have a soft cap at three in terms of bids they will make available to the BE and it will take a very solid resume for a fourth school to get a bid.

I also believe that the SEC as a whole will receive far too much credit for their performance against the ACC and that may end up giving them twelve or thirteen bids.
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Don’t think it works like that: the MW got six last year. Their “cap” if the powers that be had a say would be 1 or 2.
 
What I find odd over the past few years since Connecticut joined the Big East is that the league is averaging less bids overall than it did in its initial 6 years.

For me that makes no sense considering how good of an addition UConn has been for the league (2xNC).

But it seems like the league overall dropped in quality after UConn joined even though UConn has performee really well.

The 2014-19 the Big East averaged 5.33 bids per year with 10 members

2021-24 it averaged 4.5 bids per year despite having one additional top notch program.

I really hope the Big East can go back to routinely getting 5-6 bids on an average year and 7 on a really good year like it did back in 2017.

I know quality of seeds matter a lot. But sending a lot of teams is also good so we can get those units $$$

Also, does any of this mean we are probably better off sticking at 11 than adding that 12th member? Or am I overthinking it? Not enough data?
 
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ecasadoSBU said:
What I find odd over the past few years since Connecticut joined the Big East is that the league is averaging less bids overall than it did in its initial 6 years.

For me that makes no sense considering how good of an addition UConn has been for the league (2xNC).

But it seems like the league overall dropped in quality after UConn joined even though UConn has performee really well.

The 2014-19 the Big East averaged 5.33 bids per year with 10 members

2021-24 it averaged 4.5 bids per year despite having one additional top notch program.

I really hope the Big East can go back to routinely getting 5-6 bids on an average year and 7 on a really good year like it did back in 2017.

I know quality of seeds matter a lot. But sending a lot of teams is also good so we can get those units $$$

Also, does any of this mean we are probably better off sticking at 11 than adding that 12th member? Or am I overthinking it? Not enough data?
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The drop off of Nova once Jay Wright retired and injuries to key players on teams that would've been tournament bound explains it.
 
ecasadoSBU said:
What I find odd over the past few years since Connecticut joined the Big East is that the league is averaging less bids overall than it did in its initial 6 years.

For me that makes no sense considering how good of an addition UConn has been for the league (2xNC).

But it seems like the league overall dropped in quality after UConn joined even though UConn has performee really well.

The 2014-19 the Big East averaged 5.33 bids per year with 10 members

2021-24 it averaged 4.5 bids per year despite having one additional top notch program.

I really hope the Big East can go back to routinely getting 5-6 bids on an average year and 7 on a really good year like it did back in 2017.

I know quality of seeds matter a lot. But sending a lot of teams is also good so we can get those units $$$
Expand ...
Not sure you’ve been paying attention but the collegiate landscape has changed significantly since 2014. There is thing called conference realignment, NIL and portal that’s generally minimizing non football conferences ;).
 
ecasadoSBU said:
What I find odd over the past few years since Connecticut joined the Big East is that the league is averaging less bids overall than it did in its initial 6 years.

For me that makes no sense considering how good of an addition UConn has been for the league (2xNC).

But it seems like the league overall dropped in quality after UConn joined even though UConn has performee really well.

The 2014-19 the Big East averaged 5.33 bids per year with 10 members

2021-24 it averaged 4.5 bids per year despite having one additional top notch program.

I really hope the Big East can go back to routinely getting 5-6 bids on an average year and 7 on a really good year like it did back in 2017.

I know quality of seeds matter a lot. But sending a lot of teams is also good so we can get those units $$$

Also, does any of this mean we are probably better off sticking at 11 than adding that 12th member? Or am I overthinking it? Not enough data?
Expand ...
20 conference games= more losses on average. However, this will even itself out once the tournament expands in the next year or two.
 
RuffRuff said:
Not sure you’ve been paying attention but the collegiate landscape has changed significantly since 2014. There is thing called conference realignment, NIL and portal that’s generally minimizing non football conferences ;).
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The Big East has had a terrible run over that stretch, only winning 40% of the national championships.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
The Big East has had a terrible run over that stretch, only winning 40% of the national championships.
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If the past is what dictated the future in a rapidly changing world, then UNLV would still be kicking @ss.

How did those two Nova titles help them into their current state of affairs? The SEC was a laughing stock 5-6 years ago and is now dominant and will break the bid record. Point is things change fast, referencing BE trends from 10 years ago is ridiculous.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
The Big East has had a terrible run over that stretch, only winning 40% of the national championships.
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The AAC once had back to back titles with us and Louisville too. One dominant program does not mean the entire league is strong and deserves more bids. Last year I think the league should have gotten one or two more bids. This season the Big East was horrible out of conference and doesn’t deserve more than 3. There’s 12 or 13 SEC teams right now with better records than us and they are playing harder schedules. Given where NIL is going it seems things will likely get worse not better for the conference going forward.
 
ecasadoSBU said:
What I find odd over the past few years since Connecticut joined the Big East is that the league is averaging less bids overall than it did in its initial 6 years.

For me that makes no sense considering how good of an addition UConn has been for the league (2xNC).

But it seems like the league overall dropped in quality after UConn joined even though UConn has performee really well.

The 2014-19 the Big East averaged 5.33 bids per year with 10 members

2021-24 it averaged 4.5 bids per year despite having one additional top notch program.

I really hope the Big East can go back to routinely getting 5-6 bids on an average year and 7 on a really good year like it did back in 2017.

I know quality of seeds matter a lot. But sending a lot of teams is also good so we can get those units $$$

Also, does any of this mean we are probably better off sticking at 11 than adding that 12th member? Or am I overthinking it? Not enough data?
Expand ...
I think it shows perception bias. UConn coming out of the woods to be the program they are took "them" by surprise. If UConn is that good, that league must be that bad is my guess for how "they" analyzed it. Kind of a WC Fields thing,
"I'd never belong to a club that would have me as a member." The club in this case agrees. Any club that has UConn as member must suck.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
The Big East has had a terrible run over that stretch, only winning 40% of the national championships.
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Because of us and Nova, the Big East won championships. That only somewhat hides the fact that the overall quality of the the league, especially the bottom half, has gotten weaker. And yes, the P4 schools with football tv money and NIL money advantages, will not be our friend (unless we join them). The P4+ND is already trying to influence the way basketball tournament bids are awarded. It's the unfortunate evolution of big time college athletics.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
It is weird that there is a consensus by roughly half the regular posters on the Boneyard that there is a conspiracy to hurt the Big East and UConn, but apparently that conspiracy does not extend to preventing UConn from winning a national championship. Twice.
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Not that weird. We were too good to stop. Twice.
 
superjohn said:
Yes and because of Duke and UNC the ACC has always been considered a great basketball conference. And because of every team in the Big 10 they haven't won anything in basketball in decades.
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But because of football, they are a P4 conference and the non-P4's will find it impossible to make up the $$ difference with revenue sharing.
 
uconnric said:
But because of football, they are a P4 conference and the non-P4's will find it impossible to make up the $$ difference with revenue sharing.
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Then become a fan of another school. You are over halfway there already.
 
The big east and UConn have been great together … we have helped each other
 
Lunardi now has Creighton in the tourney as a 9 seed after their UConn win & he has Xavier on the bubble. So 4 BE teams seem solid and 5 seems possible, for the moment anyway. The UConn game this Saturday 1/25 @Xavier will be their Superbowl.
 
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Hi-Low said:
Lunardi now has Creighton in the tourney as a 9 seed after their UConn win & he has Xavier on the bubble. So 4 BE teams seem solid and 5 seems possible, for the moment anyway. The UConn game this Saturday 1/25 @Xavier will be their Superbowl.
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It probably becomes a zero-sum game around 4 bids. Xavier probably has to knock someone out to get themselves in, because UConn, St. Johns, Xavier and Creighton still have a lot of games against each other. To get 5 teams in, those 4 would have to run the table against Providence, Depaul, Seton Hall and Butler, and no more losses to Villanova are allowed either. And then they would still need to win more than the lose against the other bubble teams.

It is a hard path for all 4 of those teams plus Marquette to get bids.

I think it will the inverse about the SEC. Some of those teams with decent NETs are going to keep losing, and it is going to be hard to get in the dance with whatever a SEC bubble team's overall record will be after it goes 7-11 or 6-12 in conference play. Someone has to lose every conference game.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
It probably becomes a zero-sum game around 4 bids. Xavier probably has to knock someone out to get themselves in, because UConn, St. Johns, Xavier and Creighton still have a lot of games against each other. To get 5 teams in, those 4 would have to run the table against Providence, Depaul, Seton Hall and Butler, and no more losses to Villanova are allowed either. And then they would still need to win more than the lose against the other bubble teams.

It is a hard path for all 4 of those teams plus Marquette to get bids.

I think it will the inverse about the SEC. Some of those teams with decent NETs are going to keep losing, and it is going to be hard to get in the dance with whatever a SEC bubble team's overall record will be after it goes 7-11 or 6-12 in conference play. Someone has to lose every conference game.
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Arkansas has already played themselves out. Texas may be on it's way.
 
There's also the bid stealers (upsets in conference tourneys) so every year only a certain amount of at large teams..though I disagree with the entire premise:

If Gonzaga (not trying to pick on them, but as an example) is like 18-0 and heads into their conf tourney and gets upset by San Francisco who gets the auto-bid, the conference suddendly has 2 teams: San Fran and Gonzaga. So that is -1 to the at large pool b/c all along Lunardi et al would have 1 team: Gonzaga assuming they win out.

So we get these from time to time, some years more than others. Thus the Big East will be 4-5 teams in the dance depending a more on the bid stealers than which teams in the Big East finish 1-5, because if the 5th best team wins the tourney they dance and #4 might drop out.
 

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