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by **herodotus** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 1:52 pm

kayako wrote:
What do you think about A10's championship game being held on Sundays? It didn't matter to you guys, but I thought going from sunday to dayton to the tournament game would be rough for any team. Sucks that Adams went into a funk late season, I was rooting for the Bonnies.

If you're the A10, you play whenever CBS tells you, otherwise, you'll be playing your title game on ESPN2 up against a P6 league. It's important for the A10 to continue to position itself as a "super mid major", or "Power lite" conference. Playing on network tv, with no real competition helps sell that. The ratings for their game is usually quite solid. No way they give that up.

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by **GoldenWarrior11** » Sun Mar 18, 2018 9:59 pm

I sincerely hope that Val and the other university Presidents are utilizing Loyola's run as leverage to get DePaul to replace JLP (and Leitao). Loyola has more on-campus students, a larger endowment and - now - a stronger national presence for men's basketball. It is an absolute joke that DePaul refuses to make a change within its athletic department and get men's basketball on track. The whole Wintrust-name story last week as icing on the cake. Not only is the admin nepotistic but they are down-right stupid in their role.

If DePaul truly feels its men's basketball program should not be the "Junior NBA" and believes they are doing things the right way, the Big East Presidents need to seriously look at their long-term membership. Not only have they not got the results needed to be a member of our conference, but they defend those same results and say that it is still (after 13 years) a work in progress.

by **JPSchmack** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:21 pm

kayako wrote:
JPSchmack wrote:My stance has always been along the lines of: St. John's beat Duke and Nova, they could be deserving of a bid, but losing to 15 BE opponents makes it impossible. Some might call that "not deserving a bid" and I call it "limitations on your 7-8-9-10 programs due to conference configuration."

But sweet merciful crap, Marquette deserved a bid. All the stuff I talk about with “too many BE losses = off the bubble RPI” ? Marquette had none of those woes. They got hosed. Compare the resumes of TCU, K-State, Marquette and Oklahoma, and there’s no criteria you could use to put Marquette fourth.

What do you think about A10's championship game being held on Sundays? It didn't matter to you guys, but I thought going from sunday to dayton to the tournament game would be rough for any team. Sucks that Adams went into a funk late season, I was rooting for the Bonnies.

Yes, and no... I mean, the Big Ten sucked and we heard it was because of their layoff. Gonzaga hasn't sucked in March for 20 years and they've ALWAYS had a layoff since their tourney ends five days before Selection Sunday. The A-10 struggled with their legs? The Pac-12's final is Saturday night and they sucked in the tournament, too.

The Bonnies ran out of gas against Florida because of the First Four game (2 am flight to Dallas, landed around 5 a.m. Wednesday morning, then they played Thursday night. No coach would ever book that itinerary). (The First Four should be for High-Loss BCS teams that had their chances and didn't get it done. Teams like Bona/MTSU should go into the R64. And those BCS teams shouldn't get paid for the extra round).

Anyhow, the A-10 tourney on Sunday really doesn't screw the A-10 any more than Saturday does. We're on Sunday because the Big XII abandoned the timeslot after they felt playing on Sunday hosed one of their teams in the seeding. CBS offered us the spot and we pounced, because honestly, the CBS slot probably does more for us than playing Saturday. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS we're almost always a three-bid league (or more).

Plus, because we don't have 7 teams in the tourney, it's pretty easy to slot in an unexpected winner -- like Davidson. They don't have to maneuver everyone around to avoid conference conflicts when they always disrespect our regular season champion with a 7, and never give them a 5-seed.

The only year the Sunday game screwed us was 2012... when they gave Tourney champ Bona a FOURTEEN SEED. Which made no sense. We finished with a better resume than Colorado, who won the Pac-12 and got an 11 seed. But that was the second year of the First Four, they didn't know what they were doing... and it was all BYU's fault. They couldn't slot BYU into their correct seed either, so they did the First Four as 14-seeds.

While I was ticked off at the time (we lost by THREE to 3-seed Florida State, and the Seminoles were not happy with the draw), Bona really had no at-large chances, so we were happy to be in at all.

If anything, the Sunday Championship game doesn't affect the A-10 as much as the schedule shift from Friday to Saturday:
Friday: 12:00 (1/8) , 2:30 (4/5), 6:30 (2/7), 8:00 (3/6) in the Quarters
Saturday: 1:00 (1/4) and 3:30 (2/3) in the Semis.
Sunday: 12:30 (most years) FINAL

And that actually HELPS US get more teams into the tournament. Because our 2/3 seeds generally are getting at-larges, and it's our 4 seed that we're trying to get as an extra bid.
Six of the last 7 years, the finalist from the EARLY SESSION of the Quarters (1/8/9/4/5 seeds) has won in the final over the finalist from the LATE Session (2/3/6/7 seeds).

4/5 seeds are 5-0 in the finals over 2/3 seeds. DC over URI was a rarity. The last 2/3 seed to win was in 2011, when the 3 seed beat a NINE seed.

by **JPSchmack** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:33 pm

herodotus wrote:If you're the A10, you play whenever CBS tells you, otherwise, you'll be playing your title game on ESPN2 up against a P6 league. It's important for the A10 to continue to position itself as a "super mid major", or "Power lite" conference. Playing on network tv, with no real competition helps sell that. The ratings for their game is usually quite solid. No way they give that up.

YES. 100% Correct. We ARE the "Worst Major Conference."

If you make the determination by any metric, the cutline is behind the A-10. The "mid-majors" are mid-majors because they're getting 1-2 bids, MAYBE a third in their best year.
We have a DOWN YEAR, we still get 2-3, and in our very good years, we get 5 or 6.

Since ESPN didn't pick up our TV rights, they always backhand compliment us: "The A-10 is looking like they could get multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament." Which is something we've done in 38 of 39 years as a conference!

I'm getting to the point where I think that the constant committee disrespect means we should ringlead a new "Best of" conference -- really just to ditch those without the resources to compete (Fordham, LaSalle) and those diverting their resources to football (UMass).

by **stever20** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:39 pm

JPSchmack wrote:
herodotus wrote:If you're the A10, you play whenever CBS tells you, otherwise, you'll be playing your title game on ESPN2 up against a P6 league. It's important for the A10 to continue to position itself as a "super mid major", or "Power lite" conference. Playing on network tv, with no real competition helps sell that. The ratings for their game is usually quite solid. No way they give that up.

YES. 100% Correct. We ARE the "Worst Major Conference."

If you make the determination by any metric, the cutline is behind the A-10. The "mid-majors" are mid-majors because they're getting 1-2 bids, MAYBE a third in their best year.
We have a DOWN YEAR, we still get 2-3, and in our very good years, we get 5 or 6.

Since ESPN didn't pick up our TV rights, they always backhand compliment us: "The A-10 is looking like they could get multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament." Which is something we've done in 38 of 39 years as a conference!

I'm getting to the point where I think that the constant committee disrespect means we should ringlead a new "Best of" conference -- really just to ditch those without the resources to compete (Fordham, LaSalle) and those diverting their resources to football (UMass).

You only got 3 teams in the tourney this year because of a bid thief. That's the only reason. If Rhode Island wins tourney and SB loses in the QF vs Richmond instead of the semifinal, it's a 1 bid league. There was 1 way for the A10 to get 3 bids, and 1 way only. And it screwed the conference because if Rhode Island beats Davidson, Rhode Island isn't a 7 seed and is a 6 seed, and has a much more realistic shot of advancing to this weekend.

by **kayako** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 10:28 am

JPSchmack wrote:we should ringlead a new "Best of" conference -- really just to ditch those without the resources to compete (Fordham, LaSalle) and those diverting their resources to football (UMass).

I'd like to see this happen. Replace those 3 with long term viable schools within your footprint. Top candidates?

by **Bostonspider** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:02 am

URI fell to a 7 seed by losing 3 of their final 5 games. Had they beat St. Joe's at home instead of losing by 30, they might have kept a higher seed..