If the NCAA Tournament started today, the Big East would have eight teams in the Big Dance, according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi.
That’s 80 percent of the league.
“I think we have eight teams in the conference good enough to get in,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said Tuesday after his team beat St. John’s at Madison Square Garden. “….This is going to be a wild conference, a lot of really good teams.”
By contrast, Lunardi has six Big 12 teams in the tournament and five apiece from the ACC and Big Ten, with four each from the Pac-12 and SEC.
According to Lunardi, every team in the Big East sans Creighton and Marquette would make the tournament.
That includes Villanova, Seton Hall, Butler, Providence, Xavier, Georgetown, St. John’s and DePaul.
DePaul (9-7, 3-0) currently sits atop the league standings and would enter as the de facto league champ as of right now.
Kentucky, Virginia, Duke and Wisconsin would be the top four seeds if the tournament started today, Lunardi wrote, while the 2 seeds would be Louisville, Villanova, Gonzaga and Arizona.
Syracuse, defending NCAA champ UConn, Indiana and South Carolina would be the first four out.
The New York metropolitan area would have four teams in the tournament in St. John’s, Seton Hall, Hofstra and Monmouth.
