Big East Basketball Rankings and Predictions

The Big East is a conference that’s had the back to back national champion UConn Huskies and arguably the best college basketball team ever just a few seasons ago. They also have seen the rise of St. Johns to a 2 seed in the tournament last year and have had numerous other programs make it one of the toughest conferences yet again. We’ll be ranking our prediction on how the standings could look by the end of the season. 

1. UConn - With two 14 ppg scorers returning including a major piece of their back to back titles Alex Karaban along with the addition of Silas Demary Jr. who seems to be a similar kind of player to Tristen Newton, it's hard to go against UConn with the top spot. They were a top 15 KenPom offense last season with much less production from their total guard positions as they had during their winningest seasons and now, with a likely more offensive minded backcourt, they could easily climb into the top 10 offenses in the country 

2. St. Johns - When you come off a year where you had the 2nd highest ranked defense in the country it's hard to not put you around the very top. They return center Zuby Ejifor and have added shooting and scoring with transfer Oziyah Sellers and look to the rest of their transfer class and returners to help them rise above their 68th KenPom ranked offense last season. 

3. Creighton - a team that had a 15-5 conference record last season will see a lot of new incoming players including duo Owen Freeman and Josh Dix both coming from an Iowa team that had the 18th ranked KenPom offense last season. With such level of offensive efficiency look for this program to battle for the top spot in their conference. 

4. Georgetown - Coming off of a 8-12 in conference record, this team returns Malik Mack who provided double figures in scoring and has added players from elite programs including Langston Love and KJ Lewis.

5. Marquette - this program has consistently been around the top of the conference for some time now and return key guard Chase Ross who put up 10 ppg for them last season. They hope their returners can get them back to a top 50 offense and defense. 

6. Providence - this team looks for Jason Edwards who led Vanderbilt in scoring last season to bolster the backcourt. Vanderbilt had the 32nd ranked KenPom offense and was a tournament team. This program only had an in conference 6-14 record last season in the Big East and hope to improve greatly this time around.

7. Villanova - with a lot of new players including Devin Askew who averaged 18 ppg at Long Beach State and Duke Brennan who averaged almost a double double last season, this team hopes to climb from their 11-9 in conference record. 

8. Butler - This team returns double digit scorer Finley Bizjack who also had a 3-point percentage of over 42%, they hope he could continue his high level play which helped this program get to a KenPom offense ranked at 38th last season. The thing about them is that they had a KenPom ranked defense of 169th. 

9. Xavier - Even with so much change for this team they are coming off a year where they had a 13-7 record in conference. They have more than 10 new transfers coming in from mostly mid-major schools so it’ll be interesting to see if they can match that winning record from last season. 

10. DePaul - this team is coming off of a 4-16 in conference record and look to returning double-digit scoring guard CJ Gunn to improve and climb the standings 

11. Seton Hall - this team had a record of 2-18 in conference last season and has many new transfers from mid-major programs hoping to help them greatly improve. 

Overall its hard to pick against UConn at all considering they return key leading scoring and also since St. Johns did have the 68th ranked KenPom offense last season. Other teams also have many transfers who look to be key players which can benefit UConn with their continuity.