Big East Basketball: Ranking the current status of every old Big East team

6. Syracuse

ACC: 111-62 (50-40), 3 NCAA appearances (Final Four, Sweet 16)

5. UConn

American: 107-69 (49-41), 2 NCAA appearances (National Championship)

4. Louisville

American/ACC: 128-46 (60-30), 3 NCAA appearances (Sweet 16, Elite Eight)

Not everything has gone swimmingly for these quasi-blue bloods, but they have still collected some impressive hardware since the Big East fractured earlier this decade.

If someone else compiled their own rankings and had Louisville and UConn closer to the bottom (or even a little higher), I wouldn’t begrudge them. The Huskies are coming off back-to-back losing seasons in the middling American, its first such streak since the mid-1980’s, and Louisville saw 123 wins, its 2012 Final Four berth, and its 2013 National Championship vacated over a sex scandal. Still, when the dust settled, both programs landed two of the hottest names on the coaching market in Chris Mack and Danny Hurley, even as uncertainty swirled through each campus.

Louisville should be fine as the Cardinals move further away from scandal; Mack is a phenomenal coach, and Louisville is consistently one of the best teams in the superior ACC. UConn, even with Hurley, is still stuck in the American without much chance of getting out. But if Hurley can rack up some wins, it will revitalize an unhappy fan base and create a solid top-tier of the conference with UConn, Cincinnati, and Wichita State. The American is not ideal, but there is room for growth going forward, and the Huskies are just four years removed from a title.

In Syracuse, Jim Boeheim and the Orange have not been able to replicate as much success since 2013-14, when they were ranked as high as no. 1 in the AP Poll. Syracuse missed the NCAA Tournament twice in the last four years (including its one-year ban), and only snuck in as a double-digit seed in its two appearances. But somehow, Boeheim and his zone have managed to turn those poor seedings into deep tourney runs, advancing to the Final Four in 2016 and the Sweet 16 this past year.

Boeheim’s retirement has been pending for several years, but now that Mike Hopkins is no longer necessarily the head coach-in-waiting, Syracuse’s future plans are a little murkier. The reality is Boeheim’s teams have not been very good recently, and if not for the two miracles, zone-fueled March runs, this would have been the worst four-year stretch in his tenure.

Of course, he did win those games in March, but Syracuse basketball is no longer the beast it was just five years ago. Now the Orange blend in as one of the many ACC programs looking to simply knock off Duke and North Carolina, rather than holding court as one of the elite teams in the conference.

At the very least though, UConn and Syracuse get bumps in the rankings for continuing to play old Big East rivals. It’s disappointing that every former Big East cohort has not managed to keep up at least one non-conference game with an old foe each season.