Big East's 11 Teams in NCAA Tournament Too Much? Nope

The Big East Conference has the best talent in college basketball.

As we approach Selection Sunday, bubble talk is heating up. It seems like every hour, the last four in changes, with Joe Lunardi's last predictions seeing Richmond, Boston College, Michigan, and Memphis into the tournament. This will change now that Memphis fell to East Carolina.

What does not seem likely to change is the 11 teams in the NCAA Tournament from the best conference in the game.

Usually it's an amazing feat to have six schools in, as the SEC, Big 12, and Big Ten do.

But to have 11 schools out of 16 is on the verge of insanity!

Not really.

The Big East is where the most competitive basketball is played. A team with eight or nine losses in conference, such as Connecticut or Villanova, is still a great program, among the best, as especially UConn has proved this year by going 4-1 so far against teams in the Top 10, with #7 Notre Dame still to come. Not to mention the Huskies are one of only two teams to win at Texas this season.

The Big East from top to bottom is the most difficult and competitive conference in the country. South Florida, who would be the 15 seed if the Big East started today, have brought the likes of Brigham Young and Connecticut, the teams with arguably the two leading National Player of the Year candidates, to overtime and lost by a combined total of seven points.

Every team in the Big East is competitive. Even 1-win DePaul has challenged the big boys at times this year. Every game in this conference is a test of a team's demeanor. To win even the Big East regular season is an unbelievable accomplishment.

Then comes the tournament at Madison Square Garden. Sixteen teams coming together, several of them among the best in the country, to determine a champion in the country's power conference that trumps all power conferences.

As Bob Knight said earlier this year, and as many of the top experts have agreed recently, it is in fact harder to win the Big East Tournament than the NCAA Tournament. In the NCAA Tournament, a team could end up playing one of the 16 seeds, normally a low conference team that is only in because they won their conference.

That is followed by an eight or nine seed. These can sometimes be dangerous, but the higher seed normally comes out on top. Not to mention the tournament is expanded over three weeks or so. The Big East Tournament is five straight days of pure hell and amazing basketball.

I think back to 2009 and the reason why Syracuse did not win the championship. First of all, that could have just as easily been Connecticut in their shoes, but at the end of the sixth overtime in their epic Quarterfinal clash, it was a matter of who had less fouls. Syracuse barely had less fouls, therefore more bodies.

Then it got better for them as the Semifinal went to overtime with West Virginia. After that, basically a total of nine halves of basketball, or four and a half games in less than 24 hours, they just did not have enough in the tank to stop Louisville.

That year, had it not been for the six overtimes, I believe either Syracuse of Connecticut would have won.

If you think 11 teams is scary, imagine if a DePaul or South Florida, one of the five teams that has no mathematical chance of getting an at-large bid for the NCAA Tournament, or NIT for that matter, was to win the tournament. There would be 12 teams going to the NCAA Tournament out of the Big East, right to the field of 64! Three-eighths of the tournament field would be from the Big East.

Unthinkable?

Seeing as it is most likely not going to happen as a first round team (seeds 9-16) will probably not win the Big East Tournament, seeing as very few teams in the tournament's history were able to win in four games as the system was until 2009. Again I say, 11 is still likely, and will in all likelihood be a reality come Selection Sunday.

Time to break down the difficulty of the Big East as I mentioned above. For starters, there are currently eight teams ranked in the Big East, and West Virginia played itself into next Tuesday's final regular season rankings by beating Connecticut tonight. I think we will see nine teams in next week as it is unlikely the lowest ranked team, Villanova at 19, will drop out as losses to Notre Dame and Pittsburgh (should they lose to Pitt on Saturday) on the road are not exactly frowned upon, especially when the Irish shoot the way they did on Monday.

Look at the RPI, which granted I do not always applaud, but it gives us our best comparison of teams, mainly through strength of schedule. The lowest strength of schedule is DePaul's 80. Besides that, the Big East has 14 teams in the Top 50 of strength of schedule, 10 in the Top 25, and three in the Top 10.

Overall, the Big East has the highest S.o.S ranking in the country with the Big Ten as the nearest competitor. Georgetown actually has the strongest schedule in the country according to the latest rankings (updated at 9:30 Wednesday night). The Big East certainly has the toughest opposition in conference, but has it out of conference as well, and performs positively! Victories over teams such as Kentucky, Texas, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Duke grace the Big East resume at the moment.

Every team in the Big East has at least fought to the death against a tough opponent this year. There is no bad game in conference, as every team can win every night!

People outside the zone of the Big East are complaining about 11 teams. Why?

Why is that so insane?!

Look at one of Lunardi's first four out in his bracket which has 11 Big East teams. Use Clemson as an example. They are one of Lunardi's first four out. They are doing pretty well. They are 19-9 and 8-6 in the ACC. However, this is a team with a loss to Old Dominion and no wins against the Top 25. They have failed to win a significant game on the road. In fact, their only two wins on the road this year are at Miami (FL) and Georgia Tech.

Compare that Clemson team to Marquette, at a 10-seed in the latest bracket, the lowest of the Big East schools, with the other 10 all at 7 or higher. Marquette has a slightly "worse" record at 18-12, 9-8 in the Big East. However, the Golden Eagles also have three wins over the Top 25, rather the Top 15. One of those came on the road, in Hartford in front of a rowdy and hostile crowd as Marquette came back to beat the Huskies in overtime.

The 11 teams all deserve to be there.

They all have proven that they can play and win against the best the nation has to offer. To punish teams like Marquette and Cincinnati because their conference has too many teams is ridiculous. The Selection Committee has one job. Thirty-one spots are given to conference champions automatically. The Committee must then pick the 37 best teams after that, REGARDLESS OF CONFERENCE AFFILIATION!

If Big Sky conference has four at-large teams worthy of a spot among the 37 most deserving teams, they should be allotted those four spots and be given five total. It may sound crazy for such a small conference, and in all realistic thought unlikely, but if that is the case, they should be awarded those spots.

To punish a team simply because their conference has too many teams in the tournament is ridiculous! So what if the Big East has 11 worthy teams. That just means that the Big East is the best conference and has the best teams! Isn't that what you want in the NCAA Tournament, the best teams? I would certainly hope so.

So when you see 11 teams selected to the tournament this year, remember that the NCAA Selection Committee is simply putting in the best teams. Conference affiliation means nothing when all is said and done. In fact, it would be a crime if things stay the way they are and 11 teams do not get in. Even if Cincinnati loses to Georgetown on Saturday, they have done enough to earn a spot.

Do not hate on the Big East Conference. Take the time to watch the Big East Tournament and some of this Saturday's big games, including #16 Connecticut vs. #7 Notre Dame in Storrs and #19 Villanova vs. #5 Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. You will see what an amazing conference this is and that it is 100 percent worthy of every spot it gets in the NCAA Tournament.