The seven Catholic schools in the Big East have agreed to leave the conference and are debating the process of departing it, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.
How DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova leave the Big East still is undetermined. . . .
The seven Catholic school presidents have called a second conference call for Saturday when they are expected to address these issues and possibly make an official declaration.
The schools involved are all excellent universities with rich histories in basketball. Georgetown, Marquette and Villanova have all won national championships and the others have all appeared in Final Fours within the last 30 years or so.
It makes sense to go out on their own, because the remaining schools in the Big East aren't really a good fit. At this point, the Big East is essentially becoming Conference USA, adding teams like Houston, Memphis and Tulane. It's not a viable league, especially since there's little question that UConn and Cincinnati would take an invite from the ACC or Big Ten in a heartbeat, were one to be offered.
So what other teams might join the Catholic Seven? Well, there's one obvious suspect:
Notre Dame was supposed to stay in the Big East for a 27-month period, which could mean as long as the 2015 season. But the Irish have been negotiating an early exit.I really don't think Notre Dame would come along for this, although you never know -- it would in some respects make more sense than going to the ACC does for the Irish. And while I'd be surprised if Gonzaga (located in Spokane, WA) and St. Mary's (Moraga, CA) would want in*, the other four would make a lot of sense. And you could add either St. Joe's or LaSalle (both in Philadelphia) or perhaps Loyola of Chicago and have a nice 12-team league.
[Notre Dame Coach Mike] Brey also said the discussion among the Catholic schools was to make it a national Catholic conference with Xavier, Saint Louis, Dayton, Creighton, Gonzaga and possibly Saint Mary's, as well.
I've always been a big Marquette fan and conference affiliations have always been a source of frustration for MU, as they've moved from the ill-fated Great Midwest Conference to Conference USA to what seemed like a better fit in the Big East. A potential Big Catholic League would be an excellent solution for most of the schools involved. Besides their current Big East colleagues, MU has played Xavier, Dayton, Saint Louis and Creighton many times over the years. It would work very, very well.
*Frankly, if you're going to go coast to coast, you'd probably want to add the University of San Francisco as well, which has a very proud basketball history of its own. And that's the problem with all these scenarios; there's always another school you could add.
4 comments:
I always thought that these smaller basketball schools were more interesting. Some of that was coming to consciousness in the 80s (I remember missing the second half of Georgetown/Villanova because it was past my bedtime.) Part of it is that since they don't get as much exposure, they remain more picturesque (I have no idea what Seton Hall looks like but it sounds awesome!) They evoke a time when college sports were more about rivalries than television and money.
Seton Hall has a very interesting history, actually. They were one of the schools that was implicated in the point shaving scandals that almost brought down college basketball in the 1950s.
Seton Hall was also the team that beat my alma mater, Beloit College, in the NIT in 1951. This was in the time when the NIT was as prominent, or perhaps even more prominent, than the NCAA tournament has become. There's a tale there, too -- for a few seasons after the war Beloit was a nationally prominent program, as was Hamline. Might have to blog about that some day.
New league will add Butler, Xavier and perhaps Creighton. VCU, St. Louis and Dayton are the other candidates.
They should only have Catholic schools, call the league the Big Cat and have the Pope throw up the first tip for the league opener between Xavier and Georgetown.
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