Who will be the Big East favorite for 2014?

[Noonzy]

As long as you don't hire an agent, you can declare and then withdraw before a certain date and come back. I think the deadline to withdraw is sometime in May. From comments Doug made to Jim Rome this week, I think he intends to go pro. The loss of Gibbs, McDermott and Echinique will be a lot to overcome next year.

I thought this rule changed this year. If you declare by April 28th or whatever the date is, there is no going back even if you haven't hired an agent.

[Awilhelmscream]

Is Otto Porter coming back?

Can't pick a favorite until I hear the answer.

Right now, though, even though I'm an X fan, gotta say Marquette.

I'm a Marquette guy and we don't lose much but what we do lose is our PG. Cadougan isn't a world beater but he's a solid PG. That being said, we have a guy that's played admirably I. Spot duty and another guy coming in that's got the potential to be a stud PG. MARQ being the favorite is going to hinge completely on our PG play. I think Nova is going to take a huge step forward. I'll take the cop out and name the top 4 instead of a favorite. GT, MARQ, Nova, and Butler.

[Hoops]

I may not be relating this quite exactly as it was told. My understanding is that from the NBA's collective bargaining agreement, the league took the need for a draft-eligible kid to hire an agent out of the equation for at least the first 20 kids selected. The reason is because the first 20 selected in the NBA draft receive guaranteed money set by the league and a 3 year contract - with the first 2 years guaranteed money as set by the league which is pretty substantial by my pay-grade, and that the 3rd year is an option year then negotiated by the athlete (likely by now the agent) and the team and if the amount is not agreed upon, then athlete can buy out the 3rd year option out and go to the open market.
What made sense too me was that some pretty good players have declared in the past, and then later withdrew and returned.
The guaranteed money is substantial enough that a kid selected one of the top 20 would most likely would take it. But as you go further into the draft, the guaranteed money and options become less attractive and are even less years and the need to hire an agent to look after the players interest is greater, which after the agent is in the kids life – he’s gone from college life...

[X- Marks the Top]

If Sampson and Harrison return we should be a top 5 team at the very least - depending on how good Orlando Sanchez is there's a real chance we could be really competitive (deep NCAA run) If one declares and the other cant get his head straight it could be another long season for us.

One thing that's for sure is it going to be really competitive. Georgetown should be as good as ever, Providence & Villanova improve even more with experience. The three incoming teams could be in for a culture shock when they join.

Culture shock???? Maybe with the new arenas and such. Yea playing against the likes of gtown, st.johns,Villanova, Marquette will be great. But in no way do I see X being in for a couple long years. We would be making our 5th sweet 16 in the last 6 years if we didn't lose our starting five this past summer.

We should have had back our pg, mark Lyons who is leading Arizona on a nice season with our X coach Sean miller. He was a headache and I guess it grew weary on our coach. But he is definatley a pretty darn good player who would have made X way better. We told him we would not give him his scholarship back. In his senior and final year!!!!! From that standpoint it looked as though X made a very tough decision on giving him the boot because He would have been the leading scorer on this team, if not second.

Also our star freshman last year dez wells, was expelled from school over summer for some bs. Some complete bs. Long story short was kicked out because he supposedly didn't wear a condom. Yes I just wrote that. It was so bad that the cincinnati prosecutors office went on 700 wlw and said they would not pursue charges against dez wells and urged XU to reconsider lifting his expulsion. To make matters worse for X was the NCAA ruled him immediately eligible on a a expulsion which rarely ever happens on a transfer at Maryland. Started all season for the terps but I'm not sure his numbers but saw in the acc tournament he had a couple 20 plus point monster games one against the blue devils which they beat.

On top of that, we lose 2 top 100 players to being ineligible. Both were four star players and will hopefully should be eligible to play this fall. Like I said with just dez wells and mark Lyons this team was poised to make another big run in the tourney. Instead for only the second time in 15 years or so, X will miss the tourney. They were one of only 8 teams to make the tourney 8 years in a row. Pretty tough break for the X. We will be fine next year tourney almost guaranteed as long as no one leaves early or is ineligible. Crossing fingers.

One more note.
There ore only four teams in all of division one basketball who can say this as a fact....... Duke, Kansas, Michigan state, and the xavier musketeers, the only teams in the country who can boast they have made it to the sweet 16 4 out of 5 years. Nice stat. Actually great! Would have been 5/6. We shot ourselves in the foot. Now we get to watch the NIT (not in tournament). But the only silver lining in all of this is we may get to check out where we will play and get used to the arena where we could win our next conference championship next year. Lol. At Madison square garden. J/k, but I can hope. No fin in the nit, but I love the X. So I will watch my team in the nit knowing every team runs into circumstances like this once in awhile. I mean look at North Carolina and Kentucky this year.

I will be rooting for all of our new mates in the NCAA and nit this year. Where ever your team ends up, root for your new conference mates. It's time now to start putting w's in the win column and start getting some more recognition. No this is not the old big east. Never will be again. This is a new big east with its morals of basketball at hand. Time to shut people up. Go Muskies!!!!! Go Big East!!!!!!!!!

[Ball Turret Gunner]

I'm sure you all saw the X players calling themselves gansters after the X/UC fight last year. X had to purge the guys who were throwing haymakers during that fight. Also, there was pressure from the federal government for X to handle rape cases with more due process after they mishandled some cases on campus. The documents that the government made X sign were posted in the Cincinnati Enquirer. X made their own bed in these situations. It wasn't "bad luck".

[DeltaV]

The culture shock I could see would be the style of play/amount of contact that the refs allow. Not trying to be an elitist, but would the new comers be used to Big East style no blood-no foul, 5 bodies on the floor rough play (Louisville Syracuse last night was a great example of that, even though we don't have either team).

Of course, the follow up question is will we still have the same refs that allow that style of play? Or will Nova and Georgetown be the ones with the culture shock of a 'softer' big east?

[BillEsq]

The culture shock I could see would be the style of play/amount of contact that the refs allow. Not trying to be an elitist, but would the new comers be used to Big East style no blood-no foul, 5 bodies on the floor rough play (Louisville Syracuse last night was a great example of that, even though we don't have either team).

Of course, the follow up question is will we still have the same refs that allow that style of play? Or will Nova and Georgetown be the ones with the culture shock of a 'softer' big east?

Anybody who says this has never seen a A-10 game.... nothing personal the top 10 teams of the A-10 are every bit as physical as the big East both currently and for the past recent history...

[XU85]

For the record, anyone who signs their post "Xavier Nation Zippem up" certainly does not represent Xavier Nation, and is likely a troll.

[BillEsq]

For the record, anyone who signs their post "Xavier Nation Zippem up" certainly does not represent Xavier Nation, and is likely a troll.

you think....

[XU85]

For the record, anyone who signs their post "Xavier Nation Zippem up" certainly does not represent Xavier Nation, and is likely a troll.

you think....

Ok good. I'm glad it was that obvious!