Big East What To Watch: Week 14

The regular season will be over for Big East women’s basketball three weeks from Tuesday. The last scheduled game day is Monday, February 27th. Things are hurtling to a conclusion here, so that just ratchets up the tension attached to any single game that has a chance to impact the seeding for the conference tournament. Teams are trying to avoid that #6 seed and thus that game against the #11 seed on the first night of the tourney. There’s a difference in being the #3 and the #4, because then you get to postpone seeing UConn in your path as long as possible. Lots of things are still up in the air, and maybe this week will help bring a little clarity to them.

We’re a little bit further away from the start of the men’s basketball tournament, but this week could give us a lot of clarity about who’s going to end up as the regular season champion and snag that #1 seed at Madison Square Garden.

Let’s get into the highlights….

Tuesday, February 7: #10 Marquette Golden Eagles at #21 Connecticut Huskies (5:30pm Central, FS1) — This is the first game in a four game stretch for the Golden Eagles that is going to determine whether or not they get a Big East regular season championship trophy. There’s 3 games against NCAA tournament caliber teams in this run, and two of them — including this one — are on the road. The Huskies have only beaten Butler, DePaul, and Georgetown since January 19th, and are in need of a big time win to straighten their season out a bit as well.

Tuesday, February 7: Creighton Bluejays at Seton Hall Pirates (6pm Central, FloSports) — A game and a half separate these two teams in the standings as the week starts: Jim Flannery’s Bluejays at 10-4, Lauren Park-Lane and the Pirates at 8-5. Both teams are in a tangle of teams between third and sixth in the Big East right now, and remember: 6th place has to play on the opening night of the conference tournament. Any wins you get against the group that’s all smashed together in the standings helps keep you out of sixth and might push someone else down there.

Wednesday, February 8: #23 Creighton Bluejays at Seton Hall Pirates (5:30pm Central, FS1) — Creighton has somewhat quietly been one of the best teams in the country since Ryan Kalkbrenner returned from illness, and they come in to this one on a six game winning streak and with a chance at a Big East title if they get their wins and get some help. Seton Hall, on the other hand, hasn’t taken a bad loss in Big East play and has won seven of their last eight to play their way into the NCAA tournament conversation. A home win here could be exactly the statement win that the Pirates need to push themselves over the line to an at-large bid.

Wednesday, February 8: #4 Connecticut Huskies at Marquette Golden Eagles (7pm Central, SNY) — It’s not critical to the Big East standings, at least not between the two teams involved. But Marquette needs a signature win to push themselves deep over the line and into the NCAA tournament, and solving the Huskies in Milwaukee would go a long way towards exactly that. The two teams played a tight one for the most part out east earlier this season, or at least it was tight after UConn took a big lead early but the Golden Eagles never let them run away with it.

Saturday, February 11: #21 Connecticut Huskies at #23 Creighton Bluejays (1pm Central, Fox) — Take everything we said a minute ago about Adama Sanogo’s team and Arthur Kaluma’s team, shake them together, figure out the appropriate things to think about both teams after their results earlier in the week, and you can see the importance of this game for both sides.

Here’s the full men’s basketball schedule for the week!

Here’s the full women’s basketball schedule for the week!