Lieberman: Big East looking overrated after Tournament performance

What the heck happened to the Big East this year?

The widely acclaimed, big, bad and best… What the heck happened to the Big East this year?

The widely acclaimed, big, bad and best conference in America sent eight teams to the NCAA Tournament this year. After one weekend of play, two remain in Syracuse and West Virginia.

Here are the teams that beat Big East teams, with their seed, in the Tournament: (6) Xavier, (11) Washington, (10) St. Mary’s, (8) California, (11) Old Dominion and last but not least, (14) Ohio.

That’s not exactly a laundry list of dominant teams.

Ohio finished ninth — ninth! — in the Mid-American Conference this year. Its record against teams such as Kent State, Akron — everyone but Michigan and Buffalo — was a grand 7-9.

The Bobcats won in overtime at Ball State to qualify for the MAC tournament, then beat Akron in overtime in the finals to get the automatic berth. Then they beat Georgetown 97-83 in the first round. Fourteen points doesn’t do justice to this blowout.

Georgetown looked sluggish beyond comparison against Ohio throughout the entire game. Rarely did they show flashes of the brilliant team that pushed West Virginia to the brink for the Big East Championship.

The telling stat is that Georgetown shot 50 percent from the field. It’s telling because the Hoyas’ defense was so bad that making half of their shots wasn’t even close to enough offense.

All year the Hoyas were a Jekyll and Hyde squad. They looked Final Four-caliber against Duke and in the Big East tournament yet fell flat against Rutgers, South Florida and Ohio.

The first day started off horribly for the Big East, with Notre Dame falling to Old Dominion in the second game on the schedule last Thursday. Old Dominion held Irish forward Luke Harangody to a mere four points on just 2-of-9 shooting from the field.

Villanova struggled in overtime to beat Robert Morris in the opening round and ultimately lost to St. Mary’s in the second round.

Pitt looked dominant against Oakland but couldn’t do enough late in its game against Xavier.

Marquette fell to Pac-10 foe Washington by two. Louisville lost to another Pac-10 team, California, by 15.

That leaves two teams, but what a great two teams they are.

Syracuse and West Virginia played out the season as the Big East’s top two teams, and deservedly, they survived the first weekend.

The Big East Player of the Year, Syracuse’s Wes Johnson, carried the Orange past Gonzaga, scoring 31 points and grabbing 14 rebounds. Syracuse mopped the floor with Gonzaga, winning 87-65.

West Virginia forward Da’Sean Butler led his team with 28 points in the Mountaineers’ gritty 68-59 win over Missouri.

Maybe, as media and fans, we overvalued the Big East this year. Maybe we didn’t realize that last year was last year and that “the top teams in the Big East” isn’t synonymous to “the top teams in the country” anymore.

Or maybe the mid-major teams, and for that matter teams across all of Division I, are catching up with the Big East after last year’s talent exile.

It’s clear, however, that this league hadn’t lost its luster prior to the NCAA Tournament.

The NCAA selection committee held the Big East in such high hopes. The committee gave top three seeds to all but two Big East teams, suggesting that they believed these teams were good enough to advance to the Sweet 16 and beyond.

If they had a second crack, I’m not so sure the Big East would receive eight bids.

These losses weren’t about referees or Big East teams adjusting to playing different types of basketball. Big East teams were overrated, and hopefully next year, the committee won’t make the same mistake again.

The result of these losses is further proof that the gap between college basketball teams is closing. This should be exciting, as it shows that no matter what conference patch is on a team’s shoulder, come Tournament time, a team still simply has to win to advance.