Big East Basketball: 2022 Conference Tournament preview and predictions

From the beginning of the season back in November, we really weren’t sure what we were going to get from the Big East Basketball Conference. A conference that had just four teams make the NCAA Tournament a year ago, one of which being the Georgetown Hoyas, the eighth seed in the conference tourney who went on to earn the auto-bid.

Villanova had its question marks. UConn lost its best player in James Bouknight. Creighton lost its entire starting lineup. All of the tournament teams from the year prior had huge question marks heading into 2022.

Throughout the non-conference season, pretty much the entire conference had some early season success. UConn defeated Auburn in the Bahamas. Providence collected wins vs. both Wisconsin and Texas Tech. Villanova took down Tennessee. Even Georgetown secured a pretty good win by defeating Syracuse. Overall, the league was in a pretty good place come conference play.

In conference play, things started off shaky as just about every team was affected by pauses due to COVID 19. As the calendar shifted to February, those pauses were no more, and just about every night we were getting instant classics between conference foes. Providence vs. Xavier in 3 OTs, UConn vs Villanova, Villanova vs Providence not once, but twice. Every game had the opportunity to be better than the next, and in most cases it was.

As March is upon us, the Big East is back from a down year and is going to get six or seven teams into the NCAA Tournament. Pretty much every team has a chance to cut down the nets at Madison Square Garden this weekend, and that’s not something that every conference can say. Will it be the top-seeded Friars? Maybe the Huskies or Wildcats? Could another team take the leap and cut down the nets? Here’s a preview of the tournament.