Big East Media Day Poll and Notes: Providence Picked 7th by the League's Coaches, Bryce Hopkins 1st Team All Big East, Taking Stock of which programs are annually overrated and underrated on Media Day
A deep dive into which Big East programs are traditionally overlooked or overrated, and tracking NCAA Tournament appearances, seeding, records, All Americans, and more since realignment in 2013
Happy Big East Media Day!
The league’s coaches have picked Providence to finish seventh in the Big East this year. That’s the same spot PC found itself in prior to the 2021-22 campaign in which they won the Big East regular season title. It also marks the second lowest preseason pick for the Friars since the league realigned in 2013 (9th in 2016, 7th in 2021).
Bryce Hopkins was named Preseason First Team All Big East, after being one of two unanimous First Team selections at the end of last season. Devin Carter was named Preseason Honorable Mention.
Marquette’s Tyler Kolek is the Preseason Player of the Year, while the Golden Eagles were selected to win the league for the second consecutive season. Only Marquette (7) and Creighton (4) received first place votes.
Of course, one of the fun outcomes of today are fans and coaches complaining about how they are disrespected on an annual basis. This rite of fall led me to start tracking which programs have the most legitimate gripe about being consistently undervalued on Media Day.
Here at Friar Basketball we have been monitoring predicted finishes on Media Day and contrasting them with a program’s Big East Tournament seeding to come up with a plus/minus system to see which programs have actually been undervalued the most (i.e. a third place finish in a year in which a team was predicted to come in fifth, would result in a +2). The numbers for Villanova and DePaul don’t show much variance because of where they are typically predicted, and where they usually end up, so this year I’ve also included the number of seasons in which a team finished higher or lower than its predicted finish.
Below, you will see that breakdown, as well as a variety of numbers that tell the story of how each Big East program has fared since realignment in 2013 (NCAA Tournament records, average NCAA Tournament seeding, overall and conference records, highest AP ranking, final AP ranking, AP All Americans, Big East POY award winners, etc).
*All of the numbers below are as members of the Big East, so UConn is only included over the past three years.
Which teams have the best “plus/minus” in regard to where they were predicted to finish versus their actual Big East Tournament seeding?
Most underrated on Big East Media Day:
Creighton: +13
Providence: +7
Seton Hall: +4
Most overrated on Big East Media Day:
Georgetown: -15
St. John’s: -7
Xavier: -6
In fairness to Xavier, they have finished higher than their predicted Big East Media Day ranking in four of the ten seasons since realignment. That’s the third best total behind Creighton (six) and Providence (five). Xavier’s minus five in 2017, minus four in 2020, and minus five in 2022 really hurt their score.
St. John’s has only finished better than it’s predicted finish once.
Teams that have finished worse than predicted on a per-season basis? Georgetown has finished lower in six of ten seasons, followed by Marquette (5), Butler (5), Seton Hall (4), and Xavier (4).
NCAA Tournament Records Since Realignment:
Villanova: 22-6
UConn: 6-2
Xavier: 9-6
Creighton: 7-6
Butler: 5-4
Providence: 3-7
Seton Hall/Marquette: 1-4
Georgetown: 1-2
St. John’s: 0-2
DePaul: 0-0
Average NCAA Tournament Seed:
Villanova: 2.5
UConn: 5.3
Xavier: 5.8
Creighton: 6.1
Marquette: 6.2
Butler: 7.25
Georgetown: 8
Seton Hall: 8.2
Providence: 8.8
St. John’s: 10
DePaul: DNQ
Number of Seasons Ranked in the Final AP Top 25 Poll:
Villanova: 9
Xavier/Creighton/Butler: 3
UConn: 2
Providence/Seton Hall/Marquette/Georgetown: 1
St. John’s/DePaul: 0