Breaking Down The Big East

In the first major conference breakdown I am going to start with the Big East. I will start off with my opinion of who I believe will be the contenders then go on from there.

1. West Virginia
Seems like the obvious choice here. Even with the loss of Head Coach Rich Rodriguez and star running back Steve Slaton, I believe West Virginia has the best chance to run away with this conference. Coach Bill Stewart says that he is going to make quarterback Pat White more into a passer and not be so reliant on the option and running game.

QB
I don't need to say much here. Pat White is a hell of a college quarterback and will continue to dominate this year both in the air and on the ground. In every year playing Pat has increased his yardage, completion percentage, and TDs and last year decreased his interceptions from 7 to 4. Also, this quarterback is not a one trick pony and has also increased his rushing yards every year as well. Last year he rushed for 1335 yards and 14 tds. I expect both rushing and passing will increase this year.

RB
Noel Devine is going to be the successor to Steve Slaton. Not only does he have a great name he ran for 627 yards with an 8.1 yards per carry. And in his third game played he ran for 136 yards on only 5 carries. I believe he will be the next great West Virginia running back. They also have Zach Hulse (5-10, 200), FCS transfer Mark Rodgers (5-8, 180) and prep-schooler Terrence Kerns (6-1, 225), if academically eligible.

Anyways I don't feel like breaking down everything so I will just do an overall:
West Virginia should win this conference easily but does have tough games at Colorado, then home games against Rutgers and Auburn. If they stumble at all against those teams they will just be another underachieving West Virginia team.

2. Pitt:
I am in love with runningback LeSean McCoy and it is not just the fact he has 4 capitol letters in his name. I believe he will be the next great runningback and maybe will be better then Ray Rice and Steve Slaton. Look for around 1,800 yards on the ground and 600 yards in the air. With a bad Big East he will be enough to threaten some teams.

3. Rutgers:
After losing Ray Rice, all eyes will be on Mike Teel. Mike Teel will be the best passing quarterback in the Big East. Even with an injured thumb Teel was able to put up 3,147 and 20 Tds. With Tiquan Underwood (6-2, 180) and junior Kenny Britt (6-4, 205) both coming back after putting up 1,000 yards last year, I expect nothing less then 3,800 yards and 27 Tds.

4. South Florida:
South Florida was an anomaly last year and as much as like the heart of Matt Grothe, I don't believe he will be able to do it again. Grothe put up 2670 yards in the air and 872 yards on the ground. I think he will be about the same but he can't do it alone and doesn't have any prolific play makers to go to on his team.

5. UConn:
After a fluke shared Big East title, UConn lost their leading wide receiver Terrence Jeffers to Vanderbilt. But they do have Tyler Lorenzen, Jared Lorenzen's kid brother and he is also huge 6-5, 240.

And the rest:
6. Louisville:
No Brian Brohm, big problem. has 6 wins maybe.

7. Cincinnati:
NCAA screwed Ben Mauk out of a 6th season thus screwing Cincy out of any chance to win.

8. Syracuse:
Don't know, Don't want to know.