History shows Big East has evolved into a power conference

With the transition and rebrand of Full Court in the act of moving into its launch, this is a good moment to take a pause and, perhaps as one who has watched Big East women's competition from its birth in the early 1980s, to offer a perspective of how it has grown through the years.

The Big East itself is about to evolve again with some schools such as charter members Pittsburgh and Syracuse heading to the Atlantic Coast Conference and longtime member West Virginia heading to the Big 12 to be replaced by others.

Today, somewhere in the middle of all the pizzazz and procedures promulgated by the NCAA in terms of the annual chase of the national championship elements of and personalities of the Big East can be found.

For example, Linda Bruno, who was to become the Atlantic 10 commissioner, was still overseeing Big East women's competition when she was appointed chair of the NCAA women's basketball tournament committee in the early 1990s and was a key player in the national organization fostering its relationship with ESPN in terms of television on the women's side.

DePaul athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto was also a chair of the committee and has sat on various other NCAA panels affecting women's competition.

Through the years there has also been a heavy dose of coaches with backgrounds to their roots in Philadelphia and to the days when Immaculata was the first national champion.

The dean of Big East coaches is Harry Perretta, who got his 600th win this season and was coaching Villanova in the Philly suburbs when the Big East women's competition was formed.

Some others who have guided teams in the Big East who have similar backgrounds include Connecticut's Geno Auriemma, Pittsburgh Agnus Berenato, Rutgers' C. Vivian Stringer, former Miami coach Ferne Labati when the Hurricanes competed, former Providence coach Bob Foley and former Georgetown coach Pat Knapp, to name a few.

But back in the early 1980s when the NCAA launched women's competition and schools transitioned from their previous AIAW region alignments into the conference structure that existed on the men's side the Big East was not as relevant as the Atlantic 10.

In those days Rutgers, coached by Theresa Grentz, and Penn State, coached by her Immaculata teammate Rene Portland, fought for supremacy in the Atlantic 10 and also were regular residences of the Top 10 of the Associated Press women's poll, which had been inaugurated for the 1976-77 season.

St. Joseph's, coached by Jim Foster, now at Ohio State, was also in the upper portion of the standings and a little later on George Washington became a championship contender when Joe McKeown, another Philly guy, who is now at Northwestern, came back to the East after having success coaching New Mexico State.

The aforementioned schools had large media followings and the Atlantic 10 held preseason media days and postseason banquets on an annual basis.

Meanwhile, back in the Big East, Perretta made Villanova an early conference power and for a long time the Wildcats owned UConn instead of the other way around.

St. John's, under Joe Mullaney Jr., who is now associate head coach to Perretta, was also in the Big East hunt, as was Syracuse, coached by Barb Jacobs who is now a conference executive, and soon enough Providence under Bob Foley, who had been a longtime aide to Rene Portland at Penn State and Colorado.

In the mid-1980s Villanova's Shelly Pennefather carried the Wildcats to the NCAA tourney and another star was Providence's Doris Burke, later to become a highly acclaimed television sports broadcaster.

Meanwhile, prior to the 1985-86 season deep down the list of annual also-rans, Connecticut was seeking to fill its coaching vacancy.

The women's athletic director Pat Meiser, now athletic director of Hartford University, had been women's basketball coach at Penn State when the Lady Lions earned their first national ranking.

When it came to making the hire, an assistant to Debbie Ryan named Geno Auriemma became the choice.

"I have only had to make two hires," Meiser once joked. "Geno Auriemma and Jenn Rizzotti."

Rizzotti, a former UConn star, was hired to coach Hartford, where she has led the Hawks to America East titles, national rankings and NCAA tournament appearances.

Once settled in at UConn, Auriemma's primary goal was to get to the top of the Big East and in 1989 he got the Huskies there though his associate head coach Chris Dailey, who played at Rutgers, had to handle the team.

It seemed that Auriemma had miscounted his number of games played but the conference found a way to knock one off the list and to make the NCAA folks happy, he was suspended for a game at the end and at the Big East tourney.

Otherwise, UConn would have been ineligible for its first NCAA appearance.

The key conference rivalry in the early Auriemma years was with Providence, though the Friars eventually began to fade as a contender.

Still, most of the attention, nationally, remained with the Atlantic 10, but when the 1990s arrived a shift in prominence began.

Providence and Connecticut began earning rankings in 1990-91 and when Penn State was upset early in the NCAA tournament the path was open for UConn to advance to its first Final Four where Auriemma lost to his former boss Debbie Ryan of Virginia in the semifinals.

Having a taste of the high life, UConn began thinking more of competing in the national arena. The Huskies also quickly developed a large media following locally and later nationally back in the days when newspapers freely sent reporters on the road after good stories.

But the players who got UConn to the finals graduated and so in 1991-92 a new member Miami began a two-year run at the top of the conference.

The pendulum then began to switch back to UConn and in 1994-95 became the fateful year that the Huskies finished unbeaten, unseated longtime national power Tennessee, and the seeds were sown for future dominance in the conference and nationally.

Though the Big East was a one-team UConn conference in the mid-1990s, another member enjoyed some prominence when Seton Hall contended for the title and made the NCAA tournament field because of a star named Dana Wynne.

A member of Phyllis Mangina's staff - Tina Martin - was later to be hired at Delaware where she has had longtime success and has guided the Blue Hens into the rankings for the first time this season.

Meanwhile attention was fading on the Atlantic 10 after Penn State had bolted for the Big 10. George Washington stepped up and earned rankings, as did St. Joseph's, but Auriemma was becoming a media icon.

Also back in that time the conference championship was held at school sites until UConn became the cash cow for the Big East, which moved to Hartford in 2004 and has been in the XL Center, previously known as the Hartford Civic Center, ever since.

Besides UConn's first national title, the ensuing summer of 1995 saw Rutgers and West Virginia defect from the Atlantic 10 to the Big East while Notre Dame left the Midwest Collegiate Conference to move to become a member.

Furthermore, Grentz left Rutgers for Illinois and the Scarlet Knights began chasing C. Vivian Stringer, who had major success at Iowa and previously Cheyney.

But the Big Ten was loaded with competition, which was the Stringer's liking. While family situation was a major factor in determining the move, it was only after she was convinced that the Big East could become what the Big Ten enjoyed at that time that returned to the Atlantic seaboard.

With Notre Dame and Rutgers setting sights on becoming national players also, the impetus was planted for other conference members to step up if they wanted to compete. Some did, others did not.

Then in 2000 with a Final Four in Philadelphia, the Big East had two teams in the mix with Rutgers and Connecticut in what was a basketball homecoming, especially with Penn State also in the field.

By then Auriemma was harvesting talent but the conference began to grow as others began improving their programs.

Notre Dame won the NCAA title in 2001 and UConn followed with the next three. TV broadcasts began to expand annually.

The influx of UConn talent as well as stars from Notre Dame and Rutgers translated into a large Big East representation on WNBA All-Star teams, WNBA titles and Olympic gold medals.

Meanwhile, in 2003-04 and then 04-05 Miami and Virginia Tech, which had become a member from the Atlantic 10, took off for the ACC with Boston College joining them the following year in the time frame.

But in 2005-06 most of the cream of Conference USA - DePaul, Louisville, Marquette along with South Florida and Cincinnati - jumped over and the Big East ballooned to 16 teams.

And the growth has continued until the next set of shifts, which are about to occur.

So that is a pseudo rough notes of where the Big East was and how it got to be where it is now - high on Conference RPI rankings, representation in the national polls, and last season an NCAA-record nine schools in the 64-team field.

That number may be slightly less on Selection Monday next month, but between now and then are significant games to be played.

And as soon as we are sailing in the new ship, this notebook will be back to guide you along the way.