Several Big East basketball teams competed in tournaments over Thanksgiving week. How did those results impact this edition of the power rankings?
With a 79.0% winning percentage to start the season, the Big East ranks third among the 32 college basketball conferences in terms of victories at this point in the season. DePaul is currently the only team under .500 and eight out of the 10 teams continue to look like teams that could fight for at-large NCAA Tournament bids as the season goes on.
As expected, Villanova has remained undefeated through the first few weeks of the season and they hold down a top-10 spot nationally at No. 4 in the AP poll for the conference. After the Wildcats, Xavier sits at No. 21 in the country while Creighton entered the rankings at No. 25. In addition, Seton Hall and Providence are receiving votes as well.
Those teams already represent 50% of the conference hovering around the top-25 teams in the country and that goes without mentioning the possibility of teams such as St. John’s and Butler making their way up the rankings in the coming weeks.
Conference play is quickly approaching and at this point, the Big East has proven that they belong in the discussion for which conference is the best in the nation. Still, there are plenty of high-quality opponents left on the non-conference schedules for the programs in the Big East, including two of them taking on Gonzaga within the next week.
As the first month of college hoops comes to a close, let’s take a look at how each individual team in the Big East is playing and rank them based on these performances.