Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Big East Tournament expanding?

  • 12 teams or 16 teams.
  • four days or five days.
  • selling 38,000 more tickets.
  • upselling corporate sponsorships.
  • convincing MSG that four more games from the Big East is good for business.
Per Andy Katz' blog today, the Big East is considering moving to a full 16-team conference tournament at MSG next spring. The guys at MUScoop picked up on this one - talk about it here.

8 comments:

  1. how will this affect our top teams that have to play extra games in the tourney before going onto the NCAA?

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  2. hate this idea. the BE tourney is just about as long as it needs to be. Would you start it on Tuesday?

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  3. This reduces the importance of regular season games for both top 4 finnishers and those trying to avoid the 13-16 position.

    Arguably each BE game is critical for making the NCAAs, but having a bye or BE tourney bid to 'shoot for' adds motivation for players and fun for fans.

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  4. I agree. This is a dumb idea. But like all things in the hypocritical NCAA...money talks.

    Noooo, we can't have a national championship game!! What about the kids??!! They'll miss class!!!

    (but on a side note...we'll go ahead and add a twelveth game...)

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  5. You apparently don't understand how the tournament would be structured. The top four teams would not have to play the first two days. Teams 5-8 would not have to play the first day. It's only teams 9-16 that would play the first day. The top eight teams wouldn't have to play any more games than they do now, so there still would be value to finishing in the top four.

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  6. still you lose incentive maybe a little because you end up in the tourney no matter what . . . ::Shrug::

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  7. While I'm not in favor of this .. OTOH, if you opened to everyone, and did the #9-16s on Day 1, it would open a new race for a 1st round bye.

    Not only would there be a race for the top 4 slots (2 byes), but also the top 8 (1 bye). The 9-12 teams would also have a much harder time than they did under the old system, as they'd have to play 1 more game to win the BET than before. And .. the 5-6-7-8 teams would have an easier time than before, as they'd be playing lower seeds who could be tired.

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  8. You guys are all missing the point.

    Giving every team the opportunity to tell recruits that they are assured of playing at Madison Square Garden every single year strengthens the Big East. Leaving out four teams to begin with was boneheaded.

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