As the Big Green men’s basketball team travels to St. John’s University tomorrow, players are part of a long history of teams eagerly descending on New York City to play at the center of college hoops.
But as I wrote in last week’s column, the relationship between college basketball and New York has been dramatically altered in a tragic way. The break up of the Big East conference means that some of the nation’s premiere programs will no longer meet at Madison Square Garden every March for the highly-anticipated conference tournament. What the Big East’s collapse has done, then, is not only put an end to one league’s great rivalry matchups and tradition, but it has raised a much more daunting question: will New York still hold the same prominence in the college basketball world that it has enjoyed over the past few decades?
Because of the slew of exceptional players in the Big East when it first began holding its tournaments at the Garden in 1983 — think St. John’s Chris Mullin and Georgetown’s Patrick Ewing — the nation’s eyes were cast on New York. Big East schools were so closely located to one another that fans could easily access the Garden. That proximity also ensured that even during the regular season, high-stakes matchups in New York had an ambience unlike any other arena.
The Big East, in fact, has long converged on New York for another reason: to recruit talent. Its top contenders have long sought the best players from this stronghold, making the post-season tournament a homecoming. For Mullin, a Brooklyn native, what must have been most rewarding about playing for his hometown team was the chance to shine in the nation’s spotlight every March. Bronx native and University of Connecticut standout Kemba Walker’s exceptional performance in the 2011 tournament must have felt even more special because it was in his hometown.
St. John’s fans in the post-Lou Carnesecca era have lamented his successors’ inability to recruit the city’s young stars, who are highly coveted by stronger Big East programs. New York has long been the point of convergence for the city’s premiere high school programs and the Northeast’s elite college ones, but such a New York-centric basketball atmosphere is in danger of vanishing without the powerhouses of the Big East such as Syracuse University, which is currently ranked No. 2 in the nation.
It’s not just the Big East that views the Big Apple as prime recruiting territory. Just look at the number of early season out-of-conference games played at MSG or the newly built Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Coaches will use those road trips often to court potential recruits. But of course, those teams don’t return for a tournament every March, and thus unlike the Big East, they are in no way foundational to New York’s prestige in basketball.
The rise of New York City as the “capital of college basketball” dates back to the 1930s, as Richard Davies and Richard Abram discuss in their book “Betting the Line: Sports Wagering in American Life.” As college basketball rapidly grew in popularity, sportswriter Ned Irish took notice of the jam-packed gymnasiums across the city, and he began to promote games at Madison Square Garden. He organized doubleheader matchups that achieved raucous sellout crowds, helping propel New York’s basketball reputation into the national consciousness of fans.
The authors argue that Irish’s success pushed New York area schools into the limelight, boosting the team’s national appeal.
“Strong teams from other regions vied to be invited to the Garden to play the local teams,” the authors write. “The basketball powers of the day were eager to challenge one of the eastern giants and bask in the limelight of the Big Apple.”
For over 70 years, traveling to New York had an intangible aura attached to it. Playing in the city told players that this wasn’t just any game. But if the traditional powers of college basketball won’t be doing that annually anymore, then I can’t help but wonder whether the symbolic value of the journey for all visiting teams has forever been diminished.