CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein Has Opinions About The Big East

It’s a summer tradition unlike any other: CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein firing off an explosion of tweets bright and early one morning about various conferences. On Monday, it was the Big East’s turn to face the music of Rothstein’s opinions.

Let’s see what he has to say.....

I can’t disagree with that top two. I’d have to say that I agree with Paint Touches’ assessment that we’re all in a lot of trouble if St. John’s finishes the year in 6th place. I know they’re getting Marcus LoVett into the mix after being stuck not being able to play last year, and Sharmorie Ponds is highly ranked. St. John’s also went 1-17 in Big East play last year. Based on last year, finishing sixth would mean an eight win improvement for the Johnnies, and c’mon, who are we kidding here.

I don’t think I can disagree with the 8th place slotting for Marquette. They finished seventh with Henry Ellenson and now his rebounding is gone. The Golden Eagles might be hard pressed to grab missed shots without Ellenson (sub-200 in both offensive and defensive rebounding rates with him), so at least for now, you’d have to figure they go backwards a bit.

Makes sense, although I can make a very serious argument for Maurice Watson, Jr. to be in here. He was all-BE Second Team last season.

Next.

Gonna sleep their way straight through the season, maybe. I’ll believe Georgetown’s pointed in a good direction when I see it.

Is it good when both of your only two freshmen are in what is arguably a list of the 10 best freshmen going into the season? It seems like it’s good, right? At the very least, one team in the Big East doesn’t get a freshman on the list that way.

I’m going to need a clarification as to whether LoVett is allowed to be on this list. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be allowed to be a redshirt freshman this coming season. Seems a little silly to declare him ineligible to play but still give him four years of eligibility. On the other side, I can see why Rothstein would include him here.

Translated: The next five guys. I’m not really sure that there’s 15 freshmen worth mentioning. As an example: Eli Cain and Jessie Govan were on the all-freshman team last year. Not really knocking them dead there, y’know?

Shoutout to Andrew Rowsey, everyone’s favorite gunner from Lexington by way of Asheville. This is where I should point out that in the check-in posts on Butler and Creighton (more coming, btw, it’s a long summer), both Savage and Foster were completely neglected. I blame this on those schools for not making their transfer status more obvious on their roster pages.

This seems like a good spot to point out that Katin Reinhardt has never averaged less than 10 points a game and never shot worse than 35% from behind the three point line.

I generally speaking have a problem with labeling transfers as “under the radar.” For the most part, transfers are guys that felt underutilized at their previous location. You get your guys like Marcus Foster (kicked off the team) and Andrew Rowsey (clearly looking for a bigger challenge), but most transfers are guys that didn’t make an impact elsewhere. Somehow they’re supposed to be under the radar when it comes to their new landing pad? I don’t get it.

I think the Veer Singh possibility is the most interesting one here. I can see the other guys: Yakwe was really good for SJU as a frosh, Booth blew up in a big way in the national championship game (KenPom actually has him as the MVP of that game), Cartwright has Bentil & Dunn out of his way, and the same goes for Wideman, except with Jones and Dunham at Butler.

Meanwhile, Singh played less than 20% of Seton Hall’s minutes and shot a sub-par 31% on 55 three point attempts. After playing double digit minutes through most of non-conference play and the start of Big East action, his biggest outing in the final 11 games was eight minutes of burn against DePaul. Not saying it can’t happen, and with Isaiah Whitehead and Derrick Gordon gone, someone has to play for the Pirates. It just doesn’t make as much obvious sense as the other four. Side note: where’s my guy Jajuan Johnson here?? Does he not qualify because he started 16 games and averaged over 10 points a game?

What do you think Rothstein got wrong? What did he get absolutely right?