The Athletic’s Eamonn Brennan does fantastic work covering the entire college basketball landscape, and was a big proponent of the Big East during his ESPN days at a time when the worldwide leader wasn’t particularly kind to the conference.
Brennan penned an early projection of next year’s Big East, ranking Providence seventh in the now 11 team league. He wrote of the Friars, “Call this the Ed Cooley vote of confidence. In other words, on paper it is hard to make the case for Providence as anything other than a rebuilding Big East bottom-feeder in 2020-21.