The Big East
Inside the Most Entertaining and Influential Conference in College Basketball History
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- ¥1,200
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The definitive, compulsively readable story of the greatest era of the most iconic league in college basketball history—the Big East
“This book, full of long-standing rivalries, unmatched moments in the lives of coaches and players, and juicy insider gossip, is, like the game of basketball, a ton of fun.”—Philadelphia magazine
The names need no introduction: Thompson and Patrick, Boeheim and the Pearl, and of course Gavitt. And the moments are part of college basketball lore: the Sweater Game, Villanova Beats Georgetown, and Six Overtimes. But this is the story of the Big East Conference that you haven’t heard before—of how the Northeast, once an afterthought, became the epicenter of college basketball.
Before the league’s founding, East Coast basketball had crowned just three national champions in forty years, and none since 1954. But in the Big East’s first ten years, five of its teams played for a national championship. The league didn’t merely inherit good teams; it created them. But how did this unlikely group of schools come to dominate college basketball so quickly and completely?
Including interviews with more than sixty of the key figures in the conference’s history, The Big East charts the league’s daring beginnings and its incredible rise. It transports fans inside packed arenas to epic wars fought between transcendent players, and behind locker-room doors where combustible coaches battled even more fiercely for a leg up.
Started on a handshake and a prayer, the Big East carved an improbable arc in sports history, an ensemble of Catholic schools banding together to not only improve their own stations but rewrite the geographic boundaries of basketball. As former UConn coach Jim Calhoun eloquently put it, “It was Camelot. Camelot with bad language.”
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O'Neil (Long Shots), a senior writer at The Athletic, gives the Big East its due in this engrossing history. Utilizing over 60 interviews—including with legendary coaches John Thompson Jr. of Georgetown and St. John's Lou Carnesecca—O'Neil explains the impact on both college and pro hoops of the initiative spearheaded in 1979 by former Providence College basketball coach Dave Gavitt. Gavitt envisioned an East Coast–centric conference, intended to restore the region's prominence after it was tarnished by a 1951 point-shaving scandal. That dream was realized as "the Big East grew into a national power, partnering with an equally spunky sports network, ESPN, to become the most formidable and influential conference in college athletic history." In addition to the seven NCAA championships it secured between 1979 and 2013, and the multiple players it iconized ("who need but one name by way of introduction—Mullin, Pearl, Alonzo, Kemba, Allen"), the Big East helped turn college basketball into a national sensation. Even the way the sport was played was altered—with "the snarl and style of the Big East" upending the civility traditionally displayed on the court. With this colorful account (one coach called the conference "Camelot with bad language"), O'Neil skillfully shows the importance of personalities off the court and on. This is a must-have for March Madness fans.
