2014 Big East Tourney

[glen]

Anyone know if we plan to have our final on Saturday or Sunday? Safe to assume the bottom 4 teams will play first with the winners playing the 1 and 2 seeds?

[yorost]

I doubt anyone knows, but why would it change to Sunday? Finishing later doesn't imply you're a stronger conference, the conferences play the ladder game for attention so the weaker ones keep backing up. We'll be the conference we are, forcing our finish to Sunday won't improve us or are image.

The tourney will almost certainly follow standard conventions for 4 games a day. 12 teams gets you 4 teams with a bye, and 10 teams gets you 6 teams with a bye. Don't know why they would make it any other way.

[glen]

Saturday vs Sunday - I'm guessing we will play it when Fox wants. I simply couldn't remember if there was a discussion about it previously.

[The Partisan]

From a fan attending the BET, a sunday final is better. Especially next year if only ten teams. 7-10 play Thursday night. Top 6 get byes to Friday. Makes it easier to see entire BET. None of that Tuesday crap. Mid week BET is a pain in the arse.

[classof29]

Plus we want to limit the time a student-athlete misses class, and since most basketball players don't have Friday scheduled class (when possible) this would be the best for them.

[billyjack]

The Big East used to play a Sunday final (think Walter Berry vs Pearl), but at some point the NCAA recommended* that conferences play Saturday finals. This was requested to make the selection committee's job easier... less scrambling around late Sunday afternoon after games finished. So the Big East switched because we're good guys. The Big East also now realizes that Saturday night finals get better ratings.

* the selection committee would go so far as to penalize teams who played late Sunday games. One year the Pac 10 I think was going to lose a bid because two semi-bubble teams were in the middle of a game during the 6:30 selection show. This might've been before the Pac 10 had a tourney. I'm getting old and have forgotten the details, but it was the first time I remember a bracket slot having two teams written in with a slash between them.