Although Georgetown was a member of the Big East Conference , it was not the storied conference the Hoyas had joined as a charter member in 1979 . The original Big East Conference still existed , but under a new name , as the American Athletic Conference – marketed as " the American " – and Georgetown this season was a charter member of an entirely new conference also named the Big East . Both the new Big East and the American claimed the history and heritage of the original Big East as their own , and the new Big East had many aspects that were reminiscent of the old Big East . Like the old conference during in its early days , the new Big East was a basketball-only conference that played a regular-season schedule made up of each team hosting and visiting each other team once – something that had become impractical in the old conference as it expanded in the interest of college football programs – and it also maintained the old Big East 's tradition of holding its conference championship tournament , the Big East Tournament , at Madison Square Garden in New York City . The new conference also included traditional Georgetown foes ; among schools that had transferred from the old conference to the new one were three other charter members of the original conference ( Providence , St. John 's , and Seton Hall ) and a second-season addition to the old Big East ( Villanova ) , as well as two schools that had joined the old Big East more recently ( DePaul and Marquette ) . However , other aspects of the new conference were quite different from the old one . Three of its members ( Butler , Creighton , and Xavier ) had no association at all with the original Big East , and two of them were among the better teams in the conference in its first year , while Georgetown-St . John 's meetings lacked the national notability they had enjoyed in the old conference 's heyday . Moreover , Georgetown would no longer face traditional foes such as Connecticut – a charter member of the original Big East which remained in the American , not on Georgetown 's schedule for the first time since the 1979-80 season – and Pittsburgh – a fourth-season addition to the old conference which had joined the Atlantic Coast Conference ( ACC ) and was not on Georgetown 's schedule for the first time since the 1981-82 season . Most notably , archrival Syracuse ( which also had joined the ACC ) was no longer on Georgetown 's schedule , missing from it for the first time since the 1978-79 season . Both the new Big East and Georgetown felt the absence of Syracuse particularly keenly because of the role the Georgetown-Syracuse rivalry had played in the original Big East throughout its 34-season history . As the new Big East began play , media observers opined that the new conference was weaker on the court than the old one and lacked the luster of its predecessor and would have to build new rivalries and a new history of its own if it was to prevail in the sports marketplace
original Big East Conference
Big East Conference (1979–2013)
2013–14 Georgetown Hoyas men's basketball team