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Your 2015-16 Big East Basketball Media Day Live Blog/Open Thread!

All the coverage of the events at Madison Square Garden that you can shake a stick at.

Mike McGinnis/Getty Images

Bright and early on Wednesday morning, the Big East kicks off the men's basketball Media Day.  Everything going on will be broadcast by the Big East Digital Network on Fox Sports Go.

Commissioner Val Ackerman will get things started by addressing the gathered media at 8:30am Central time.  From there until 11am, there will be rotating media availability for men's basketball, so things will probably be slowly trickling out from there.  Marquette's TV time is scheduled for 9:30-10:15am Central time, so I would imagine that's when we'll see head coach Steve Wojciechowski, along with Luke Fischer, Duane Wilson, and Henry Ellenson, being interviewed on the BEDN.

The women's basketball program starts at noon Central time with another introduction from Commissioner Ackerman.  There's a series of coaches' panels going on throughout the afternoon, with Marquette's Carolyn Kieger getting partnered up with Creighton's Jim Flanery, Providence's Susan Robinson Fruchtl, and Joe Tartamella from St. John's from 1:30-1:45 Central.  Marquette's TV interview time is between 1:15 and 2pm Central time, so we'll see how that plays out on the Big East Digital Network.

You can check out our men's basketball preseason awards picks, as well as our women's basketball preseason award picks to compare them to who actually wins the awards as they're announced during the day.

The Big East's men's basketball Media Day hub can be found here, while you can find the women's basketball hub over here.

7:50am - We've got preseason poll results!

8:45am - Commissioner Val Ackerman announces that the Big East Tournament title game will be carried on broadcast Fox, while the earlier rounds will remain on Fox Sports 1.

9:14am -

Well, half of it is.

9:28am -

9:38am - Jay Wright just questioned the basketball acumen of the other nine coaches in the Big East because they all picked Villanova to win the league this season.  His words, not mine.

10:00am -

10:05am - Butler's Chris Holtmann says he wouldn't be surprised to see a record number of free throws shot this season.  If that happens, that means that there's a lot of terrible coaches in the country who are refusing to coach their players on how to play according to the rules as written in the rule book.

10:10am - Xavier's James Farr says that knowing that Uber let Matt Stainbrook drive for them means that he had to start supporting and using Lyft.  Smart man.

10:14am - St. John's head coach Chris Mullin getting interviewed on the BEDN.  He's a horrifyingly dull interview and now I miss Steve Lavin.

10:24am - Henry Ellenson admits that older brother Wally is a better jumper, but has to take credit for being the best dunker between the two after winning the dunk contest last Friday.  BEDN is showing footage from Europe and MU practices to show everyone what Henry can do.

10:29am -

It's all about repetition.  I think I had Wojciechowski down by the time I finished writing the post when he was hired.

10:34am - Steve Wojciechowski's time at the interview table wraps up with discussion of Coach K.  He's always a very measured public speaker when it comes to media appearances, but actually watched what emotion and enthusiasm he did display while discussing his current team drain out of his body completely.  It's like his brain went into a default mode while talking about his old boss.  I actually saw him brighten up again when the interview segment was over.

10:57am - Seton Hall's Kevin Willard joins the interview table and LITERALLY the first thing out of his mouth about his team is how they've improved the team's maturity level by adding two graduate students.  As I'm typing this, he mentions improving maturity level AGAIN.  Can I wager on him getting fired?  Who wants to take my money?  Do I have to pick a day and go over/under on it?

11:07am -

Don't lie about the Bradley Center, Stu Jackson.  We're literally in the process of picking out the right size wrecking ball to destroy it right now.

11:15am - Georgetown's John Thompson III thinks that if the cards fall the right way for the Big East, the conference could get seven teams into the NCAA tournament.  Who would be the seventh?  If you figure that it's the top six teams in the preseason poll, someone out of Seton Hall, DePaul, Creighton, and St. John's will have to jump into the void.

JT3 is the final guest for the men's portion of the BEDN programming, and everyone's taking a break until noon when the women's programming starts up.

12:04pm - Women's basketball preseason awards!

12:40pm - The BEDN broadcast moves to the first coaches' panel after talking to DePaul's players.  May I suggest having more than one microphone if we're going to have three person groups talking to the host?

12:48pm -

12:54 pm - Shantelle Valentine and McKayla Yentz join the interview desk to talk about how things are coming together for the youngest team in the country.  Apparently the newbies on the team identify Yentz as the "mom" figure on the team, while Valentine is turning into a "big sister" role.

1:25pm - I don't have a picture of it, but I like Tabatha Richardson-Smith's hat.

1:37pm - Creighton's Marissa Janning openly burying the locales in the Missouri Valley Conference relative to the cities in the Big East.  Turns out Washington, D.C. > Terre Haute, IN.

1:48pm - Commissioner Val Ackerman appears to be a big fan of the move to four quarters for the women's game.

1:55pm -

2:05pm - Villanova's players confirm that Harry Perretta only appears to be a total psychopath while he's coaching.  Apparently Perretta is a super thoughtful and helpful coach off the court.  No joke, this segment of the Coyer sisters and Kavunaa Edwards talking about Perretta could have gone on for another 20 minutes and I would have totally fine with this.

2:19pm - Aaaaaaaaand we're done for the day.  Pretty uneventful Media Day, generally speaking.  We've gotta get some cantankerous coaches in this league or something.