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After going undefeated over the first four days of the NCAA Tournament, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman said that the conference is “working towards getting a better handle on what matters most” to the tournament selection committee, and she has been “told to continue to schedule tough,” according to Zach Braziller of the N.Y. POST. There may also be a “review of the NET” (NCAA Evaluation Tool), one of the metrics the committee “leans on.” Only three teams from the Big East -- UConn, Creighton and Marquette -- were selected for the NCAA Tournament despite the conference being “ranked as the second-best” in the nation by KenPom.com. The conference has “responded by sending all of them to the Sweet 16.” When offering her first public remarks since the “snubs” of Seton Hall, St. John’s and Providence, Ackerman said, “I think the teams that are left are finding a way to send a bit of a message here: That the Big East is one of the elite basketball conferences in the country and we play at the highest level.” She added the conference is “working behind the scenes to try to understand it better, [and] to make our concerns known.” Ackerman: “That’s how we’re going to attack this. I don’t think standing on this table right here and screaming at the top of my lungs is going to get us more teams in the tournament this year. It might get me on the back page of the New York Post and they might write nicer things about the Big East” (N.Y. POST 3/25).
BATTLE-TESTED: On Long Island, Roger Rubin notes entering the Sweet 16 the Big East is the only conference to win every game, and he asks, “And really, doesn’t winning games define things at this point of the season?” The Mountain West got six entries, and only San Diego State is still standing. Somehow the “experts” thought the placement of the MWC teams in the bracket was “under-seeded because of their high metrics.” In reality, the committee “actually overestimated them.” Rubin writes some might say that those Big East teams “barely got through to the Sweet 16.” But they are “repeatedly battle-tested by the rigors of Big East play,” which helped them “evolve into teams that know how to win a game -- any kind of game” (NEWSDAY 3/25).
