With the addition of Connecticut to Big East Basketball, the league will be even more competitive in 2020-21. Here is a look at some of the players who could break on to the scene this season.
They say you can’t go home again, but Connecticut certainly has as they will be rejoining Big East Basketball this coming season. But it isn’t quite the conference they remember, but it will be just as competitive as the days of yore for the Huskies. Four of the teams finished in the top 25 and seven of the ten teams in the conference won at least 18 games last year.
While players such as Markus Howard and Myles Powell are no longer giving opposing defenses headaches, there are still plenty of players that will help fulfill the Excedrin quotient of coaches. In some cases, those players will be the ones you expect, while in other cases it may not.
One of the more fun pieces to write in the offseason is trying to identify who those breakout players may be. It could be a solid contributor to becoming a star, or a young player that takes a big leap with their production. Such an exercise can make a writer look like a genius or a fool once March comes around, but that is the nature of the business in these parts.
In a conference like the Big East that had three teams finish tied for first place and the top seven teams finishing within five games of each other, as well as adding a Connecticut team that won 19 games and went 10-8 in the American Athletic Conference, finding a breakout player on your team could make a huge difference on where you finish in the standings. So, let’s take a look at this year’s breakout candidates in the Big East.