I was looking at the Catholic 7 rosters at the BE tournament over the weekend trying to determine who would be strong next year based upon the returning players. DePaul loses an awful lot in graduating Martin and Harry this year. I think the sleeper in the bunch is Marquette. They have a lot of good young players and upset Nova and a few other teams this year and they all come back. St. John's loses some star players and Georgetown's vaunted recruiting class remains unproven. Cincinnati, Providence and Seton Hall all need some help to move above their current second division status. I have no info on any potential new recruits coming in on any of the schools other than Nova.
Recall that Xavier was within two consecutive missed layups and a length of the court rush by Stanford from going to the final four a few years ago, but have lost all of their good players as well as their coach. Not sure if they have a young team or not. I don't believe Butler was ever good.
The talk is getting Creighton as the 10th team, if not right away, for 2014-15. This year they are 23-6 and tied for the Missouri Valley Conference regular season title and will be a NCAA team if they win their conferencetournament.
No matter what, it will be a significant stepdown in competition for Nova. Our RPI will be tough to get under 100 as an eighteen game conference schedule and four big five games would not leave much room for scheduling any top tier teams in the remaining non-conference schedule, assuming any of them is even willing to play us. If I were an opposing coach, I would never schedule Nova, at least while Harry is coaching. Why waste your time preparing your team for a style of play you can't possible get used to in a few days practice and will never again face in the season? Not much to gain and the potential for loss in playing us, especially if we are a lower RPI team from a mid-major conference. That being said, the opportunity to win the conference championship and getting an NCAA bid is probalby a lot better on a year in-year out basis than trying to compete in a major conference like the current (old) Big East used to be.
We were discussing ideas of where the new Big East would have their conference championship for the women. Big venues are probably out of the question and most of the schools are probably too small to hold a big event like that. All in all, a whole lot of questions and not many answers at this point. It is what it is, and I think Nova and the other basketball schools made the best play that they could, knowing that they could and did not want to remain with the remnants of the old Big East. A lot of work needs to be done to give it the best shot at success. Hopefully the television revenue in the early years of the contract will allow the league schools to widen the net and expose more fans to a continuation of the Big East basketball tradition on both the men and women's side.