Winners / Losers if UConn joins the Big East

[stever20]

Nice job ignoring all the valid points I made. You know I'm right .

I try to give people benefit of the doubt, but it's beyond obvious to me that he's just trolling here. He'll never turn face here because he's a college fb fan that hates the P5.

I don't even think he's a big college football fan, I think he just hates the P5 and Big East (the P6, as CBS put it on Selection Sunday).

I've noticed most of our other resident trolls haven't been active this past week. With this UConn news Stever had the perfect opportunity to abandon the AAC, but now it's too late. At least he's consistent I guess.

I just don't think conferences matter as much in basketball as folks want to make it out to be. I mean look at Gonzaga. Look at VCU. And the AAC is a lot better than those conferences. Conferences don't get teams in the tournament, teams get themselves in the tournament.

[Husky_U]

Winner: Holyland (more HuskyU)

Loser: CSNBBS (less HuskyU)

[scoscox]

Well, I mean Marquette, Creighton, and Xavier don't really have problems filling their arenas. Uconn impacts them far less than they would Georgetown, Seton Hall, and to a lesser degree Wells Fargo. I am kind of curious, were Cintas and Clink packed like that before they got into the Big East?

Cintas hung around 95% capacity per year in the a-10. It holds 10,200 (10800 standing room only)or something close to that and depending on the year we’d average anywhere from 9800 to full sellouts. It’s always been full. It’s definitely been amped up since we moved to the big east though. The last three years we’ve averaged over 100% capacity on the year. More or less every conference game is standing room only now and something like the top 20 most attended games ever are either uc or a big east team.

[GoldenWarrior11]

I just don't think conferences matter as much in basketball as folks want to make it out to be. I mean look at Gonzaga. Look at VCU. And the AAC is a lot better than those conferences. Conferences don't get teams in the tournament, teams get themselves in the tournament.

And yet, there are only a handful of teams that average multiple bids year-in and year-out, and from those conferences, even fewer that average over 50% in a given year. Part of the Big East's strength is that all eleven (wow, still weird typing that) members are 100% fully committed to men's basketball, and have a rich and strong history of competing at the highest levels of college basketball. Adding UConn only further sells that brand, and it will immensely help the value of both the Big East and UConn.

Conversely, nearly half of the league cannot say the same in the AAC. If you take ECU, SMU, Tulane, UCF and USF (half of the current incarnation of the league), they have a combined fifteen (15) NCAA Tournament appearances in the past thirty (30 years). That's an average of one for every program every ten years. UConn's history, prestige and reputation was absolutely 100% utilized to cover-up for that. Now that UConn will be gone, it will be up to Memphis, Houston and Cincinnati to carry the league; unfortunately, none of reached an Elite Eight or further since 2007 (Memphis, and that was under Calipari). No current AAC team has won a national championship since 1962 (Cincinnati).

[adoraz]

If Memphis had beaten Texas Tech, they would have been end of the year 22-12 with 3 Q1 wins and a top 40 NET. Sorry but a resume like that last year with the win over Texas Tech- they'd have gotten in. Especially with how close they were with Cincy and Houston late in the season.....

The problem you are making is you want to look back at UConn 15-20 years ago. The problem is the AAC wasn't around then. All we have to look at are these 6 years- and even really moreso only last 5 years after all the moves got finished. That UConn has not been strong at all. That's the UConn that we have to evaluate in terms of how it's going to impact the AAC on the floor. If the AAC was only getting 2-3 teams in with UConn being one of them, dominating the conference, then what you're saying would be spot on. But the fact of the matter is that has not been the case at all whatsoever. The average Ken Pom rating last 5 years for UConn has been 94.4. You say that's not fair, that includes the 17-18 season where they were putrid. That's fair. But then you have to consider the outlier the other way of the 2015-16 season where they finished 25-11.... But you take those other 3 years- and the average is 89. That's the UConn that the league is losing.

This is so comical and I won't waste my time responding. UConn is the AAC's best basketball brand and it's not even close. That's a fact and I won't debate it.

[adoraz]

I just don't think conferences matter as much in basketball as folks want to make it out to be. I mean look at Gonzaga. Look at VCU. And the AAC is a lot better than those conferences. Conferences don't get teams in the tournament, teams get themselves in the tournament.

And yet, there are only a handful of teams that average multiple bids year-in and year-out, and from those conferences, even fewer that average over 50% in a given year. Part of the Big East's strength is that all eleven (wow, still weird typing that) members are 100% fully committed to men's basketball, and have a rich and strong history of competing at the highest levels of college basketball. Adding UConn only further sells that brand, and it will immensely help the value of both the Big East and UConn.

Conversely, nearly half of the league cannot say the same in the AAC. If you take ECU, SMU, Tulane, UCF and USF (half of the current incarnation of the league), they have a combined fifteen (15) NCAA Tournament appearances in the past thirty (30 years). That's an average of one for every program every ten years. UConn's history, prestige and reputation was absolutely 100% utilized to cover-up for that. Now that UConn will be gone, it will be up to Memphis, Houston and Cincinnati to carry the league; unfortunately, none of reached an Elite Eight or further since 2007 (Memphis, and that was under Calipari). No current AAC team has won a national championship since 1962 (Cincinnati).

That was a 100% defeatist post by Stever. Literally the worst case scenario post for him. His conference's #1 team just got poached by the conference he hates, and his response is "none of this matters". He has something like 10,000 posts to the contrary.

Imagine going back to 2014, right after the AAC outperformed the Big East in it's inaugural year and UConn won the Title... and then telling Stever that in 5 years the Big East would win 2 Championships, the AAC would bomb every season, and then the Big East would poach UConn. Brutal.

[X-man]

And now we learn from stever that conferences don't matter! Who knew?

[GoldenWarrior11]

I didn't understand this quote from the other site. I know that Stever (both here and there) has vigorously and adamantly utilized Kevin Ollie's firing, Dan Hurley's hiring, the resurgence in recruiting this past season, the steady comparables in home attendance between BE/AAC and the on-court improvements this past year all as reasons why AAC Men's Basketball will be a steady major seven basketball conference year-to-year moving forward (despite its under-performance the past few years). Now he says that same program (which is now moving back to the Big East - utilizes evidence that has not changed) as reasons why it is actually not bad for AAC Men's Basketball? I cannot comprehend how both arguments can be made true.

perceptionwise this is horrible for the AAC.

For football, it's definitely a blessing. Lose one of the 10 worst programs in college football.... You take UConn out of the AAC last year, and only 3 teams had fewer than 5 wins. For a G5 league- that's not bad.

For basketball, it's one of those things of perception vs reality. UConn in basketball last 5 years is only 38-25 OOC and 43-47 in conference play. So outside of structurally, how is losing that going to hurt much? Now, the problem that I see for the AAC is if they stay at 11 for basketball and go double round robin, that's just dumb as hell. If they stay at 11, I'd keep it at 18 conference games.

I just love how Big East fans want to act like this is absolutely devastating for basketball for the AAC. Sorry but it isn't. This isn't Uconn of 5-20 years ago. This is UConn of the last 3 years- who was one of only a handful of top 7 conference programs that finished sub .500 overall each of the last 3 years. Not even Cal can say that. If the league gets VCU to replace UConn, sorry, but the on court ratings wouldn't be hurt at all....

Also perception wise, I think losing UConn may help the AAC in that they no longer have folks saying they need to move.

[Django]

Winners are the entire Big East, FS1, MSG, and UConn basketball fans
Losers are UConn football fans, Wichita Community College fans (Memphis, Cincy and Houston as well) and all the basketball fans in the AAC, which is just another G5 football conference now

[Hall2012]

If Memphis had beaten Texas Tech, they would have been end of the year 22-12 with 3 Q1 wins and a top 40 NET. Sorry but a resume like that last year with the win over Texas Tech- they'd have gotten in. Especially with how close they were with Cincy and Houston late in the season.....

The problem you are making is you want to look back at UConn 15-20 years ago. The problem is the AAC wasn't around then. All we have to look at are these 6 years- and even really moreso only last 5 years after all the moves got finished. That UConn has not been strong at all. That's the UConn that we have to evaluate in terms of how it's going to impact the AAC on the floor. If the AAC was only getting 2-3 teams in with UConn being one of them, dominating the conference, then what you're saying would be spot on. But the fact of the matter is that has not been the case at all whatsoever. The average Ken Pom rating last 5 years for UConn has been 94.4. You say that's not fair, that includes the 17-18 season where they were putrid. That's fair. But then you have to consider the outlier the other way of the 2015-16 season where they finished 25-11.... But you take those other 3 years- and the average is 89. That's the UConn that the league is losing.

And if the Raptors lost game 7 to the Sixers they'd have gotten nowhere near the NBA title. Everyone has close games, it's a stupid argument.