Today was Big East men’s basketball media day at the Garden in NYC, and since I had an exam today, I couldn’t head up from DC for the afternoon. Had I gone, I would have found out firsthand the following information pertaining to Georgetown basketball:

1. The Hoyas were picked to finish fourth in the league behind Pitt, Villanova and Syracuse. I’ll stick the entire coaches’ picks at the end of this post.

2. Austin Freeman was picked as the preseason Big East player of the year. The last Georgetown player to actually win the award (as in after actually playing the season) was Jeff Green, now of the Oklahoma City Thunder, in 2007.

3. Chris Wright was a preseason second team all-Big East selection.

All this seems about right. Freeman doesn’t strike you as a conference player of the year type, but he emerged last season as an explosive and reliable scorer until his diabetes was diagnosed. He’s had an entire offseason to adjust his lifestyle and there’s no reason not to expect a full season of what we saw from the second half of the UConn game last season until his diagnosis.

Even without a proven post player (Julian Vaughn proved himself as a role player but not as someone to lean on in the paint last year), the Hoyas’ backcourt makes them a legitimate conference title contender. And with the Big East looking it’ll be “down” (for its standards) this season, the table looks set for an improvement from last year’s eighth place finish. Prior to last season, Georgetown was picked fifth in the coaches’ poll.

Here are the rankings. First place votes are in parentheses.

1.Pittsburgh (12) 222
2. Villanova (1) 208
3.Syracuse (2) 187
4.Georgetown 173
5.West Virginia 164
6.St. John’s (1) 145
7.Notre Dame 123
8.Louisville 121
8.Marquette 121
10.Connecticut 113
11.Seton Hall 104
12.Cincinnati 91
13.USF 54
14.Providence 36
15.Rutgers 32
16.DePaul 26