Big East Basketball

A first-time champion of the Big East tournament will be crowned on Saturday night inside Madison Square Garden.

The Marquette Golden Eagles will be playing in their first-ever Big East tournament final. The Xavier Musketeers are making their second appearance in the championship game.

Marquette was the class of the conference all season. Shaka Smart's team won its first Big East regular-season title and it has lost just twice since January 1.

Xavier comes into Saturday's final on a five-game winning streak and off a blowout victory over the Creighton Bluejays.

Another first will be achieved in the Xavier-Marquette matchup, as it marks the first time the top two seeds will play each other in the Big East tournament final in the current configuration of the league.

Big East Tournament Final Info

Date: Saturday, March 11

Start Time: 5:30 p.m. ET

TV: Fox

Live Stream: FoxSports.com and Fox Sports app

Make your picks: Play the NCAA March Madness Men's Bracket Challenge and Tournament Run.

Preview

Marquette will enter the Big East tournament final as the favorite to cut down the nets.

Smart's team suffered three losses in Big East play, and it is 16-2 since the calendar flipped over to 2023.

Big East Player of the Year Tyler Kolek drives every part of Marquette's game, and he will be front and center for the Golden Eagles on Saturday.

Kolek is one of four Marquette players with a scoring average in double figures, and he is second in the nation in assists per game.

The sophomore guard tortured the Xavier defense in both regular-season meetings. He had 25 points in an 80-76 loss on January 15. He produced 15 points and five assists in a 69-68 victory on February 15.

Souley Boum holds the same role as Kolek for Xavier. He produced 40 points in the two games against Marquette.

Boum and Xavier's other top scorers will try to attack the lane to achieve the same success they did on January 15.

Sean Miller's Musketeers shot 44.9 percent from the field and hit 13 of their 17 free throws to cover up for 10 turnovers and a 27.8 percent day from three-point range.

Xavier recorded a better percentage from the field in its loss to the Golden Eagles, but it only got to the free-throw line on nine occasions on February 15.

Marquette earned that win over Xavier despite shooting 38.2 percent from the field and 22.7 percent from three-point range.

The Golden Eagles offense has not struggled much since that victory, as they hit the 70-point threshold in six straight games.

Xavier is on a similar streak with at least 75 points in each of its last five games, but it can be inconsistent at times on offense. The Musketeers failed to hit 70 points in four of their five Big East losses.

Marquette needs to guard the three-point line well again to take down Xavier. The Musketeers rank fifth in Division I in three-point shooting percentage, even though they did not shoot well from deep in the two meetings with Marquette.

The Golden Eagles rank ninth in overall field-goal percentage, and they will try to attack the rim through Kolek's dribble penetration. Oso Ighidaro and O-Max Prosper give Kolek two solid options to dish to when he carves into the lane.

Xavier must contain Kolek's dribble drives through Boum and others to avoid getting into a track meet.

Xavier's defense has held opponents under 70 points in four of its last six wins, and if that trend continues, it can upend the Golden Eagles. Meanwhile, a higher-scoring affair favors the Golden Eagles.

The winner will earn a new honor for its basketball program, and it will be just the fourth different Big East tournament winner since 2014.

After Georgetown's season ended with a blowout loss to Villanova in the first round of the Big East men's basketball tournament on Wednesday, the program made a major change Thursday.

Georgetown has parted ways with head coach Patrick Ewing, ending his six-year tenure. The Hoyas finished with a 7-25 record this season following last year's 6-25 campaign.

CBS Sports' Jon Rothstein first reported the news.

"It was a rough year. It was not the year we thought we would have had," Ewing said after Wednesday's 80-48 loss. "We kept fighting. We didn't give up, and we're disappointed the season ended the way that it did."

Ewing exits with a record of 75-109. The highlight of his run with the team came two years ago when the Hoyas surprisingly won the Big East tournament as a No. 8 seed. The victory fittingly came at Madison Square Garden, where Ewing starred for so many years as a member of the New York Knicks.

Georgetown's lone NCAA tournament appearance during the 60-year-old's time at the helm came during that 2020-21 season, and the team fell in the round of 64. It only participated in one other postseason tournament under Ewing, falling in the NIT's first round in 2019. It was a far cry from the success Ewing enjoyed as a player.

The Basketball Hall of Famer starred for Georgetown for four years under head coach John Thompson, leading the team to the 1984 NCAA championship and two other title-game appearances. The Hoyas went 121-23 while Ewing was in uniform, including a 9-1 conference tournament record. He went on to become the No. 1 pick in the 1985 NBA draft.

Georgetown will now begin its search for the right person to lead a rebuild as the program hopes to return to prominence.

The Big East Conference announced that the UConn women's basketball team's home game against DePaul on Sunday has been postponed because the Huskies will not have the league-minimum seven scholarship student-athletes active because of injuries.

According to a UConn release, junior forward Aaliyah Edwards and first-year forward Ayanna Patterson suffered injuries during the Huskies' 73-37 win over Xavier on Thursday.

Sophomore guards Caroline Ducharme and Azzi Fudd, junior guard Paige Bueckers and first-year forward Ice Brady are also inactive. That leaves the Huskies with six players available from their 12-woman roster.

The conference said it will look to reschedule the game.

"At UConn, the health and well-being of our student-athletes will always be our top priority," director of athletics David Benedict said in a statement.

"Our women's basketball program has unfortunately been affected by an unprecedented number of injuries this season. While it's unfortunate that we need to postpone Sunday's game, it's the right call to protect the safety of our student-athletes. We will work with the Big East and DePaul on options to reschedule the game."

Bueckers is out for the 2022-23 season with a torn ACL suffered in August, and Brady is sidelined for the year with a dislocated patella in her right knee suffered in October.

Per Maggie Vanoni of CT Insider, Ducharme suffered a concussion in practice last Monday. Fudd has been out with a knee injury since Dec. 4. She remains sidelined but has resumed basketball activities in her ramp-up to return to the court.

Vanoni reported that UConn has not yet released details on the injuries to Edwards and Patterson.

Despite playing all season short-handed, UConn finds itself fifth in the Associated Press poll. The Huskies sport a 13-2 record (6-0 in Big East), with their only losses occurring against No. 4 Notre Dame and No. 13 Maryland.

The next game on UConn's schedule is a road matchup against No. 24 St. John's on Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.

Big East commissioner Val Ackerman said the conference is likely to eventually feel the impact of college sports' widespread realignment despite so far holding firm with 11 all-sport members.

Ackerman told Dana O'Neil of The Athletic on Tuesday that two key factors in recruiting potential additions will be a school's basketball prestige and its geography, with the conference's current programs being located exclusively in the Northeast and Midwest.

"I don't think the Big East will stay at 11 forever," Ackerman said. "I can't quantify when, but there's too much going on around us. Maybe it's proactive, or it could be reactive expansion. You'd rather be proactive, but maybe other things helping elsewhere and certain opportunities are presented to us that we didn't see and then we act on those. Either way, it's fine."

The initial wave of realignment, which was jump-started by Oklahoma and Texas announcing their future moves to the SEC in July 2021, was focused mostly around high-profile football programs shifting around to avoid being left out when the dust settled.

Since the Big East, which has existed in its current iteration since 2013—it was formed as members of the original Big East broke off to create the American Athletic Conference—doesn't feature football, it was mostly spared from the chaos.

Ackerman, the former WNBA president and a member of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, told O'Neil she doesn't expect that lack of change to remain the case, though.

"You have to be nimble," she said. "This isn't going away anytime soon, not in the landscape we're in right now."

Asked whether Gonzaga, a basketball-centric school based in Washington, would be an ideal addition, the Big East commissioner explained the key question is whether the financial side would make sense for all of the conference's other teams aside from hoops.

"Geography is not unimportant," Ackerman told O'Neil. "If you're bringing in someone as a full member, you're bringing in another 13, 14 or 15 sports, and you to think about that. What's the volleyball team, the baseball team, the softball, what's their experience going to be like? What's the travel like? And can we afford it? It's not insurmountable, but it's on the pecking order."

The Zags currently reside in the West Coast Conference.

As it stands, the Big East's full-time membership features: Butler, Connecticut, Creighton, DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Villanova and Xavier.

If the conference is going to add more schools, it'll likely happen before February 2024, when its negotiating period with Fox opens for the next television contract, per O'Neil.

That gives the Big East around 16 months to explore options for expansion, which could bolster the size of the TV deal, or opt to stick with its core 11.