SNUBBED: BIG EAST Bids for NCAA Tourney Denied Due to DePaul, Georgetown Metrics

Bubbles burst for Seton Hall, Providence, and St. John’s

Your Georgetown Hoyas turned out to ultimately be spoilers for the conference’s hopes at several March Madness invitations—despite not beating anyone but DePaul—as the NCAA Selection Committee punished the BIG EAST by only offering only three bids to the conference: UConn, Marquette, and Creighton. Having dead weight like the Hoyas and Blue Demons in your conference is no longer a cute punchline. It’s a punishment.

Invites for teams like Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Providence were clearly stolen by some auto-bids from tournament winners this week, but why other conferences weren’t impacted as harshly is wild. The BIG EAST’s dismal basement dwellers are likely to blame.

The BIG EAST is widely regarded as the second best team, based on metrics, but was treated like a red-headed stepchild. It appears that the positive metrics did not outweigh the detrimental statistics enough for some people.

Fans can get mad at the selection committee all they want but the reasons seem obvious.

Perhaps it’s a pro-football conference lean or an anti-Fox bias, but most likely the committee discounted four conference wins for each contender.

The BIG EAST deserved better. This conference literally just had the best conference tournament, has the best stable of coaches, and was filled with hard-fought victories throughout December through March. Having two very crappy teams shouldn’t matter this much.

But apparently the good qualities of the conference were not enough to overcome the dead weight at the bottom of your conference ship.

DePaul and Georgetown tanking can no longer be treated a funny little quirk. This shit has actual consequences.

When you build a new conference with basketball solely in the spotlight (rather than football, e.g.) you need to actually have a basketball program at each school to lead your athletics departments and contribute to the development and success of the conference as a whole. Georgetown is 62-139 since the new BIG EAST started (2013-14), and DePaul is 39-162.

Fielding two teams this bad in the same conference, for almost a decade, has literally upended up the metrics for the other programs to such an extent that it killed student-athlete opportunities and cost the BIG EAST conference an NCAA payday.

Not changing the coaching staff a season earlier and choosing to have a slow rebuild for Georgetown this year prematurely ended the seasons for Seton Hall, St. John’s, and Providence—costing money, time, and student-athlete opportunity.

Putting it bluntly, Ed Cooley’s roster decisions for this Georgetown squad likely caused his old Providence recruit and friend Devin Carter a chance at post-season glory, fame, and improved draft position.

Moreover, defense is even more important in today’s game. You have to build and maintain big leads in each game if you are hoping for an at-large berth.

Hindsight dictates that every team has to run up the scoreboard at every chance. There is no such thing as garbage time and late game opponent three pointers to close the gap for palatability can cost you a postseason spot.

You can’t let your foot off the gas. You can’t be sportsmanlike.

What else does this mean for the conference moving forward?

Does this put additional pressure on Ed Cooley and DePaul’s new coach, Chris Holtmann?

Does this undermine BIG EAST media rights efforts?

Does this encourage league expansion? Does UConn flirt with leaving (again)?