BUFFALO, N.Y. - Fancy meeting you here. The beauty of this early phase of the NCAA Tournament is that teams come from all over, from many different conferences, and they wind up at the same spot. The disparity is represented here by the likes of Syracuse, Connecticut and Villanova all having come from different conferences.
Imagine that.
Except, of course, anyone who has spent a week in early March at Madison Square Garden knows you never had to use your imagination to see those three teams under the same roof. It happened regularly and it was quite a show before the old Big East splintered before this season.
So what we have here is a reunion.
“It’s very cool,” said Villanova Coach Jay Wright, whose Wildcats are the one team still representing the Big East (against Milwaukee tonight). Wright and his wife ran into Syracuse Coach Jim Boeheim at the hotel Tuesday night. “[We] spent an hour in the lobby talking about the ESPN special 30 for 30 and the good old days. And it’s really cool to see the Connecticut people. It’s very cool.”
It’s also very rare. Syracuse, which will play Western Michigan today, is a high-profile new member of the ACC, and UConn, which plays St. Joseph’s tonight, sort of got lost in a game of league musical chairs last year and wound up in the American Athletic Conference. The whole thing seemed a bit odd, or maybe not.
“From Villanova to Syracuse to us, there’s no strange reason why any of us are here. We work hard,” UConn’s Shabazz Napier said. “The Big East, I just miss the matchups in Madison Square Garden, that’s the biggest thing.”
Sports, Pages 23 on 03/20/2014