The Big East Tournament as we all know it is now gone.
But the recent five-day basketball bender in New York City left behind many indelible impressions; including 64,248,336 #BigEast hashtag impressions on Twitter from Tuesday, March 12, through the close of Saturday, March 16.
Using Topsy Pro Analytics, Social Media Strategist Ashley Read and I tracked the tournament on the mainstream microblogging platform from start to finish, looking at the peaks and valleys of social mentions and impressions for participating teams and players.
The result?
On March 12, opening night of the tournament, the #BigEast hashtag appeared in over 19,990,300 timelines with more than 7,000 mentions.
As the graph below illustrates, the first peak (March 12) of #BigEast mentions represents the start of the tournament. The second large uptick (March 14) coincides with quarterfinal action, and the pinnacle peak (March 16) of #BigEast Twitter volume naturally synced with the Louisville vs. Syracuse finale.
No surprises there.
Though Syracuse squandered its 13-point first-half championship game lead and, thus the game, it earned the highest share of the conversation throughout the tournament, garnering 162,879 Twitter mentions (24.6%). Overall, the 14 individual teams were mentioned a total of 661,053 times.
The full team-by-team breakdown is below.
Louisville’s senior floor leader, Peyton Siva, was the most-talked about player on Twitter during the tournament, registering 9,496 total mentions, highlighted by breaking Ray Allen’s Big East record for most steals in a game (2,090 mentions), and earning back-to-back MVP awards for the Tournament (1,895 mentions).
Otto Porter, Georgetown’s 6-8 forward, netted 6,153 total mentions, buoyed by his Big East Player of the Year announcement (1,225 mentions) and ending up on the wrong side of C.J. Fair’s dunk poster (2,337 mentions).
Siva and Porter weren’t the only two players generating dialogue. The following graph gives a chronological look at some of the other Big East standouts who helped drive the conversation.
The Big East Conference’s official Twitter handle (@BigEastMBB) fired out 142 outbound tweets during the tournament, landing 939 total retweets and 782 new followers.
And the most popular tweet in terms of driving #BigEast impressions came from ESPN College Basketball (@ESPNcbb) after Syracuse knocked off long-time rival Georgetown in the semifinals.
“It’s clear to see college hoops fans turn to social media to react to what happens on the court,” Read noted. Which opens up huge opportunities for the schools to engage with and interact with fans.”
“This data highlights the importance of social analysis, knowing how your fans react to different situations, what motivates them and their emotions around key events on the court. This insight can be invaluable to marketing strategies and driving ROI from social media.”
With the rapidly-changing Big East landscape in motion, there’s no questioning that next year’s tournament will look radically different. Nevertheless, the 2013 edition of “spring break for the basketball soul” will go down in history as a true social-media spectacle.