The nation's second ranked conference was tossed to the side in the selection of the 2024 NCAA Tournament Sunday night.

Just three Big East teams were awarded invitations to the tournament, the fewest in 31 years: #1-ranked Connecticut, #8 ranked Creighton, and #10-ranked Marquette. Despite favorable NET rankings for St. John's (#32 NET, 20-13), Villanova (18-15, #41) Seton Hall (#58, 21-13) and even Seton Hall (#67, 20-12), none were selected despite the strength of the Big East schedule.

Among the most egregious omission, St. John's wasn't even listed on the first four teams not to make the field despite winning six of its last seven and taking UConn to a 95-90 finish Friday at Madison Square Garden in one of UConn's toughest tests all season. St. John's is the only team listed in the top 30 at the influential Kenpom.com ranking not to be invited. The school declined an NIT invitation Sunday night, while five other Big East schools (Seton Hall, Providence, Villanova, Butler, and Xavier) joined the field.

No Big East teams joined the CIT or CBI tournament fields.

What happened? Three culprits come to the fore:

  1. "Bid Stealers": A number of teams not expected to receive an at-large bid won their conference tournaments and thus earned autobids, reducing available at-large slots. Examples included Oregon (#59 NET), North Carolina State (#63), Duquesne (#80), and UAB (#104).
  2. Other Metrics: While the Big East fared very well in most rankings, other schools padded their case with blowout wins over Quad 3 and Quad 4 schools; for an example, a 40 point win over a MEAC school by one team was judged more valuable than a 10 point win over a Big East opponent.
  3. Georgetown and DePaul: Bad basketball at the Hilltop and Lincoln Park did nothing for its fellow schools. The four schools above were a combined 18-0 against Georgetown (ranked #205) and DePaul (#320), so these wins were measured as less impactful than games against conferences where its schools predominated in the top 125. The lowest ranked Big 12 team, for example, was West Virginia at 156.
On the fringe, Georgetown's non-conference schedule was a net-minus for the conference. Of its 11 non-conference opponents, only TCU (#38, 21-12) was invited to the tournament. The NET rankings of the other schools follow below, out of 362:

    84. Syracuse (19-12, Georgetown loss)
    103. Rutgers (15-17, loss)
    124. Notre Dame (13-20, win)
    213. Merrimack (19-12, win)
    242. Mount St. Mary's (12-19, win)
    287: American (15-16, win)
    300: Jackson State (15-17, win)
    301: LeMoyne (12-17, win)
    350. Holy Cross (9-23, loss)
    361. Coppin State (2-27, win)



 

The Big East Conference announced an extension to its contract with Madison Square Garden to host the men's basketball tournament through 2032.

First hosted at the Garden in 1983 following stops in Providence (1980), Syracuse (1981) and Hartford (1982), the extension will take the longest running college basketball event at a single venue through its 50th anniversary in 2032.

"Trust me, it will be more than 50 years," said Joel Fisher, executive Vice President at MSG Entertainment. "It's just gotten better and better every single year. And we didn't think it could."

For a second consecutive year, the 2024 Big East tournament was a complete sellout, selling all five sessions at 19,812 per game. By contrast, the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament at Capital One Arena did not sell out a single session, with tickets going for as little as $4.00 in each of the first two days of the event.

Over a decade ago, the ACC and its partners at ESPN made a concerted effort to wrest the MSG contract from the Big East, to no avail. The 2017, 2018, and 2022 ACC tournaments were held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in an attempt to establish a beachhead in the New York market to eventually move to MSG, but local interest was visibly lacking. Only one of the seven sessions at the 2022 ACC event sold out, and the fan experience around Atlantic Avenue paled in comparison to that of Midtown Manhattan. A similar foray by the Big Ten in 2018 was deemed unsuccessful and that league has no plans to return.

Last month, the ACC announced that it will play upcoming tournaments in either Greensboro or Charlotte for the next six years, beginning in 2025 when it welcomes decidedly non-Atlantic schools in California, Stanford, and Southern Methodist to the conference. The three schools were a combined 46-46 this past season and none were invited to the NCAA tournament from their current conferences.

 

Finding a new way to lose, the curtain came down on a grim 2023-24 season of Georgetown University basketball in a 74-56 loss to Providence College in the first round of the Big East Tournament before 19,812 at Madison Square Garden.

The Friars had something to play for, the Hoyas did not, and it showed. In comparison to the nightcap of the triple header when winless DePaul took Villanova to the buzzer in a wholly unexpected 58-57 finish, this game featured a Georgetown team to whom a few of its players had mentally checked out, either for the season, or with an eye on a new destination next fall.

Competitive for the first four minutes at 9-7, the Friars responded with an 11-0 run and a 20-7 lead at the 13 minute mark of the first half. Had Jayden Epps not been in the game, they might have had to call this in the first half. Epps scored 13 of the Hoyas' first 15 points of the game over the first nine minutes of play, but despite this impressive run the Friars scored on five of six attempts and led by 11 at the 8:04 mark, 33-22.

A cold win blew into the Garden for the Friars, ending the first half with just one field goal in the final eight minutes, but Georgetown was equally ineffective, shooting 2 for 15 to end the half and trailing 40-27 on 32 percent shooting.

Providence opened the half with five straight points and built a lead the Hoyas could never seriously challenge. Though the Hoyas shot better after halftime at 52 percent, it allowed the Friars five threes after th4re break and 50 percent shooting overall.

Georgetown had two mini-runs to narrow the score. Consecutive baskets by Epps closed to nine at the 14:12 mark, but the Hoyas missed its next six and PC answered with back to back threes at the 10:48 mark, 55-41. A 9-2 Georgetown run in the final six minutes brought the Hoya to within eight with 3:40 to play, 64-56, whereupon it promptly too one shot for th4e rest of the game, while Devin Carter scored five straight to put any misplaced hopes out of reach. The jilted PC student section got in a final round of off-color jeers at Ed Cooley as he opted not to empty the Georgetown bench as the Friars coasted to the win.

The world will little note nor long remember this game, but two items deserve recognition. First, a 30 point effort by Jayden Epps did what the rest of his team could not: compete. Epps became the first Georgetown player since 1996 to score 30 in a Big East game, finished the season with seven 30 point games in a season, fifth most in school history for a career and a number matched in a single season by only two other men: Reggie Williams and Allen Iverson.

"It's good to be in the company and beside a name like Allen Iverson. You know how great he was," said Epps, who was not born when Iverson last played as a collegian and was only six when Iverson retired from the NBA. "Like Coach [Cooley] said, it's always good to play in this building as well. Growing up as a kid, you see so much about it, you watch games here, you hear how legendary it is. It's just a dream come true playing in this building, getting an opportunity like that, and I just got to keep working and trying to keep getting better."

Less recognition can be paid to the other memory of this game: a free throw exhibition that elicited derisive laughter from the sold out crowd. After shooting 2 for 5 as a team at halftime, the Hoyas did not take a free throw until the 10:58 mark, where Epps split a pair at the line. Three minutes later, Epps missed two, and Dontrez Styles split a pair at the 6:52 mark. From that point, the Hoyas missed an astonishing nine consecutive free throws to end the game, en route to a 4 for 19 finish, third worst for a single game in school history. While it may be adventurous that a better free throw effort may not have been determinative, missing 15 free throws and losing by 18 is yet another symbol of the sheer futility of this season and how, in hindsight, how ill-prepared this team was to face a challenging Big East.

A program defining off-season now awaits.

Here's the Georgetown half of the box score:


            MIN   2FG   3FG   FT  REB  A  PF  PTS
Starters:    
Brumbaugh    16   0-1   0-1   0-0   3  2   2    0 
Epps         40   9-15  3-8   3-11  3  4   2   30
Styles       35   3-4   0-3   1-5   9  1   3    7
Heath        34   0-3   1-2   0-0   2  3   2    3
Cook         23   1-4   0-0   0-0   6  1   3    2
Reserves:
Bacote        1   0-0   0-0   0-0   0  0   0    0
Fielder      17   1-2   2-5   0-2   2  0   3    8
Massoud       7   0-1   1-2   0-0   1  0   0    3
Bristol      27   0-0   1-3   0-1   2  0   3    3
Team Rebounds                       7
DNP: Asadallah, Montgomery, McKenna, Mutombo, Kazor      
TOTALS      200 14-30  8-24  4-19  35 11  18   56  

 

First year Georgetown assistant Ivan Thomas was been named head coach at Hampton University.

A native of Norfolk, Thomas joins a Hampton program that finished 9-24 under 15th year head coach Edward Joyner, who was fired last week. It's the first college head coaching assignment for Thomas, who spent eight years with Ed Cooley (seven at PC, one at Georgetown) after 13 years as a high school coach.

"Ivan is one of the most dynamic, energetic leaders of men I know," said Cooley in a statement. "He has the ability to connect, motivate, and teach the game of basketball and life. Ivan is a relationship person who thrives on opportunity. His ability to coach will inspire many recruits to want to play for him. I am very proud of his vision and persistence."

Thomas is the first Georgetown assistant to be directly elevated to a head coaching position since 2018 and is one of three former Georgetown assistants currently serving as a head coach, along with Mike Riley at UDC and Kevin Broadus at Morgan State.