Big East Tournament

UConn just won the Big East Tournament. That's not a huge surprise. What's surprising is that they did not have one of the single or double-byes and had to win games for 5 straight days in the best conference in college basketball in order to win it.

Bob Knight, the other day, said that he thought that winning the Big East tournament might actually be more impressive than winning the National Championship given the level of competition in that conference. I happen to agree with him in this year's case with UConn winning it. To win the National Championship, you have to win 6 games over a stretch of about 3 weeks. If you are a good team - a higher seed -then you might be able to get to the Sweet 16 before you meet another team close to your skill level. Since UConn played on the first day of the Big East Tournament, in theory they were playing teams better than them on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th days of the Tournament, all in consecutive days... and were still able to win each game. That's pretty amazing. If you compare whomever wins the National Championship's round-by-round games versus the round-by-round games that UConn just won and also consider that UConn did it in 5 consecutive days with no rest, I do think that UConn's run may prove to be harder based on level of competition faced and stamina.

Now before anyone calls me crazy, understand that I'm not saying that it's better to win the Big East Tournament than the National Championship...that's not even close to what I'm saying. Obviously the stakes are much higher in the NCAA Tournament and there is much more pressure on each and every team to elevate their game. Obviously, winning the National Championship means infinitely more than winning a conference tournament. It's almost a joke to compare the two feats in the same sentence. If you win the National Championship, no one will ever talk about whether or not you won the conference tournament that year. I get all of that. For UConn, it'll actually be quite an anticlimactic season for them because they likely won't win the National Championship. They'll then be relegated as the team that couldn't perform in the NCAA Tournament because they wore themselves out in the Big East Tournament. So, not only will it not mean as much that they only won the Big East Tournament, but they will actually be condemned to an extent for doing so.