Big East Linkage is a news roundup feature on BECB. Feel free to send us any relevant links, stories or posts you think might be interesting to readers at bigeastcoastbias at gmail dot com.
Making the Grade: The full Academic Progress Rate data was released today by the NCAA. For football, all the Big East schools except for Louisville exceeded the four-year minimum score of 925. Louisville turned in a 906. Blame Steve Kragthorpe for that. Rutgers led the football schools with a 988 and was in the top 10% APR for the fourth year in a row.
As for Men's basketball, DePaul had a perfect 1000 APR, West Virginia had a 995 and Cincinnati had a 992. The other programs were above the 925 minimum with two exceptions: Providence and Connecticut. Providence had a 925 and Connecticut will be short two scholarships for turning in a dreadful 893.
Expansion: Brett McMurphy polled the coaches and most were in favor of expansion.
Voodoo Five wonders if Villanova is a red herring to disguise a referendum on commissioner John Marinatto.
The Big East decided to wait on the new TV deal, before the Pac-12 signed that megabucks contract. Expansion came to a halt after the Pac-12 deal. In any event, the Big East should throw the media deal to the open market and make more money than if they had taken the ESPN deal weeks ago.
UConn coach Jim Calhoun thinks that we will see a football and basketball split in four or five years and that UCF just isn't sexy (as an expansion candidate), but Memphis is.
Ranked: West Virginia comes in at number 22 in the Sporting News' Post-Spring Top 25. At Sports Illustrated, the Mountaineers came in at number 20.
The Jimmy V Classic: has Missouri vs. Villanova and Washington vs. Marquette on December 6, 2011.
Rumble in the Garden: has the latest on Momo Jones. Basically, he can't transfer to St. John's because his old AAU coach is on the staff at St. John's. An NCAA rule is the culprit here with their rule from 2010. Rumble in the Garden interprets the rule in the article.