The Big East started play in the 1979-80 season, the same year Georgia Tech joined the ACC. Among the Big East’s original seven members were Boston College and Georgetown, who meet Saturday in the second round of the NCAAs.
Animosity abounded when BC left the fold, taking what it thought was a better deal to become the ACC’s 12th member. Miami, a Big East addition in 1992, the same year the ACC added Florida State, and Virginia Tech, which joined the Big East in 2001, both left by 2004-05. But, with their departure announced and settled, the Eagles were forced to stay in the Big East one more season, hardly a formula for popularity as they traveled around the league.
Among those to express bitterness was UConn coach Jim Calhoun, who said he would never voluntarily play BC again.
John Thompson III, the Georgetown coach, took over the Hoya program during Boston College’s last Big East season. He professes no strong feelings about the Eagles’ jumping ship.
“I’ll be honest,” he said, an elocution that always suggests a speaker’s other comments are suspect. “With that whole situation, we kind of left that to our president and administrators.” Understandably, Thompson, son of the former Georgetown coach of the same name who captured the program’s sole NCAA title in 1984, said he was focused on other things. “The whole thought process of who’s leaving and who’s staying, I was worried about Georgetown,” he insisted. “For me, we were trying to get Georgetown’s house in order the way I wanted it in order.”
But while the Hoya coach and several of his players displayed little feeling for, or knowledge of, seven seed Boston College, Jared Dudley clearly had his eye on his former Big East mates.
“Georgetown I would say is the hottest team in the country,” the ACC player of the year said of an opponent that has won 16 of its last 17 games, including a comfortable opening NCAA win over Belmont. Dudley expressed confidence BC could handle the Big East champs and No.2 seed in the East. During his first two years at Chestnut Hill, the Eagles beat the Hoyas three times in three tries.
“We’ve done it before,” the senior said. “Just because you’re favored doesn’t mean you’re going to win.”
Copyright 2011 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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