St. John's Most Likely to Replace MU to Give Big East 7 Bids Again, Unless MU Defense Improves

This is one of 32 conference previews based on projections of Value Add for each player in www.valueaddbasketball.com. The other 31 projections appear at www.pudnersports.com so that readers only interested in the Big East need not review.

Each piece follows the same format, listing the Massey football ratings alongside the Value Add basketball projections. In the case of the Big East, Villanova's strong FCS team ranks ahead of a number of the 129 FBS teams as the 111th best overall football program. Butler and Georgetown also play football, and are ranked 363rd and 312th of all college teams.

Of the seven Big East teams that made the tournament last year, Value Add projects all but Marquette to return to the tournament, while St. John's is likely to replace Marquette as the seventh team (currently misses by only a couple of spots as the projected 52nd best team). Only nine of Villanova's players have projected values now, so their projections should rise to a Top 10 level, but right now they are edged out by Providence.

Here is where Value Add ranks each Big East team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools. Updates will be provided here as well as the previews of the other 31 conferences.

Big East/2017 Seed	ValueAdd	Football
Providence 11	19
Villanova 1	20	111
Seton Hall 9	22
Xavier 11	27
Butler 4	36	363
Creighton 6	47
Saint John's	52
Marquette 10	72
Georgetown	141	312
DePaul	158

Marquette's trio of Markus Howard (171st), Andrew Rowsey (207th) and Sam Hauser (256th) all rank in the top 7 percent of all players. Value Add assigns some of the blame for the horrid defense last year to all players, so any improvement in team defense will lift all players, but if the team continues to try to trade good three-point shooting with uncontested dunks on the other end the defensive ratings will continue to hold down player ratings.

More important of course, is that the high powered only needs an adequate defense to push Marquette back into the tournament.

Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order, and the other Marquette players in the top 20 percent of all players. As always, corrections are welcome to pudnerjohn@gmail.com or 404.606.3163.

Nat'l Rnk	Top 15 Big East Players	Value Add	School	Ht
15	Jalen Brunson 1	9.16	Villanova	`6-02
23	Mikal Bridges 25	8.78	Villanova	`6-07
36	Khyri Thomas 2	8.21	Creighton	`6-03
39	Trevon Bluiett 5	8.17	Xavier	`6-06
41	Shamorie Ponds 2	8.13	St. John's	`6-01
49	Angel Delgado	7.80	Seton Hall	`6-10
64	JP Macura 55	7.38	Xavier	`6-05
67	Marcus Foster 0	7.30	Creighton	`6-03
95	Khadeen Carrington 0	6.90	Seton Hall	`6-04
129	Kelan Martin 30	6.51	Butler	`6-07
134	Jalen Lindsey 21	6.49	Providence	`6-07
143	Emmitt Holt 15	6.35	Providence	`6-07
171	Markus Howard 0	6.10	Marquette	`5-11
197	Desi Rodriguez 20	5.85	Seton Hall	`6-06
203	Jessie Govan 15	5.82	Georgetown	`6-10
Nat'l Rnk	Other MU in top 20%	Value Add	School	Ht
207	Andrew Rowsey 30	5.80	Marquette	`5-10
256	Sam Hauser 10	5.43	Marquette	`6-06
705	Haanif Cheatham 25	3.32	Marquette	`6-05

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Big East 3rd of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed at www.pudnersports.com with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.

Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.