It was a tough tournament for the Big East Conference.
None of the five Big East schools that earned berths in this year’s NCAA Tournament made it out of the first weekend.
Eighth-seeded UConn’s 77-75 loss to No. 1 Florida in the second round on Sunday afternoon delivered the final blow.
Second-seeded St. John’s was eliminated Saturday afternoon with a 75-66 loss to 10th-seeded Arkansas. Later Saturday, No. 9 Creighton suffered an 82-70 defeat to Auburn, the tournament’s top overall seed.
Those losses came after No. 7 Marquette was upset by No. 10 New Mexico, 75-66, on Friday in the first round. No. 11 Xavier beat Texas in their First Four matchup on Wednesday before losing, 86-73, to No. 6 Illinois on Friday.
This is the first time since 2019 that the Big East is not represented in the Sweet 16.
Overall, the Big East went 4-5 in the tournament. Creighton, which beat No. 8 Louisville in the first round, was the conference’s only school to defeat a team with a higher seed.
Sunday’s loss in Raleigh, N.C., officially ended UConn’s attempt to win three consecutive national championships.
The Huskies had won 13 consecutive games at the Big Dance, tying a record for the most victories in a row since 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams.
“If it’s going to come to an end for us, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be in a game where we lost to a lower seed,” head coach Dan Hurley said. “There’s some honor, I guess, in the way that this went down.”
Leading the way for Florida was senior guard Walter Clayton Jr., who scored 15 of his game-high 23 points in the second half.
Before he transferred to Florida ahead of the 2023-24 season, Clayton played at Iona under Rick Pitino for two years.
“We knew this game wasn’t going to be easy,” Clayton said. “They’ve got a championship pedigree, back-to-back champions. That’s a great team. They had that experience. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We kept our composure.”
UConn led by two points with under three minutes remaining in the second half, and the score was tied, 64-64, with less than two minutes to go.
The Huskies joined Florida (32-4) in the tournament’s wild, wild West — the same region as St. John’s.
“To be that close to getting to a Sweet 16 and knowing that the No. 2 seed lost yesterday, this bracket could have really opened up for us,” Hurley said.
A Big East team has won four of the last eight NCAA Tournaments, with Villanova emerging victorious in 2016 and 2018 and UConn claiming the last two crowns.
UConn entered this season ranked No. 3 in the AP Poll, but after losing four starters from last year’s team — including lottery picks Stephon Castle and Donovan Clingan — the Huskies regressed. They finished 24-11, including 14-6 in conference play.
In its second year under Pitino, St. John’s (31-5) surged past UConn to win the Big East’s regular-season and conference tournament championships. The Red Storm went 18-2 in Big East play, tying the 2023-24 Huskies for the conference’s single-season wins record.
Only three Big East schools made the NCAA Tournament last year, but all three — UConn, Marquette and Creighton — advanced to the Sweet 16.