Madison Square Garden Plays Host To Best in College Basketball .. The BIG EAST

I wrote this for the British audience of Basketball 24/7. Hope you enjoy.

Across the Pond:
Madison Square Garden Plays Host to the Best College Basketball Conference in all of the United States

Syracuse OUTLASTS Uconn in a Six-Overtime BIG EAST THRILLER

By Terry Lyons
http://www.terrylyons.com

NEW YORK, MARCH 12 – Sir Elton John called it the “World’s Greatest Venue.” U2’s Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry once said directly from the stage, “We’ve enjoyed some our very best nights as a band, here in New York.” The Concert for New York was a “Top 5” list for the greatest rock show on Earth, despite the fact in was staged at Madison Square Garden in October, 2001 and not long after one of the worst days of our lives. As a native New Yorker, now happily transplanted to Boston, Massachusetts since September, 2008, I quickly realized there was one thing I missed most about Manhattan.

I missed “The Garden,” the world’s most famous arena.

Well, I spent some serious time at my favorite arena on Thursday night when the Syracuse Orange outlasted the University of Connecticut Huskies, 127-117, in a six-overtime thriller. The game started at 9:30pm and finished up at 1:22am to become the longest game in the shot-clock era of US collegiate basketball. Prior to the Thursday night BIG EAST quarter-final game, the longest game in conference history was a 116-111 Notre Dame win over Georgetown on February 9, 2002.

The six-overtime thriller proved to be one of the very best BIG EAST games in the conference’s history. That, Basketball 24/7 fans, is one serious statement because the BIG EAST tournament is a spectacular event with a legendary history and it is an event that every sports fan should attend if they live by The Who’s insightful lyric, “Hope I die before I get old.”

The BIG EAST is that good and that much fun.

Here is a short tutorial: In 1979, although college basketball was enjoying unprecedented heights in popularity (see Indiana State with Larry Bird vs. Michigan State with Earvin “Magic” Johnson), the most popular college basketball conferences were the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) with teams such as Duke and North Carolina; the BIG TEN with powerhouses such as Michigan State, Wisconsin, and then-Coach Bobby Knight’s Ohio State; the Pac-10 with the great UCLA legacy of the 1960s and ‘70s with Coach John Wooden, all-time college player of the century Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor) and NCAA standout Bill Walton, along with a smattering of others. None of the best collegiate basketball conferences had much of a presence in New York City, after some scandalous days in the 1950s, by the way.

Then, along came Providence College athletic director Dave Gavitt, a former college coach who enjoyed success beyond his wildest dreams as the first Commissioner of the BIG EAST and later with USA Basketball resulting in a well-deserved induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts (the birthplace of the game). Gavitt joined forces with the athletic directors of a few other “independent” schools and laid out a vision which included the following tent-poles:

New York: St. John’s University
Upstate New York: Syracuse University
Boston: Boston College
Providence, RI: Providence College
Hartford, CT: University of Connecticut
North New Jersey: Seton Hall University
Washington DC: Georgetown University

A short year later, in 1980, the very important Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) market was added when Villanova University joined the conference while Pittsburgh (PA) joined in 1982.

With a ton of foresight, a lot of hard work, planning and the stroke of a few important signatures, college basketball was reborn in New York City and the rest of the northeast USA. With the BIG EAST Conference as a start-up, along came regular weekly (national television) broadcast exposure from the upstart sports and entertainment programming network of ESPN, from sold out on-campus arenas. The “Big Games” were played in the likes of The Garden, the Providence or Hartford Civic Centers, the then-Capital Center in Landover, MD – home of the NBA’s (then) Washington Bullets. BC played its big games at the wonderful Boston Garden, Villanova played at the 76ers’ Philly-based home, The Spectrum, and Syracuse built the “Carrier Dome” to house record-breaking crowds while it created record-breaking basketball awareness in Upstate New York.

The conference grew to 16 members for basketball and later added the important outposts of Chicago (DePaul) and Notre Dame (South Bend, Indiana); Cincinnati (Ohio); West Virginia; Marquette (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and South Florida. Both Miami and South Florida were ‘in and out’ conference members over the years and they were among others who joined, backed out, jumped ship or were added as associate members in sports other than men’s basketball.

Then, the bad news, the NCAA’s large eastern college football programs spread their wings and extended their budgets and the BIG East took on a college football powerhouse strategy at the cost of the original hoops havens, like Providence, Seton Hall, St. John’s and Georgetown. At that point, the smart move would have been splitting the conference in half to create “The BIG EAST” for the football mavens like Syracuse, ND, West Virginia, South Fla, Rutgers, Louisville and a couple others) and the “LITTLE EAST” schools listed above to be joined by DePaul of Chicago and maybe a replacement in the Boston area for the depart (to ACC) Boston College. Northeastern or B.U. might’ve been ripe for the taken in the sports thirsty Boston Hub.

With your BIG EAST tutorial now over, the column turns to report of a very rich history of basketball, played each year between the final conference regular season games and the start of “March Madness,” otherwise known as the annual NCAA Men’s basketball championship.

The winner of the conference championship is awarded with an ‘automatic’ bid to the NCAAs, regardless of their regular season record. That makes for some very competitive “one and done” basketball during the week of March 10-14, 2009 when all 16 BIG EAST converged on The Garden for the very first time. Until last season, only 12 teams advanced and four were not invited to the post season tournament.

To set the stage, paint a picture and add a little flavor to the event, picture a convention of college basketball fans and team boosters all traveling to New York City to take a long weekend, meet-up with old friends and watch hour upon hour of basketball.

In the 1980s, I would always take “BIG EAST” Thursday off and head to The Garden with my brother and other good friends, arriving by 11am for the Noon start of the first double-header. We would watch games, grab a beer and a bite, then head out to our favorite Greenwich Village haunts for a dinner-time snack and cold beverage. Then, it would be a sprint back up Eighth Avenue to see the 7pm and 9:30pm twin bill before sell-out crowds all day of 19,375.

Not a bad way to spend a spring day.

SOME NOTES to PONDER: The Syracuse vs. Uconn game pitted two of the conference’s original teams in their 84th all-time match-up. The Syracuse Orange now own a 49-35 advantage over Uconn … The Big East and Garden officials are "close to a contract extension" to keep the conference tournament at the world’s most famous arena and are in final discussions to extend the current agreement which expires in 2011, according to Big East Senior Associate Commissioner John Marinatto and reported today by Bloomberg News. The BIG EAST tournament has been at MSG since 1983, after its first three years as a rotating tournament hosted by the conference office but staged in conjunction with the original member schools in Providence, RI (1980), Syracuse, NY (1981) and Hartford, CT (1982)… Look out for Villanova. The suburban Philadelphia school, coached admirably by Jay Wright – a frequent junior national team coach for USA Basketball – advanced to the BIG EAST semifinals for the 16th time. Villanova is not a team to take lightly in the month of March … Marquette University finished their BIG EAST season at 24-9 and entered the tournament as the #21-ranked team in the country. Marquette is assured of getting an “At Large” bid to the NCAAs but hurt their seeding with the last second loss to ‘Nova. Marquette advanced to the Final 4 in 2003 behind the incredible performance of Dwyane Wade, now an NBA and USA Basketball champion. Marquette U is located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and is known in the USA as one of the top schools for journalism.