ACC vs Big East

So the McHump has been McFlapper, yapping in my ear about the "Biiiggg Easssttt Biiattch!!", given what a great year the B.E. is having this year.

Which got me thinking, "why does it seem like the Big Least has been the bitch of the ACC since I started watching college basketball two decades ago?"

So I thought reason #1 might just be that I'm homer, as a Duke Alum with a huge mancrush on K.

Then I decided to look up the tourney results and settled on reason #2: the fact that the ACC has actually dominated the Big East in terms of NCAA results in the past twenty years. To wit,

1990-2009 Final Four appearances:

Big East: 7
ACC: 20

1990-2009 National Championships:

Big East: 3
ACC: 6

So then I got to thinking, but maybe the "resurgent" Big East outpaced the ACC if we only look at the most recent decade, 2000-2009. Wrong again. National Championships, 3-2 for the ACC; Final Four appearances, 9-5 for the ACC.

Yup, the Big East is having a better year in 2009. The irony is, the ACC might still grab the Nat'l Championship, although I'd actually be hoping we don't. I'd even rather Connecticut, my second most hated team, wins over UNC.

And if history is a guide, we'll look back on '09 as the exception, not the rule.


UPDATE:

I decided to all the way back into ancient history and did the same analysis in the 1980's: "The heyday of the Big East." Suffice it to say that the strucutral advantages that the Big East had in those years, specifically the stranglehold over the D.C. and NYC recruiting pipelines that G'Town and St. John's provided, have evaporated. And those were the vaunted years of Hoya Paranoia, Chris Mullins, and Rick Pitino at Providence. And yet the results? Dead even:

1980-1989: Final Fours entries, 8-8; National Champions, 2-2.

That was the high water mark for the Big East. And even then it was a draw. And the ACC has pummeled the Big East since. And now, with Calhoun's program in trouble with the NCAA and potentially looking at sanctions, Pitino flirting with Arizona and thinking of leaving L'Ville (and let's face it, they're not really a Big East team anyway), and Boeheim nearing the end of his career, how big will the fall off be?

Two more decades of ACC domination, IMHO.