The 'Outside of Syracuse' conference
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim inspects his bench.
3:00 pm Jan. 20, 2012
There is no shortage of drama in the Big East this season, between the reshuffling of the usual heirarchy within the conference and, at a higher level, questions about its very survival as a basketball entity.
But there is very little drama, and even less suspense, about the conference title. Nearly every description of the conference begins with the qualifier “Outside of Syracuse,” a phrase that could be the motto for the Big East this year. The Orange, 20-0 and ranked first overall in the country, have been in a class of their own.
The remaining question for Syracuse this season may not be whether it wins the Big East title and earns the number-one seed in the NCAA Tournament that usually accompanies it, but whether they can do something that no Big East team in the conference's 32-year history has done: go undefeated through the gauntlet of Big East games.
Already, Syracuse's start has put it in some elite company. Only one Big East team has ever started 20-0 overall—Boston College, back in 2005. (B.C. finished just 5-5, however.) And with a win on Saturday against Notre Dame, the Orange would improve to 8-0 in the conference, a start matched by only ten other Big East teams ever.
Each time a giant in the Big East has risen, and threatened to go unbeaten, another behemoth has risen up to stop it. Patrick Ewing's Georgetown Hoyas won an NCAA title, and reached two other NCAA title games. But Georgetown started no better than 2-0 in its first three Big East seasons with Ewing.
In Ewing's senior year, Georgetown began 14-0, 7-0 in the Big East, but promptly lost two straight—to Mark Jackson and Chris Mullin's St. John's Redmen, and Pearl Washington's Syracuse Orangemen. They didn't lose again until the final game of the season, 66-64, in an enormous upset, to another Big East team, Villanova.
Interestingly, St. John's that year was one of two Big East teams ever to make it through conference play with just a single loss. After beating Georgetown, St. John's cruised to a 14-0 start in the league. (They'd blown a chance at an undefeated season, incredibly, with an early-season non-conference loss at Niagara.)
But after dispatching Syracuse 88-83 at the Carrier Dome, St. John's had just two Big East games left—at home against the Hoyas, and a relatively easy game against Providence College. Georgetown took its revenge. First it beat St. John's at Madison Square Garden, 85-69, to shatter the unbeaten league record. And then less than two weeks later, the Hoyas beat St. John's again, this time to win the Big East tournament. And finally, three weeks to the day after that, Georgetown beat St. John's in the Final Four, 77-59.
A similar dynamic played out with the league's other one-loss team, the 1995-96 UConn Huskies. Connecticut lost in November to Iowa, shattering the chance at an undefeated season. But the Huskies began Big East play 14-0, the best start in league history. With just four games remaining, Connecticut faced its two toughest tests—a game at Allen Iverson's Georgetown, the second-best team in the league, followed by a trip to Villanova to face Kerry Kittles. If they could weather those two games, light challenges against Rutgers and Seton Hall would be all that stood between Connecticut and perfection.
Connecticut couldn't stop Iverson, however, with the sophomore point guard notching 26 points, six assists and an astonishing eight steals in a 77-65 Hoyas win on ESPN's Big Monday. It looked as if Georgetown would do the same to Connecticut less than a month later, in the Big East Tournament, leading Connecticut 74-63 with about four minutes left. But a spirited Huskies comeback, completed by an incredible Ray Allen jump shot, gave Connecticut the Big East crown and an NCAA number-one seed. Still, Connecticut's 17-1 conference record, along with three Big East Tournament wins, marks it as the closest any Big East team has come to perfection.
It is only appropriate, then, that Jim Calhoun's Huskies will get two chances to humble Jim Boeheim's Orange. Syracuse hosts Connecticut on Feb. 11, just three days after facing a Georgetown team that could also end their unbeaten streak (if a team like the red-hot Cincinnati hasn't already done so). Two weeks later, Syracuse will need to travel to Gampel Pavilion and beat Connecticut on its home court, on a Saturday night before a national television audience.
Connecticut has struggled of late, but the Huskies probably have the most talent, top-to-bottom, of any team in the league. Outside of Syracuse, of course.
