NEW YORK – When Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese addressed the media at the league’s annual men’s basketball media day Wednesday in Madison Square Garden, he only mentioned one specific team during his four-minute speech: Syracuse.

‘I can’t tell you how disappointed I was last year in Syracuse not getting in,’ Tranghese said of SU not receiving a bid to the NCAA Tournament in March. ‘I’ve studied it, I’ve looked at it, I’ve tried to be objective about it. And at the end of the day, I can’t tell you why they didn’t get in.’

Seven months after the Orange was snubbed, the day still serves as a grim reminder of the state of the Big East. On a day used to preview the upcoming season, the commissioner used an example from the past to illustrate the pre-eminent issue in the conference: the size of the conference – 16 teams, the largest in the country – is keeping strong teams out of March Madness.

When Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim sat down to address the media, his first question was about the tournament committee’s decision. And while he said he wants to focus on the upcoming year, the Hall of Fame coach did offer his two cents.

‘The only thing I’ll say about the Tournament that I think is important is the media and really everybody at the end of the day says, ‘The Big East gets six teams in, the Big Ten gets six teams in, the Pac-10 gets six teams in,’ like that’s all equal,’ Boeheim said. ‘Well, that’s 37 percent of the Big East in the Tournament. That’s over 50 percent in the tournament in those other two leagues.’

The size issue was the hot topic of the day, as every Big East team converged in the Big Apple. Each one brought its head coach and between two and four players, and members of the media spent two-and-a-half hours questioning them.

Louisville and Georgetown both received the same number of votes to finish first in the preseason coaches poll. Syracuse was picked to finish fifth, behind Marquette and Pittsburgh. Orange freshmen Donte Greene and Jonny Flynn were selected as preseason co-rookies of the year and Eric Devendorf was named to the conference’s first team.

Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert was picked as the consensus Big East player of the season.

But the majority of the media wanted to talk about the conference’s size. Another dimension will be added to the issue of this year, when the Big East add two more conference games, making a total of 18 games each team has to play. Each team will face every conference opponent once, and three of them twice. Concerns have been voiced about whether the schedules will be fair, to which Tranghese has no answers.

‘It isn’t perfect and it certainly isn’t fair, and I’m the first to tell you that,’ Tranghese said. ‘That makes it even harder for our more talented teams. And that’s what we’re faced with.’

The Big East is one of three conferences – along with the Big Ten and Pac-10 – to switch to the new format. No one is sure yet how this will affect the league’s showing in the dance, but all agree that it will have some effect.

‘I think we have to make sure that it doesn’t hurt us,’ Villanova coach Jay Wright said of the new schedule. ‘I think we as a league all have to work to make sure it enhances our chances. Because it should.’

John Thompson III, Hibbert’s head coach at Georgetown, said he hoped the conference did not have a maximum number of teams that the NCAA selection committee would allow in. He, along with most of the other coaches, felt the league’s size warrants extra spots.

‘It definitely is a concern. It is my belief and my hope that as the league grows – ages opposed to grows – that the committee will understand that we are different, that the committee will understand that you cannot look at a finite number for this league,’ Thompson said. ‘Because I think this year will show that this league will have some of the better teams in the country.’

While focusing on the upcoming season, most coaches were using Syracuse’s story as a cautionary tale and were taking lessons from it to ensure their teams do not fall victim to a similar fate.

‘To see what happened to Syracuse last year was just a travesty, and it’s really a huge warning sign about how we have to approach the future,’ Providence coach Tim Welsh said. ‘I don’t know what we can do about it except to talk about it and try to get the people to understand that just because you’re in ninth place doesn’t mean you’re not a good team. You can be in ninth place and be a very, very good team.’

Published on October 24, 2007 at 12:00 pm