The Big East Is Not The Overrated Conference Charles Barkley And Matt Jones Think It Is

Outside of various bone-headed plays and bad officiating decisions, the big talking point in this year's NCAA Tournament is how "bad" the Big East is done. And why not? It was set up as an easy narrative. After all, only one team wins, so when at the very least 10 Big East teams lose, it is easy to write the column about how the Big East is overrated as it is happening. A conference is built up just so its failings can be written about later. You see this all the time in sports in general. It happens with every team that gets hot in the NFL (remember in the middle of the season when the Giants were the "best team in the NFL?"). It is happening with the Miami Heat. And now, the Big East.

Now there are those that will call the Big East the best conference in the history of mankind and praise Saint John's, Marquette, Syracuse, Connecticut, and Georgetown as teams all deserving of the Final Four, but let's ignore those on the fringe. Instead let's focus on the narrative, the "Big East is overrated."

Now to those selling this bullshit argument. First up is Charles Barkley, who said that the Big East is only worthy of 8 teams in the Big East Tournament. Teams placed in 9th, 10th, and 11th in the Big East are Connecticut, Villanova, and Marquette, respectively. The 3 Big East teams with the lowest seeds are Marquette (11), Villanova (9), and three teams with a six seed (Georgetown/Saint John's/Cincinnati).

I'll open up the field, and will ask the question with all these teams included. What columnist/pundit/media argued that Connecticut, Villanova, Marquette, Georgetown, Saint John's, or Cincinnati should be out of the NCAA Tournament and Alabama, Virginia Tech, Saint Mary's, Boston College, and/or Harvard should be in their place? I'm not talking about talking about VCU and UAB, who argued one of the aforementioned teams should be in the tournament instead of a Big East team. The only ones who are entitled to be saying the Big East is overrated are those that made the argument on March 13. I watched Selection Sunday. Charles Barkley never made that argument. And neither did any national pundit. To turn around and make that argument now is backseat driving and writing revisionist history. One game in the middle of March does nothing to change an argument about how one team should be excluded and another included. Seriously. Did any of those first teams out of the NCAA Tournament deserve to get in over any of the Big East teams that got in?

CBS Sports' Matt Jones on Twitter said the following in a series of tweets: "Charles Barkley absolutely CRUSHING the Big East...and he is right. Says conference with best coaches and little talent...agreed. Big East fans believe it is good bc teams beat each other up like SEC football...difference is SEC football beats teams in OTHER leagues too. And Big East spare me 'top to bottom competition.' You lost to teams in the OVC, COLONIAL, HORIZON and WEST COAST CONFERENCE. #Notwinning"

I have no idea where this notion of "little talent" comes from, one of the two best players in college basketball comes from the Big East and his name is Kemba Walker. You may have heard of him. Secondly, the Big East does very well non-conference. Just take a look at any of the 11 Big East teams' schedules in this year's NCAA Tournament. There is a reason why Marquette, Villanova, and UConn were easy choices over the likes of Virginia Tech. Matt Jones also tries to marginalize the opposition of Big East foes by pointing out conferences of some of the teams that beat Big East teams. Of course, 9 Big East teams lost, and he only mentions 4 conferences. But let's take a look at the teams from these conferences. The Colonial teams to triumph over Big East foes are a very good George Mason team who a Villanova team in a tailspin (George Mason was the higher seed in this game, oh by the way) and VCU who beat Georgetown. While VCU's inclusion in the tourney was very controversial, they are still dancing. So I fail to see how someone can marginalize a team that is in the same part of the tournament as Duke, North Carolina, and Kentucky. The Horizon League team to beat a Big East team was Butler who beat Pittsburgh. You may remember Butler. They were in the national championship game last year and returned a good number from that team this season. The WCC team to beat a Big East team was former Cinderella turned tournament mainstay Gonzaga who beat Saint John's. The OVC team that beat a Big Team was Morehead State who beat Louisville. This is the only real indefensible loss a Big East team suffered against a team from a mid-major conference. Everyone else lost to a major conference foe. The exact results: Florida State beating Notre Dame, fellow Big East team Marquette beating Syracuse, Kentucky beating West Virginia, and fellow Big East team Connecticut beating Cincinnati.

Now I do not know what people were expecting at this stage, but let's play the numbers about what people were expecting. Chances are nobody actually thought about what the Big East would look like after the first 4 days of the tournament because the most any conference had ever gotten into the tourney in the past was 8. The Big East had 11 in. But let's play around and what people should have expected.

The Big East got 11 teams in a 68 team field. That is 11/68, or .1617, which is to say 16.17% of the tournament field consists of Big East teams. Now let's set that equal to x/16 to see if a conference gets 11 teams in a field of 68, how many teams it can reasonably expect to the Sweet 16? Set 11/68 equal to x/16, solve the proportion by multiplying 11 by 16 and dividing the result of 176 by 68 and the answer is 2.59 teams. Because it is impossible to have .59 of a team, it can be safe to interpret this answer has anywhere between 2 and 3 teams. Guess how many Big East teams are left in the NCAA Tournament? You guessed it, 2 teams! The Big East is not overachieving, but just because it is not overachieving, does not mean it is overrated and is undeserving of 11 teams. That is flat out absurd. Also, the Big East has won 9 games this tournament (psst, Marquette and UConn, the 2 teams still remaining combine for 4 of those 9). Sure one of those was against UNC-Asheville, but let's not paint the Big East has a conference where 9 of 11 teams dropped like a fly to the likes of UC Santa Barbara and Wofford.

The Big East does not have great teams. The Big East has lots of good to very good teams that make it the deepest conference in college basketball, bar none. There is a reason they only got #1 seed. I make no bones about that, but to paint the Big East has this hilariously undeserving conference because of the past few days when they had only one real bad loss got a number of Sweet 16 teams that you would expect from a conference with 11 teams in a field of 68, you cannot say they are overrated. Unless of course you are writer that said the Big East was invincible last week. In which case, you just set yourself up for a false narrative that will get you a lot of page views. Good for you.