UD Flyer Fanatic wrote:
I get your frustration. If there were only a similar private university with an established top 50 rpi team within a hundred miles or so that would agree to play you guys...
I think they play X, UC, Notre Dame and IU all the time. If you're talking about UD, I suggest you fire your game scheduler and get somebody who can get you such games. X has done it for years and years. UD would rather schedule DII teams.
Not to belabor the point- yes I was sarcastically referring to UD. Maybe we should fire the scheduler- but that is our past head coach and the AD. Such is the importance to us of a strong OOC schedule as we get precious little quality win opportunities in season. We would rather not schedule patsies, but as the MBB program is our only revenue sport and supports the entire athletic department budget, we do host an occasional buy game for revenue (and last year's sole D2 team does not impact RPI) . But the bottom line is we do find it most difficult to find good program open to playing us. Hopefully our recent success and strong RPI has taken the "bad loss" stigma away to some degree.
We now return back to our regular programming.....
UFF,
I'm not dumping on you, but offering a straight up comment on this: there is more than likely a perception here and from outside the UD fanbase that Archie's exit from UD will translate to a step back for UD. I'm not following or familiar with your new coach, but that isn't the point. It's not about who took the job in this case, it's about who left it.
Coupled with that is the reality that the A10 has become a shell of its former self. Xavier and Temple are gone. UMass has been down for most of the time for many years now. St. Joe's seems to have gone off the ledge. With both VCU and UD having experienced recent material coaching changes and with the bottom of the A10 remaining so gifted at being very much bottom-centric performers, it just seems that it will be that much harder to recruit into that conference moving forward.
UD has the fan support and resources to make it work. It hasn't had a track record of consistently maintaining strong coaches, following coaching exits. That doesn't mean that can't change, starting with the most recent occurrence.
I will tell you this, though: the difference in the level of recruiting that can be achieved between the Big East and P5 and the other conference is simply staggering. I sometimes now sit back and wonder how Xavier did what it was able to do in recruiting when it was in the A10, and that was when the A10 was banging around in the conference rank range of 6/7.
At the very least, if UD wants to remain relevant, it's going to have to run rough shod over the A10 in order to gain a path into the NCAAT.