Big East loads up on hoops in rebuilding plan

While the ACC has wagered its future on television ratings and Miami-Florida State football, the Big East will become the strongest basketball conference of all time.

Well done, ACC.

Rick Pitino's Cardinals will add another basketball power to the reconstituted Big East. (AP)

The ACC's clumsy expansion this summer raised legal and ethical issues, but the Big East's rebuttal Tuesday answered the question of college basketball dominance. When it adds Louisville, Cincinnati, Marquette, DePaul and South Florida for the 2005-06 season, the Big East will be without peer in basketball -- past, present or future.

In a related development, the ACC undercut the very product that made it, once upon a time, the elite conference nationally.

Formerly a crazy-deep basketball league in which barely-.500 conference teams like N.C. State in 1983, Virginia in 1984 and Georgia Tech in 1990 reached the Final Four, the ACC has become top-heavy in recent years. Six NCAA Tournament bids used to be the norm, even in the ACC's days as an eight-team league, but in the past five years, it has averaged just four bids annually.

Into that vacuum stepped the Big East, SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-10. Depending on the year, one of those leagues could have made legitimate arguments for conference supremacy.

Not any more. By unloading its two worst basketball programs -- Miami and Virginia Tech -- the Big East gave its league a jolt of energy. By unloading those schools (along with downward-spiraling Boston College) on the ACC, the Big East has contributed to the further dilution of its biggest basketball rival in the East.

ACC coaches Gary Williams of Maryland and Skip Prosser of Wake Forest have said the league "will make the best of it" when Virginia Tech and Miami come aboard next season.

There's a slogan: ACC basketball ... make the best of it.

Meanwhile, by replacing those schools with Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette and DePaul, the Big East will become a bigger, bulkier version of what the ACC used to be -- loaded at the top, formidable in the middle, yet not shabby at the bottom. Current and future Big East schools occupy seven spots in the coaches preseason Top 25, two more than the Big 12. The ACC is next with four ranked schools, followed by the Big Ten (three), SEC (two) and Pac-10 (two).

Future Big East teams went a combined 17-6 in the 2003 NCAA Tournament, led by champion Syracuse and semifinalist Marquette. The ACC has never won more than 14 games in a single tournament, not even in 1991 when it had the champion (Duke) and a semifinalist (North Carolina). No other league has won more than 15 NCAA Tournament games.

How strong will the Big East become? Put it this way: Cincinnati, Connecticut, Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, St. John's, Syracuse, Villanova and Seton Hall have combined for 33 Final Four appearances.

And in 2005-06, one of those teams will finish no better than 11th in the Big East.

That, friends, is a strong basketball league.

Of course, the ACC has that thriving college market in Boston.