NEW YORK – Jay Wright thinks it’s going to be a unique year for the Big East this upcoming season. Even though his Villanova squad was picked to win the Big East by the coaches in the preseason poll, Wright doesn’t expect the same level of dominance that top teams in the conference demonstrated last year.

‘If we are the number one team, we’re not a dominant team, we’re kind of a young team,’ Wright said. ‘We got a lot of new players so if that is the best team, there are a lot of really good teams that are very close. I think we’re going to see a really unique season. I think that the team that wins this league is going to have a lot of losses.’

After a banner season last year that placed a record five Big East teams in the Sweet 16, Wright and his conference coaching counterparts talked of the league’s transition to a more balanced conference in 2009-10 during Wednesday’s Big East Media Day at Madison Square Garden.

Villanova is picked to win the league with 10 first-place votes and 218 points, just three points ahead of West Virginia.

Syracuse, who made the Big East conference championship last year, was picked sixth with 152 points.

‘I think it’s more balanced,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said. ‘It’s still good teams at the top, not quite as many at the top as last year, but there’s a lot of teams that are capable of getting to the top. Last year the top teams were pretty much what they thought they were going to be and I think there’s a little more flexibility toward the top.’

Disregarding the lack of a national championship, the Big East had arguably its greatest season as a conference last season – with only the 1985 season, featuring both Georgetown and Villanova in the national championship, as a contender. Two teams made the Final Four, five teams made the Sweet 16, and at one point in the season there were a record nine teams ranked in the top 25.

With the loss of talent to the NBA Draft, including four lottery picks, the league is certainly not as strong as it was last year. While most coaches, Marquette’s Buzz Williams among them, may make the case that the Big East is still the best conference in Division I, Rick Pitino doesn’t see it that way this year.

‘It’s like the ACC last year, its like the Big Ten last year, its like the Pac-10 last year, its not the number one conference in college basketball this year,’ said Pitino, whose Cardinals are picked to finish fourth. ‘I would venture to say the Big Ten will be. I think the Big Ten is strong this year. That doesn’t mean the Big East and the ACC are down, I think they are going to be very strong.’

That should lead to a more balanced conference this season. Pittsburgh, the No. 2 seed in the Big East Tournament last year, was picked ninth in the poll. Marquette, who was ranked in the Top 25 last season, registered just 78 votes, which was 12th. While there are still good teams, the dominance at the top is not so profound.

Several coaches believe this could be a year that one of the teams picked at the bottom sneaks into the top half of the conference potentially grabs an NCAA bid. The key is experience. Teams like Cincinnati, who has not made the tournament in head coach Mike Cronin’s three years and finished ninth last year, returns four starters. St. John’s, picked to finish 11th, returns its top eight players from last season.

‘Teams that have traditionally been at the bottom are the most experienced teams in the league and should be significantly better than they have in years past,’ said Georgetown head coach John Thompson III. ‘At the start of the season last year you can pick three, four teams and say these guys will end up in the Final Four and everyone would sit there and say, ‘ok I can see that.’ We don’t have that this year.’

For Syracuse, being picked sixth didn’t come as much of a surprise. Boeheim said losing the top three scorers from last year’s team may be the reason SU wasn’t picked very high, while center Arinze Onuaku said that conference coaches ‘won’t rank what they haven’t seen,’ referring to the many new faces in the Orange lineup.

Still, SU doesn’t seem to be too worried about where it’s picked. The Orange was picked eighth last season and still wound up playing for the conference crown.

‘We want to come out and win and play Syracuse basketball and that’s got to be efficient, smart basketball considering our losses,’ SU guard Andy Rautins said. ‘But we definitely have more than enough to make up for that.’

mrehalt@syr.edu

Published on October 22, 2009 at 12:00 pm