The 2021-2022 college basketball season will involve significant changes in the Big East Conference. There are plenty of questions about the teams other than Villanova in this league, and that will make the Big East season such a fascinating one to watch. Get ready for a lot of unpredictability and abrupt changes in various teams\u2019 fortunes over the course of the season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Team Likely To Surprise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Butler Bulldogs might have been hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic more than any other Big East program. Butler had a lot of players in isolation or quarantine and accordingly had its regular starting lineup and overall rotation disrupted to a considerable degree. The Bulldogs could not develop the cohesion or continuity they needed. Yet, late in the season, they hammered Villanova when their lineup was finally intact. This is a team which knows the pandemic messed with their previous season. Everyone in the locker room will be highly motivated to set things right this season. The Bulldogs also should benefit from last season\u2019s roster disruptions, because when regular frontline players were unavailable due to COVID-19, untested freshmen got a lot of playing time and were able to develop. Now Butler has a deeper, more experienced roster with a lot more guys who know how to play together and can create many added lineup combinations which will give this team a lot of in-game versatility. What made last season so difficult could make this season very successful. Butler has been known as a program which does more with less. That is likely to be the case this upcoming season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Team Likely To Disappoint<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Creighton Bluejays have been a top-three Big East program the past few years under coach Greg McDermott. Their up-tempo style of play, their effective use of the 3-point shot, and their home-court advantage in Omaha have all played roles in the rise of the CU program. However, this season, Creighton is likely to get stuck in a transition year. Incoming recruits are talented and promising, but all five top scorers from last season\u2019s team, which made the Sweet 16, are gone. That is simply too much to replace in the course of one season. Creighton should be a very strong team in 2023, but in 2022, the Bluejays are going to fall several spots in the Big East, and it might be a battle for them to merely make it back to the NCAA Tournament. This will be the biggest change in the power structure of the Big East compared to previous years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conference Champion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Villanova Wildcats gave the eventual national champion Baylor Bears a battle in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament even without injured guard Collin Gillespie. With Gillespie back and the supporting cast being tougher and more seasoned, Villanova should have the ideal mix of talent and experience to contend for a Final Four bid under head coach Jay Wright. Villanova might have made the Final Four if Gillespie had been healthy last March. The Wildcats are in position to thrive in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2021-2022 college basketball season will involve significant changes in the Big East Conference. There are plenty of questions about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":14549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19647,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19628\/revisions\/19647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}