If you are a college basketball fan and haven’t tuned in for this year’s Big East tournament, its time to stop calling yourself a college basketball fan.  After four days and fourteen games, West Virginia and Georgetown will square off this evening for the Big East tourney crown and the automatic bid to the NCAA.  It wraps up perhaps the most highly competitive league championship tournament in NCAA history.

Greg Monroe Leads 8th-Seeded Georgetown To The Big East Championship Game

Let’s take a moment to review some of the highlights of the tournament:

• Saint Johns blowing Connecticut off the floor to register the first upset of the tournament, 73-51, and ensuring that Connecticut will not be dancing this March.
• Seton Hall blowing a 29 point second half lead with 13:36 left to Providence and escaping with an unbelievable 109-106 victory in a matchup of amazing offensive basketball.
• Cincinnati nailing its free throws with 1.8 seconds left to seal a 69-68 victory over Rutgers.
• Marquette squeaking by Saint Johns 57-55 in a back and forth second-half brawl.
• Cincinnati outrebounding Louisville 54-33 (with 28 offensive boards) to stave off and register a 69-66 upset
• Georgetown shocking top-seeded Syracuse 91-84 as Syracuse watched it’s big man Arinze Onuaku carried off the floor due to a knee injury.
• Marquette upsetting Villanova 80-76 with some late scoring success, dropping in 50 points in the second half.
• Notre Dame upsetting Pittsburgh 50-45, making its free throws down the stretch to pull out the victory.
• West Virginia hitting a three pointer at the buzzer to beat Cincinnati 54-51  after an unbelievable turnover that gave the Mountaineers the one extra opportunity for the win.
• Georgetown upsetting and demolishing Marquette 80-57.
• West Virgina winning another last minute heartstopper over Notre Dame 53-51.

All this and they still didn’t play the championship game yet.  It almost makes you feel bad for the kids on Georgetown and West Virginia as it is almost impossible for tonight’s game to live up to what has transpired in the tournament thus far.

The results of the Big East tournament this weekend are bound to lead to much controversy when the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee announces the brackets Sunday night.  There are those that will complain that the Big East is getting too many spots.  There are others that will disagree and say the Big East is being not being represented enough.

After watching this tournament, I have to side with the latter part of the argument.  It is expected that the Big East will likely send just 8 of its teams to the NCAA tournament this year.  Given the quality of basketball displayed in Madison Square Garden this week, it is a gross injustice that at-large bids will be granted to bubble teams from other major conferences that simply aren’t deserving.

Let’s take at the list of teams that are on the bubble and will likely be dancing in March:

• Illinois
• Minnesota
• Washington
• Arizona State
• Ole Miss
• Virgina Tech
• Georgia Tech

If any of these teams played in the Big East, they’d likely be the 12th seed or lower in the conference.   Most would make the case that the Big East #12 team, Connecticut would handily defeat this group of bubble teams on a consistent basis.  These bubble teams will get the nod over South Florida, Seton Hall and Cincinnati simply because they performed better in drastically weaker leagues.

Lets take a look at the Pac-10 for example.  Here is a league that will no doubt get three participants in the NCAA Tourney despite being less competitive than the MAAC or Horizon leagues.  If you took Siena, Northern Iowa or Butler and placed them in the Pac-10 this year, they win the league championship handily.  But they will get multiple at-large bids at the expense of the Big East teams.

Arizona State is the 2nd rated team in the Pac-10.  Looking back at their season, they played three tough out-of-conference games against Duke, Baylor and BYU, losing every game.  Washington played Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Georgetown.  The only game they won was against Texas A&M and that really had nothing to do with Washington, as that was the game A&M star Derrick Roland snapped his leg in half in a horrific injury that completely shocked the whole Aggies team.

Then you have Pac-10 champion California.  Here is their resume out of conference.  Blown off the court by Syracuse.  Handled with relative ease by Ohio State.  Spanked by Kansas.  Beaten by New Mexico.   Their only quality non-conference win came against Iowa State whom came in 11th place in the Big 12.

Be assured, the Pac-10 will get three representatives in the NCAA tournament regardless of how bad this conference has been this year.  While California, Arizona State and Washington get undeserving invites to the Big Dance, South Florida, Cincinnati and Seton Hall will likely be playing in the NIT.

Lets hope that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committtee was watching the same basketball games the rest of us were viewing this week in New York City and awards 11 invites to the Big East and sends the message to conferences like the Pac-10 to improve their games or don’t expect to get invited.