Brookover: Big East a beast again in smaller package

It was the perfect ending for the old Big East. Four years ago, when the conference still had 15 teams, including basketball blue bloods Louisville, Syracuse, and UConn, eight teams went to the NCAA tournament, and Rick Pitino's Louisville squad emerged as the national champion.

A monumental split followed, leaving us all to wonder whether the Big East would ever be a beast again.

Jay Wright wondered, too.

"I don't think anyone in this conference was more devastated when it broke up than me," the Villanova coach said Tuesday night shortly after his third-ranked Wildcats had dismantled No. 15 Xavier, 79-54, at the Pavilion. "Maybe me and John Thompson [III]. We talked about it, and we were crushed because we grew up in it as assistants. He grew up with it as a kid."

Wright and Thompson, the current Georgetown coach, watched Georgetown vs. Syracuse, Syracuse vs. Villanova, Rollie vs. Boeheim, the original towel-toting John Thompson vs. the sweater-wearing Lou Carnesecca. It was classic theater and college basketball at its best.

And it didn't end with those 1980s bloodbaths, either.

"There was a heyday in the late '80s, but there was a heyday [in 2011], when 11 of 16 teams made the tournament," Wright said. "We all believed that we were in the best conference in America, and then that all breaks up."

And, no, it can never be the same again. But what we have now, in just the fourth season of this reconfigured conference, is something special again.

It's a smaller beast - a piranha perhaps instead of a great white shark - but still an animal the rest of college basketball does not want to mess with.

"It's a different beast, too," Wright said. "Syracuse used to win by overpowering people. Butler just dissects people, so you know when you go play them, it's just different."

Four of the top 15 teams this week are from the Big East, with Villanova leading the way at No. 3. The Wildcats, of course, had been No. 1, but Wright knew there was at least one loss on his conference schedule, and it came a week ago at Butler, a place where nobody in the nation wants to play.

Wright never likes to lose, but he knows when the rest of the conference is good and the rest of the country is watching it makes it easier to sell his own school's special brand of basketball to the teenage talent he must recruit.

"I'm thrilled about it because I was probably the most skeptical in the beginning," Wright said. "It's better than I ever thought it would be."

Wright said that was the subject of his discussion with Xavier coach Chris Mack before Tuesday's game.

"How about this league?" Wright said to Mack.

"It is a killer," Mack said.

And it has a national television audience.

"We're basketball guys, and you know college sports is going toward football and it is run by football," Wright said. "But for us, all of our decisions are made about basketball. And then you watch Fox Sports on a Sunday during an NFL game and they're promoting the Villanova-Xavier game."

This was a game worth promoting even if it did not live up to the hype. Xavier (13-3) had only lost twice this season going into the game, and one of those losses was at Baylor, the team that replaced Villanova at the top of the rankings this week. The Musketeers were also the last remaining unbeaten team in the brutal Big East.

But the king of this beastly conference remains Villanova, which improved to 16-1 with a 25-point win that was its most impressive of the season.

As you might expect, the trio of Kris Jenkins, Jalen Brunson, and Josh Hart - three key figures in last year's drive to the national championship - played vital roles on a night when Villanova started slow before taking control early in the second half. Jenkins scored 20, hitting four of his eight attempts from three-point range and all six of his free throws. Hart matched Jenkins' 20 points and six rebounds. Brunson scored 11 and dished six assists.

At the moment, with Phil Booth still recovering from a knee injury, the Wildcats are only seven deep, which is a smaller rotation than any coach would like when going through a schedule as difficult as the one Villanova must navigate before the NCAA tournament.

The Wildcats just got through perhaps the most difficult part of that schedule by beating two of the other three ranked teams, with the other win coming at eighth-ranked Creighton. But Wright refuses to overlook any of the teams in his conference.

"Sometimes you lose to a team you shouldn't lose to because you're thinking of somebody next," Wright said. "I do know this. Anybody in this league can beat us. You saw what St. John's did to Syracuse [a 93-60 win at Syracuse]. I know and our guys know that anybody in this league can beat us, and we respect them all."

Jenkins nodded in agreement as his coach spoke.

The Big East is a beast again. A feisty little beast.

bbrookover@phillynews.com

@brookob