Beware of Creighton. They are in the conference for a reason. I too wonder how the conference fares against the P5 with their money to burn, but so far it has gone pretty well, and not just because of Villanova. They won two championships, but the year of the last one, they finished second in the league to Xavier. The feelings of Marquette fans toward Louisville and Cincinnati are different.
We used to play Louisville regularly even before being in the same conference, back in the Denny Crum days. In C-USA, we had some wars. In 2003, we had a battle for the conference championship with each team winning on the opponent's floor. They used to bring a good crowd to Milwaukee, and we actually liked them. They knew basketball. The teams respected each other. I was surprised to look at the record and see that they had run up a streak against us. It did not feel that way. Too many close games.
Cincinnati is a different matter. We were conference rivals with them going back to the early '90's in the Great Midwest, and then on to C-USA. But that was under Huggins. In the Big East, they were not one of the top teams until the final year before the breakup. Replacing them with Xavier seems to be an improvement, especially since we have a long history with Xavier as well. And there is another thing. The current Big East teams all have a collective chip on their shoulder for P5 schools. We're gonna die off? You're gonna bury us? Watch this!
I do not know that the departed teams are necessarily better. It is just that in the 16 team format, there were so many of them. UConn, Pitt, Louisville, Georgetown, Syracuse, West Virginia, Villanova, Notre Dame, could all be nationally ranked in a given year, and at least half of them were. Lots of opportunities for wins against ranked teams. Lots of ESPN. That is no longer the case, but there are no longer any USF or Rutgers. Teams rise and fall and rebuild and none of them are going to be walkovers. Men's basketball is the priority for all of them. All three of the recent additions have basketball traditions dating back decades. We might not be at the point where five out of ten team are ranked in a given year, but we are not far off, and the middle and bottom of the conference are stronger.
You guys might long for the days when the BE put three teams in the Final Four. I recall the days when we placed 11 teams and had three top seeds. But I am happy with this arrangement. F the P5!
