PSR Showdown
What's the best basketball conference in the country?

Big East: A Man's World
By Rob Rossi
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The Big East isn't college basketball's most entertaining conference, but somebody would be hard-pressed to convince me that, from top to bottom, it isn't the best.

Yes, I am well aware that the reigning national champion hails from the Atlantic Coast Conference - so? One team does not a conference make. While I do not dare suggest the ACC is a one-team conference; it's doesn't possess the depth of the freshly expanded Big East, which added to a stable of consistent programs the likes of Louisville, Cincinnati and Marquette.

To consider how difficult the Big East slate is, think on the situation facing West Virginia, a squad that was a meltdown against - ahem - Louisville from going to the Final Four last season. The Mountaineers return four of five starters, including Tourney darling Kevin Pittsnogle, and will likely enter the preseason rankings somewhere within the Top 20. But WVU might not qualify for the NCAA Tournament this season because the Big East is that deep.

In the Big East, there are no easy wins.

At Connecticut and Pitt, in the Orange Dome, down in D.C. - wins in such places are hard to come by and, in some cases, rarer than mild western Pennsylvania winters.

The Big East's depth, superior as it is to any college basketball conference, is not the reason it ranks supreme amongst the likes of the ACC, SEC, Big Ten, Big XII and Pac-10; for that reason, somebody needs only to actually watch a Big East contest.

In the Big East, basketball is different. Less about skill than it is will. It's about toughness, guts, hard fouls, tightrope defense and board-crashing chaos. Teams that come out of the Big East are tested because they've survived a brand of basketball that is best described as brutal.

Such brutality is what makes the Big East best. After all, there is something comforting about knowing that a conference champion could survive a showdown on a New York City cement court.

Rob Rossi is a sports writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

ACC: Where It's At
By Bill Cole
Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal

No one can predict in November the teams that will play in April's NCAA Final Four but one point is almost certain: at least one ACC team will be there.

No conference has sent more teams to the Final Four in the last 18 seasons, 20 and counting. None tops the ACC's six NCAA titles in that time. If you doubt the ACC's quality, here's the perfect example:

Roy Williams spent 15 seasons at Kansas chasing the NCAA championship, coming close four times but never winning. He became North Carolina's coach in 2003 and two years later took home the trophy.

College basketball analysts voted UNC-Duke the best rivalry in the game. Others voted UNC's 1957 win over Kansas in three overtimes for the title as the greatest Final Four game. Some say Duke's heart-stopping 104-103 OT win over Kentucky in the 1992 East Regional is the best NCAA Tournament game of all time.

The ACC has a tradition as deep as the Marianas Trench. The last repeat NCAA champion is Duke, which has won three of the ACC's 10 national championships. David Thompson, Phil Ford and Buck Williams play in the ACC and leave. They are replaced by Christian Laettner, James Worthy and Juan Dixon. Frank McGuire retires as a coaches and the next era produces Dean Smith.

ACC basketball is more than players and coaches. Students spend weeks camped out for tickets in bitter cold. Fans hold up eye charts for offending officials. Tickets for Duke home games are as scarce as Texas Democrats.

When Duke and UNC play, arena noise levels can drown out bomb explosions. Buildings shake. Students paint their bodies, jump up and down as if human pogo sticks and strip to bikini swim trunks to distract opponents. Brainiacs who quote Sophocles in class walk into an arena and sound like a longshoreman who just dropped an anvil on his foot.

There is no better place to be in the winter than inside an ACC basketball arena. That includes sitting in the OPEC oil ministry's chair seat.

Bill Cole covers the ACC for the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal.