During the regular season, Big East teams played Big Ten teams 8 times...

[joeybee12]

Big East teams won 6 of those.

[SpiralHawk]

1. That is just so, um, special and stuff...

[caraher]

2. So?

Bottom line is still that the best Big East teams underachieved in the NCAA tournament; Purdue was the one Big Ten team that choked in March Madness.

Still, it's interesting to look at the head-to-head record in more detail:

Here were the Big East wins:

Notre Dame (H) over Wisconsin 58-51
Syracuse over Michigan 53-50 (Atlantic City)
Syracuse over Michigan State 72-58 (Madison Square Garden)
Connecticut over Michigan State 70-67 (Hawaii)
St. John’s over Northwestern 85-69 (Madison Square Garden)
West Virginia (H) over Purdue 68-64

And the losses:

Wisconsin over Marquette (H) 69-64
Minnesota over West Virginia 74-70 (Puerto Rico)

Every game was either a home game for the Big East team or on a neutral court (some of which were effectively home games for the Big East). Most were rather close, the two exceptions being Syracuse over MSU and St. John's over Northwestern (sub-.500 in the Big Ten). Only two of the wins were against teams with Big Ten conference records above .500 (Purdue and Wisconsin), both coming in Big East home games. On a true neutral court the Big East went 2-1, with the loss coming to a Minnesota team that won a third of its conference games.

Overall, it looks like the top half of the Big East matched up pretty well with the middle of the Big Ten.

[joeybee12]

4. right off, you're wrong...ND was not home against Wisconsin...it was at a neutral

court during a holiday tournament. The Big East may not have lived up to its potential this year, but yet again the Tint Ten is over-rated.

Stop making things up buddy.

[caraher]

6. Oops, my bad on ND

I was scanning through the Big East schedule and results and misread the location of that one game.

Any other mistakes?

[dakota_democrat]

3. Not that I want to stop the Big East hate (cause hating the east coast is fun)

But they were never going to meet the expectations thrown on them. No conference will ever be "11 teams in the dance" strong.

I do like the "Hey, the top teams in the Big East beat the middlers to worse in the Big 10" argument, simply because it reeks so desperately of straw-grasping.

[joeybee12]

5. Well, when UCONN beat MSU, MSU was #2 in the country...talking about over-rated.

[caraher]

7. That's partly a symptom of the most annoying aspect of college hoops coverage

Coach worship.

The media love Izzo (we can all make our own lists of coaches in that category).

While coaching is obviously very important, I do wish commentators would spend less time talking about the genius of the guy on the sidelines when it's the players who have to make the plays. It's unavoidable, I think, since the coaches are the people they get to know best - the people who are there year in and year out and become the public face of a program.

But it also tends to skew assessments of the strength of teams.

[joeybee12]

8. At least with college basketball the season is long enough to rectify

these undeserved rankings...can't say that about college football.

[dakota_democrat]

9. They should get away from preseason rankings in basketball

That MSU was ever #2 this season shows how bogus preseason rankings are.

NCAA should really put something in place so teams in the lower half of a conference are automatically barred from the tournament.

[joeybee12]

10. Pre-season college basketball rankings don't bother me the way the pre-season

college football rankings do...that is almost 100% based on reputation.