UConn Basketball: 3 pros and cons for Huskies leaving Big East Conference

3. Prestige and Competition

I love the Big East as much as anybody, but playing Duke or Kansas every year is much more prestigious than playing all the teams in the conference combined.

Now the Big East is phenomenal basketball and has consistently fallen through the cracks in terms of recognition of how well the game is played in this conference.

It might even be better than the Big 12, and the ACC was not very good last year, but the Big 12 had two top-five teams in the conference last year, and getting to play those teams twice rather than the squads they take on in the Big East is a better resume for them by just a bit.

Just looking at the Big 12 and the Big East though, the conferences do play a challenge between their teams every year, and the Big East leads that 21-15 since 2019.

So in terms of the actual basketball, there may not be much of a difference, but everybody in the nation knows about all the state schools in the Power 5, and the main people that know about places like Marquette, Providence, Creighton, Seton Hall, etc. are people that know college basketball, have seen them once or twice watching March Madness, or alumni of that school.

More people will be drawn to watch UConn vs Texas every year vs UConn Villanova, there is a reason those matchups against Big 12 teams are much bigger for the small Big East schools and not the other way around.