Yeah, Villanova. Hallelujah, Big East. You have it right.

I was looking up the details of Sherburn's state basketball championship in 1970 on microfilm a few years ago. This was the last one-class state tournament in Minnesota basketball.

The most-amazing thing discovered in going through the Morning Tribune's sports sections from that weekend was this: To be reminded of what an afterthought the NCAA basketball tournament was at that time.

There was a 25-team bracket – conference champions and a number Independents invited as at-large entries. The Final Four was played in Cole Field House, an arena with a capacity slightly above 14,000 on the campus of the University of Maryland.

Four years earlier, Cole had been home to Texas Western's (now UTEP) upset of Kentucky in the national title game. That was a dramatic event in this nation's sports history, since it was Western's all-black lineup against Adolph Rupp's still-segregated Kentucky team.

The Final Four was a Thursday-Saturday event in 1970. The semifinals were UCLA (of course) vs. New Mexico State and Jacksonville [Fla.] University vs. St. Bonaventure.

The semifinals were played on March 19, the same day that the four quarterfinal games of the state tournament were being played at Williams Arena. Those four games received massive coverage in the Morning Tribune of March 20 , sending all other events – Twins spring training, the North Stars, even the mighty Pipers of the ABA – to third-rate status in the sports section.

Meantime, on an inside page, the national semifinals (Jacksonville 91, St. Bonnie 83; UCLA 93, New Mexico State 72) received a one-column headline, a combined five or six paragraphs, and two short-form boxscores.

UCLA's latest title still was swallowed up by the huge coverage of Sherburn's victory over South St. Paul in the state title game.

As you can note in this morning's Star Tribune sports section, the attention paid to the NCAA tournament has gotten somewhat larger. Villanova's magnificent 77-74 victory over North Carolina filled 60 percent of Page 1C, with the Twins' uninspired 3-2 loss in the season opener holding down the lower portion of the front page.

Villanova serves as both an outstanding champion and a vivid link to the growth of college basketball over the past four decades.

The opinion here (and I'm writing it, so that's what counts) is that the explosion of college basketball as a national entity can trace its beginning to a pair of occurrences in the fall of 1979:

The simultaneous arrivals of ESPN and the Big East basketball conference.

There is no more instructive or entertaining 30 for 30 than "Requiem for the Big East.'' It tells the story of Dave Gavitt's vision to create an actual conference for an East filled with independents, and the desperate need for the fledgling cable sports network in Bristol, Conn. to have some live programming.

The original Big East proposed by Gavitt was Providence, St. John's, Georgetown, Syracuse, Seton Hall, UConn, Boston College, Holy Cross and Rutgers. Holy Cross and Rutgers declined. Villanova and Pittsburgh signed on.

Great players from the East started to stay home. Gavitt lucked out with a tremendous early rivalry: St. John's and Lou Carnesecca in New York vs. Georgetown and John Thompson in Washington D.C.

There was also a young Jim Boeheim at Syracuse, and Rollie Massimino at Villanova, and soon P.J. Carlesimo at Seton Hall and then Jim Calhoun at UConn.

The Big East and ESPN's exposure made college basketball what it has become – huge, and maybe too huge with what's now 350-plus Division I programs.

The Big East was basketball missionary work by Gavitt, the former coach at Providence. It went away from that mission by adding football in 1991.

The identity was lost. It became an unholy mess in the search for football programs and millions.

Then, the Big East was devoured when the other major conferences started picking off the football schools in the search to create larger audiences for their TV networks and contracts (with ESPN, among others).

The Big Ten wound up with Rutgers. Ain't we lucky?

What's left of the Big East after the six major football conference became the Power Five is a ridiculous collection of orphans billing itself as the American Athletic Conference. I think it went with that title in the hope people might confuse the AAC with the ACC and accidentally start watching a game.

Georgetown, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's and Villanova were originals still in the fold. Marquette and DePaul had been added as the Big East went through its convulsions.

And in March 2013, it was announced it three outstanding basketball schools – Xavier, Creighton and Butler – would join to form a new 10-team conference.

It worked a TV deal with FS1 and conference play debuted on New Year's Eve 2013. Immediately, the new Big East became my favorite conference in the revamped world of college basketball.

You know why?

They have 10 schools devoted to basketball and with a basketball tradition. And also, because the new Big East has only 10 schools, meaning every team plays every other team twice – home and away – during the regular season.

Yeah, Villanova. Hallelujah, Big East.