The Big East survived, and now it thrives

Madison Square Garden takes on a different feel for the Big East men's basketball tournament, and it is a little bit of a throwback. Yep, it is New York and it is the same old Garden, but it isn't much like a Knicks game or a Rangers game or a big boxing fight.

It is a party, kind of, but a nervous and intense one, with a basketball theme at its very core. The games are the entertainment. The city, and all it has to offer, is merely the backdrop.

Heck, there should be a party this week, for a very compelling reason. We all like anniversaries and this is a major one. It was 10 years ago that the "new" Big East was formed, but its future initially looked desperately uncertain and had little more than a name, some history, and seven core Catholic schools behind it.

Plus, crucially, a mindset that was all in on basketball.

Back then, sorrowful anecdotes were being passed around the sportsverse, amid the general assumption that the glory days of the Big East and its men's tournament were a thing of the past. The reality, highlighted again this week as a fiercely contested tournament reaches its final stages, is something quite different.

"It's a brutal league man," Connecticut head coach Dan Hurley said, after his team beat Providence in a Thursday quarterfinal, offering a sentiment he utters frequently and unwaveringly. Hurley called the league "brutal" back in January and again before the tournament started, and he means it because there is no respite asked or given.

The Big East's top four all sit in the top 25 of the rankings, topped by No. 6 Marquette, though No. 11 UConn might be playing as well as any other team in the country. Those teams go head-to-head on Friday (6:30 p.m. ET on FS1 and the FOX Sports app), followed by 2-seed Xavier and 3-seed Creighton (9 p.m. ET on FS1 and the FOX Sports app), two of the league's newer members.

The Big East stacks up well on the overall strength meter and as well as the semifinalists, Providence should also find itself in the NCAA Tournament field based on its overall body of work.

But this tournament has always been about more than numbers and stats and seedings and as much as any other conference championship, it doesn't feel like a mere preamble to bracket time and the NCAA Tournament itself.

This is where people go to watch their team and then stuck around to watch more basketball. People without a team will go, because it is the Big East tournament, and it's what they've always done, and it's special and frenetic. This is northeast basketball, where hoops is king and college football, unlike other places, just doesn't have the same impact on the culture.

Looking for a comparison? Think of how much they love football in the vast span of SEC land and you're on the right kind of path.

No one knew quite what to expect in 2013. The Big East had seen the numbers of its football-first members strip away over the previous years, before DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall and Villanova pieced things together under new commissioner Val Ackerman.

They struck out into the unknown, armed mostly with the Big East name, and the key component of having kept control of its iconic basketball tournament at the Garden.

Once this time of year comes along, there is an energy about Big East basketball that's simply unceasing. This year, the constant competitiveness is ever-present.

With Villanova in a rebuilding phase after the retirement of coach Jay Wright, who took the program to two national titles, there is a ton of flex coming from elsewhere.

There are no soft landings here and preconceived ideas often fall flat. Marquette's Shaka Smart heard and read that his team were thought likely to finish no higher than ninth in the Big East before the start of the season.

Instead, they won the regular-season title, are looking good for an overall No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and have a noticeable vibe about them. Smart, two years into the job, is buzzing, his enthusiasm infectious, and his ecstatic leap for joy after beating Creighton toward the end of the regular season is worth looking up and watching on repeat.

As the tournament unfolded, there was a sad bit of poetry too. Georgetown's latest struggling season coming to an end with a 80-48 humbling against Villanova, in the building where head coach Patrick Ewing shined as a member of the Knicks for all those years. A couple of days later, Ewing's tenure came to an end as well, relieved of his duties.

It is a strange sort of basketball paradise here, one where dreams are as likely to die as burgeon, a sense of all-or-nothing that only adds to the pressure. It is where the competitiveness of the tournament cannot to be topped. Make no mistake, Big East games have the same passion as what will take place next week.

And it is where, 10 years on, the spirit lives strong in a tournament, and in a part of the country, where college basketball is at the center of everything at this time. The Big East survived, and it thrives onward, its identity secure – and its own.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider newsletter. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX and subscribe to the daily newsletter.

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