Big East 2025

Matchday 19: November 7, 2025

Wow, what a dramatic Decision Day! The schedule-makers are doubtless pleased with how things turned out, even if whatever pour soul had to put together that giant list of scenarios is probably very glad this week is over.

Akron 1 @ Creighton 0: We can consider this to be the true baptism - or, in keeping with the conference's Catholic tint, the final ordination - of the Zips as a member of the Big East. An edgy, chippy, tense affair decided by a goal 'in the paint' put away following a deflection off of a defender. A gritty win on the road, capped off by some Grade A taunting of the home team and crowd after knocking the Bluejays from their Division Champ perch coming in and ending their season. Now that's Big East attitude!!!

UConn 2 @ Seton Hall 1: The Pirates came into the match ranked 21st in the country, and now they finish 6th in the conference and on the outside of the BET looking in. All the scoring happened in a span of less than 10 minutes: Seton Hall first at 72:50, then UConn at 77:27 and 80:53. That's the first Big East loss of the season for the Pirates, as they finish 3-1-4. The Huskies have had some confounding results, but they're surely happy to be back in Boyds after a one-year hiatus, and prior to tonight they had been the only Big East team to hang a goal on Georgetown.

Georgetown 2 @ Providence 2: Once again down a number of regular starters, the Hoyas A-/B+ squad could not replicate on the road what they did at home against Xavier, allowing the Friars to come back from a two-goal deficit. This is still a better result than what happened in 2023, when Georgetown was ranked #5/#4 coming into a mid-October match with the Friars and left with a 1-0 loss that exposed some real chinks in the armor (though they did manage to claim the Regular Season trophy that year, they lost in the Big East title game and crashed out in their first NCAA Tournament match). It also marks the first time the Hoyas have finished the regular season undefeated since they went 7-0-2 during the Covid Spring Season of 2021. And now these two get to do it all over again in the semifinals - how often does that happen?!

Butler 2 @ St. John's 2: The Bulldogs actually outperformed expectations coming into the season, with their 8 points in the standings good enough for third in a Midwest Division where they were picked in the preseason poll to finish last. The Johnnies had the 5th most points in that poll, but they found themselves ending season in 7th place overall on points. Either way, it's no fun to come into Decision Day already knowing your season is over afterwards...or that would be the case, except Dave Masur has for some reason scheduled a game on Sunday against CCNY?! What in the world???

Villanova 1 @ Marquette 0: The Golden Eagles outshoot the Wildcats 22(6)-4(3), including 11-1 in the second half, earn 8 corner kicks to 0, and still lose at home. It's been that kind of year for David Korn & Co. But hey, they finish with a .500 record on the year, while Villanova actually finishes with a winning record... thanks to late-season matches against D-III and D-II schools, respectively.

DePaul 1 @ Xavier 1: A stoppable force met a movable object. No one cared, as evinced by the listed attendance of 198. DePaul did put up 19 shots, 11 on goal, which is practically unheard of for them.

 

They've buried the actual conference rulebook somewhere where I can't find it, but the general tiebreaker after the head-to-head stage is 'Better result against a common opponent, starting with the top of the league and going down.'

Georgetown is top of the table, but Creighton didn't play them, so that doesn't count. Akron is the #2 seed, but Provy didn't play them, so ditto. #3 UConn is the first common opponent, and here we have a 3-0 win for the Huskies over the Bluejays in Storrs on October 3 and a scoreless draw between the Nutmeggers and the Friars in Providence on October 25. The tiebreaker therefore goes to Craig Stewart's men, while Johnny Torres & Co. stay home.

 

Ah, thanks for catching that. The 'start at the top of the table and go down' one is the next tiebreaker after 'record against all common opponents.'

 

It would definitely be better to go back to a 6-team tournament. The regular season is a bit imbalanced, but mostly fine - a 9 or 10 game season would be even more imbalanced in terms of variation in who you play/don't play in the other division, and 11 conference games is too many.

I fear that cost-cutting was indeed the primary rationale behind the switch from 6 down to 4. I can't think of any other compelling rationale, aside from a "it's too disruptive for everyone to wedge an early-week 3v6 and 4v5 game in there," which I don't buy.

 

I'm just glad they had more than 1 or 2 defenders per team - that happens way too often in soccer and lax.

 

Matchday 19A: November 9, 2025

City College of New York 0 @ St. John's 10:

 

Big East Semifinals: November 13, 2025

UConn 2, Akron 1: I caught most of the first half and all of the second. It was a very entertaining affair as a neutral observer - I went back and forth between hoping UConn would pull off the upset, since Georgetown matched up better against them, and wanting the Zips to prevail because they would help Georgetown's RPI more.

My main takeaway is that Akron is the better footballing side, with greater skill, technicality, depth, and ability to control possession. UConn, however, has a bunch of guys who look real good coming off the bus and back it up on the pitch with their physicality. What separates them from the other rock throwing specialists of the Big East, like Seton Hall and St. John's and to some extent Providence, is that the Huskies have some guys with high-end breakaway speed, meaning they can punish you on the counter in an instant. Oh, and that Kyle Durham guy is pretty good too, and he is a very vocal air traffic controller back there.

That's what ended up happening to the Zips, who got hit by a pair of counters (the first one was more direct, the second one had a bit more kicking it around the box before the shot) for goals and a third one with two and a half minutes left in the match that led to a DOGSO straight red. UConn is just not a good matchup for them.

Georgetown 2, Providence 0: The Hoyas going ahead in the first four minutes definitely changed the tenor of this contest, resulting in a bit more of a grind as Georgetown took fewer risks and recycled more, Meanwhile the Friars decided they needed to play a more possession-oriented game, since catching a more deliberate Georgetown side on a counter would be that much harder. Both teams had some good opportunities, but the middle of the match was a bit of slog. This being a rematch of the regular season finale (and, for that matter, last season's Big East title match) also meant there weren't a lot of surprises to be had on either side.

Then once the Hoyas got the second goal with 20 minutes left off of a brilliant pass by Mateo Ponce Ocampo (who would not have been anyone's favorite to win Offensive Player of the Tournament honors coming into Thursday), Providence had to throw caution to the wind (ah yes...wind... more on the topic of wind in the next recap...) and Georgetown was content to play keepaway. Tough for the Friars to end the season with a losing record, but just making it to Boyds is a big achievement now in the four-team format.

 

Would that have been true if Akron had beaten UConn, though? I seem to recall looking at your site on Thursday morning and seeing Akron sitting at...I want to say it was 7 in RPI? That's where I got the idea in my head.

 

That would seem like it would wash out the differences in opponents' SoS (i.e., identical W-L-T records may have been earned against very different competition and so should be assessed differently)... although maybe that's measured within the SoS metric itself?

 

Big East Final: November 16, 2025

Georgetown 3, UConn 1: One wonders what this match would have been like had it not been played in gale-force winds. Then again, the teams' first meeting this season featured a period of torrential downpour so intense that even I, a known Rain Appreciator, felt compelled to hide under the ticket tent for a spell and watch the match on my phone. So, you know, maybe a fair skies were not in the cards for these two in 2025.

As it was, my sense from Coach Gbandi's post-game comments is that Georgetown won the toss (that's how they do these things, right, with a coin toss?) and elected to defend against the wind in the first half, so that they would have it at their backs in the second, when everyone would start feeling fatigue. Both sides had first half opportunities, including a blast off the woodwork by Georgetown, but when halftime arrived with no score, you got the sense that the Hoyas would start to open up in the second half and the Huskies would look to spring the counter.

That's exactly what happened, although the first goal - off a corner 20 minutes into the frame - could have arrived at any time. Such is the nature of set pieces. The second tally came less than two minutes later, however, off of a wicked curler of a shot (altered by the twisting wind currents, at least a little? Who knows), and that lit a fire under UConn that paid off 4 minutes later on a sidewinder missile of their own.

Then, less than 90 seconds later, a far too heavy touch only a couple of yards outside the 18 led to a rapid turnover, sprint into the top of the box, and driving shot into the corner that Kyle Durham very nearly got to anyway thanks to his enormous wingspan. Nearly.

Just as UConn is a bad matchup for Akron, Georgetown is a bad matchup for UConn, especially with Tate Lampman back patrolling the defensive lines. With a final conference mark of 8-0-2, the Hoyas can count the 2025 campaign as among their very best ones to date.