Big East Odds, Betting Report: Checking In With College Basketball’s Most Fun Conference (Jan. 23)

Before the season, the Big East looked like a strong conference, especially at the top.

Conventional wisdom looked at the Big East as a three-horse race, with the Connecticut Huskies, Marquette Golden Eagles and Creighton Bluejays in a tier of their own above a meaty middle-class fighting in the middle of the standings.

Nonconference play mostly backed up that thinking, with those three separating as part of the national elite, a step ahead of the rest of the conference.

Then the Big East schedule started, and chaos ensued. To paraphrase Apollo Creed's trainer in Rocky, those mid-tier teams "thought this was a damn fight."

They've played like it, knocking off each of those top three teams within the first week of conference play, plus twice more since then.

It's led to a messy set of standings, with more than half the league currently sitting on two or three losses in conference. The Big East boasts nine of its eleven teams ranked 65th or better by KenPom.

With some of the best home-court advantages across the sport, that leads to a minefield for any team looking to find their way to a winning record. For the first time in a while, teams playing in the opening round of the Big East Tournament, prior to the quarterfinals, will have real aspirations to play their way into an NCAA Tournament invite.

Let's whip around the league, gauging each team's chances to play in the postseason.

All odds via FanDuel as of Tuesday, Jan. 23.

Connecticut stumbled into conference play, suffering a blowout loss at Seton Hall to open its Big East slate.

Star center Donovan Clingan was injured in that game, leaving him out of the next several contests. That Seton Hall loss was just UConn's second of the season, the other coming on the road at Kansas.

With Clingan out and a brutal loss in the rearview, it looked like the reigning champs may be in for a tough go.

Instead, the Huskies have ripped off seven straight wins and are clearly the best team in the conference, if not the country.

FanDuel lists UConn at -430 to be Big East regular-season champs, which feels a little steep given that it hasn't played at Creighton or faced Marquette at all, though the Huskies are certainly the odds-on favorite to win the league.

If you're falling in love with Connecticut, now would be the worst time to invest in a national title or Final Four future, which is comical considering it dropped 6-of-8 early in conference last year before making the run to cut down the nets.

Nothing in Marquette's nonconference slate suggested the Golden Eagles weren't a Final Four-caliber team.

Even their first two losses in the Big East, at Providence and at Seton Hall, were unexpected but understandable at two tough teams in road environments.

The follow-up loss, at home to Butler, was the real concerning one and put Marquette severely behind schedule.

Now, if you squint, maybe there's still hope. This team technically controls its destiny in the chase for the conference title. Just win out, including a sweep of UConn, and Marquette is the Big East champ again.

I wouldn't advise buying in at +850, but for those of you in my boat holding a Marquette futures ticket — well, there's a chance.

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Marquette might have an actual path to the top of the standings, but if you found a book (or a fellow college basketball junkie) willing to take a heads-up bet on conference finish between Marquette and Creighton, the Bluejays would be slight favorites.

That's due to their schedule, which has been tougher to date. The Bluejays have already made trips to Connecticut and Marquette, coming up empty.

My eyes will be tuned into Creighton particularly from now until its home date with UConn on Feb. 20. That stretch includes a homestand (Xavier, DePaul and Butler), two tough but not impossible roadies (Providence and Xavier), a gimme (Georgetown at home) and a trip to Hinkle to play Butler.

It's too much to expect a seven-game win streak, but in this Big East, that's about as easy a stretch as you'll see.

If I'm going to believe in Creighton in March, it'd better show itself worthy over the next month, building some momentum before a tough stretch to end the regular season (vs. UConn, at St. John's, vs. Seton Hall, vs. Marquette, at Villanova).

The Pirates have built a surprisingly strong tournament resume.

Seton Hall is 9-2 against Quadrants 2-4 and boasts big wins over Connecticut and Marquette, nearly pulling off the Big East trifecta this weekend, dragging Creighton to three overtimes before losing.

Here's where things get tough: Seton Hall has six road games left. Five of those six are, for my money, the five toughest trips in the conference: Marquette, Villanova, St. John's, Creighton and UConn.

Thankfully, assuming a winning record in the Big East punches a team a ticket to the Big Dance, that still leaves wiggle room. It would take a sizeable — but possible — collapse for the Pirates to miss out on tourney play.

Say hello to the most confounding team in the Big East, if not college basketball.

• Nonconference wins over North Carolina, Memphis, Texas Tech and Maryland.
• Winless against its Philly rivals, losing to Penn, St. Joe's and Drexel.
• Started Big East play with three straight wins.
• Lost 3-of-4 with the lone win coming over despicable DePaul.

This is all par for the course given Villanova's style of play. The Wildcats are one of the most 3-point trigger-happy teams in the country but aren't particularly good at shooting them.

This leaves a disjointed experience, dictated largely by shooting luck on a game-to-game basis.

The last of the three-loss Big East teams has a much longer way to go to build a tournament resume. Unlike Seton Hall, Xavier's home losses to Delaware and Oakland drag down any early conference play success it's had.

Bracket Matrix has Xavier as the 10th team out of the tournament today.

There is hope!

To build a resume, a team needs big games on the schedule. Xavier has them in spades, especially over the next eight days. The Musketeers play at Creighton on Tuesday, then at UConn on Sunday and against St. John's at home next Wednesday.

If they can't steal two of those, their chances for more notable wins — like home games against Creighton, Villanova and Marquette — might be too little too late.

Two weeks ago, I would have spent half this article gushing about the resurgent Red Storm and Rick Pitino's return to glory. A 4-1 in start in Big East play and 5-1 record since RJ Luis returned from injury had the Johnnies on top of the world.

Since then, times have changed.

St. John's faced a brutal three-game stretch — at Creighton and Seton Hall, plus Marquette at home — and lost all three, including two losses by a single point.

Things don't necessarily get easier, with Villanova, Xavier and UConn coming up next, though the load does eventually lighten.

ESPN's BPI metric says St. John's has the easiest remaining schedule in the conference, though that could just be the good fortune of all four games against the bottom-feeders — Georgetown and DePaul — still to come.

If there's a team to expect to fall apart this season, it's the Friars.

They were plenty competitive in November and December and looked like a tournament team. Even now after a four-game losing streak, the Friars are considered a bubble dweller.

The trouble comes in the reason why they lost four straight. That streak started with the loss of Bryce Hopkins to injury. Since then, the Friars have become the Devin Carter show, as the explosive junior now leads the Big East in scoring.

One scorer, some gritty defense and a home crowd is going to steal a win or two, but that won't keep the Friars in the postseason mix.

This is the last Big East team with any prayer of a postseason bid. Currently, just one of the bracketologists aggregated by Bracket Matrix puts the Bulldogs into the field of 68 and does so as the last team in. But hey, that's better than nothing, right?

That outlier projection is certainly too bullish based on what we've seen from Butler.

A road win at Marquette is to be praised for sure, though Marquette shot 5-of-31 from 3-point range in that game, and the Bulldogs haven't really notched another impressive win yet.

Butler's other two wins in the conference came over Georgetown and DePaul.

Last year, Georgetown's 2-18 conference record was bad enough for the school to send Hoyas legend Patrick Ewing packing and open up the head-coaching job in DC.

This season, Ed Cooley has the Hoyas at 1-6 in conference, though as with every team mentioned above, I'm not sure wins over DePaul should count.

In order to squint and see any level of progress in Year 1 of the rebuild, it'd be nice to see Georgetown beat anyone other than DePaul. The Hoyas have had chances, losing to Seton Hall by four and at the last second at Xavier.

Earmark Tuesday's game against Butler or the March 5 date with Providence as their best chance to steal one.

I could either make this final section one biting sentence about how terrible the DePaul basketball program is, or I could unravel a Moby Dick-sized diatribe about the disgrace in Chicago. I'll do my best to split the difference.

DePaul is 0-7 in conference play this year and just 3-15 overall, leading to the recent firing of head coach Tony Stubblefield.

Honestly, I don't really know why you'd waste the time firing him midseason when he's just continued the ongoing rot of the DePaul basketball tradition.

Since joining the Big East, DePaul has never once been competitive. In 19 seasons as a member of the Big East, DePaul has one winning record in the conference. By comparison, the Blue Demons have won three or fewer conference games 11 times — more than half of their Big East seasons!

Go ahead, keep firing coaches. Not sure what good that will do. At some point, the stink of DePaul is much more about the administration and Big East leadership.

At least the Lady Demons made 17 straight Women's NCAA Tournaments this century.

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