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Steve Donahue Says There’s “Not That Much Different” Between the Big East and Atlantic 10
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This was after the Hawks smoked George Mason the other night:
“The hard thing for me is to imagine that we’re the 7th-best league in the country and people only talk about one team going to the NCAA tournament. So the numbers, based on what the Power 5, Power 4, and the Big East do, it’s going to not allow a league like ours to look like it on paper. But I’m just telling you, there’s not that much different between the Big East and the Atlantic 10. Take UConn out and there’s no difference. I’ve always thought that. I thought it last year. I watched St. Joe’s last year a lot. Billy (Lange) was a good friend of mine. Porter Moser at Oklahoma, a great friend of mine. There are two teams in that league (SEC) that were 6-12 (in conference) and got into the NCAA tournament. And I watched an 11-7 team in the A10 not get in. Not only did they not get in, they weren’t even close to getting in. That’s not fair. They’re not that different – Oklahoma, Arkansas, St. Joe’s last year. Somehow, we gotta do something to help our league, because you can’t be 7th in a metric and ‘oh we’re only gonna get one team in.’ That’s not right. “
First things first, I think Donahue is referring to Oklahoma and Texas when he talks about the SEC. Those teams finished 6-12 in conference play but both got into the tournament on the strength of non-conference wins. Arkansas was 8-10 in SEC play but won 22 games and went to the Sweet 16.
But he does have a realistic and generic point here, that the power conferences can be overrepresented in March Madness, while teams like St. Joe’s, George Mason, VCU, etc are winning 20+ games regularly and finishing near the top of the conference but fighting for an auto-bid and then praying that a 2nd A10 team gets in as an at-large. It’s the ages-old conundrum of how you compare and contrast power conference and mid-major teams. Do we want to see the 10th-best team from the SEC or the 2nd-best team from the A10, WCC, or American?
RE: the Big East specifically this year, it’s a top heavy league. There’s UConn and St. John’s, then a drop to Villanova, then a further drop to Seton Hall. After the Pirates, it’s a bang-average conference of .500-ish teams. I don’t think it’s out of the question to surmise that the middle of the A10 could compete with the middle of the Big East, putting teams like Davidson and Duquesne and Fordham against Creighton, DePaul, and Providence. And, in a small sample size, the Big East and A10 were competitive against each other this year. Nova beat La Salle and Duquesne. Dayton beat both Marquette and Georgetown while Providence smacked Rhode Island at home. There wasn’t anything from those results to suggest that one conference is miles ahead of the other.
So I don’t think Steve Donahue is crazy here. The Big East has won a bunch of national titles recently, but that was two teams doing that, and the drop off has been steeper ever since realignment. There’s no Syracuse, no Pitt, no West Virginia. There’s no Louisville, no Cincy, no Notre Dame. That version of the Big East was murderer’s row. It was an elite conference. This version of the Big East is just really good, and just so happens to have UConn at the very top.
Either way, the A10 isn’t some joke conference. It’s a good conference.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com