Agree with the list and comments.
I don't see the top 3 changing. And while all those coaches go out of their way to praise their Big East brothers, you can tell by their OOC they learned lessons from the past few years when it comes to scheduling and how that impacts things tourney time. Whether it is playing top programs outside the BE to challenge their respective teams before March, to build resumes for March, to acquaint their teams with different styles, athletes and caliber of players they won't see as much in the league. They know the Big East is a tough, gritty league where road Ws are difficult, but they want to make sure their respective groups are growing as they should and not getting "fools gold" from dominating within the league.
Losses to BYU, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas won't hurt UCONN. It can only help them. Losing to Bama, Ole Miss, Kentucky, Iowa State, etc won't hurt St John's -- it will only help them. Ditto for Creighton although I don't think their OOC is nearly as tough as Uconn or SJU, unless I missed something.
Will be interesting to see who emerges amongst the middle tier. Cooley is talking an awful lot early, but he always talks a lot. I think they will be good. With Marquette, the question has always been whether Shaka's "player retention only" model will work in this portal era to the point where MQ is consistently a top 25 team like they've been recently. Jury out on that IMO. Nova and Providence -- who knows.
Would love to be able to say that I think we are going to be in that "middle tier", but I can't based on what we've seen. Because of the OOC, or lack thereof, anything we "know" about this team with a reasonable degree of confidence will probably not be that good until we get into mid-late January, at the earliest.
