Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

Hey guys,
We've had some movement in the past week with Holtmann being switched out for LaVall Jordan. Lost a great coach but picked up one with great potential, now mixed with stability due to Jordan's Butler roots.

Anyway, the conference has made amazing progress. We started with a checklist of 150 items to get done. We're down to a small handful. Here's my list:

1. Have success and national rankings from our New York and Chicago teams.
2. Continue to improve TV ratings.
3. Attendance improvement at DePaul and Georgetown.

For 1, each team has had a good offseason and their coaches both enter Year 3, with a chance to make a nice leap this year.
For 2, ratings continue to climb. DePaul and St John's being better will help that along.
For 3, Ewing's arrival and DePaul's Wintrust Arena are both good or great developments.

What are some other boxes to check?

Agree that it's very important to have a relevant SJ and capitalize on the NYC area market. As someone who lives in the NYC metro area, SJ gets tons of buzz even if we go unranked and make the tourney. I can only imagine the buzz if the team was top 25 all year with a Sweet 16 appearance or better. Finally, we appear to have balanced the scholarships and now we have a 3 year window we can truly compete for tourney berths. Under Lavin, it seemed that we'd only have a realistic shot every 4 years. I was expecting NIT at a minimum earlier in the offseason but since adding Trimble and Wilson I think making the NCAA's is a fair expectation. Any halfway decent coach would get at least 20 wins with these guys. Conference play will be a grind as usual, so OOC performance will be crucial.

To add to the checklist, continue to get at least 5 teams into the tournament. I would also say that one of SJ, G'Town, DePaul has to step it up big time in the next few years especially since Butler is going to be rebuilding for a few years. Those teams also represent huge markets in NYC, DC, and Chicago.

I think there's still the NCAA tourney performance to check off. In 3 of the 4 years, the league has underachieved pretty dramatically in the tourney. The league has had from top 4 seeded teams a whopping 5 of 7 teams lose before the sweet 16. Sure Xavier has broken thru twice as a lower seed, but still, having only 4 sweet 16 teams overall in 4 years has got to change.

stever20 wrote:I think there's still the NCAA tourney performance to check off. In 3 of the 4 years, the league has underachieved pretty dramatically in the tourney. The league has had from top 4 seeded teams a whopping 5 of 7 teams lose before the sweet 16. Sure Xavier has broken thru twice as a lower seed, but still, having only 4 sweet 16 teams overall in 4 years has got to change.

In the last 2 years, 3 of those sweet 16s, 2 elite 8s, final four...I am forgetting something...let me think...what is it...oh yes, a National Championship. That's a pretty big thing to "check off" regarding the NCAA tourney.

Your beloved AAC in those 2 years: 0 sweet 16s, 0 elite 8s, 0 final fours. In fact, I think one tourney win by Cincy is the extent of success those two years.

Ma! Meat loaf!

stever20 wrote:I think there's still the NCAA tourney performance to check off. In 3 of the 4 years, the league has underachieved pretty dramatically in the tourney. The league has had from top 4 seeded teams a whopping 5 of 7 teams lose before the sweet 16. Sure Xavier has broken thru twice as a lower seed, but still, having only 4 sweet 16 teams overall in 4 years has got to change.

The Big XII who has been a regular atop the conferenced rankings have struggled in the tourny as well so it seems chit just happens in March and that doesn't totally reflect on the strength of the conference. Heck look at the ACC this past year.

stever20 wrote:I think there's still the NCAA tourney performance to check off. In 3 of the 4 years, the league has underachieved pretty dramatically in the tourney. The league has had from top 4 seeded teams a whopping 5 of 7 teams lose before the sweet 16. Sure Xavier has broken thru twice as a lower seed, but still, having only 4 sweet 16 teams overall in 4 years has got to change.

I don't disagree with this but realistically we need to achieve when we have the seeding to do so. Getting into the 2nd weekend is mostly about seeding and matchups and that hasn't worked out to our advantage for a few of our schools.

Savannah Jay wrote:

stever20 wrote:I think there's still the NCAA tourney performance to check off. In 3 of the 4 years, the league has underachieved pretty dramatically in the tourney. The league has had from top 4 seeded teams a whopping 5 of 7 teams lose before the sweet 16. Sure Xavier has broken thru twice as a lower seed, but still, having only 4 sweet 16 teams overall in 4 years has got to change.

In the last 2 years, 3 of those sweet 16s, 2 elite 8s, final four...I am forgetting something...let me think...what is it...oh yes, a National Championship. That's a pretty big thing to "check off" regarding the NCAA tourney.

Your beloved AAC in those 2 years: 0 sweet 16s, 0 elite 8s, 0 final fours. In fact, I think one tourney win by Cincy is the extent of success those two years.

Ma! Meat loaf!

And in the last 2 years, even with 3 sweet 16's- had flame outs by #1 Villanova in '17 and 2 Xavier in '16. So of the 4 top 4 seed teams in the last 2 years, only 2 made it to the sweet 16. You expect your 1 and 2 seed teams to make it to the sweet 16. And yeah, when you send 12 teams to the tourney, with 4 of them being sweet 16 seeds(and then 2 other 6 seeds)- you expect more than 3 sweet 16's. There hasn't been a tourney yet where there's no buts. Even with the year that Nova won the title, you had the Xavier loss. The NCAA tourney is still something that needs improvement on. The 3 sweet 16's in the period rank 6th in the country last 2 years. And the 4 in the last 4 years is half the next lowest P6 conference. And I think the coaches would agree that the tourney performance needs to improve.

Oh and I was wrong- it's actually 6 of 8 top 4 seeded teams for the Big East having lost before the sweet 16.

NJRedman wrote:

stever20 wrote:I think there's still the NCAA tourney performance to check off. In 3 of the 4 years, the league has underachieved pretty dramatically in the tourney. The league has had from top 4 seeded teams a whopping 5 of 7 teams lose before the sweet 16. Sure Xavier has broken thru twice as a lower seed, but still, having only 4 sweet 16 teams overall in 4 years has got to change.

The Big XII who has been a regular atop the conferenced rankings have struggled in the tourny as well so it seems chit just happens in March and that doesn't totally reflect on the strength of the conference. Heck look at the ACC this past year.

Big 12 in the last 4 years has 10 sweet 16 teams to the Big East's 4.

Also they've had 10 sweet 16 seeds in those 4 years- and of those 10, 6 made the sweet 16.

And yet the B12 has zero NC's during that time. Wah-wah-wah.

What he said ^