The immediate caveat to this article is that the sample size is small. Somewhere between six and ten games isn’t enough to totally determine how good a team is. It is, however, enough to get us some idea.
The Big East isn’t as good this year. The conference is currently ranked fourth in overall efficiency for the second year in a row. Two years ago it was sixth. The Big East hasn’t had a run of finishing that low since 2001-2003. That’s been awhile. Xavier joined the conference in the hopes that they wouldn’t consistently have to schedule a monster non-conference in order to have a chance of earning an at large bid.