In late November of 2010, the Big East announced they would be once again expanding the conference by adding Texas Christian University, which led to many questions from concerned basketball fans. How would the basketball tournament work with 17 teams? Would a school leave the conference to keep the balance? Would TCU make the conference better or hinder its progress?
Well, luckily for Setonian readers, I will answer the question of Texas Christian’s worth to the Big East and how I think the conference can realign itself in order to accommodate the new program.
Let’s begin with a little background of Texas Christian athletics. The private, Christian university is located in Fort Worth, Texas and boasts a student body of about 8,700 students, give or take. That will make TCU the 10th largest student body in the Big East, just a few hundred students ahead of Notre Dame. It will also be one of the youngest schools in the Big East; specifically the sixth youngest, having opened in 1873, three years after both Syracuse and St. John’s opened their doors.
TCU has no trouble being one of the newer little guys in a big pond, as it’s already the second smallest school in the Mountain West Conference ahead of the United States Air Force Academy, and has only been a part of the Mountain West for six years.
What else should we know about the program? Since we are discussing its basketball worth, I will avoid discussing its football prowess (even though we all love TCU alumnus, LaDainian Tomlinson). Here are some TCU basketball vitals from the past five years.
W/L Records
2009-10: 13-19 overall, 5-11 conference
2008-09: 14-17 overall, 5-11 conference
2007-08: 16-16 overall, 6-10 conference
2006-07: 13-17 overall, 4-12 conference
2005-06: 6-25 overall, 2-14 conference
Offensive/Defensive Efficiency (national rank in parenthesis)
2009-10: 104.2 adjusted offense (134), 64.8 adjusted defense (277)
2008-09: 101.4 adjusted offense (168), 98.0 adjusted defense (108)
2007-08: 99.7 adjusted offense (195), 100.4 adjusted defense (146)
2006-07: 110.0 adjusted offense (253), 94.8 adjusted defense (67)
2005-06: 93.1 adjusted offense (288), 100.1 adjusted defense (145)
Based on the numbers, it’s painfully obvious that they are simply not a good basketball school. Sure they have seven appearances in the NCAA Tournament, but of those seven appearances they have never made it past the second round. Their last tournament appearances came in 1998, when they lost in the opening round to Florida State.
Will they contribute anything to the Big East?
Actually, I think they can. In fact, I would go as far as saying they could possibly contribute more to the conference in their first five years than what we have seen from the likes of South Florida. South Florida has the largest enrollment of any Big East program, yet they are bottoms in attendance, have only gone dancing twice and remain the only Big East University to never make it to a Final Four.
There is one thing Texas Christian has that I like: location.
Deep in the heart of Texas, football is still king of the college sporting world. However basketball in the Lone Star State is still quite popular and remains a hotbed for recruiting talented high school players. Texas is always well represented on the recruiting trail, as seen in the following breakdown from Scout.com’s Top 100 Recruits since 2005:
Number of Top 100 Recruits from Texas*
2010: 6 (Perry Jones III, Tony Mitchell, Cameron Clark, Phil Pressey, Michael Cobbins, Tobi Oyedeji)
2009: 6 (Tommy Mason-Griffin, Shawn Williams, Junior Cadougan, Nolan Dennis, Roger Franklin, Erik Williams)
2008: 5 (Willie Warren, J’Mison Morgan, Anthony Jones, J’Covan Brown, Philip McDonald)
2007: 4 (DeAndre Jordan, Anthony Randolph, Gary Johnson, Jai Lucas)
2006: 8 (Darrell Arthur, Damion James, DJ Augustin, Hasheem Thabeet, Bryan Davis, Michael Washington, Dexter Pittman, Nic Wise, Donald Sloan, Josh Lomers)
2005: 9 (Gerald Green, CJ Miles, Byron Eaton, Roderick Flemings Fendi Onobun, Kevin Rogers, Jovan Adams, Henry Dugat, Terrel Harris)
* – Not one of these recruits wound up at Texas Christian University
There are certainly some impressive names on those lists. What really interests me is the number of guys on that list who stayed close to home, and by close to home I mean in Texas or in a state which borders Texas (Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico). There are 38 guys on that list. Of those 38 players listed, 28 of them wound up at schools in Texas or a bordering state.
There are four major conference basketball schools in the state of Texas: Texas Longhorns, Texas Tech Red Raiders, Texas A&M Aggies, and Baylor Bears. Texas Christian, by joining the Big East, will become the fifth major conference college basketball program in the country.
Whether the program’s past has been shaky or not, this undoubtedly adds to their clout and adds yet another local program for Texas high school basketball players to consider. This gives student athletes in the state a legitimate fifth option to dwell on, especially given the quality opponents they will face in conference play. Texas basketball is currently centric to the Big 12 Conference, but by adding the Horned Frogs, the Big East puts itself in a position to grab southern recruits that would otherwise consider Big 12 programs.
All in all, I think the situation is not as terrible as everyone has made it out to be. Do I want to add another team to the Big East? Probably not, but this is definitely not going to be the worst thing that has ever happened to this conference. I think Texas Christian will struggled for a little bit, but in due time I have faith that their location and their resources will prevail, allowing them to float around the lower middle tier of Big East basketball.
While most people certainly don’t like expanding a conference that is already considered clogged up as it is, I think the situation is a bit overblown. I may not have all the answers (ie: how will the addition affect revenue and traveling?), however I do think I have a simple remedy for the Big East’s realignment and conference tournament issues.
It’s becoming pretty apparent that the Big East, despite being one of the premiere college basketball conferences in the nation, is a bit crowded. The addition of TCU just adds to the ongoing headache, which will surely be exacerbated by the thought of a 17 team conference tournament. Mind you, the Big East literally just changed its conference tournament strategy last year by allowing all 16 teams to participate instead of just the top 12 schools. So what do we do now?
I think the strategy for the future of the Big East is pretty simple: sort teams into two divisions based on geography.
The great thing about the Big East right now is there is actually a somewhat even split in regards to geographical location. Several other conferences are already using divisions to separate their teams, such as the Southland, Mid-American, and Sun Belt. The only major conference to currently divide its teams is the SEC.
Before we move on to what the divisions look like, let’s look at Big East representation by state (including TCU).
Schools in the Big East by state
Pennsylvania, 2
New Jersey, 2
New York, 2
Washington, D.C., 1
Indiana, 1
Wisconsin, 1
West Virginia, 1
Kentucky, 1
Florida, 1
Illinois, 1
Ohio, 1
Rhode Island, 1
Connecticut, 1
Texas, 1
Just by looking at it, it’s obvious how much disparity there is around the entire conference. No state has more than two Big East schools in it. One school isn’t even in a state! Most of the major conferences are like this, while the smaller conferences tend to occupy a smaller area of states, however the Big East seems to stand out more than any other due to the fact that by 2012 it will have 17 schools. No other conference comes close in that regard.
Going back to what I briefly mentioned before, the large geographical disparity helps the conference if they were to follow through on what I believe to be their best option, creating divisions. The transition would be pretty smooth. Basically, the divisions would be called “Atlantic” and “Central.” I chose the names because they make the most sense. The teams in the Atlantic division would be farther East, closer to the Atlantic Ocean, while the teams in the Central division would be closer to the Midwest or the center of the country. This is how I would split them up:
Atlantic
Syracuse
Villanova
Connecticut
Georgetown
Seton Hall
St. Johns
Rutgers
South Florida
Providence
Central
West Virginia
Pittsburgh
Marquette
Louisville
Notre Dame
Cincinnati
DePaul
TCU
That gives us nine teams in the Atlantic division and eight teams in the Central division. The best part about this is that neither division is top heavy by looking at the status of each program. Each division has four elite programs at the top, two teams which are typically conference bottom feeders, and a few solid programs in the middle.
Now that we have our divisions, how would the tournament work? This is also somewhat simple. If you have ever watched the SEC conference tournament, it’s pretty similar to that. The top six seeds from each division are allowed to play in the tournament, with the bottom two seeds in the Central and the bottom three seeds in the Atlantic missing out on the tournament. The top two seeds from each division would receive a first round bye.
The seeds would look like this, with the letter representing the first initial of the division and the number representing the seed of the team:
Credit John Lopiano
I think this format would work wonders, and an already competitive conference becomes even more competitive as teams vie for a spot in the Big East tournament. I was never a fan of all teams making the tournament despite the fact that it gave underdogs a chance for a glory. I think a 12 team tournament in this format is the best solution to having 17 teams and the easiest possible way to avoid a crowded conference tournament without having to sacrifice the excitement.
This blog post was written by Setonian Staff Writer John Lopiano. He can be reached at john.lopiano@student.shu.edu
Setonian Says... 