Starting to get into the meat of it with another conference sending a handful of teams into the field of 68. No top seeds yet, but some threes or fours in here for sure.

When is the Big East Tournament?

Wednesday the 8th of March through Saturday the 11th.

Where is the Big East Tournament played?

The Mecca. All games will be played at Madison Square Garden in NYC.

How to watch the Big East Tournament

Fox has the rights, so all games leading up to the final will be shown on FS1 with the final on FOX Saturday night.

Who won the regular season title?

Marquette finished 17-3 (25-6 overall) to take the regular season crown and the top seed in New York.

Defending Champ

Second seeded Nova took it down to send Jay Wright out with one last tourney title (his 5th overall).

Who will participate

All eleven teams will head to the Garden.

How Many teams will the Big East send to the tournament?

Looking like a solid four and probably five. Marquette, Xavier, UConn and Creighton are locked in, and Providence would really have to look bad to slip down to the bubble. Villanova winning this isn’t out of the realm of possibility either, so a six-bid Big East is a small but viable dream.

Big East Tournament Bracket

Byes to the top five teams, with the bottom six playing on Wednesday. No reseeding or extra days off.

Big East Tournament Odds

The four seed is your favorite in this one with a big drop off after the first five and an even bigger one when you get to Seton Hall. Odds from FanDuel.

Big East Tournament Preview

I’ll admit I didn’t follow the Big East season as closely as I could have and immediately wondered a bit about UConn being a favorite here. I guess they played themselves into form and according to someone I asked that would know, they’d be a short favorite over Marquette on a neutral right now, so I have to respect it. Pretty wide open and with a handful of teams getting auto-bids on a neutral I guess anyone near the top here winning seems very realistic.

Marquette split the season series with the Huskies, but rank behind them in any season long metrics and total efficiency numbers I can find. The offenses are likely on par, but there’s a fair sized gap between the defense, in UConn’s favor. I tried to avoid the top few favorites, but just couldn’t get there with Nova or Providence.

I sort of like Creighton’s path here. Beat a pesky Villanova team (pending their first round game) and you get a Xavier team without Freemantle (or maybe even Seton Hall if things get weird) and you’re in the final at almost 3/1. They boast the best defense in the league with an offense that isn’t that far behind the big dogs. They have an extremely high Free Throw %, shoot the deep ball well and did I mention they have a really tough defense?

Big East Tournament Prediction

Nothing says “Big East” like Omaha, Nebraska. I’ll take the class of the bottom half of the bracket to find it’s way in the finals while UConn and Marquette duke it out.

My Bet: Creighton +280