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Big East, Atlantic 10 tourneys will never be same

THEY WILL HAVE two conference tournaments in New York next week, one at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and one at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

They will have two conference tournaments in New York next week, one at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and one at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. (Yong Kim/Staff file photo)
They will have two conference tournaments in New York next week, one at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and one at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. (Yong Kim/Staff file photo)Read more

THEY WILL HAVE two conference tournaments in New York next week, one at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and one at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

There will be 15 schools at the Garden, 12 at Barclays. By my count, just three of the Big East 15 are committed beyond next season. And you know if Connecticut, Cincinnati and/or South Florida could find a better landing spot, they would be gone. By comparison, the Atlantic 10, which may eventually lose six of its 16, is a model of stability.

Three and possibly all four of the A-10 teams that won't even make it to Brooklyn are still going to still be in the league when all the moving is done. I have been looking around for schools the A-10 can get that would help with its search for at-large bids/markets/winning tradition. And I don't see much.

The seven Big East Catholic schools are forming their own basketball league and retaining the name. They will add Butler and Xavier and probably Creighton, Dayton and Saint Louis. It should be a nice league.

But it won't be anything like the old Big East without Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Notre Dame, Connecticut and Cincinnati. The five "new" basketball schools for the "new" Big East have really nice basketball traditions and zero national championships. The six that will be going have eight national championships. The seven Catholic schools have three among them, one each from Villanova, Georgetown and Marquette.

So enjoy MSG next week. It won't ever be the same.

And feel a little sorry for the A-10. The league made all the right moves last offseason, bringing in VCU and Butler. That made a good league into a really good league. But it is about to get overpowered by television money from a network that is starting from scratch and wants to make a splash. Saint Joseph's and La Salle will continue to play basketball, but this version of the A-10, without so many of the marquee programs, will bear little resemblance to the league that is going to get at least four at-large bids this year.

And feel a bit sorry for Temple. The Owls wanted to play football and thought they had found the perfect solution. Then, everything blew up. Temple will now be in a football/basketball league with Memphis, Central Florida, Houston, SMU, Tulane, East Carolina, Connecticut, Cincinnati and South Florida. Don't see any top 25 football programs. Memphis, UConn, Cincinnati and Temple are serious basketball programs, the rest hopeful. That league is searching for a name and relevance.

The best part of college sports is that it has never been about anything but the players, coaches and fans. Money has never been the reason to make any decision. Nice to see that nothing has changed.

The charge

Got an email from one of my favorite basketball people after my treatise on the charge/flop 2 weeks ago. Hank Nichols is in the Basketball Hall of Fame because of his passion for the game as one of its best officials and the NCAA's first National Coordinator of Officials.

He noted that it "is not always illegal for a defender to be moving when contact occurs in a block/charge situation" and "the most basic rule of basketball, which underpins most other rules, is that any player who legally establishes position on the floor is entitled to that position. This rule holds true for all players on the court including secondary defenders, primary defenders, players with and without the ball, etc."

Anybody who knows me knows I hate the charge because of how it is taught, called and sold to officials by floppers. But I know Hank knows more than I do so I called, said a few words and listened. Every last thing he said made perfect sense. Still, when we were hanging up, he said he probably had not changed my mind about my basic premise. He was right about that.

Bo for the Hall

Lots of interesting names on the final ballot for the Basketball Hall of Fame. Where is Chester's Bo Ryan?

After 29 seasons as a head coach, the former Chester High point guard's numbers still look like a misprint. His career record is 671-213. Any coach who is 100 games over .500 is having a really nice career. Whenever Bo retires, he is going to be 500 games over .500.

His Division III Wisconsin-Platteville teams had two perfect seasons, won four national championships and were 314-37 in his final 12 years. He is 288-110 at Wisconsin, 143-59 in Big Ten games. Prior to his taking over, Wisconsin had never won more than 22 games in a season. Bo's teams have won 24 or more eight times in 12 years. The Badgers have never been out of the top four in the league standings and his winning percentage in league games is the best in history.

This season, when he has the sixth or seventh best talent in America's best league and when he lost his starting point guard to an injury before the season started, Bo has the Badgers at 20-9, 11-5, tied for second heading into the final two regular-season games.

Year after year, he does it with players that appear to have come off an assembly line. They look the same. They play the same. They shoot when they are ready. They make you shoot before you are ready. They play the pace they play and make you play the pace they play. And they win way more than they should be winning.