The Big East Conference Tournament gets underway on Wednesday March 12 and will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York, New York. The tournament will be covered on Fox Sports 1. Vegas odds have the Villanova Wildcats as the favorite to with the Big East Tournament. Odds for the tournament are list below and are courtesy of Sportsbook.ag.
This will be the 35th annual Big East Tournament, but it is not the same event as last year when 16 teams battled for the Tournament title. This year just 10 teams are in the league with just 7 of those teams competing in last year's tournament. Those holdovers are Villanova, Marquette, Georgetown, Providence, Depaul, St John's and Seton Hall.
Last year it was the Louisville Cardinals that took the tournament title, but they are no longer in the league. The Favorite for this year's tournament is the Villanova Wildcats. The Wildcats come in ranked 6th in the nation with a 28-3 record and they won the regular season Big East title with a 16-2 conference record.
They Cats won the Big East regular season title by two games over a Creighton team that has perhaps the best player in the land on their team in Doug McDermott, who averages 26.5 ppg for the 13th ranked Bluejays. This is a dangerous team that can beat anyone if they are hitting their threes.
Providence, St John's and Xavier all come in having finished 20-11 overall and 10-8 in the Big East. Of those 3 teams I would say that Providence and St John's are the surprise teams. Neither were expected to do much this year, but here they are, in the top half of the Big East.
Georgetown was expected to compete for the conference title, but Greg Whittington was dismissed from the team for disciplinary reasons at the end of November, and academics doomed Joshua Smith the first week of the new year. Those two losses were big for the Hoyas and they ended up just 8-10 in the Big East and 17-13 overall. Marquette was another disappoint teams as they finished just 17-14 overall and 9-9 in the Big East.
Seton Hall, Butler and Depaul all had rough years in the Big East as the 3 teams combined to go just 13-40 in conference play. Depaul had the most dismal season, going just 3-15 in the Big East this year.
2014 Big East Tournament Odds (Courtesy of Sportsbook.ag)
Villanova +150... Creighton +200... St John's +600... Xavier +1000... Providence +1200... Marquette +1200... Field (Any Other Team) +1000.
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