2018 Season - Non-BE Games Of Interest...

[Xudash]

I've been using my left mind for about 30 years now...my right one went on strike during my military years.

Bona (as you say) and StL (SLU) would boost the conferences middle and upper tiered teams into the dance on a more consistent basis.
Instead of 4 or 5 teams, with 6 in a very good year, we'd be seeing 6 or 7 teams dancing annually, with 8 in a very good year.
Just a bit more Dinar in NCAA Credit monies coming into the conference.

JP Schmack is back posting...perhaps he would grace us with spelling out his expansion plan/scenario, again.

I've always liked and respected SBU. A proud program. Passionate fans.

BUT, small and isolated is no way to position yourself for a top-2/3 conference.

AND your fixation on manufacturing more bids via dilution is absolutely nuts.

IF we expand, it probably happens by adding only one team to protect the round robin as we otherwise move to a 20 game schedule, and it will probably only happen by adding the perceived strongest, most mutually acceptable program available.

Not one A10 team is at the top of such a list presently and SBU - fairly or unfairly - is no where near such a list.

Gaming bids is not the emphasis. Protecting the brand through strength is the emphasis.

[Xudash]

Allow me to follow-up that post with this one: Xavier just won the regular season Big East Championship.

Doing that dwarfs anything the program ever accomplished in tha A10. A10 fans who read this board can't imagine or will probably refuse to acknowledge and accept the level of competition that exists in the Big East.

Oops. I stand corrected.

[herodotus]

Allow me to follow-up that post with this one: Xavier just one the regular season Big East Championship.

Doing that dwarfs anything the program ever accomplished in tha A10. A10 fans who read this board can't imagine or will probably refuse to acknowledge and accept the level of competition that exists in the Big East.

One? Egad! I'm assuming you must be using some sort of program that you speak into, that then converts your speech into printed words. If so, get a better program that can tell when "won" is appropriate instead of "one".

[JPSchmack]

Get a glimpse of the future, today:

St Bonnies (23-6) @ St Louis (15-14) on Fox Sports Midwest, @8PM tonite.

The Bonnies are rollin'.

Love how rabid the Bona fans are but... In XU's A10 years Bona was an RPI boat anchor most years. They'd occasionally have a good run but most of the time it was brutal. They're also in a hard to reach location. If this game was at Bona the Billikin's bus (yes you need a bus from Buffalo to get there) would probably be sitting in the middle of a snowbank right about now. Most fans who cared about the A10 wanted Bona to leave for a lesser conference. Why anyone in their right mind thinks they'd be a good fit in the BE escapes me.

Not to be "That guy" but during Xavier’s time in the Atlantic 10, the only time Bonaventure was in the bottom half of the RPI was the six years of their ineligible player and ensuing sanctions.

Yeah, we Bona lost an entire recruiting class (Mike Gansey transferred to WVU) and were put on recruiting restrictions with penalties twice as severe as Syracuse got for cheating 9 times as much; they sucked.

In 18 non-sanction seasons since Xavier joined the A-10 in 1995, the Bonnies have never been below 166 in the RPI.
Average 17-12, 86 RPI. Seven postseason appearances. Two NCAA bids and the biggest screw job in NCAA selection history.


We’re No. 21 in the RPI now and the rest of the conference outside URI is pretty terrible. If we can be in the top 30 of the RPI (TWICE!) while playing Fordham, LaSalle, Duquesne, etc. Imagine what we could do if Big East membership basically doubled our budget.

My pro-Bona expansion case is well documented. So here’s the bullet points:

- Good Conference soldier: .683 OOC (.734 OOC when we don’t have to take guarantees).
- Big East recruiting & more money to buy instead of be bought, and that number goes up.

- Western New York has 2.4 million people and zero BCS teams.
- Hard to get to Bona, cult-like fans watch on TV (Highest ratings by any CBB team on NBCSports)

- Even with more money and better facilities, we're still gonna be a step behind in recruiting until we can afford to run our own private airline.
- So you’ll beat us more than we beat you. If we go 7-11, That makes the rest of you 101-97 in Big East play instead of 90-90. That pushes the eighth Big East team into the NCAAs.

[EMT]

I'll take the Bonnies. The-Bone-Yard would explode.

[JPSchmack]

Allow me to follow-up that post with this one: Xavier just won the regular season Big East Championship. Doing that dwarfs anything the program ever accomplished in tha A10. A10 fans who read this board can't imagine or will probably refuse to acknowledge and accept the level of competition that exists in the Big East.

I agree and am the example of someone who DOES imagine, acknowledges, accepts the level of competition in the Big East. But that’s actually my point….

I've always liked and respected SBU. A proud program. Passionate fans. BUT, small and isolated is no way to position yourself for a top-2/3 conference.

Gonzaga is small, proud, passionate and isolated.

AND your fixation on manufacturing more bids via dilution is absolutely nuts.

IF we expand, it probably happens by adding only one team to protect the round robin as we otherwise move to a 20 game schedule, and it will probably only happen by adding the perceived strongest, most mutually acceptable program available.

Not one A10 team is at the top of such a list presently and SBU - fairly or unfairly - is no where near such a list. Gaming bids is not the emphasis. Protecting the brand through strength is the emphasis.

Manufacturing bids is what you do when you don’t have the quality programs and you conspire and schedule to make it appear that you do. The Big East doesn’t have to do that.

The Big East has the strength. It has the brand. You’re viewing expansion from the same stance as the Power Football Conferences: They were trying to fix a weakness. Your only weakness is that you can’t all go to the dance in the same year (More TV viewers doesn’t hurt, either).


If you take 10 shooters that average 20 points per game and make a team out of them, they won’t magically score 200 points per game. Because there’s only one basketball and about 75 possessions.

Four guys are going to see their scoring average go down. By a lot. That’s what’s happened to Marquette, Georgetown, DePaul and St. John’s.

You bring in two role guys who can create extra possessions by grabbing offensive boards, hitting the floor and getting steals… your shooters can score more.

That’s not “manipulation via dilution” that’s being a well rounded and making everyone better.

[gtmoBlue]

Thanks JP. You express the expansion talking points and the ancillary points in a much better manner than I can.

[BEXU]

I still envision BE Teams taking their dog sleds up to Olean every year to play in the Reilly Center. Our last game there we had to rent a bus all the way back to Cincy. That would suck for Creighton.

[Xudash]

Allow me to follow-up that post with this one: Xavier just won the regular season Big East Championship. Doing that dwarfs anything the program ever accomplished in tha A10. A10 fans who read this board can't imagine or will probably refuse to acknowledge and accept the level of competition that exists in the Big East.

I agree and am the example of someone who DOES imagine, acknowledges, accepts the level of competition in the Big East. But that’s actually my point….

I've always liked and respected SBU. A proud program. Passionate fans. BUT, small and isolated is no way to position yourself for a top-2/3 conference.

Gonzaga is small, proud, passionate and isolated.

AND your fixation on manufacturing more bids via dilution is absolutely nuts.

IF we expand, it probably happens by adding only one team to protect the round robin as we otherwise move to a 20 game schedule, and it will probably only happen by adding the perceived strongest, most mutually acceptable program available.

Not one A10 team is at the top of such a list presently and SBU - fairly or unfairly - is no where near such a list. Gaming bids is not the emphasis. Protecting the brand through strength is the emphasis.

Manufacturing bids is what you do when you don’t have the quality programs and you conspire and schedule to make it appear that you do. The Big East doesn’t have to do that.

The Big East has the strength. It has the brand. You’re viewing expansion from the same stance as the Power Football Conferences: They were trying to fix a weakness. Your only weakness is that you can’t all go to the dance in the same year (More TV viewers doesn’t hurt, either).


If you take 10 shooters that average 20 points per game and make a team out of them, they won’t magically score 200 points per game. Because there’s only one basketball and about 75 possessions.

Four guys are going to see their scoring average go down. By a lot. That’s what’s happened to Marquette, Georgetown, DePaul and St. John’s.

You bring in two role guys who can create extra possessions by grabbing offensive boards, hitting the floor and getting steals… your shooters can score more.

That’s not “manipulation via dilution” that’s being a well rounded and making everyone better.

Kudos for a very thoughtful response.

[JPSchmack]

No problem. Thanks for listening.

I'm not some "Hey, we're just as good as you!" homer. I'm a realist. We're a ridiculous long-shot to ever be a Big East team because everyone ASSUMES the same thing about conference expansion.

It would be an incredibly ballsy move to add St. Bonaventure to the Big East. Because you'd either have to say "We don't NEED strength, we're good with strength. They help us CONFIGURE." (Which you shouldn't say). Or you'd have to say "We can't find a program that's at our level outside of Gonzaga... so we're going to MAKE ONE." (which you probably wouldn't say either.

But the fact is, conference play is a limiting agent. If the Big East had a SINGLE-ROUND robin, you could send all 10 teams. But when the 9th best team in the league plays 16 games against NCAA calibre programs, they're probably going 5-13 in conference. And that's not going to be enough to get a bid.