What happened to the Big East?

2011 NCAA Tournament Bracket - Notre Dame falls. What happened to the Big East?

The Big East originally got 11 teams into the tournament. They had seven teams ranked in the top 25 in the nation. They are considered so good that the team which finished 9th in the conference, Connecticut (9-9 in conference play), was also rated 9th in the nation by going 19-0 outside the conference.

Only two of the original 11 are left, and those two are only there because they happened to draw another team from the conference, meaning that one of them had to win. (U Conn advanced by beating Cincinnati and Marquette advanced by upsetting Syracuse.) The Big East teams that had to play against outsiders are all gone, with many of them having lost to teams seeded 8th or worse, and a few of those losses being embarrassments.

How did the celebrity brackets come out?

President Obama is still in the 99.9th percentile. Snoop Dogg is in the 79th. Dick Vitale is in the 69th.

One last basketball note for the weekend:

Kansas has a very easy path to the Final Four. There are only four teams left from the bottom half of the brackets, and three of those four are in the Southwest. The other three teams in the bracket with Kansas are seeded 10, 11, and 12.