2024-25 transcript for each men’s Big East team (plus

• Myron MedcalfApr 30, 2025, 09:00 AM ET Close Covers college basketball Signed up with ESPN.com in 2011 Graduate of Minnesota State University, Mankato

Weeks after a fascinating Final Four, we have actually lastly captured our collective breath to assess the 2024-25 males’s college basketball season.We’ll be grading each group in the top conferences in a series of report cards we’ll launch each Wednesday for the next 5 weeks: the Big East (listed below), ACC (May 7), Huge Ten (May 14), Huge 12 (May 21) and SEC (May 28).

Part of this process is simple: A good team that played like an excellent group will earn a strong grade, and an excellent team that played like a bad team will not. However it will be made complex for specific groups. Some had championship dreams. Others wanted to win simply one game. In any case, we are evaluating each team’s season based upon preseason expectations while providing grace on a case-by-case basis for any regrettable midseason events.We have actually included

a handful of other notable teams– Gonzaga, Memphis and Saint Mary’s– from conferences we will not hit thoroughly alongside the Big East groups in this launching edition. Let’s begin.Note: Teams

listed in alphabetical order under each grading tier. Non-Big East teams are marked with an asterisk.Jump to a team: Butler

| Creighton|DePaul|Georgetown|Gonzaga *|Marquette|Memphis *|Providence|Seton Hall|Saint Mary’s *|St. John’s|UConn|Villanova|Xavier A grades

Grade: A

Greg McDermott’s fantastic effort must have produced more attention. Pop Isaacs, then a star transfer from Texas Tech (and now headed to Houston), suffered a season-ending injury in early December. However Creighton still handled to win 25 games, finishing 2nd in the Big East behind a strong St. John’s squad and making top-50 marks in changed offensive and defensive effectiveness. And under McDermott, Ryan Kalkbrenner joined Patrick Ewing as the only player to win Big East Defensive Player of the Year four times.By the time they had lost to Auburn in the second round of the NCAA competition, the Bluejays had actually already created an excellent season. Grade: A Turbulence had mostly defined Penny

Hardaway’s period at Memphis prior to the 2024-25 season– there had been NCAA infractions, key departures and a series of shortfalls. However Hardaway put together his finest training effort this season, leading the Tigers to the American Athletic Conference regular-season and competition championships.With Tyrese Hunter(all-AAC first string selection)and PJ Haggerty (junior varsity Associated Press All-American) as their anchors, the Tigers won 29 games, the highest tally under Hardaway. Hunter’s foot injury was a devastating development before the NCAA competition, but the Tigers still managed to produce the best total season of the Hardaway era.Editor’s Picks 1 Associated

Grade: A

Randy Bennett won the West Coast Conference regular-season crown over rival Gonzaga in 2024-25 after losing Aiden Mahaney, an all-WCC first team choice the previous season, to the transfer website. Bennett, nevertheless, has actually made his mark in college basketball with his capability to establish talent. The growth of Mitchell Saxen (10.8 PPG, 7.9 RPG) and Augustas Marciulionis (14.2 PPG, 5.9 APG) helped Bennett record his sixth WCC champion. The Gaels also defeated Vanderbilt in the NCAA tournament after protecting a 7-seed.

Grade: A Sustained by one of the nation’s leading protective systems, St. John’s won the regular-season and competition champions. RJ Luis Jr. won Big East Player of the Year and the Red Storm became one of the sport’s most attractive stories, shown by their appearance on “The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon.”

A second-round loss to Arkansas suddenly ended a season for a team that entered the NCAA competition as a severe title contender, however it was still ultimately selected to finish fifth in the preseason survey before authoring its very first run to the top of the Big East standings in more than thirty years.

Grade: An Enhanced by the return of Zach Freemantle, Xavier tied Marquette for a fourth-place finish in the Big East with a 13-7 record. Freemantle, who had not played a complete season since 2021-22 due to the fact that of injuries, averaged 16.8 points and 6.8 rebounds for a Musketeers team that went 8-1 over its last conference games and secured an 11-seed in the NCAA competition, where it beat Texas in the First 4 before losing to Illinois in the opening round.Sean Miller

is now at Texas due to the fact that of the method he molded a Xavier group that made 39.1% of its 3-point efforts (4th best in the country) and completed top-50 in adjusted offensive and protective efficiency.B grades

Grade: B

In his very first season, Chris Holtmann took a DePaul group that had won 3 games with no conference victories in 2023-24 to 14 wins with 4 conference success to prevent the last-place surface that was forecasted in the Big East preseason poll. The Blue Devils also took Marquette and Creighton to overtime.The objective this season was to get better after a devastating campaign. DePaul did that.

Grade: B

Before freshman Thomas Sorber– an all-Big East 3rd team choice– suffered a season-ending injury, Georgetown was a 15-10 team with a 6-8 in-conference record. But the Hoyas, who likewise grappled with Jayden Epps’ ankle injury, lost five of their next seven games and destroyed what was left of their possibilities to make the NCAA tournament. Still, they jumped from 9 success in 2023-24 to 18 wins in 2024-25 in Cooley’s second season with the program.C grades

Grade: C

With the return of all-West Coast Conference first-team choices Graham Ike and Ryan Nembhard, Gonzaga appeared poised with the skill to go after Mark Couple of’s first national championship. Instead, the Bulldogs ended up second in the WCC for just the 4th time in Few’s career.A program

that has owned the WCC under Few didn’t appear like a genuine national championship contender for the bulk of the season. The Bulldogs went 1-4 against Baylor, Kentucky, UConn, UCLA and West Virginia while suffering losses to Oregon State and Santa Clara (at home) in league play. A thriller against national title runner-up Houston in the 2nd round of the NCAA competition was fascinating, but the Bulldogs were likewise an 8-seed for a factor.

Grade: C With all-Big East preseason first-team choice Kam Jones(19.2 PPG, 5.9 APG), the Golden Eagles completed 4th in offensive effectiveness and 2nd in protective performance in Big East play. They likewise ended up 4th in the standings, which is where they were projected in the preseason survey. However expectations increased after a 9-1 start to the conference schedule up until they stumbled with a 4-6 stretch over the final 10 regular-season games.A first-round loss to 10-seed New Mexico in the NCAA competition– the 3rd first-weekend exit in 4 seasons for Shaka Smart– didn’t exactly punctuate completion of a season that when appeared more appealing.

Grade: C UConn sought to make history as the very first program since John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins to win 3 consecutive national championships, however it was obvious early in the season– see: the Huskies’ 0-3 finish in November’s Maui Invitational– that this was a various team than the one we had experienced the previous 2 years.The Huskies eventually made an 8-seed in the NCAA competition as an outcome of ending up 3rd in the Big East after getting 10 of 11 votes as the favorites in the preseason poll. A healthy Liam McNeeley( missed out on 8 games) may have altered their fortunes– and Dan Hurley’s unstable temperament– however several players(such as Aiden Mahaney) still stopped working to enhance from the previous season. Grade: C After a November loss to Columbia(KenPom’s 217th-ranked group at the time), the since-fired Kyle Neptune told media that Villanova’s habits weren’t” where they need to be.”Well, those propensities caused a series of struggles that had the Wildcats miss their third straight NCAA tournament. They completed second in offending performance in Big East play and tape-recorded wins over 3 top groups(St. John’s, UConn, Marquette)to earn a sixth-place slot in the standings after being projected to complete seventh. Still, with the nation’s leading scorer, Eric Dixon( 23.3 PPG ), the Wildcats should have had a stronger campaign.D grades

Grade: D In the third season with Thad Matta at the helm, Butler seemed poised to take the next action– Patrick McCaffery(11.2 PPG, 42%from beyond the arc)moved from Iowa and Matta returned his top two scorers from the previous season, Pierre Brooks II and Jahmyl Telfort. A promising 7-1 start with key wins over Northwestern and Mississippi State only heightened the optimism, but Matta’s squad went on to lose 17 of its next 23 games. Grade: D After recovering from an ACL injury, star Bryce Hopkins balanced 17.0 points in 3 games before he was sidelined the rest of the season with a bone bruise. The 6-foot-7 forward might have been an all-Big East first string choice for a Providence group that won 21 games in Kim English’s very first season in 2023-24. Rather, the Friars fell apart.Picked to end up 6th in the Big East preseason poll, they instead collected a 12-20 record and a 6-14 mark in conference play, suffering four sub-100 KenPom losses. Grade: D Every coach who is fighting to raise his team in the nationwide hierarchy hopes his team can reach its ceiling, however flirting with that capacity can also cause chaos. In 2015, Shaheen Holloway had the right lineup in his second season as the head coach of his alma mater. Those Pirates

won the NIT, but the program was ultimately purged by the portal last offseason, causing the 2-18 surface in conference play this season. Seton Hall did not look like a team that belonged in the Big East a year after entering Choice Sunday as a strong bubble prospect.