NEW YORK -- Cream with Eric Clapton played a show at Madison Square Garden last night. Yesterday afternoon, the rock stars of the college basketball world took center stage in the same building as the new and improved Big East basketball conference had its coming-out party.

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The conference held its annual media day at the Garden. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim and Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun, recent inductees into the Basketball Hall of Fame who have more than 1,400 victories between them, usually are the stars. But Rick Pitino, the charismatic coach at Louisville whose Cardinals are one of the league's five new members this season, commanded the most attention.

"You can tell certain guys have a presence," Pitt center Aaron Gray was saying as he stared around the room. "When Pitino walked into the room, everyone's heads were turning."

Pitino is back in the conference two decades after taking Providence to the Final Four. In between, he coached in the NBA with New York and Boston, at the University of Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference and in Conference USA with Louisville.

"A lot has changed. Back when I was here the first time, it was an Italian league. You had [Lou] Carnesecca, [P.J.] Carlesimo, [Rollie] Massimino, myself, [John] Thompson," Pitino joked. "A lot has changed. The quality is still there, but the depth is really overpowering."

Joining Louisville as newcomers are Cincinnati, DePaul, Marquette and South Florida, making the Big East bigger and better. The Big East is now a 16-team super-conference, the first of its kind.

"This is a pretty historic occasion," Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said. "We're about to walk down a path that's never been walked down before."

The league is steeped in stars and more tradition than before. Fifteen of the 16 schools in the league have advanced to the Final Four. Ten of the schools made it there in the past 16 years.

The league wasn't shy about pumping its new image yesterday and took full advantage to get some publicity.

Pitt coach Jamie Dixon was at the forefront of the media blitz. He appeared on ESPN2's "Cold Pizza" morning show with Villanova coach Jay Wright and Notre Dame coach Mike Brey.

Immediately after meeting with television, radio and print reporters at the Garden, he left for a taping of the ESPN2 show "Quite Frankly" with Stephen A. Smith. Dixon and several other Big East coaches were scheduled to appear on that show to discuss the arrival of the league's new era.

"It's a reflection of our league and the teams in our league," Dixon said of the hype.

"We're not driving this," Tranghese said. "ESPN came to us. The public and the media are excited about this. Our conference has an advantage of being in New York City for things like this, and we're taking advantage."

The first thing anyone thinks of when they think of the new Big East is the number of teams.

And while bigger is better, according to Tranghese, there are challenges.

The schedule is a nightmare to arrange, and coaches are already complaining about imbalance among the top teams.

And there are the worries about how many teams the NCAA selection committee will pick for the tournament in March.

Tranghese acknowledged the road might be a bit bumpy. He termed the league's schedule "dysfunctional" and said it will be that way next season as well because existing television contracts stipulate that certain teams play each other twice. But Tranghese is confident about the NCAA tournament issue.

He said the selection committee will choose the 34 best at-large teams, regardless of their conference affiliation.

"Everyone keeps telling me we're too big," Tranghese said. "Well, everything in America is too big. The ACC is too big, the SEC, the Big Ten. We just happen to be a little bigger than others.

"Four years ago, we had 14 teams, and I didn't hear anyone say anything then. But I think when you add the teams we added, it makes us not only bigger but it makes us better."

Coaches are more guarded in their optimism because they're the ones who have to go out and play the schedule.

Perhaps, Boeheim summed up the coaches' feelings best when he said: "There are a lot of good teams and a lot of good players in this league. I just think people ought to enjoy it and not worry about it. We may have some complaints at the end of the season, but we all ought to enjoy the season."