Big East basketball matchups announced
by Mike Rutherford on Jul 2, 2008 2:23 PM EDT
in Basketball
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PrintNotre Dame, West Virginia and South Florida are the three Big East teams that Louisville will play twice during the 2008-09 season, the conference announced today.
U of L's league home schedule outside of the mirror games includes tilts against Connecticut, Marquette, Pittsburgh, Depaul, Providence and Seton Hall (hey Bobby). The Cards will face Georgetown, Syracuse, Villanova, Cincinnati, Rutgers and St. John's on the road.
The dates for all of these games will be announced at a later time.
My first impression is that I'm really surprised we're not seeing a UConn/U of L home-and-home, since those teams figure to be one and two when the coaches' preseason poll is released. I figured we'd see the Cards doubling up against the Huskies, Marquette for rivalry purpose, and then someone predicted to finish near the bottom of the standings like USF.
As it is, U of L gets two games against a Notre Dame team that returns all but one player from a squad that finished third in the league a year ago, a West Virginia team that will definitely be hurt by the departure of Joe Alexander, but which brings back a solid core of players and brings in perhaps the best recruiting class in school history, and a South Florida squad which, well, appears to be the worst team in the league once again.
I'm disappointed that we're not getting a series with a traditional rival like Marquette or Cincinnati, but I suppose the league is attempting to push the budding U of L/WVU rivalry, and that's understandable, especially since both games figure to be competitive.
It's impossible to gauge the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual league schedules at this point, because there are simply too many teams in the Big East that look amazing on paper. We're all going to be privy to outstanding basketball almost every single night from January through early March. It's going to be exciting, fun and frustrating all at the same time.
You know what's not exciting or fun, but extremely frustrating? The fact that today is July 2.
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I Guess We're Stuck
It looks like we broke the law of unintended consequences when UofL and the vestiges of Conference USA joined the Big East. Lets face it, the Big East is not a conference, it is an Intergalactic Federation. There are so many teams that, by necessity, rivalry’s had to suffer. We probably knew that goin’ in. We probably realized that sometimes “less is more,” but were afraid to be left out in the cold. Geographically, the league is a joke, with the “eastern” environs reaching to Milwaukee. Where will we expand next? Montana State? Catalina Island? Katmandu?.....Now that’s east!
Solutions? Probably not. We could split the league into two divisions based on geography. Some, but not all, of our natural rivals would be in our division. We would play the teams in our own division home and home every year. We would play all the teams in the other division once each year. I think that adds up to 22 games instead of the current 18. That’s a lot, yeah, but we could knock off a couple of the early tilts, maybe (just as the Daytona 500 is the most important and FIRST NASCAR event) even opening the season with UK.
Playing Marquette only once is like the Yankees hosting the Red Sox, but never having to play in Fenway park….with the cry “Wait till we get you back at our place,” hollow. Cincy is a traditional rival for us. DePaul as well. Yes, we had that great OT tilt with WVU in ‘05 but no real history with them. History and tradition is enhanced when teams play each other often.
Chance of this ever happening? Let’s put it this way: it’s a round number.
I know I’m not telling anybody something they didn’t already know, but for me,, at least, there is always the feeling that the league, though very good, is not all that it could be.
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