Why is it a good idea to always keep an eye on the Big East? Well, the conference has produced four of the past eight national champions, four more than the Big Ten and SEC combined. And there have been some boisterous doings lately. As college basketball takes a deep breath for Christmas, the state of the Big East set to a holiday song.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Connecticut . . .
Twenty-six days ago, the Huskies limped home from Maui with three consecutive losses and having to pay for their excess baggage of sudden questions and doubt. A shadow of their national championship selves. They’re 6-0 since having beaten ranked Baylor and Gonzaga and won at Texas. The latest step in the December surge was Saturday when they led at Butler for 39 minutes and 20 seconds and held on 78-74, winning despite being outscored by 10 at the free throw line. Three days before, they had slipped past Xavier in overtime.
No, UConn is not the mega-talented steamroller of the past two seasons. To win takes more challenging labor, and the margin for error or a down day is infinitely more minor, but the 10-3 Huskies have developed the knack of finding a way, which they had not yet learned in Hawaii. Take the Butler game. With the Bulldogs charging at the end and a whole house behind them, Connecticut took eight field goal attempts or free throws in the last 2:35. It made seven of them, with veteran Alex Karaban looking like the veteran champion he is and Liam McNeeley playing like the reliable freshman flash he has become. That’s called not blinking.
HITTING REWIND: A thrilling Saturday full of non-conference men’s hoops
The Big East and nation at large must now wonder: Is Connecticut back?
“November sucked for us,” coach Dan Hurley said after Saturday’s win. “It’s something that’s given this team an edge. The external noise was really loud. There was a lot of commentary on the program, on the team, on myself. I’m just really proud of their response. I’m not sure how many at that point in Maui went on their stupid podcasts saying we’d be 10-3. Not all podcasts are stupid, just some of them are.”
“Last year’s team we’d get the game to 14, you’d blink and it would be 22. Last year we’d get the game to 11, and it would get to 18. This team, they don’t have that killer instinct yet. Our quality’s not quite there yet. We’re going to improve a lot during the year. We’re nowhere near where we’re going to be, but while we’re trying to figure ourselves out, we’ve just got to find a way to win games and execute and make plays down the stretch.”
What Creighton is this? . . .
It’s been hard to tell, night to night. The Bluejays breezed to a 4-0 start, given a big push by Ryan Kalkbrenner, scoring 49 and 24 points in the first two games. Then they dropped three in a row when Kalkbrenner had only 24 in the three games. Suddenly, the No. 14 team in the nation was fighting to stay above .500. They recovered to win three more games, including a 13-point pounding of No. 1 Kansas. Then, two more defeats, accented by a 24-point shelling at Georgetown. Then, an 86-79 sprint past Villanova Saturday with Kalkbrenner going for 23 and two more starters, 20 each.
What gives?
“It’s the Big East,” coach Greg McDermott said. “You’re going to have some clunkers once in a while, and then you’re going to have some games where you play pretty well, and you can’t get lost in either one of those.”
The 12 Games of Dixon . . .
It has not been all peaches and cream for Villanova. Do you remember Columbia or the 3-4 start? — and the defense can be woeful. However, one thing that has kept the 8-5 Wildcats moving forward is their sixth-year senior glue, Eric Dixon. He has led the team in scoring all his 12 games and contributed at least 24 points the past five games in a row. Dixon tops the nation with his 25.8 scoring average, shooting 50 percent from the three-point arc. But if the Wildcats don’t improve the defense, will that be squandered?
Baby, it’s Kam Outside . . .
When Marquette needed to right itself Saturday after blowing a late 15-point lead in five minutes at Xavier, the Golden Eagles had just the guy to do it. Kam Jones scored seven points in the last two minutes to get Marquette to 11-2 on the season and 2-0 in the Big East. Jones has the numbers of a league player-of-the-year candidate: A 20.3 scoring average, 54 percent shooting, an 83-20 assist-turnover ratio. But then there’s Dixon, too. And Kalkbrenner. That should be a fun race.
Check the walls . . .
At Georgetown, do they still have the pictures of the past great Hoyas teams turned to the wall? OK, maybe they never were, but they could have been. Georgetown has had one winning record in nine seasons, and the Big East record for the past three years was 4-55. But things have changed in the second year of the Ed Cooley regime with an influx of new faces. Top rebounder Thomas Sorber is a freshman, and steals leader Micah Peavy is a grad student from TCU. Jayden Epps, in his second Georgetown season after moving from Illinois, is the top scorer. The other Hoya who’s averaging in double figures, Malik Mack, came from Harvard.
Consider the handiwork of the new collection. The Hoyas slipped past Seton Hall 61-60 Sunday to go to 10-2 and see their first 2-0 conference start in nine seasons. Earlier in the week, they had pummeled Creighton by 24 points with 12 steals, seven by Peavy. The defense is back in style at Georgetown. The Hoyas are 31st in the nation in scoring defense and 35th in field goal percentage defense. Last season, they were 328th and 360th. Cooley was Big East coach of the year in 2022 at Providence. If this keeps up, he’ll make it again at a different league school.
Looie, does he know?
Lou Carnesecca, the patron saint of St. John’s basketball, died at 99 on the last day of November, but is he smiling somewhere with the Red Storm 10-2? If St. John’s is to make this a season for Looie, the start could hardly have been better. The Red Storm won five games in a row, and the only two losses came by a combined four points. They’re 2-0 in the Big East after blowing away DePaul 89-61 — with only three 3-pointers — and coming from 16 points behind to beat Providence by two at the buzzer. That was their first victory of the season by under 13 points.
Rick Pitino’s bunch often gets better each game as it goes along. St. John’s is averaging 44.8 points in the second half and outscoring opponents by an average of 10.9 after halftime.
If we make it through December . . .
That’s a Merle Haggard song. Butler coach Thad Matta, presumably a country music guy, mentioned it earlier this month when the Bulldogs were embarking on a death march of four ranked opponents in 15 days, plus a trap game with dangerous North Dakota State. Butler went 0-5, though the Bulldogs put up a stern fight Saturday against Connecticut.
“I remember in August, whenever the schedule came out… I put a piece of paper down on my desk and the calendar is there, and it had at Houston, Wisconsin and UConn, three straight Saturdays,” Matta said. “I went home and slept like a baby — I woke up every two hours and started crying.”
And now?
“We’ve been tested, there’s no question about it. We’ve failed every test. Guys have to be more accountable to get themselves ready to play. We’ve got to coach better.
“We’ve seen everything.”
Sean Miller is singing that same tune at Xavier. The Musketeers were 7-1 when they went to TCU on Dec. 5 and lost by four points. Last week, over eight days, they faced No. 22 Cincinnati, No. 11 Connecticut, and No. 9 Marquette. Lost by three to Cincinnati, then by five at UConn in an overtime game with 22 lead changes, then by two to Marquette after rallying from 15 down. They led in the final five minutes in all four defeats, but late-game execution was a problem. In the last two games, they had to play without injured leading scorer and rebounder Zach Freemantle.
“Right now, I don’t even know if it’s trying to manufacture positives as much as just we need a break,” Miller said after the Marquette loss. “We’re playing shorthanded and I wish I could help the guys a little bit more.”
Nor has the month been pleasant at DePaul, where Chris Holtmann’s glorious 7-0 start as coach has stalled with four losses in five games, the last two at St. John’s and Northwestern by 28 and 20. It was the same for Providence and Seton Hall, each dropping six of eight.
Sounds as if they need a break, too. Well, it’s Christmas.
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