Big East Basketball: Observations of league heading into late stretch of 2020-21

Marquette, Georgetown, Providence, Butler, and DePaul

I’ve already touched on the disappointing seasons of Marquette and Georgetown in my article regarding underwhelming coaches. I won’t harp on those two teams anymore, but here’s a shoutout to Patrick Ewing. Since I criticized the Hoyas program, their two-game win streak coming off a pause is mightily remarkable and worth noting. Winning at Creighton is not an easy thing to do.

Ed Cooley seems like the greatest guy and the coolest dude ever. Yet, I for one am sick of the same exact Providence team we see every year. The Friars play very hard, but they hover around .500, and play up, or down, to their competition. They ooze toughness but having studs like David Duke and Nate Watson, there’s no way they should lose to Georgetown coming off a pause. Right after that loss, they only scored 18 points in the second half at home against Seton Hall. For what should be a tournament team, 9-9 is not going to cut it.

Butler just isn’t good anymore. The Brad Stevens and Chris Holtmann days are over. I have yet to be impressed with anything LaVall Jordan has done. He inherited great college players like Kamar Baldwin and Sean McDermott. Those guys are gone and this year the Bulldogs are 5-10. It isn’t pretty.

Finally, there’s DePaul. Picking on them is like picking on someone two feet shorter than you. What’s the point? They remain irrelevant after what was an unexpecting fun start they had last season. However, I will say something nice. I like Charlie Moore’s hardiness.

The Big East has seen better days, simple as that.