NEW YORK, N.Y. — Ask any of the Big East’s 11 women’s basketball head coaches about the current state of the conference and they’ll all spit back the same exhausted response: The Big East — which behind UConn’s wrath has produced 11 national championships and 27 Final Four appearances — needs to be better.
More importantly, though, and perhaps more explicitly, the Big East must take advantage of the NCAA Tournament expanding from 68 to 76 teams in 2026-27. It’s do-or-die.
“I’m not sure why we’re being overlooked,” Providence head coach Erin Batth said. “We always have some great games and some great teams. Playing more on TV will help; we need to be seen, and we need to do our job in the non-conference, too.”
For as axiomatic as that is, Batth is right: The Big East needs to win the games it’s supposed to win. As the “Power Four” conferences — the Big 12, Big 10, SEC and ACC — swell to 16 and 18 teams, respectively, it becomes increasingly paramount that the Big East picks off those teams in November and December.
The league’s TV deal, signed before the start of last season, includes games on FOX Sports, NBC Sports/Peacock, TNT Sports and ESPN+, giving the conference ample opportunity to be seen by both the college basketball world and high-profile recruits.
“The Power Four conferences have done all they can do to try and stack their leagues,” Maquette head coach Cara Consuegra said. “That’s no surprise to anybody. We’re that next conference that’s fighting really hard to show our quality, which recruits will like.”
But how are these chippy Big East squads, all 11 of them, supposed to compete with the cash-lined pockets of the SEC and Big 10 with, in some cases, less than half the budget to build their rosters?
“Retention,” Creighton head coach Jim Flanery said when asked about what will help the Big East compete with the Power Four. “Being able to keep your players, I think, is huge. The portal is very expensive, so being able to retain older players that have chemistry create the best teams.”
Flanery’s Bluejays and Denise Dillon’s Villanova Wildcats have combined for seven NCAA Tournament bids in the past five seasons, joining UConn as the regulars of the conference in March Madness. All three teams, especially Creighton, were built on a bedrock of retention. Both Villanova and Creighton, as well as St. John’s, can be found on most bubble projections on bracketology sites.
“We went to the tournament four years in a row, and we had five kids that stayed five years,” Flanery said. “That’s the biggest thing — you’ve got to be able to retain players.”
It’s become increasingly more difficult to retain players each off season without large swaths of money laying around, though. Not retaining players in turn, Flanery says, leads to less team chemistry. Less team chemistry usually lends itself to slower starts in the non-conference. Slower starts in the non-conference lessens the chance of the Big East sending more teams to the postseason.
It’s cyclical — and incredibly disheartening for coaches attempting to rebuild programs.
“We’re in a tough situation,” Georgetown head coach Darnell Haney said. “Some of these other conferences outside of the Power Four, like the Atlantic 10, they have an upper echelon and a really low echelon. So, what happens with these NET rankings is that they’re beating the snot out of the bad teams while we may lose to St. John’s. Anybody can beat anybody in this league, and I don’t know if that hurts us come NCAA Tournament time.”
Flanery offered a solution.
“You have to get kids on the team that play for each other,” Flanery said. “If everybody comes from somewhere else — like the transfer portal — it’s harder to get them to play for each other. So, to me, it’s all about high school recruiting and retention.”
The preseason conference awards back Flanery’s theory: Of the 10 players selected to the All-Big East Preseason Team, eight remain at the same school they started at. The number includes seven players from conference frontrunners at Connecticut, Villanova and Creighton.
The formula, despite being archaic in an age of players going to five schools in five years, appears to work for teams abstaining from the transfer portal to sustain a culture. It might be what rehabilitates the conference from being swallowed up by the money of the Power Four.
“You can’t win the derby with a donkey,” Batth said. “You need to have stallions. And that’s recruiting and that’s retention. We’re all trying to figure it out.”