Although conference play doesn’t begin until the day after Christmas, the Villanova Wildcats are the early favorite to become this season’s men’s basketball Big East conference champions.
The Wildcats posted a regular season record of 26-7 last season and made it to the Final
Four of the NCAA tournament before falling to the University of North Carolina, the eventual national champions.
Villanova received 10 first-place votes out of a possible 16 in the Big East coaches preseason poll Wednesday, Oct. 21, including University of Cincinnati head coach Mick Cronin’s vote.
“Villanova obviously went to the Final Four, and they’ve got three McDonalds All-Americans starting in their backcourt. That’s probably enough right there,” Cronin said.
Senior guard Scottie Reynolds, who has averaged 15 points per game his entire career at Villanova, leads the Wildcats.
West Virginia University (23-12) returns four starters from last year’s team, which was reason enough for the Big East coaches to select the Mountaineers to finish second in the league this season. West Virginia received five first-place votes in the preseason poll.
The final first-place vote went to the University of Connecticut. Seniors Jerome Dyson and Stanley Robinson, along with sophomore guard Kemba Walker, will also be looking for back-to-back Final Four appearances.
Cronin credits returning players as the main reason Villanova, WVU and UConn took the top spots in the preseason predictions.
The defending regular season and conference tournament champion University of Louisville Cardinals were picked to finish fourth.
ESPN’s Dick Vitale, in his preseason national top-40 rankings, puts the Wildcats, Mountaineers, Huskies and Cardinals seventh, ninth, 10th and 12th, respectively.
The Big East coaches picked Georgetown, Syracuse, Cincinnati and Notre Dame to round out the top eight.
Cincinnati players have different thoughts on their team’s seventh-place selection, the highest for the program since joining the conference in 2005.
“I feel it’s just right,” said senior guard Deonta Vaughn. “It lets me know that coaches are giving us a lot of respect this year for having us as high as they have us being that we lost to some teams that we feel we shouldn’t have lost to last year. Coming in it lets us know we still have to work harder.”
Teammate Larry David doesn’t share Vaughn’s feelings and calls being picked seventh “a big motivation.”
“I’m not going to put our heads too hot, but I don’t like [the seventh-place pick],” Davis said. “I think we’re going to finish better than seventh.”
Although he voted in the poll, Cronin doesn’t place much faith in the Big East coaches’
preseason predictions.
“I think it’ll be a lot more unpredictable,” Cronin said of the upcoming season. “I’d be in shock if it came anywhere close to the preseason predictions. I think that [the poll] could be totally off other than Villanova at the top.”
Another thing Cronin isn’t buying into is the national observation that the Big East may experience a “down” year.
“What you might see this year is some teams finish higher than they’re picked, and maybe a few teams that are picked to finish high finish low,” Cronin said. “But I don’t think it’ll be down.”
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