Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski started the rhetoric. His former assistant, Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said he believes the Big East will finish it.
Coach K said earlier this week that the ACC was the nation’s best conference, and it wasn’t even close, according to the chief Blue Devil. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who’s not quite old enough to have fought in the Civil War, responded by saying that only in the South did such a question exist.
What’s behind this seemingly unplanned war of the conferences? NCAA Tournament lobbying.
The ACC got just four teams in last season’s NCAA Tournament. The Big East got a record eight. The ACC, which had the nation’s last undefeated team until Wednesday night when Virginia Tech pulled a shocking road upset at Wake Forest, wants at least five bids. The Big East is gunning for a record nine berths.
The ACC has four teams – Wake, Duke, North Carolina, Clemson – ranked in the Top 10, though once again it looks like Clemson is repeating its tired act of getting off to a great start only to crash and burn when league play starts.
The Big East also has four teams ranked in the Top 10 – UConn, Pitt, Syracuse and Marquette. But unlike the ACC, which has no other teams ranked in the Top 25, the Big East has Georgetown, Notre Dame and Villanova. And West Virginia, which has been ranked, leads the league in scoring defense.
We know that every coach waves his league’s banner, but possibly the most objective voice belongs to Notre Dame’s Mike Brey, who was a long-time assistant at Duke before moving to Delaware and then South Bend.
“Here’s where I think we’re really different and I watched a couple of other leagues the last two nights, no one has the physical front lines that the Big East has,” Brey said. “No one has our big guys.
“I looked at some of the battles in the paint in the Big Ten and the ACC, it’s nowhere near what we just had to deal with at Louisville and at Syracuse. There is NBA size and physicality and strength on the front lines of this league over and over again, and it’s just different.”
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I hate losing. Everything is darker when you lose.”
St. John’s forward Justin Burrell, after a 76-57 loss at Villanova