Six of the ten teams in the Big East have four games left. The remaining four teams have three games left. The bottomline is that the regular season comes to a conclusion on March 5th with all ten teams in action and the likelihood is that many of the Big East members will still be jockeying for final seeding position for the Big East Tournament that begins on March 9th at Madison Square Garden. I’ll be doing this “Seed Watch” post regularly over the next eleven days and there will be more detail about tiebreakers and scenarios as the season gets closer to a conclusion. For now, I’ll give you the Big East Tournament bracket as it would be today and what a win for certain teams this week means for the seeding outlook.

The first game of the tournament will be at 7pm on Wednesday, March 9th with another game that night at 9:30pm. All games will be televised on Fox Sports 1.

Here is where we stand through games on 2/21/2016:

Seed Movement Scenarios by Matchup

In this first edition of the “Seed Watch” I think it makes sense to view the potential impact of matchups on Wednesday and Thursday this week. I’ll analyze some scenarios if a win and some if a loss and then do this exercise again on Friday for the weekend games. Let’s start with Wednesday.

#1 Villanova: 24-3, 13-1 vs. #2 Xavier: 24-3, 12-3

Villanova has a huge game this week against 5th ranked Xavier on Wednesday. If Villanova wins it would mean a season sweep of Xavier and the Wildcats would would lock up the #1 seed in the Big East Tournament, even if they lost their last 3 league games. If Villanova loses against Xavier, it opens the door for the Musketeers to have a realistic chance at grabbing the top spot from the Wildcats. It also would open the door for a long shot run by Seton Hall to win out

As I said above, the game between Xavier and Villanova on Wednesday this week is critical for the Musketeers if they have any hopes of a 1 seed in both the Big East and NCAA Tournaments. Should Xavier win, they would still need to win out and get help from Villanova in order to get the win the league’s regular season. On the other side of the coin, a Xavier loss would potentially open the door for Seton Hall to slide up to the 2 spot.

#4 Creighton: 17-10, 8-6 vs. #8 Marquette: 17-10, 6-8

This game is a good example of the slim margin that exists in the middle of this league. There are two games separating these teams but they are four spots apart in the standings. A Creighton win puts them in position to beat St. John’s in their next game and get to 10 league wins. That would guarantee that they don’t play on Wednesday night. They’ve only been swept by Villanova so far so they would have a decent chance in a tiebreaker scenario in the top half of the league. Marquette has a tough final 4 games with this game being on the road, then home for Villanova and Georgetown and they finish at Butler. A win by the Golden Eagles brings Creighton down to 7 losses and gives Marquette a chance to muddy the waters the rest of the way since they are in the ballpark of both Georgetown and Butler in the current standings.

#3 Seton Hall: 19-7, 9-5 vs. #5 Providence: 19-8, 7-7

Seton Hall has a pretty tough finishing stretch that begins on Thursday with Providence coming to the Prudential Center. If the Pirates get past the Friars, they would need only one more victory to ensure a top 5 finish and two more wins would most likely lock them into finishing in 3rd, at worst. As I said in the Villanova/Xavier portion above,  if Seton Hall wins out and Xavier falters down the stretch, the door would be open for the Pirates to make a run at the #2 spot.

#9 DePaul: 8-18, 2-12 vs. #10 St. John’s: 8-20, 1-14

This is a battle for the 9th spot. A DePaul win would mean St. John’s would have to win their other two games to even get into a tiebreaker scenario for the 9th spot. It would split the season series and make the tiebreaker a little more interesting should the Red Storm actually get to three league wins the end of the day on March 5th. A St. John’s win would sweep the season series against DePaul and mean that if the two finished tied at the end of the regular season, the Red Storm would get the 9 seed. This game has some intrigue from a seeding perspective, but it’s a battle for who will be the second worst, so the appeal may be limited for some.

I’ll tackle Saturday’s game that feature Butler at Georgetown, Villanova at Marquette and DePaul at Providence, on Friday with an updated edition of “Seed Watch”. This will be a pretty regular topic as the regular season winds down and the Big East teams jockey for final position in the standings.

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Mike Hopkins

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