The 1996–97 Big East Conference men's basketball season was the 18th in conference history, and involved its 13 full-time member schools.
Boston College and Villanova were the regular-season co-champions of the Big East 6 Division with identical records of 12–6, and Georgetown won the regular-season Big East 7 Division championship with a record of 11–5. Boston College won the Big East tournament championship.
Season summary & highlights
The Big East continued to use the divisional structure which had debuted the previous season, with six of its teams playing in the Big East 6 Division and seven in the Big East 7 Division. The divisional structure lasted through the 1997–98 season.
The Big East played an 18-game regular-season conference schedule, making it impossible for each team to play each other conference member twice in a home-and-home series during the regular season, as Big East teams had from the 1980–81 season through the 1994–95 seasons. As they had the previous season. each team played six conference opponents twice in a home-and-home series and the other six once each. The schedule was unbalanced, with teams playing anywhere from one to four home-and-home series against teams in their own division and anywhere from two to five home-and-home series against teams in the other division. A notable anomaly that resulted was that Georgetown and St. John's each played Syracuse — in rivalries that had contributed to the rise of the Big East Conference to national prominence during the 1980s — only once for the first time since the conference's first season in 1979–80.
Boston College and Villanova were the regular-season co-champions of the Big East 6 Division with identical records of 12–6. It was the third regular-season championship or co-championship as well as the first divisional title for both schools.
Georgetown won the regular-season Big East 7 Division championship with a record of 11–5. It was the seventh regular-season championship or co-championship and second consecutive divisional title for Georgetown.
The division winner with the best record received the No. 1 seed in the Big East tournament, the division winner with the second-best record received the No. 2 seed, and the second-place finisher with the best record received the No. 3 seed. The rest of the schools were seeded fourth through thirteenth based on conference record and tiebreakers. Teams seeded fourth through thirteenth played a first-round game, and the other three teams received a bye into the second round.
Villanova received the No. 1 seed based on it finishing as co-champion of the Big East 6 Division and winning the tiebreaker with Boston College. Georgetown received the No. 2 seed by winning the Big East 7 Division outright. Boston College received the No. 3 seed as the second-place finisher (after losing the tiebreaker with Villanova) with the best record. The tournament's seeding thus was as follows: (1) Villanova,(2) Georgetown,(3) Boston College,(4) Providence,(5) West Virginia,(6) Pittsburgh,(7) Miami,(8) Syracuse,(9) Notre Dame,(10) St. John's,(11) Connecticut,(12) Seton Hall,(13) Rutgers.
Four Big East teams received bids to the NCAA Tournament. Georgetown lost in the first round and Villanova and Boston College in the second round. Providence was defeated in the Southeast Region final.
Five Big East teams received bids to the National Invitation Tournament, which did not yet have seeding. At least one played in each of the tournament's four unnamed brackets. Miami and Syracuse lost in the first round and Pittsburgh in the second round. Notre Dame was defeated in the quarterfinals, but Connecticut reached the semifinals.
