The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Mixed emotions
Big East coaches’ reactions vary on UConn’s return
Seton Hall head coach Kevin Willard, left, isn’t the biggest fan of UConn’s return to the Big East, while Providence coach Ed Cooley is looking forward to the renewed rivalry between his Friars and the Huskies.
Kevin Willard has one of the best, most sardonic personalities among Big East coaches. A bit of a throwback to the unfiltered days of Jim Calhoun and Jim Boeheim.
So when Willard, the head coach at Seton Hall, was asked on Wednesday how UConn’s return to the Big East would help the conference in general and Seton Hall specifically, it was hard to tell if Willard’s response was serious.
“It sucks for us, to be honest with you,” Willard said, matterof-factly, on a Zoom call for Big East Media Day. “I didn’t vote for it, I voted against it. I’m still really not that happy about it. Obviously, no one in this league listens to me, so it’s not like I’m used to getting my way, anyway.”
Now, it should be known that Big East coaches had no vote in the decision to bring UConn back to the league. That was entirely done by the league’s
presidents, and that vote was said to be unanimous. So, we may have been witnessing a bit of that ol’ Willard sarcasm again.
Still, when told about Willard’s statement, UConn coach Dan Hurley — a Seton Hall alum — seemed a bit taken aback.
“It doesn’t make a ton of sense to me,” Hurley said, “but I’m not the coach at Seton Hall.”
“Obviously, we’re all competitive,” Hurley continued. “Kevin has had incredible success, NCAA tournament appearances, playing at the top of the Big East. I don’t think any of that’s gonna change. UConn’s gonna add one of the most passionate fanbases in the country. You’re adding a recent tradition in the last 20 years that’s top-five in the country in terms of winning national championships, producing lottery picks. I see UConn doing nothing but enhancing the league, as we get our act together. Hopefully, we become a perennial top-20, top-15, top-10 program,
6-foot-5 wing will handle it with aplomb.
“He’s got a lot of ‘alpha’ in him, a lot of confidence,” Hurley said. “He gets over mistakes quickly, moves on to the next play. He’s practicing incredibly hard. He’s on the gold-medal stand for us right now. He’s dialed in. He just looks like a guy who understands the moment he’s in for his career, and the type of year he’s primed to produce. It doesn’t look like the moment is gonna be too big for him. It looks like it’s exactly what he’s always wanted.”
UConn, back in the Big East for the first time since the 2012-13 season, earned a total of 69 points in the annual preseason coaches’ poll. Villanova (99 points) was selected to win the league, followed by Creighton (91) and Providence (79). Seton Hall (67) was picked to finish fifth.
Rounding out the preseason coaches’ poll were Marquette, Xavier, Butler, St. John’s, DePaul and Georgetown.
Creighton’s Marcus Zegarowski was chosen as the conference’s Preseason Player of the Year. The all-Big East first team was comprised by Villanova’s Collin Gillespie and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, Providence’s David Duke, Seton Hall’s Sandro Mamukelashvili and DePaul’s Charlie Moore.
Joining Bouknight on the second team were Butler’s Bryce Nze, Creighton’s Mitch Ballock, Providence’s Nate Watson, Villanova’s Justin Moore and Xavier’s Paul Scruggs.
Marquette’s Dawson Garcia, a McDonald’s AllAmerican, is the preseason Rookie of the Year.
SCHEDULE ACCORDINGLY
UConn’s return to the Big East will officially kick off on Dec. 11, when St. John’s visits Storrs for the
first men’s basketball conference game of the season.
The Big East announced a slate of 23 conference games Wednesday morning. UConn has four games scheduled: St. John on Dec. 11, at Georgetown on Dec. 17, Creighton on Dec. 20, and at DePaul on Dec. 23.
All home games will be played at Gampel Pavilion. Tipoff ties and TV information will be announced at a later date, along with a decision on whether fans will allowed to attend.
The lingering COVID-19 crisis delayed planning for the season. The earliest the season can begin is Nov. 25 and UConn has two nonconference games schedule as part of the Legends Classic at Mohegan Sun.
UConn, USC, Vanderbilt, and BYU will participate in the event on Dec. 1 and 3 in Uncasville.
The Huskies could also play North Carolina State on Dec. 5 at Mohegan Sun and are expected to schedule Sacred Heart and Central Connecticut State, as well.
Big East commissioner Val Ackerman said the conference has postponed the Gavitt Tipoff Games against Big Ten opponents. The games were scheduled to play before Nov. 25.
Ackerman also said the conference schedule will resume Dec. 30.
ONE MORE YEAR?
The NCAA is giving all current college athletes the option of taking an extra year of eligibility, due to the uncertainties surrounding COVID-19. UConn senior Isaiah Whaley likes the idea.
“I feel like it was the right thing to do, especially for seniors,” he said. “Some seniors might feel like they want the full senior year experience, with full crowds and stuff.”
Seniors who return to school for another season next year could still maintain their scholarship, though it would be at the
discretion of their school. The same thing has already happened to collegiate athletes in spring sports like baseball and softball, who lost just about their entire seasons last spring to the pandemic.
So, would Whaley consider returning to UConn next season?
“It depends on how the year goes, honestly,” he said. “You never know what will happen during the season. I feel like it’s really good for me to have that door open.”
BUBBLE TALK
There continues to be plenty of talk about possibly playing Big East games in some sort of “bubble,” similar to how the NBA conducted its playoffs. Hurley has a bit of a different idea.
“For me, my thing would be like do a little minibubble, with rapid-testing every two weeks, where you bring maybe four teams in and try to knock out three games in five days, then go back to campus for 10 days. Then go back to the bubble for maybe a shorter amount of time and tryk to knock out three or four games. Going in for a month, to play a bunch of games, for me, could become a very unhealthy environment. So, I’m more like a ‘mini-bubble’ person.”
Villanova coach Jay Wright endorsed the use of a bubble and said the conference powers have pondered the idea, but he acknowledged the challenge.
“There’s no doubt, the bubble is the answer,” Wright said. “If you want to ensure you’re going to get all your games in, the bubble’s the answer. All the medical experts will agree to that. The challenge for us in college athletics — specifically college basketball — is, our players are students, they’re not employees. So to force someone to go into a bubble is shaky and, No. 2, if you do it for the men, you have to do it for the women, which doubles the cost for everybody. ... I don’t think the schools really have the finances to do that.”
HONORING JOHN THOMPSON
The Big East announced the creation of the John Thompson Jr. Award, which will recognize the athletic department, program, or indivual that “makes significant efforts to fight prejudice and discrimination and advance positive societal change.”
Thompson, who coached Georgetown 1972-1999, died on Aug. 30 at age 78.
“I think it’s a great thing,” said Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing, who play for Thompson. “He was an important part of my life, starting from when I first came to Georgetown when he first started recruiting me and to the day he died. He’s always been a person that I could pick up the phone, talk to, call, any advice I might need, help shaping my coaching career.
“I think it’s a great honor for the Big East to have this award in his name and the things that he had fought for over the course of his life.”
Thompson was coaching high school when Georgetown hire him in 1972.
“Coach Thompson always talked about, even when we won the championship in ’84, he was given an opportunity that a lot of other people that looked like him wasn’t given that opportunity,” Ewing said. “It’s great to be sitting here as a head coach at Georgetown ... and all the other minorities sitting at the helm at all the other Big East universities. We’ve come a long way in that respect and we have to continue to fight that fight.”