Beyond the boisterous Paint Crew and the rest of the capacity crowd at Mackey Arena, there could not have been many who viewed Purdue’s November home game against Xavier as an extraordinary occasion. The Boilers were playing what could be viewed as their first serious opponent of the 2023-24 season, although all opponents might be viewed as serious after what happened last spring. The Musketeers, though, were fielding an eight-man rotation featuring seven players new to the program.
The matchup was part of the Gavitt Tipoff Games, though, a series begun in 2015 to match members of the Big East Conference against opponents from the Big Ten Conference to provide teams with a compelling launch to their seasons and named to honor Naismith Hall of Famer Dave Gavitt.
All that’s over, now. The 2023 Gavitt Games were the last.
It could be viewed as the product of the imbalance between the two leagues – not on the court, where there was only a 34-30 difference in favor of the Big Ten in the eight years the series was played, but in the standings, where the Big Ten will list 18 members starting next season and the Big East just 11.
Or it could be a precursor to the way games will be scheduled across all of college basketball as the cohort of major conferences shrinks next season (no more Pac-12) and the membership of those still standing expands.
Just last season, the Big Ten was involved in both the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and the Gavitt Games. As of now, there is no announced plan for any such series involving the league. That could mean fewer opportunities for fans to see major-conference teams against major-conference opponent in the homecourt environment that is one of college basketball’s most appealing qualities.
“We’ve always wanted to play the best. We’ve always wanted to go on the road in the Big East, to go on the road in the ACC, and play those guys, just like they want to come here and play,” Purdue coach Matt Painter told The Sporting News. “It’s unfortunate we couldn’t play it, because I know we really enjoyed it.”
The dissolution of these two interconference series and the expansion of the Big Ten and ACC to 18 members each and the Big 12 and SEC to 16 has raised questions about the future of non-conference competition in major-college basketball.
Gonzaga coach Mark Few, whose team finished fifth at this season’s loaded Maui Invitational, said before the tournament, which featured five top-10 teams, “The way the landscape is changing, there’s no chance we’ll see this again. Everyone needs to enjoy this for what it is.”
Every big-time league that is being reconfigured – which is every one save for the Big East – is having to reconsider how it conducts its basketball competition. The Big Ten still is considering how to operate an 18-team basketball conference, with such details as how many teams to include in its championship tournament to how to structure the regular-season competition.
There are questions about whether to continue with the 20-game schedule begun in the 2018-19 season or possibly to extend that to 22 games so teams can play a broader spectrum of league opponents multiple times.
Their decisions will ripple through all of Division I basketball, as will those of the other expanding power conferences.
There are those with a stake in the outcome of the Big Ten’s discussions who aren’t convinced playing more league games is the ideal approach, especially given the league’s success in this decade at qualifying teams for March Madness. It began with the 2019-20 season, when the Bracket Matrix consensus of online projections indicated there would have been 10 Big Ten teams included in the field had the NCAA Tournament not been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the past three tournaments, the league has averaged the placement of nine of its 14 members in the 68-team field: nine in 2021 and 2022, eight in 2023. Nine entrants is a league record, and only the Big East’s 11 bids in 2011 exceeded that number.
The reason the Big Ten did so well on Selection Sunday never was a secret. It was because they did so well against non-conference competition, from the two challenge series to the various multi-team tournaments in which they competed to the one-off neutral-site games to the less common home-and-home series such as Northwestern’s against DePaul or Rutgers’ against Seton Hall. If there are fewer such games, it's possible there could be less such success and fewer teams – per capita, of course – in the NCAAs.
How will we know which are the good leagues if they aren't playing one another and deciding it on the court? This isn't college football, where so many just assume it's the SEC. This has always been established through competition, and the rewards for the achievers presented on a Sunday in March.
The Big Ten has been playing conference games in early December since the 2017-18 season. The ACC began playing early season league games two years later, including some in early November to celebrate the launch of the ACC Network.
So one question to be answered is whether there’ll be more such games crowding out high-level non-league competition.
Xavier coach Sean Miller said for his program in the Big East, the ability to play a full double-round robin – every team in the league, home and away – plus one guaranteed game in the league tournament at Madison Square Garden and the annual Crosstown Shootout against rival Cincinnati means the Musketeers are getting a heavy dose of high-major competition. “For us, it’s a matter of maybe establishing one home-and-away series, which I would like to do,” Miller told TSN.
There are other series still proceeding in conferences outside the Big Ten. Tuesday night, the ACC and SEC launched a challenge series that will feature 14 games over two nights. Missouri’s victory at Pitt was one of the first victories in the books for the SEC. Tigers coach Dennis Gates wants power teams to continue playing buy games against mid- and low-major competition because of the service it does for those opponents in funding their athletic departments but also believes the college game needs marquee non-league games to help drive the sport’s popularity.
“I think everyone needs to continue to play everyone as early as possible to try to keep the synergy in college basketball alive,” Mizzou coach Dennis Gates told TSN. “It is an entertainment battle … I think we need to see an increase in games, possibly, in college basketball – going from 33 to possibly 40. I think that’s something we should look into.
“I think we’re stuck in the past as it relates to buy games, buy games, buy games. I think every fan base wants to see opponents like this face each other and not be afraid to go on the road … That invigorates your fan base, and that invigorates your team.”
