The Last One

                        This is not meant to be a nostalgic sob story by an old time sport's writer distraught about the Big East conference as we know it ending. Unfortunatley, it will just be a young bloggers goodbye to the greatest college basketball conference ever assembled. There is no real great place to begin when describing the Big East and its postseason tournament. It is dripping wet with college basketball history and lore. This piece will not do it justice, but I am going to give it Hell.

                 Where to start, ah yes, The Garden. The Mecca, The World's most famous arena. Is there possibly a better venue? Not a chance. The arena is built for this. Sure, the Knicks and Rangers are the tennents, but the Garden is for Big East Basketball. Plain and simple. The collection of fans it brings together, and the playground of Manhattan just beckoning outside these hallowed walls, it is indescribible. The fans are the atmosphere, but something about that building brings it to a whole new level. I will dare to say that is the best atmosphere in all of college basketball. It does not have the Final Four importance, nor does it have the national relevance that the first weekend of the tournament has, and it certainly does not have that on campus feel. But it is better. Ask someone that has been there.


                     I am a veteran of five Big East tournaments. I have witnessed four Big East Tournament Titles, and have been to close to twenty games inside the Garden overall. The passion this tournament brings trumps that of the NCAA tournament. Its the Garden, you are not just rooting against some of these teams, you hate them. You hate their fans, and they hate you. Its college basketball at its most pure level. UConn, Syracuse?  Calhoun, Boeheim, Huggins?  They were the villains that took over Gotham for one week in the middle of March annually. But, no more.

The allure of the Big East tournament was and still is simple. A weekend in New York in March. check. Watching some of the best basketball money can buy. check. Need I say more?  That is why I am going to miss it.

-Seeing Gerry McNamara takeover a town for a weekend (Hell, I was half rooting for him towards the end) -The collection of iconic coaches roaming the sideline, Calhoun, Pitino, Huggins, Boeheim, Dixon, Wright, Thompson III. 
-The level of play with the likes of Carmelo Anthony, Emeka Okafor, Ryan Gomes, Craig Smith, and so on and on and on and on......
-UConn, Syracuse, Louisville, Pitt, Marquette, Georgetown, Villanova,Cincinnati, Notre Dame all in the same building in one weekend
-Walking down Broadway wearing your team colors proudly.
-Having some wild stories to tell, or well, ehh maybe not tell.

                   It sucks, it is over. Still,  the name will lives on, and half of the league will continue to have this weekend, but they know it will never be the same. How could it?  Butler and Xavier are not Pitt and Syracuse. As a Pitt fan, how am I going to get excited about the ACC tournament in Greensboro, North Carolina? How as a town can Greensboro expect to create excitment for Pitt, Syracuse, Louisville, and Notre Dame fans? It can not. The Big East tournament was one of a kind, and it is dead. It is something that will be talked about as long as college basketball is being played. The Big East had it right. Now all they will have will be the two minute montages ESPN put together.

             My last and greatest Big East tournament story took place just this past weekend, my friend calls me Saturday around noon. "Do you want to go to the Big East Championship, its the last one." I think it took me all of two seconds to say yes. Seven hours later we are scalping tickets for $100 outside of Pennsylvania Station. We were there, we made the last one. A long night of bickering Syracuse fans, celebrating Saint Patrick's Day, and waking up on a hotel room floor with a giant hole in my wallet later.....was it worth it?  No Doubt. I saw the last Big East Tournament game, and that is nothing I will ever forget.