PHILADELPHIA — It’s not easy and it’s certainly not fun but every Big East basketball coach has a stretch like the one Ed Cooley and his Providence Friars are navigating right now.

The Friars are in snowy Philadelphia this weekend waiting to take on fourth-ranked Villanova. The game was scheduled for Saturday but was pushed to Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Wells Fargo Center due to the East Coast blizzard. That’s given the Friars an extra day to both prepare, and ponder, a date with a team that’s won its last 22 games against conference competition.

Cooley's team is coming off a 71-68 win over No. 18 Butler and also faces a quick turnaround for a visit from No. 5 Xavier on Tuesday at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. A stretch like that can try the patience of any coach and gave Cooley a chance to extol the virtues of the Big East.

“We just played a ranked team, we’re getting set to play a ranked team and then we play a ranked team on Tuesday,” said Cooley. “When the Big East went to this new brand, this new identity, everybody talked about how competitive will it be? We are arguably the best conference in America top to bottom. … It’s a basketball-centric conference and we’re super excited about who we are, where we’re at and where we’re going.”

In Year Three of the so-called New Big East, the depth and competitiveness of the conference’s 10 teams is certainly a calling card. In truth, the deepest league in the country is the Atlantic Coast Conference, which has eight of its 15 teams in the top 42 of the Ratings Percentage Index. The deepest top-to-bottom league is the Big 12, which has eight of its 10 teams in the top 55.

But the Big East is only a few steps behind. The league has the No. 1 (Villanova) and No. 4 (Xavier) RPI teams, according to NCAA.com. It also has six in the top 75 and is once again poised to place 60 percent of its teams in the NCAA Tournament, just like last season.

“I know there had been questions as to whether this iteration of the Big East could be anything like the old conference and I feel strongly that we haven’t lost a step,” commissioner Val Ackerman said on the "This Week in the Big East" radio show. “It’s clear to me that as you look at the basketball landscape nationally now that the Big East is certainly among the best basketball conferences in the country. There may well be a Big Five out there but in the sport of basketball there’s no question that there is a Big Six and that the Big East is in it.”

Ackerman may be leaving out the Atlantic 10 (six teams in the top 72), but her point is well taken. With two teams ranked in the top 10 and PC and Butler enjoying long stretches in the national rankings as well, the Big East is showcasing highly thought-of teams and matchups on a regular basis. This is exactly what the Catholic Seven schools hoped for when they chose to team up, add Butler, Creighton and Xavier, and see how they could fare against football-dominated leagues such as the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC.

While midseason rankings are nice for Fox Sports and can be an impetus for selling lots of tickets for the conference tournament at Madison Square Garden, everyone knows that college basketball success is ultimately measured by NCAA Tournament wins. This is where the Big East swung and missed in its first two seasons. Despite earning 10 NCAA bids in the last two years, only one team (Xavier in 2015) advanced to the Sweet 16.

Ackerman said the league isn’t about to improve its chances through expansion.

“We would be very, very selective about who we’d bring into the Big East right now. Whoever it is would have to check off a lot of boxes to make the grade,” she said.

So the focus will be on Villanova, Xavier, PC and whoever else is fortunate enough to survive the Big East regular season and make the NCAA Tournament.

“I think we’re doing everything that our coaches and AD’s and presidents envisioned and now the next step is when we get into the tournament it’s about advancing,” Ackerman said. “I think that’s the next step here. How far can we go in the tournament? How well we move into the second weekend and the Elite Eight and getting into the Final Four and ultimately winning a national championship. That’s the goal.”