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Syracuse's four-game run to the 2006 Big East tourney title was quite remarkable.

Who's afraid of the big, bad tourney?

By Dana O'Neil
ESPN.com

In 2006, Syracuse rewrote the Big East record books, becoming the first team in the league's history to win four games in four days and capture the conference tournament.

The Orange, riding the crest of Gerry McNamara's magic, were rightly lauded as a team of survivors. Winning back-to-back-to-back-to-back games in a league stuffed to the gills with talent, is only slightly less difficult than forcibly eating questionable bugs to earn $1 million from a television show.

And now Syracuse -- and Pitt, which replicated the Big East tourney feat last season -- are nothing more than a bunch of slugs. Four games in four days?

Puh-lease. Like a game of hopscotch.

Welcome to 2009, where the Big East tournament will be the biggest beast in basketball, a five-day hoopfest where the equivalent of one region of the NCAA tournament bracket (16 teams in all) will vie for the conference's tournament crown.

Member schools' university presidents voted this year to include all Big East schools in the conference tournament, ending a three-season run (that coincided with the league's expansion) that left four teams out of the March mix in New York.

"It gives everybody a chance to compete, and that's what everybody wants," said Rutgers coach Fred Hill, whose team didn't make it to New York last season. "If you haven't had the best season, there's a light at the end of the season to salvage your season."

But putting together this gargantuan enterprise doesn't come without misgivings, including concerns from the commissioner who has shepherded the league for 18 years. Mike Tranghese has steered the Big East through every sort of bump and potential pitfall, including the expansion to 16 teams that everyone argued was unwieldy. Now set to retire at the end of the season, Tranghese isn't sold on this latest Big East wrinkle.

For four days, the Big East tournament is on par with the hottest Broadway show as one of the toughest tickets to get a hold of in New York City. The building is rarely empty and never quiet, a raucous atmosphere from the first tip at noon on Wednesday until the championship game on Saturday night.

Tranghese worries that schools at the bottom of the league barrel won't bring the same fan numbers on Tuesday night and more, that other schools' fans -- particularly those from the top four seeds who don't play until Thursday -- will use Tuesday as nothing more than a travel day and not scoop up the tickets.

"How do we get them into the building on Tuesday?" said Tranghese, who voted against expanding to 16 teams. "We usually sell them in packets. That's our challenge, to put people in the stands on Tuesday, to create an environment."

There's also the notion that by inviting everyone, the regular season becomes about as exciting as T-ball, where there are no losers. Two years ago, Notre Dame hosted DePaul in the regular-season finale, with each team teetering at 5-10 in the league. Winner goes to New York; loser to the sofas. In front of a packed Joyce Center, the game came down to the last shot, with Draelon Burns' missed 3-pointer signaling the end for the Blue Demons and a new beginning for the Irish.

Will that same end-of-the-season fury be created, Tranghese wonders, if the only thing at stake is an 11-seed in the tournament versus a 14?

"It won't have the same significance," he said. "It can't."

Of course, with NCAA tournament bids on the line, there are far more pressing concerns to teams and coaches than empty seats. The Big East jammed eight teams into this year's NCAA tournament bracket, the most of any conference in the country.

Early indications this season are that the league could make a legitimate argument for nine squads (Connecticut, Georgetown, Louisville, Notre Dame, Marquette, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Villanova and West Virginia).

What happens if one of those teams is knocked off by the 15th- or 16th-place team in the league?

Or more likely, what if the 10th-place team sitting decidedly on the bubble when the tournament opens, loses to the winner of a Tuesday game?

Dana O'Neil covers college basketball for ESPN.com and can be reached at espnoneil@live.com.

In a twist of cruel irony, could the league weaken its NCAA tournament status with its own postseason?

"Yeah, it could hurt you; you could lose," said Villanova coach Jay Wright, whose eighth-place Big East team played its way into the NCAA tourney with a first-round win over Syracuse in New York last season. "There are a lot of potential negatives but so what? We can't be afraid of games."

Five things to watch in '08-09

By Dana O'Neil
ESPN.com

• Can Keno Davis do a Drake at Providence?
Keno Davis knows the knock on Providence by heart -- you can't win there, not with Syracuse and Connecticut breathing down your recruiting neck, not with subpar facilities, not with a Catholic non-football budget in the world of power basketball.

He knows it because he's living it now and because he lived it before; just insert the word Drake for Providence.

"All we heard was how strong the [Missouri] Valley was, how we were lucky to be in the conversation with Creighton and Southern Illinois," said Davis, tabbed to replace Tim Welsh in April. "I don't think we're in that situation at Providence. There are some doubters, I know, but the people around here -- the administration, everyone -- they want a strong academic college and successful athletic programs. Hopefully I can benefit from being in the right place at the right time."

Davis, the easy choice for coach of the year honors last season, certainly knows the formula well. At Drake he used seasoned veterans to turn the Valley on its ear and make the previously unknown school the story of the year. At Providence he has an entire roster returning, including injured point guard Sharaud Curry.

Davis isn't kidding himself. He knows the Big East isn't the Valley and turning around Providence, in a jammed, top-heavy league, will be a lot more work than it was to turn around Drake. The Friars haven't been a factor since 2004, the last time they made the NCAA tournament. They haven't won an NCAA tournament game since 1997.

"These guys are very open and excited about their senior year," Davis said. "Sometimes with players, it takes until their senior years for them to understand how to motivate themselves. That's what I have now. We have seniors, but they don't think anything is guaranteed. No one feels like it's their turn. They want to work and they want to win.''

• Will A.J. Price return to form?
Just how vital the Connecticut point guard is to the Huskies was made painfully obvious during the NCAA tournament. Price tore his ACL minutes into UConn's first-round game against 13th-seeded San Diego, and the Huskies promptly exited the tournament. Now the Huskies' top 10 ranking seems to hinge on Price's health.

Price, who has endured more than Job in his collegiate career, is on track for a September return, but the question is whether he'll be the same guard this year as he was before the injury. By March, Price was averaging 14.5 points and 5.8 assists per game, the kind of numbers Jim Calhoun expected when he first recruited the point guard out of Amityville, N.Y.

The good news for Price is that he has some help so he doesn't have to rush. Rookie Kemba Walker, who starred for the Under-18 team, is a more than capable temporary replacement and could, in the long run, allow Price to slide over to his more natural 2-guard spot. Price shot 37 percent from beyond the arc last season, and the combination of the two guards together might be even more powerful than Price all by himself.

• Can a team climb out of the Big East basement?
Yes, but not overnight. Fred Hill sat on the bench when Villanova, never a Big East basement dweller, brought in a top recruiting class in Randy Foye, Allan Ray, Curtis Sumpter and Jason Fraser. Everyone expected instant results. Those Wildcats took two trips to the NIT before reaching the NCAA tournament as juniors and the Elite Eight in their final season.

Hill, now the Rutgers head coach, believes there's a lesson to be learned there, and it's not necessarily a popular one: Patience is rewarded in the Big East. Other leagues can enjoy one-hit wonders, teams that come from nowhere to sudden success. Not so, Hill said, in a league that boasts some of greatest basketball traditions in the country, benches filled with Hall of Fame coaches and recruiting that is every bit as competitive as the games on the court.

"It's very difficult to climb the ladder,'' Hill said. "Everyone in this league has great players. If you have a great recruiting class, so does everyone else. That just puts you on a level playing field. What you have to do is have back-to-back classes and let them grow together and develop. It's very hard to win with freshmen in this league. Even Carmelo Anthony was surrounded by great players."

Hill, who knows fans that have been waiting since 1991 for a Rutgers NCAA tournament bid are itchy, believes he's close to making that sort of turnaround in New Jersey. He has savvy veterans (J.R. Inman) and talented rookies (McDonald's All-American Mike Rosario), but he also knows that a great year for his program still could equate to nothing better than an 11th-place finish.

"Eleventh place, 10th place, that could be a very good year for us," Hill said. "Believe me, no one wants to accelerate the process more than a coach. I would love to turn things around overnight, but in this conference it's impossible."

• Will Luke Harangody repeat as Big East Player of the Year?
It's gonna be tough. Harangody deservedly earned the honors over preseason favorite Roy Hibbert last season. Harangody's numbers -- 23.3 points and 11.3 rebounds in conference play -- not only were ridiculously impressive, but what Harangody meant to the Irish's success couldn't be measured.

But you can bet the double-teams Harangody saw by midseason last season will come in a steady stream this season. His production on occasion, suffered by the extra attention, and he can ill afford to get frustrated this season, not with a loaded Notre Dame team that returns everyone but Rob Kurz.

Harangody also will have more competition for Big East Player of the Year this season, what with a bevy of talented players bypassing the NBA for another year in college -- Connecticut's Hasheem Thabeet, Syracuse's Jonny Flynn, Louisville's Terrence Williams and Earl Clark and Marquette's Jerel McNeal -- all could give Harangody a run for the honors.

If Harangody is looking for inspiration, he need only head over to the Irish's trophy case. The last player to win back-to-back top honors in the conference was Notre Dame's Troy Murphy, who was named player of the year in 2000 and 2001.

• Will the Big East top its own record with nine teams in the NCAA tournament?
The tournament was Big East top heavy last season, with eight teams earning bids and three making it to the Sweet 16.

That could be chump change. Granted, judging teams by their preseason rosters is as flimsy as the paper the rosters are printed on, but it's still easy to make an argument for nine NCAA-worthy teams (and even nine preseason Top 25 worthy teams) without breaking a sweat: Connecticut, Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Villanova and West Virginia.

What separates the Big East is that unlike a lot of leagues, the conference wasn't decimated by a mass exodus to the NBA. Thabeet came back to UConn; Williams and Clark remained at Louisville; Harangody is back with Notre Dame; McNeal, Dominic James and Wesley Matthews will suit up for Marquette again; West Virginia might have lost Joe Alexander, but added Devin Ebanks; Georgetown mixes Greg Monroe in with Austin Freeman; Villanova has its entire roster back; and Syracuse, despite losing Donte Greene, still can count on Jonny Flynn.

When the league first expanded to 16 teams, coaches fretted they'd be punished for their size, losing spots on the NCAA tournament bracket. Turns out, bigger can be better.

If I were commish …

By Andy Katz
ESPN.com

There is no indication that the league is going to dissolve into two fractions: the football schools and non-Division I football schools. Everything seems good right now with the league and the decision to move to 16 teams in the Big East tournament. But there are a few things to tinker with in terms of scheduling.

Currently, each team plays every Big East team once and three teams twice. There should be a computer-driven (i.e. random) way to select the three repeat opponents. That way, there can be no incorrect guessing about which teams will be better than others, and there can be no complaining about the inequity of scheduling the best Big East teams as repeat opponents.

2007-08 Big East Standings

	Overall record	Big East record
Georgetown*	27-5	15-3
Louisville*	24-8	14-4
Notre Dame*	24-7	14-4
Connecticut*	24-8	13-
West Virginia*	24-10	11-7
Marquette*	24-9	11-7
Pitt*	26-9	10-8
Villanova*	20-12	9-9
Syracuse^	19-13	9-9
Cincinnati	13-18	8-10
Seton Hall	17-15	7-11
Providence	15-16	6-12
DePaul	11-19	6-12
St. John's	11-19	5-13
South Florida	12-19	3-15
Rutgers	11-20	3-15

*NCAA tournament
^NIT berth

For all the Big East news and notes, check out the league page.