Big East bids farewell to tradition in last conference tournament

Eric Prisbell, USA TODAY Sports | USATODAY

The final Big East tournament as we know it will serve as a five-day, last-call toast to the most extraordinary and distinctive conference tournament in the sport's history, a college hoops eulogy with blunt New York flavor.

Old-timers will trade tales of their favorite Lou Carnesecca sweater, their most memorable John Thompson scowl. Twenty-somethings will brag about where they sat for the 2009 six-overtime marathon between UConn and Syracuse even if they never stepped foot inside the world's most famous arena that night.

Most will curse the football-driven realignment that threatens to diminish a sport that doubles as the heartbeat for a city.

They will at the same time applaud the departing Catholic 7 -- DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Villanova -- for managing to retain the Big East name, the Madison Square Garden venue for a postseason tournament and, most importantly, an authentic and elite basketball league.

"It's kind of nostalgia for me," Louisville coach Rick Pitino told USA TODAY Sports, "as someone who grew up seven, eight streets from Madison Square Garden. After next season, (Louisville) won't really be going back again to play" there.

Pitino, whose Big East days go back to 1985-87 at Providence, says the breakup is "very disappointing. It was the greatest basketball alignment in the history of college basketball.

"And all because a few people blew up our TV deal, and then they wind up moving themselves, everything was broken up … Football is running our country right now. It is running rampant."

Louisville will remain with the conference currently known as the Big East for one more season before leaving for the ACC. There, the Cardinals will join Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame in a league that has forever been rooted in North Carolina.

Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who calls the Big East's 34-year life an "epic" story, is heartened that the Orange will be joined in the ACC by other Big East schools. He understands the tradition of the ACC tournament but knows quaint Greensboro, N.C., will never be confused with the bustling Big Apple, where scores of Syracuse fans flock every March just to watch Big East tournament games from hotels or bars.

"I have nothing against Greensboro like people think I have," Boeheim said. "It's a nice city. I like to go there. But it's not New York. C'mon. Be realistic. I got letters from people in Greensboro saying I was right.

"Where would you rather go for four days? Any city is a tough sell compared with going to New York for four or five days."

Nothing like the Madison Square Garden atmosphere

The Garden, which has hosted the Big East tournament since 1983, was the best permanent venue for a tournament in the sport's history, Boeheim said, showcasing an event both gritty and grand.

The court felt like a stage, on which players continued rivalries often forged long ago on rough-and-tumble concrete playgrounds throughout the city's boroughs. The one-of-a-kind coaches who exchanged four-letter words during all those marathon offseason coaches' meetings matched wits and Hall of Fame careers on the sidelines.

The implications were always large, whether it was in 1985, when three schools wound up in the Final Four, or in 2011, when ninth-place UConn rode irrepressible Kemba Walker to a conference tournament title and then a national title.

"Everyone has talked about how conference tournaments and NCAA tournaments have become so big, almost too big. It almost overshadows the 31 games we play," Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said. "The Big East tournament has been a big part of that: the setting, the television, the timing, the competitive games. All of that has made it bigger than the regular season to a lot of people. ... In that short period of time, it takes over the nation."

And when the four semifinalists collide on a Friday night at the center of the world's most influential city, "It is like the Final Four," said basketball connoisseur Larry Brown, who said he always found the Big East tournament intoxicating when he used to coach the New York Knicks. The thud, thud, thud of a basketball is as much a soundtrack of Manhattan as car horns and expletives.

Brown said he would not have taken the SMU job last year if he did not believe the Mustangs, now in Conference USA, were headed to a power conference. The still unnamed conference they will join next season, which will include UConn, Cincinnati, Memphis and Temple, among others, will still be an elite basketball league.

But it is not exactly the league that visionary Dave Gavitt hatched in 1979 out of a small group of Northeast-based, basketball-centric schools. And still to be undetermined is where the conference tournament will be staged.

"I just hate where college athletics is going," Brown said. "I knew what that conference meant to (the late) Dave Gavitt and what it meant to college basketball. To see it break up, not because we are going into it, but to see it break up is real troubling.

"All I know is next year I am pretty confident we will be in a great Big East. I don't know where the future lies. So our goal is to be competitive next year and then be a partner people will want because of our football program and our basketball program and our academics and location."

'Miracle' Big East stayed together this long

The one thing Pitino said he can now appreciate is what he called newfound transparency by university presidents across the country. Previously, Pitino said, they would say conference realignment and the destruction of rivalries and tradition were about the best interests of the student-athlete. Pitino said now, they at least say it is indeed all about one other thing: money.

In recent years college football has become a prize in television contract negotiations, far beyond what college basketball can demand, even in tradition- and talent-rich conferences such as the Big East and ACC.

Pitino said the tradition-rich Catholic 7 schools, which he says deserve the Big East name, waited too long to depart and "should have been fed up a long time ago" and broke away from the football schools.

To that point, Notre Dame coach Mike Brey said the Fighting Irish initially explored joining the Catholic 7. They could begin competition in the ACC next season.

Brey spent eight years as an assistant in the ACC, at Duke, but has come to appreciate the soul of the Big East tournament. And he said he will cherish the last one, even as he harbors disappointment over the breakup.

"Sometimes," Brey said, "I want to ask, 'Which football caveman did this to basketball? Can you tell me? I just would like to know.' "

Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin said he will savor the memory of his then 5-year-old daughter riding on the bus with him to the Big East championship last year, watching her pinch broadcaster Bill Raftery in the backside and run around on the court among Louisville assistants that Saturday night. Even as Cronin prepared to face Louisville in the title game, he felt the need to step back and absorb how special the event was.

And after this week, that significance moving forward will be forever changed, if not diminished.

"All these kids know the Big East, whatever it will become, whatever the Catholic 7 becomes, it's not the Big East of Syracuse and Georgetown and the Pearl (Syracuse guard Pearl Washington) against Patrick Ewing," Cronin said.

Georgetown, which has meant as much to the Big East as any school, will join the Catholic 7 in the new Big East next season. Xavier and Butler are also expected to begin competing in the league next fall, with the chance that other schools, perhaps Creighton, Saint Louis or Dayton, will join in the future.

That bodes well for a league intent on maintaining competitive credibility. But as Hoyas coach John Thompson III knows, there is only one Big East tournament.

"More so than any other conference tournament, more so than any other time in college basketball, that weekend in New York is special," Thompson said. "I anticipate in the future it's going to be just as great, but it's going to be different."

Boeheim said the lesson he learned in all this: football-basketball schools need to stick together and the basketball-only schools need to remain united.

In the end, he said it was a "miracle" the Big East remained together for more than three decades, playing an integral role in the sport's soaring rise in popularity in the 1980s.

"There is definitely going to be emotion. This has been 34 years of an unbelievable run and an unbelievable experience for me," Boeheim said. "Nothing could have come close to topping what the Big East has been. Nothing ever will."

Contributing: Nicole Auerbach