Big East | featured news

The new Big East officially has its core members, its television deal and a lease to play its conference tournament where the old Big East played it. All that came with the expected announcement Wednesday that Butler, Creighton and Xavier joined seven basketball-playing Catholic schools starting their own league this summer, a conference that has a 12-year deal with Fox Sports and assumes the lease on Madison Square Garden for its championship tournament.

Louisville beat an old foe to win a second Big East championship. Chris Smith, with his brother who plays for the New York Knicks in the stands, scored 15 points and the Cardinals withstood a closing run by Cincinnati for a 50-44 victory Saturday night that sends the Cardinals to the NCAA tournament for the sixth straight year.

The Bearcats got off to a torrid start Friday by jumping out to a 25-8 lead against the Orange, and wound up holding on to advance to their first Big East championship game.

Fab Melo's follow-up dunk with 31 seconds left lifted No. 2 Syracuse to a 71-69 win over Connecticut on Saturday night and clinched the Big East regular season title for the Orange.

The Big East was a bust. The Jimmer lived up to the hype. There are plenty of 10s, 11s and 12s left in the bracket, along with a handful of talented freshmen and a few familiar faces from Tobacco Road. The second week of the NCAA tournament will be sprinkled with the typical blend of favorites and underdogs, the familiar and the obscure, with a notable lack of Big East flavor in that mix.

Late in the second half of Connecticut’s victory in the Big East tournament final against Louisville, Kemba Walker came to the sideline and told his coach, Jim Calhoun, that he couldn’t feel his legs.