NCAA Basketball: Overall takeaways from 2021 Gavitt Tipoff Games

The Big East is for real so far

The Big East is back in a major way! They have started the season 38-4 as of November 20th and featured multiple top-15 wins. From Dan Hurley saying it looks like a seven or eight-bid league to Shaka Smart starting off his tenure at Marquette rattling off a couple major wins, this year has been all about the Big East renaissance.

Villanova looks like a legitimate top 10 team, even with two losses. UConn, Seton Hall, Xavier, and SJU all have real cases to be a top 20 type of team. Even the baby Jays of Creighton, who rely on more youth than anyone in the conference, looks up to the challenge early in the year dismantling Nebraska.

And how could you forget about the guy in the video above. Ed Cooley, one of college basketball’s best gems coaching the Providence Friars to a solid start behind Nate Watson. Conversely of the Big Ten, the Big East has outperformed or met expectations based on seeding in the NCAA tournament in four of the past five seasons.

The conference, which was expected to be in a rebuilding phase, features a few of the nation’s premier players. Gillespie of Villanova, Julian Champagnie of Saint John’s, and Nate Watson of Providence are three of the most fun players to watch in all of the college hoops landscape.

What is perhaps the most fun thing about the conference this year is the unpredictability. After Villanova, it truly is a hodgepodge between 2 and 9 in the standings. Georgetown and DePaul both seem a bit outside of that conversation, but everyone else realistically could fall anywhere in that range.

With quite a few Big East teams competing in Feast Week tournaments, it’ll be fun to keep an eye on if the conference can continue its hot start.