Big East is brutal every night

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Pitt was coming off three straight wins, including a… It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Pitt was coming off three straight wins, including a momentous victory over sixth-ranked Georgetown.

Cincinnati had just been clobbered by 17 points against unranked Notre Dame.

But when it was all said and done, the Panthers returned home with a deflating 62-59 loss to a sub-.500 team.

Fast forward to last night.

Pitt was coming off three straight conference losses, desperately needing a win to solidify their chances of reaching the NCAA Tournament and build some momentum heading into the Big East tournament.

The Bearcats, meanwhile, had improved to 8-8 in the Big East and moved ahead of the Panthers in the conference standings.

This time around, the Panthers overcame a seven-point second-half deficit to win a 73-67 contest that, by my estimate, was closer than the score even indicated.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, either.

Cincinnati is coming off a season in which they finished with a 2-14 Big East record, dead last in the conference.

With four of five of the starters returning from last year’s floundering squad and a coach in only his second year with the team at the helm, there was little reason to believe the Bearcats would right the ship.

And they didn’t – at least not right away. The Bearcats suffered through a season-opening loss to Belmont, followed by non-conference losses to Bowling Green, UAB and Illinois State among others.

But here we are only a few months later.

Following last night’s loss, Cincinnati is now tied with Pitt in the conference standings, and a deep run in the Big East Tournament could put the team back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since it joined the conference three years ago.

That’s the beauty of Big East basketball. Bad teams, like Cincinnati, eventually rise to the top.

Good teams, like Villanova, inexplicably fall to the bottom. And on any given night in the Big East Conference, considered by many to be the toughest and deepest in the nation, the contest is anyone’s to win.

Cincinnati has become the prime example for what the conference is all about.

It’s a conference so laden with talent and with so much competitive balance that practically the same lineup, trained by the very same coach, can rise from utter mediocrity to being ranked ahead of perennial powerhouses like Syracuse and Villanova.

Of course, Cincinnati is no newcomer to winning. In fact, they’re the 18th most successful program in NCAA history. But their recent woes have dropped them from the national consciousness.

But here they are, a year after living in the cellar of the conference, having knocked off two ranked teams already this season.

Last night Cincinnati played a better, deeper Pitt squad right down to the wire. It made the team that at one time looked like it would challenge for the regular-season conference title sweat out a game against an out-matched opponent.

The funny thing is, no one seemed too surprised.

“That’s a very good team,” Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said following the game. “Cincinnati is an NCAA Tournament team right now. That’s a good win for us against a very good team. Mick [Cronin] has done a very good job with those guys.”

It’s why the Big East will likely boast the most NCAA Tournament teams once again. It’s why the Panthers can beat St. John’s by 24 one night and lose to Rutgers by 13 the next. And it’s why no game, no matter how seemingly insignificant it might be, may be taken for granted.

This is the Big East, after all.