After the Big East pounded its’ collective chest with placing four teams in the AP Top 10 and nine in the Top 30, all four Top 10 teams stumbled this week while other league members are making surprising splashes around the conference. Certainly the Big East is known as a “black and blue” conference, where nearly every team can beat any other team on any given night. However, this past week showed just how level the Big East is and why picking a pre-game favorite is just as accurate as flipping a coin.
To help us breakdown the week that was in the Big East and further highlight the Big East’s incredible depth, the Big Beast blog will employ some help from our blogosphere brethren.
Last week, Andrew Porter at the UConn Blog released Week 11’s Big East Power Rankings with Pittsburgh taking the top spot. However, only five teams went undefeated in conference play this past week with every team in the top four losing at least once to lower-ranked teams. In fact, two of those top four losses came by way of a Providence upset of Villanova and a Seton Hall smashing of Syracuse…both Providence and Seton Hall are in the bottom four of the Big East. That statistic alone shows that any team in the Big East can match up with another other conference foe and pull out the W. Along with that proof of parity comes evidence that betting on Big East games could lead to early heart disease.
The good people over at BigEastHoops.com provided an updated list of weekend predictions for all the Big East match-ups. “Big Willie Style” noted in his post that he had shamefully accumulated a 5-3 record in game predictions throughout the week and was looking for a “strong weekend” to better enhance his tally. BEH’s predictions run on betting lines instead of your usual straight-up “winner and loser” format, and this is where if you bet on the favorite to cover you may need your favorite friend to cover your debts.
Of the six games Big Willie gave analysis for, all six predictions were incorrect. Even worse, only one game covered the spread and that was Seton Hall over Providence (which was also arguably the most non-meaningful of the six). That may seem odd to some, but any faithful follower of Big East basketball knows it’s just another day at the office. While I feel bad for Big Willie’s 5-9 prediction mark for last week, clearly there is little credence in looking to Vegas to map out the remainder of the Big East basketball season.
Finally, let’s see how The Rumble In The Garden’s Big East efficiency margins held up to on-court performances over the past weekend. The efficiency margins are tallied by “scoring, offensive rebounding, team turnovers on both ends, and free throws – basically all the ways a team can end a possession.” The stats are then compiled and each team has an offensive score and a defensive score that is then subtracted from one another and the remaining amount of points is the efficiency margin.
Of the top eight teams in the efficiency margins, only Louisville finished the week without a loss in conference play (albeit by the hair of their chiny-chin-chin with a one point victory over under-manned West Virginia on Wednesday). Another interesting point to mention about the efficiency margins is that two teams that are generally considered NCAA tournament “locks,” currently fall outside of the top half of the league (Notre Dame and Georgetown). Thus, not even intense data comparison covering nearly aspect of a game can be used to separate the cream from the crop in the Big East…the league is really that deep.
Overall, it is pretty obvious that no form of ranking system, be it human voting or mathematical calculation, is able to accurately determine the outcome of Big East conference games week in or week out. While the same could be said for a variety of sports and leagues, it appears the Big East is a glaring exception with nearly every team losing at least once every week. If the conference continues on this path of parity then it could either help or hinder the Big East in terms of NCAA tournament bids. For one, a wide number of teams with quality wins over conference opponents, for this sake say 10 teams, could make the tournament with teams 7-10 all having very similar resumes. On the other hand, if teams 9 and 10 of those 10 teams have nearly identical resumes, then the committee could elect to pass on them for a similar team from an under-represented conference.
If anything, these various ranking systems have showed that you just can’t tell what is going to happen from week to week…and that’s what keeps us waiting until the final horn from Madison Square Garden. After writing this piece, the “Big East standings breakdown” stands a good chance of becoming a weekly staple of the Big Beast blog.
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