Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese has two words for why he believes his basketball conference is in the best shape it’s been in his tenure: New York.
“I remember when we formed the league, [former commissioner] Dave [Gavitt] said, ‘We’ve got to capture New York, it’s got to be our town for college basketball,'” Tranghese said yesterday at the league’s media day. “And it’s back that way because of what happened a year ago. And I think if you look at what’s happening with St. John’s, Rutgers and Seton Hall, it’s going to continue.”
What has happened is what Tranghese and others hoped would come to pass when Rutgers was brought into the Big East fold for the 1995-96 season. Led by St. John’s, which went 28-9 last season and came within seconds of advancing to the Final Four, college basketball is back with a vengeance in the metropolitan area.
The Red Storm, with Eric Barkley, Bootsy Thornton and Lavor Postell returning, should be a Top 30 team. Seton Hall, coming off a 15-15 season and about to sign one of the nation’s top recruiting classes, is poised to return to the upper echelon of the conference. And Kevin Bannon, who led Rutgers to a 19-13 record last season, has an exciting squad dominated by freshmen and sophomores.
Throw in national champion Connecticut, which turns the Garden into a home court for the Big East Conference Tournament, and it’s safe to say the Big East is back – especially in the Big Apple.
“New York is the most special place in my mind that you can play,” said Tranghese. “It’s the arena with the largest audience. It has tremendous recruiting implications; tremendous corporate implications. But it’s in competition with everything. It’s in competition with the NBA, the National Hockey League, pro football, pro baseball, Broadway. You name it, it’s in this city. And the only way you get your niche is, you got to win. Because they’ll forget you in this city in two seconds if you don’t win. And I think that any time this city gets excited about college basketball, it almost radiates all the way out. There’s more excitement, more meaning, more interest across the board, everywhere.”
Certainly there couldn’t be more interest at Connecticut, where the Huskies look to defend the national championship they claimed by upsetting Duke. The Huskies return 4 of 5 starters, including guard Khalid El-Amin, who was tabbed the conference’s pre-season Player of the Year in a vote by the coaches, and have big man Ajou Deng, the pre-season Rookie of the Year.
Expectations also are high at Miami, where Johnny Hemsley was named to the pre-season Big East first team, Georgetown, where the aftershocks of John Thompson’s retirement might finally have quelled, and Syracuse, which returns all five starters led by first-teamer Etan Thomas. The Orangemen also stake their claim to New York.
“I think it’s very important for me to emphasize that there’s only one school in New York City, that’s St. John’s,” said Red Storm coach Mike Jarvis. “There are two schools in New York state, St. John’s and Syracuse. And then there are a couple of other schools that are close. So we would consider them to be in the New York area.”
*Joining El-Amin, Hemsley and Thomas on the first team are Barkley and Notre Dame’s Troy Murphy of Sparta. Connecticut, garnering 10 of 13 first-place votes, was picked to win the league, followed by Syracuse, St. John’s, Miami, and Georgetown. Seton Hall is seventh.