Custom Authentic Jerseys

Big East men’s basketball has twice as many teams as it football counterpart: 8 teams football to 16 teams basketball. And it’s been apparent since 1979 that having such a large conference, 3 more teams in basketball than any other NCAA Division I conference, hasn’t watered-down the talent level or competitiveness of the league. The conference’s proudest moment might’ve happened either in 1985, when 3 of the 4 Final Four team’s comprised itself of Big East teams (Villanova, Georgetown and St. John’s; the tournament winner going on to be Villanova) or last year, when 11 of the conference’s 16 teams went on to enter the NCAA Tournament comprising 16 percent of the tournament’s total field (Connecticut, Big East’s conference winner, also going on to win the 2011 championship game). Although not all of the Big East’s teams have done it while members of the conference, all of the Big East team’s, besides USF, have made an appearance in the Final Four at some point in their history’s.

For the last 30 years the spotlight of this mega-conference’s season-ending tournament has been played at basketball’s virtual mecca, Madison Square Garden, where 12 of the conference’s top 16 teams annually make the pilgrimage. This year the most highlighted team heading into the Garden will be #2 AP-ranked Syracuse. The Orangemen are one Notre Dame loss removed from a perfect season, and have been winning in the face of on-going former assistant coach Bernie Fine’s child abuse scandal, and a subsequent slander case against head coach Jim Boeheim, surrounding comments about the abused ball-boy children made soon after child abuse allegations first surfaced. Read More >>