If the overtone of the last week in men’s college basketball was that the Big East is still very much relevant, then the undertone was just how badly the sport needs the Big East to be relevant.

That’s not at all a commentary on the on-court product, which was excellent as ever over the first four days of March Madness, giving us no shortage of stories to get excited about.

Even in the college hoops desert that New York City has become, Princeton and Fairleigh Dickinson became darlings. The NCAA Tournament is still the best annual event in sports. That is not in question.

But is it good for the sport’s relevance on a day-to-day level that its title favorite is Alabama, a program besieged by a murder investigation implicating two of its players?

Or that the only team that seems capable of challenging the Crimson Tide is Houston, a program that didn’t meet a serious opponent in conference play, when they lost just one game in the AAC?

What of the lineup of games at Madison Square Garden this weekend? For true hoopheads, Michigan State-Kansas State and Florida Atlantic-Tennessee have redeeming value. There’s Tom Izzo overachieving in March, the Markquis Nowell Show, an up-and-coming FAU program against a Tennessee team that always seems to fall short with Rick Barnes at the helm.

For the people who just tune in for March, though, it’s a bit of a squeeze to find a compelling tale out of that.

The second weekend of this tournament is missing Duke and Kansas. North Carolina, Syracuse and Michigan were left out on Selection Sunday, none of them particularly close to the Field of 68. The only true blue bloods left in the field are Michigan State and UCLA.

You know what would be great for this sport, particularly as its biggest regular-season draw, Duke-Carolina, transitions into a new era?

A packed Madison Square Garden with St. John’s and Georgetown going at it, that’s what.

Is that going to rise to the level of the best of UNC-Duke? No, and we’re not suggesting it will.

But when the Big East is the biggest draw in the sport, college basketball wins.

That’s true even now, even when Pitt, Syracuse and Louisville play in the ACC. There is something about UConn being back in the Sweet Sixteen, with a very real chance of playing two weeks from Monday, that feels right.

That is how a revitalized St. John’s, under Rick Pitino, and a revitalized Georgetown, under Ed Cooley, would feel.

It has been a long time since the Hoyas were a force to be reckoned with — since losing to Florida Gulf Coast as a two-seed in 2013, they’ve won a single NCAA Tournament game, and that was in 2015.

It’s been even longer since the Johnnies mattered — you need to go all the way back to 2000 to find their last win in the Big Dance.

“Lou [Carnesecca] built a legendary program,” Pitino said at his introductory press conference Tuesday. “And we will get back to those days by exemplifying everything he taught.”

If Pitino is trying to bring St. John’s back, Cooley is trying to move Georgetown forward — out of the shadow of John Thompson that led to the Hoyas trying John Thompson II and then Patrick Ewing as head coaches. Both approaches are needed.

It is a given, especially around these parts, that the Garden is the ancestral home of college basketball. The only team in the country that plays its home games there should matter.

And when the Big East makes its annual pilgrimage to the building, it should not grab the attention of the city, but of the college basketball-watching country.

We got step one toward that end this week.

It was a sad day in New York sports.

Willis Reed, the Hall of Fame center and emotional leader of Knicks teams that won NBA titles in 1970 and 1973 who was known as The Captain, died at the age of 80.

• Reed was the protagonist in one of the most iconic moments in sports history, a moment that became a shorthand for bravely playing through pain and uplifting teammates, in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals. Despite nursing a torn hip muscle, Reed limped out of the tunnel at Madison Square Garden — to thunderous cheers from the crowd — and proceeded to score the first two baskets of the game to help lift the Knicks to victory.

• Reed was the 1970 MVP, the 1965 Rookie of the Year and a seven-time All-Star. He averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game in 10 seasons before his career was cut short due to injury. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.

• Reed also coached the Knicks and Nets, and worked as an executive with the Nets and Hornets.

What they said:

• Bill Bradley: “He was The Captain — that says it all. He was the backbone of the team. He was the guy that took us to the first championship by his courage, and by his unselfishness. And he was a big Knick all his life.”

• Marv Albert: “He had such respect for the way he carried himself, the way he dealt with his teammates and the way he played. And how fierce and physical he was on the court, but off the court, he was a low-key guy. … He was the heart and soul of those two Knick championship teams.”

• The Post’s Mike Vaccaro writes in his remembrance of Reed:

And the moment Reed walked through the tunnel, elbowed his way past the scorer’s table, grabbed a basketball to begin his abbreviated warm-ups is one that lives to this day. Knicks fans born years — even decades — afterward know it as if they were there to witness it. Whenever that moment is shown on the video board at Madison Square Garden the cheers are inevitably the loudest of that night.

The thing about baseball is: It’s the best!

Ninth inning, two outs, one-run game, a tension and suite of possibilities unlike anything else in sports.

The 21st century’s Babe Ruth versus the 21st century’s Mickey Mantle, for the first time, because they play together in their day jobs.

And when Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout on a picturesque full-count slider, the first thought wasn’t really: Japan won the World Baseball Classic by a 3-2 final and the defending champion United States finished second.

It wasn’t: Oh man, Trout volunteered to get punked like that. And it wasn’t: Wow, Jeff McNeil put a way better at-bat on Ohtani than Mookie Betts or Trout did (that was the second thought).

The sentiment was purely: That was a perfect little diamond of a breathtaking sports moment. I’m really glad I saw it.

Somewhere on the way to Tuesday night’s final in Miami, the conversation about the ideal logistics of the World Baseball Classic jumped the shark. Scheduling is difficult — everyone is very busy making money. Injuries are inevitable, which doesn’t make them suck any less. OK!

But we still got Ohtani vs. Trout for all the marbles, and let that be enough.

— Jonathan Lehman

The Rangers we’ve seen over the past week are the Rangers we expected after Chris Drury dealt for Vladimir Tarasenko and then Patrick Kane prior to the trade deadline.

It took some time to integrate both into the lineup, and for Gerard Gallant to find the right line combinations.

But after outscoring the Penguins and Predators by a combined 15-0 before Tuesday night’s 3-2 loss to the first-place Hurricanes, the Rangers look like a team you would be absolutely terrified to face in the playoffs.

The Eastern Conference is stacked this season, and there is every chance the Hurricanes or Devils could beat the Rangers as early as the first round. The other teams … they can do magic, too.

The Bruins loom as a potential conference finals opponent, should the Blueshirts get past the Metropolitan Division gauntlet.

But the NHL more than other sports is about getting hot at the right time. And the Rangers right now are red-hot.

They have a goalie who can keep them in games, four lines that can match up as well as any other group and a complete defense corps now that Ryan Lindgren has returned to the lineup.

The playoffs can’t start soon enough.

The expectation is Ja Morant will return to the court Wednesday night when the Grizzlies face the Rockets at home, and the hope is Morant’s stint at a counseling facility in Florida can help him overcome whatever issues led him to a Denver-area strip club earlier this month, where a gun-toting Instagram Live video became the last in a series of off-court incidents that led to an NBA suspension.

Morant’s well-being is the first priority, and the signs seem to be good so far.

And on the basketball court, Morant and the Grizzlies, who sit in second place in the Western Conference, might be the best story in the league.

And a potential playoff series against the Warriors — with the two teams’ rivalry having escalated this season with a war of words between Dillon Brooks and Draymond Green — would be must-see television.

Without Morant, Memphis beat Golden State 133-119 on Saturday, but what to make of a regular-season game that didn’t include the Grizzlies’ most electrifying player? The Warriors are fighting to stay out of the play-in round, but at the end of the day, they’re still the Warriors.

Would anyone be surprised to see them going blow-for-blow with Memphis in the playoffs?

And if you’re Adam Silver, is that not exactly what you’re hoping to see?