Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

Here’s a piece of trivia from Big East history. Even with all of the expansion and then changes of membership, the Big East has had 7 different member programs place a team(s) in the Elite 8 or better in each decade of it’s existence. So far, 3 years into the 2020s, there are three: UConn, Villanova, and Creighton.

1980s
Georgetown (80, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89)
Villanova (82, 83, 85, 88)
St. John’s (85)
Providence (87)
Seton Hall (89)
Syracuse (87)
BC (82)

1990s
UConn (90, 95, 98, 99)
Syracuse (96)
St. John’s (91, 99)
Seton Hall (91)
Georgetown (96)
Providence (97)
BC (94)

2000s
UConn (02, 04, 96, 09)
Syracuse (03)
Villanova (06, 09)
Georgetown (07)
Pitt (09)
West Virginia (05)
Louisville (08, 09)

2010s
Villanova (16, 18)
UConn (11)
Louisville (12, 13)
West Virginia (10)
Syracuse (12)
Marquette (13)
Xavier (17)

2020s
UConn (23)
Villanova (22)
Creighton (23)

It’s been fun playing with Big East history. Something that stands out is how unsuccessful teams have been after they leave the Big East. Only 2 of the teams who made the Elite 8 out of the BE returned to that level after they left the league:

Syracuse (2013, 2016)
Louisville (2015)

Both returned to the Elite 8 within a year or 2 on the heels of teams which had been successful in the BE. Syracuse did it again a few years later. Blithe programs have declined since then.

UConn (2014) is another program that made it back to championship level within a year after leaving, but they too declined after repeating as champs. When they rejoined the BE, they were again able to rebuild their program to a championship level.

The following teams which made it to the Elite 8 from the Big to East have not done it again since leaving:

BC
West Virginia
Pitt

It just seems that Big East competition and the MSG tournament do an excellent job of preparing teams for the NCAA tournament.