Thanks to the more than 450 of you that took time out to complete the Big East fan survey on preseason projections, we have a pretty robust dataset to parse through. Although Marquette fans once more dominated the responses, with over 54% being self-proclaimed #mubb fans, we still were able to get a great a nice sample size.
If you want to see all of the survey responses for yourself, I have built an interactive dashboard to let you sort through all them yourself. (LINK HERE)
The best part is that if you want to just see a specific fanbase’s response, or want to filter out the Marquette bias, you can do so yourself in the top-right filter.
I highly recommend you check it out yourself.
Who will win the Big East Regular Season?
In what turned out to be a bit of a landslide, Marquette was tabbed as the preseason favorite by the fans. The interesting part, to me, was that if you do filter out Marquette fans from the answers, Marquette still received the most votes, though in a much closer race.
Who will win Big East Coach of the Year?
Even with the MU-heavy sample, Rick Pitino received the most votes for coach of the year. I can’t say I’m surprised, as Pitino has earned every ounce of respect nationwide, but considering how rare it is for non-Jay Wright coaches to repeat, I think a non Shaka Smart option would be the best bet as well.
Who will win Big East Player of the Year?
This was an open ended question, and got over 25 different responses, not including those that completed the form with a non-Big East player and were excluded from the results. And unlike the rest of the questions, this had the most homer responses depending on what team you are rooting for.
Marquette fans chose Kolek with 46%. Creighton fans chose Kalkbrenner with 43%. UConn fans chose Clingan with 71%. Providence fans chose Hopkins with 61%.
All of which is to say, fans like their own players. News at 11.
How many Big East teams will go dancing?
In more breaking news, it’s also a shock that Big East fans think the Big East will be quite good, and get 6 NCAA Tournament bids this season. But I was a bit surprised that 5 so clearly outpaced 7 bids.
Projected Order of Finish
This is what I was most interested in. I asked respondents to project every team’s order of finish and then assigned a point value. So 1st place got 11, 2nd got 10, 3rd got 9 points and so forth. Using this method, I added each team’s point value and sorted the results that way.
I just love this visual. It’s one thing to focus on the winners, but projecting out all the way through 11 gives us a much broader outlook. Highlighting the top vote getter in each position also tells us the expected range of finish without necessarily having to count numbers.
And if you know me by now, I’m much less interested in actual finish projections than in the bucket/tier each team belongs to. Using that point value system, we get a really great look at the expected groupings.
Tier 1: Marquette, Connecticut, Creighton
Tier 2: Villanova, St. John’s
Tier 3: Providence, Xavier
Tier 4: Seton Hall, Georgetown
Tier 5: Butler, DePaul
Conclusion
This isn’t to say the season will definitely end like this, but that Tier breakdown is pretty much a mirror image of the national consensus (of 27 sources) at the moment. We’ll be sure to add it to the list.
Thanks once more to the hundreds of you that responded!
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