The Sun’s Arizin: Big East Tournament Update

Happy Thursday Nova Nation! In case you weren’t following along with all the other teams in the Big East last night, just go ahead and throw whatever you thought the Big East seedings were going to be out the window. Except for Georgetown... you know exactly what happened with Georgetown.

Three big results last night set up what should be an exciting final Saturday in the Big East:

• Creighton upset UConn
• St. John’s won the 7-seed faceoff with Xavier
• DePaul says not so fast Marquette

So, with that said, here’s a breakdown of who could end up in what seeds and what it means for Villanova.

The Villanova Region

Since Providence and Villanova are locked into the #1 and #2 seeds, let’s start by looking at those sides of the bracket.

7 v 10: We’ll start with the 7v10 matchup, the winner of which will be Nova’s Thursday night opponent. St. John’s is now locked into the 7 seed thanks to tie breakers and a win over a floundering Xavier team. For the 10 seed, that will likely be DePaul. However, there’s still a chance that if the Blue Demons pull an upset over UConn Saturday while Nova takes care of Butler, it could be the Bulldogs that slip to #10.

3 Seed: Where things get really interesting is the 3 Seed. Creighton’s upset of UConn puts them in the drivers seat to take the this spot and send UConn to the Providence half of the bracket with either a Creighton win over Seton Hall or a UConn loss to DePaul. UConn still gets the 3 seed if they win and Creighton loses.

6v11: The lock here is Georgetown, but that doesn’t mean the Hoyas aren’t playing for something on Saturday. Georgetown will have its last chance to win a game in the regular season when they play at Xavier, who’s lost 7 of their last 8, including 5 straight. The 6 seed will come down to Marquette and Seton Hall. Marquette holds the tie breaker here, so the only way Seton Hall gets the 5 seed is by beating Creighton and Marquette losing to St. John’s.

The Providence Region

Providence and Xavier are the only locks on this side of the bracket. Providence isn’t playing this weekend and Xavier hasn’t shown up in weeks, so enough about them.

The rest of the seeding is basically the inverse of what we covered above:

• UConn is now your likely 4 Seed but it could be Creighton
• Marquette is your likely 5 Seed but it could be Seton Hall
• Xavier will play either Butler or DePaul in the 8v9 game

If you want the full breakdown of all the possibilities, Matt Hackman has you covered:

So, what do all those probabilities mean? Basically that the most likely bracket scenario looks like this:

1. Providence (100%)
2. Villanova (100%)
3. Creighton (55.3%)
4. UConn (55.3%)
5. Marquette (79.3%)
6. Seton Hall (79.3%)
7. St. John’s (100%)
8. Xavier (100%)
9. Butler (85.9%)
10. DePaul (85.9%)
11. Georgetown (100%)

Then again, when’s the last time this conference was predictable?

In other news...

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