Big East Basketball: Ranking of top 5 big men for 2023-24 season

3. Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton

Creighton and the Blue Jays were unsure if they were going to get their leader Ryan Kalkbrenner back this season, but the senior makes his grand return to Omaha for his senior season. He was First Team All-BIG EAST his junior season and was one of the five finalists for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award.

Kalkbrenner is your classic seven-footer who has a great back-to-the-basket game and uses his size to bully the opposition down low. He has a great frame and a 270-pound build that Blue Jays fans have enjoyed watching for several years at this point.

Creighton is a program that thought they were going to lose a lot more than they did, and that began with the loss of Arthur Kaluma to Kansas State, it appeared players like Kalkbrenner, Trey Alexander, and Baylor Scheierman may be on the move to the NBA or elsewhere, but the whole crew has returned.

Kalkbrenner is always a big part of this team’s success, as last season he put up 15.9 points per game with 6.1 rebounds each contest. his lack of athleticism and speed hurts him in the rebounding department, but he is so dominant as a rim protector and a scorer that Creighton can make up for that elsewhere.

This team will see some tough sledding not due to their lack of talent, but with how deep this conference is yet again this season. But since this team has Kalkbrenner, they will find a way to win and be competitive once more.

2. Eric Dixon, Villanova

Villanova outdid themselves this offseason with who they were able to return and bring in, with Eric Dixon being a huge part of that. The 6’8 redshirt senior is not the seven-footer that some of these other schools have, but Villanova has usually favored undersized and more athletic big men than other Big East schools.

Dixon was a 15.4 point per game scorer last season along with 6.6 rebounds per game and was given the task of defending some of the tougher players to guard in this entire conference. He is a great combination of athleticism and physicality, and he also added a three-point shot to his game last season, which helped his scoring output.

Most big men in this conference are not ones that stretch the floor, but Dixon shot the ball from behind the arc at just under 38 percent, which is plenty for a player at his position. The Second Team All-BIG EAST performer kept the Wildcats steady during what was a disappointing season given the usual standards of Villanova. Still, with a retooled roster and one of the best bigs in this country, Kyle Neptune and his squad will look to bring this program back to its former glory.

Villanova will use Dixon to stretch the floor, which is an advantage that most other teams in this conference do not have at their disposal, so when it comes to the modern era of basketball, having Dixon may just be better than the usual seven-footers. However, that logic does not apply when it comes to the number one player on this list.