so because we have been bad the past few years, we should lower our expectations and have other bad teams as our rivals. we have been bad in the a10 because lutz recrutited lousy because he did not know how to recruit the conference, because he was a bad x and o’s coach, because our new coach inherited a mess and has made some questionable x and o’s decisions. it is not the conference but the coaching that is to blame.
You don’t just pick your rivals. We never developed any in the A10- a big reason why I give 0 shits that we are leaving. Hopefully we can develop some CUSA rivalries… Davidson is our biggest rival, the are in the SoCon for christsakes… If you have a boner for the A10- fantastic, but we are CUSA- deal with it.
We haven’t played a good brand of hoops in about a decade. I don’t give a dam why league it’s in, I want us to win some fucking games.
QFT
You don’t just pick your rivals. We never developed any in the A10- a big reason why I give 0 shits that we are leaving. Hopefully we can develop some CUSA rivalries… Davidson is our biggest rival, the are in the SoCon for christsakes… If you have a boner for the A10- fantastic, but we are CUSA- deal with it.
We haven’t played a good brand of hoops in about a decade. I don’t give a dam why league it’s in, I want us to win some f***ing games.[/quote]
i want to be in the best league possible. i support the move for the overall improvement of the athletic department but who cares if we have a rival in cusa if their rpi is #226. richmond is a southern school with rigorous academic standards but they have found sucess in the a10.
You don’t just pick your rivals. We never developed any in the A10- a big reason why I give 0 shits that we are leaving. Hopefully we can develop some CUSA rivalries… Davidson is our biggest rival, the are in the SoCon for christsakes… If you have a boner for the A10- fantastic, but we are CUSA- deal with it.
We haven’t played a good brand of hoops in about a decade. I don’t give a dam why league it’s in, I want us to win some f***ing games.[/quote]Agreed.
You don’t just pick your rivals. We never developed any in the A10- a big reason why I give 0 shits that we are leaving. Hopefully we can develop some CUSA rivalries… Davidson is our biggest rival, the are in the SoCon for christsakes… If you have a boner for the A10- fantastic, but we are CUSA- deal with it.
We haven’t played a good brand of hoops in about a decade. I don’t give a dam why league it’s in, I want us to win some f***ing games.[/quote]
i want to be in the best league possible. i support the move for the overall improvement of the athletic department but who cares if we have a rival in cusa if their rpi is #226. richmond is a southern school with rigorous academic standards but they have found sucess in the a10.[/quote]And you care if we are in A10, can’t compete and are not a fit, with zero rivals.
Rivalries are born out of at least one of 3 things - consistently being a thorn in the side of the other team by winning more than expected (Sincy), tradition (Davidson) or location (Davidson).
In the A10 we won regularly never, and no teams were local. Thus no rivalries. It also helps if the fan base cares (ours has not cared about the A10). With UAB and ODU we are picking up former conference mates with which we have tradition. With ECU we have instate. There is potential there and true rivalries are built on those things not RPI. Oregon and Oregon State is a HUGE rivalry in all sports even though Oregon is traditionally better every single year.
It also didn’t help that our giving collapsed when we came into the A10 - that limits what we can pay a new coach and facilities that we offer our student athletes.
So I don’t buy that it is JUST a coach - it is everything, coaching, recruiting, fan support, student support, giving, tv coverage and more. Our record, our giving, our fan support and our tv coverage shows that the A10 experiment didn’t work. Will it suck losing some of the quality teams we had visiting? Sure it will - it sucked when we lost L’ville and Sincy. I hated that we went to the A10 because we took a step back without any plan to move forward. I am more excited now than ever and IMO the move to the A10 is exactly what our basketball program needs at this point. Weaker league where we can rebuild ourselves, since obviously the A10 wasn’t helping.
all that moving to a weaker league means is that we have less margin for error to get into the tournament. i still view us as a program that should be in contention to win an a10 level league every year. i dont like the idea of “if we arent good enough, lets just go to an easier league” we were a premier program in old cusa so there is no reason we could not do it in the a10. just an aside, the student support has been much worse than 6 or 7 years ago. not just in the size of the crowd, but in how much they seem to care. too many people there who just are not interested in the game.
I get that - but our performance says different. We will have less margin for error - but the quality programs in the A10 has done nothing to help us. I mean who cares how great the conference is if after 8 years we still cant make it to the NCAAs. It sucks that we are in this position, but this is the price we pay for waiting until 2013 to start football.
We just have to become the Butler or VCU or Memphis of CUSA 3.0 and then wait for the next shifting of conferences and try to upgrade basketball AND football.
I agree. We can’t use the “I’m in a bad conference” crutch. We must win in conference and out of conference.
It’s great that you still view us a program that should be in contention, but the facts are that we have sucked in the A-10 since we got there, plain and simple. The A-10 is a really nice conference, but it just wasn’t a good fit. I will miss playing Xavier and the like, but I’m also looking forward to playing teams like ODU, Marshall and Southern Miss etc…
It’s great that you still view us a program that should be in contention, but the facts are that we have sucked in the A-10 since we got there, plain and simple. The A-10 is a really nice conference, but it just wasn’t a good fit. I will miss playing Xavier and the like, but I’m also looking forward to playing teams like ODU, Marshall and Southern Miss etc…
Why? odu is a pretty good program, but the other two are not. why would you rather play subpar regional teams over quality national teams? i am just trying to understand the mindset.[/quote]
Marshall was NIT last year, I believe, and USM was a tourney team.
It’s great that you still view us a program that should be in contention, but the facts are that we have sucked in the A-10 since we got there, plain and simple. The A-10 is a really nice conference, but it just wasn’t a good fit. I will miss playing Xavier and the like, but I’m also looking forward to playing teams like ODU, Marshall and Southern Miss etc…[/quote]
Why? odu is a pretty good program, but the other two are not. why would you rather play subpar regional teams over quality national teams? i am just trying to understand the mindset.[/quote]
At this point I just want to win. We are consistently losing to just about anyone we play - so before I concern myself too much about who we play I want us to start winning. I would have loved for us to be the team ranked in the top 3 of the A10 and handling teams like we did in CUSA, but we aren’t. Hell we are struggling to make the A10 tourny.
I want to play good teams AND beat them. Right now and over the past 8 years we haven’t done this. 8 years isn’t a blip its a HUGE sign that we are not a very good program. If going to CUSA is what it takes to heal us then so be it. Hell last time we played ODU they beat us by 30 or so points… 30! We need to come in CUSA - and win - just freakin win and then position ourselves. Would you rahter us lose to good teams or beat bad ones? Because our current path of losing to good ones sure has been great.
[quote=“NinerWupAss, post:54, topic:26957”]…If going to CUSA is what it takes to heal us then so be it. Hell last time we played ODU they beat us by 30 or so points… 30! We need to come in CUSA - and win - just freakin win and then position ourselves. Would you rahter us lose to good teams or beat bad ones? Because our current path of losing to good ones sure has been great.[/quote]You are assuming that conference “fit” was the reason for the struggles and also that the soon-to-be CUSA will be a better “fit”. The main reason that has been given for the fit issues is difficulty in recruiting, trying to sell a northeastern league to southern recruits, but maybe there’s something else as well?
I think both of these assumptions are incorrrect. The old coaches failed the program upon its move to the A10. The fact that a complete rebuild was required (or even thought to be required) is clear evidence of this. This new CUSA is going to be even harder to recruit to, because it is not going to be a nationally prominent league, while the new A10 is more likely to be a relevant league and competing with the big boys (now that they are getting their t.v. deal upgraded).
That will offset any advantages of the region of the country, which I think was primarily a convenient excuse to begin with, particularly given that the old CUSA included teams even further away. How many NC boys want to go play in west Texas rather than NYC and Philly? Are we really saying that Hattiesburg, MS is more appealing to recruits than Washington DC and Cincinnati? Where’s the advantage there? How much closer are ECU and Marshall than GW, Richmond, and VCU? I’m skeptical of this argument.
Major will have to adjust to this step down better than Lutz did coming into the A10, and I’m not sure that will work out much better given our current lack of success. It’ll be interesting to see how recruiting goes this year, as it’s the first in which recruits would know where we’re headed. This season is critical for coming into CUSA with some national relevance, before the coaches are stuck with selling one-bid and little national exposure with no program standing outside of those things. But I don’t think team is ready to do that yet, and probably won’t be for at least another year or two.
I hate leaving the A10 on the upswing, after coming in at its nadir. I know why the decision was made for football, but I honestly think it’s a disaster for the basketball program, essentially equivalent to resetting the program back to 1984 without knowing whether Major or some other coach will come in and do the heroic rebuilding that Mullins did in an environment that makes it harder for less prominent programs to rise. And getting a good new coach on the cheap, because football’s going to be expensive for a while, while in a low-profile league could just make things worse. I will be happy to be wrong about this, but I think the program may be irrelevant for much longer with the move to CUSA than would’ve occurred in the A10.
You can recruit 3 stars to CUSA just like you can in A10. We aren’t landing 4 stars anyways. The travel program coaches that I spoke with didn’t think it would hurt us that much.
The positive about our staff, they sold Charlotte when recruiting, they weren’t selling come here to play XU, Temple, etc. That’s what doomed the old staff, they sold playing top teams in CUSA, didn’t sell our program and Univ.
This.
UTEP recruits just fine. I think they landed two top 150 players this year and have the #13 player in the 2013 (maybe 2014) class visiting this week. I doubt he goes to UTEP, but I don’t even know the last time we got a visit from a recruit that high. Beasley probably.
Could very well be. I just know that after 8 years in the A10 we suck. I blamed it on plenty of things - coaches being part of it.
No doubt we need to adjust better than we did last time.
I hate that we ended up in the A10 to begin with. Conference shifting without football is why we ended up in this league. All we have done is correct a mistake from decades ago. I don’t buy that the A10 is on the rise any more than they were in the past. Temple is gone, X looks like it is hitting some bumps, SL has coaching problems, VCU and Butler could fall apart when one of their coaches leave. It is a solid league for sure and better than CUSA at the moment, but it isn’t the highest we should climb. If all we cared about basketball then fine stay in the A10, but when we look at where we have been and where we want to go as a school we have to make this move. We tried the A10, it hasn’t worked. We have football now and we have set ourselves up to be players in the future of conference alignment. I care zero about any teams in the league, the fact that the games I care most about winning now are ECU and Davidson says something about the league.
I also wish people would stop with the VCU and Butler stuff. If Temple and Charlotte hadn’t been looking to leave VCU and Butler wouldn’t be coming in. The same forces driving us out are driving them in. If we don’t leave they don’t both come in.
[quote=“2k, post:56, topic:26957”]You can recruit 3 stars to CUSA just like you can in A10. We aren’t landing 4 stars anyways. The travel program coaches that I spoke with didn’t think it would hurt us that much.
The positive about our staff, they sold Charlotte when recruiting, they weren’t selling come here to play XU, Temple, etc. That’s what doomed the old staff, they sold playing top teams in CUSA, didn’t sell our program and Univ.[/quote] This is a good point and may indicate Major will adjust more quickly and easily. I’m just skeptical that it will be anywhere near as easy to recruit to a one-bid league (which will impact the program success and exposure). CUSA has had some success recruiting in the past, but how much of that was to a conference that no longer exists (i.e. with Memphis and with more well-known coaches)? I suppose we’ll find out in the next couple of years, because I doubt the team is ready to make the NCAA’s in the next two years (which is a requirement to succeed without being in a decent conference).
[quote=“NinerWupAss, post:58, topic:26957”]I hate that we ended up in the A10 to begin with. Conference shifting without football is why we ended up in this league. All we have done is correct a mistake from decades ago. I don’t buy that the A10 is on the rise any more than they were in the past. Temple is gone, X looks like it is hitting some bumps, SL has coaching problems, VCU and Butler could fall apart when one of their coaches leave. It is a solid league for sure and better than CUSA at the moment, but it isn’t the highest we should climb. If all we cared about basketball then fine stay in the A10, but when we look at where we have been and where we want to go as a school we have to make this move. We tried the A10, it hasn’t worked. We have football now and we have set ourselves up to be players in the future of conference alignment. I care zero about any teams in the league, the fact that the games I care most about winning now are ECU and Davidson says something about the league.
I also wish people would stop with the VCU and Butler stuff. If Temple and Charlotte hadn’t been looking to leave VCU and Butler wouldn’t be coming in. The same forces driving us out are driving them in. If we don’t leave they don’t both come in.[/quote] I think we have a very different perspective on the A10, so it’s unlikely we’ll agree on this point.
I think fans would care a ton more about teams in the league if the Niners had ever had contenders. Why did people care about Cincinnati and not Xavier? Xavier had at least as much success over a long time period, and the difference was the Niners had terrible teams when we played them.
I disagree about the Butler and VCU stuff and the A10 not rising. Temple leaving was why the league looked around, but both Butler and VCU indicated interest. I’m not so sure they wouldn’t have both been added anyway (geographically based divisional alignments were coming up that would work for 15 teams if Charlotte had stayed in) given the option. They are solid programs with consistent success, particularly Butler whose done it with several coaches (look back at their NCAA success pre-Stevens, it’s still quite good). That along with the return of SLU, Umass and St. Joe’s to being decent is a recipe for continued league success. Even the bottom teams appear to be recruiting well right now, at least at a higher level than the bottom of CUSA.
I’m not even arguing the move to CUSA, it’s what had to be done to help football. Just that CUSA basketball is not going to be a better “fit”, but will instead make things tougher (with regard to recruiting, potential for success, and fan apathy).