2023-24 Big East Basketball power rankings ahead of conference play

1. UConn Huskies

No surprise here, the reigning National Champion UConn Huskies find themselves as the top team in the Big East Conference. This is not just due to that past success though, this team has played just as well if not better than how they were last season, and adversity was had to get to this point for this team.

Donovan Clingan suffered a foot injury before the season, so his health was not at 100% up until recently. They also lost star freshman Stephon Castle to a knee injury, and he is also just making his return. Despite these hardships, UConn still sits at 10-1 with wins over UNC, Gonzaga, and Texas.

The emergence of Tristen Newton as a lead scorer, along with the great play of Rutgers transfer Cam Spencer has this team with a whole new look after their Championship run. They lost a lot of talent to the NBA, but they replenished a lot of it, and also have brought up their own young players to fill in.

Dan Hurley is putting together one of his better coaching jobs this season, but UConn also had a strong non-conference performance last year but ended up fourth in the Big East regular season standings. If the Huskies continue to play as well as they have, then they could find themselves with a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, but that is no easy task in this strong Big East.

The parity is aplenty this time around for this conference, being ranked in the lower half does not mean the same as it has in years past. This just means that one team is not going to run away with it, so nobody is safe, not even UConn. This year has the potential to be one of the more entertaining Big East years in recent memory, so strap in, and get ready for turbulence and these rankings to look completely different once we get closer to March.