Big East Tourney Quick Look

With all 16 teams making the trip up to MSG this year, the Big East Tournament has become a five-day marathon. The top four teams get a double-bye until Thursday and teams ranked 4-8 get a single-bye. Georgetown, due to it piss-poor play in late January and most of February has no shot of being ranked anything above 10th going into the conference tournament.

To add insult to injury for the back-to-back regular season champions, the first-round games will not even be televised. But they can be viewed online www.BigEast.org.

So where will Georgetown end up? Right now we are tied for 11th with Seton Hall, who has the tiebreaker over the Hoyas since they beat us head-to-head. I just teared up when I wrote that. Georgetown has two games left, against St. John's and winless DePaul. Seton Hall plays at Louisville and Cincinnati. They should lose both of those matches and assuming that we do not collapse in Esherick-like fashion in the final two games, we should have sole possession of the 11th spot come Sunday. We are currently a game out of the 10th spot and would need a lot of help to take sole possession. Since Notre Dame has the tie-breaker over us, we would need to win both of our games, and them to lose both of their games. They play both Villanova and St. John's at home, where they are 12-2 this year.

So assuming the 11th spot, four spots behind our pre-season predicted finish, we could play the 14th seed in Round 1 of the Tournament. South Florida currently occupies the 14th spot and has no way to more higher than that as they are two games out of the 13th spot (St. John's) and has already lost to them this season. They can fall to the 15th spot if Rutgers beats Syracuse tomorrow and then beats South Florida on Saturday. Unlikely scenario but don't put it by Cuse to choke. So the Tuesday matchup would put us against a South Florida team that we defeated by 15 points earlier in February.

After that, we would play the 6th seed, which is currently Providence. Given the current standings and records, there are a total of 5 teams that could end up in that spot, Villanova, Providence, Syracuse, West Virginia and Cincinnati, but tie-breakers would most likely lead Providence back to the top spot. Unless... Nova loses to Notre Dame and then loses to Providence, in which case there is a shot of us playing Nova again in the second round. I probably could figure out the tie-breakers but I really don't want to so I will just caveat everything I say by probably and could and maybe. Or we can just see what SportsCenter has to say:



No point in pondering over the far future when our fate could be determined tomorrow. Fun times.


Good talk.