Of course, Boeheim's argument is made more passionate because the Orange did not get into the last Big Dance despite a 10-6 mark in the conference and a 24-11 record overall.
The prospects for eight, nine or 10 Big East teams in this March's tournament are made more unsettled by the fact that the Big East will play an 18-game conference schedule this season, a two-game increase from past years. That gives each team two more chances to beat its opponent's brains out in the physical league, affecting individual and conference RPI rankings in a way no one quite knows for sure.
"With 18 conference games, it's not a 15-round fight anymore," DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright said. "It's like a 50-round, bare-knuckled fight with John L. Sullivan and Jack Johnson."
But the coaches understand that they need to get the word out: that the Big East is a difficult league that only will be made stronger by its teams' playing two extra games against one another.
"No one's going to change their thinking unless someone brings it up and shows the numbers and say, 'Look, our RPIs aren't going to be as high because we're playing each other,' " Villanova's Jay Wright said.
"That's what you're telling us to do. You're telling us to play a tough schedule. So if another team is playing 14 conference games and Dick Vitale is going to talk about playing patsies and cupcakes, then they're playing four cupcakes and we're not. But [playing 18 conference games] is good for college basketball and good for TV, so let's promote it."
However, another concern of the coaches is that the NCAA Division I men's basketball committee, which selects and seeds the field of 65 teams, could place some kind of arbitrary maximum on the number of teams from the Big East.
