Connecticut and Pittsburgh follow up after Marquette and Louisville in the conference standings. Arguably the two best teams in the conference, Connecticut is 7-1 SU while Pittsburgh is 6-1 SU. Connecticut has kind of quietly flown under the radar on the national picture as funny as that sounds considering they are ranked 3^rd in the country. But they lost at Georgetown and have since really just quietly sat in the background behind Wake, Duke and UNC. The Huskies have won 7 straight and have really begun to click as a team since Stanley Robinson joined them again. While Robinson has not provided any stat worthy numbers he has provided a spark and a legit small forward who can get up and down the court with the best of them. The Huskies though are in a similar scheduling situation to Marquette as they haven’t played an overly tough early season schedule. They won at West Virginia and at Notre Dame both impressive wins but they still have some really tough games left. They have play at Louisville, Marquette and finish their last game of the year at Pittsburgh. Additionally they have a non conference matchup with Michigan in a few weeks, a team that has shown they can take down the big dogs with wins over UCLA and Duke. I will say the longer this season as gone on the better AJ Price has played as he is coming off major knee surgery and really has begun to get things going in recent weeks. Pittsburgh is a team that has played a pretty easy early season schedule with very few non-conference tests but has played well in their big conference games thus far. They have road wins at Georgetown and at West Virginia. The interesting thing about their schedule is I think it may be the easiest out of all the top dogs in the Big East. Their toughest road challenge for the rest of the year is at Connecticut, the game is at the XL center, which crowd wise reminds me of a mid to low level NBA team’s home crowd, terrible. They also have a road test at Villanova this week and home games against Notre Dame, West Virginia and Marquette, 2 of those teams don’t travel particularly well. They finish the year at home against UConn, so it is conceivable they have the easiest schedule out of the big dogs and could finish atop the Big East standings.

The remaining teams shake out with Providence at 5-2 SU, Syracuse 5-3 SU, Villanova 3-3 SU, WVU, 3-3 SU, Georgetown 3-3 SU and Notre Dame 3-4 SU. Providence has been a nice surprise under Keno Davis and really have improved tremendously offensively as the season has progressed. However, they have a very difficult schedule down the stretch. Both Notre Dame and Georgetown are in dire need of grabbing a win. The Irish have lost 3 tough games, 2 on the road and 1 at home to UConn. They face Marquette on Big Monday this week and then have 3 straight road games including at Pittsburgh and at UCLA.  Georgetown meanwhile has lost several games in a row including on Sunday they lost to Seton Hall. The one thing none of these top 10 teams can afford to do is lose to anyone else in the conference. Their just simply isn’t room for letdowns against the poor teams of the conference and the Hoyas will need to bounce back quickly.

It will be very interesting to see how this conference shakes out as the season progresses. There may not have ever been a time in College Basketball where one conference had so much depth and I can tell you one thing; I can’t wait for the Big East Tournament, as that is going to be a lot of fun to watch!