Conference realignment discussion - v. 2015

[sheg]

JP,

I agree with your overall premise - trying to get 7 of 12 or 8 of 13 teams into the tournament is easier than trying to get 6 of 10 in. And getting 7/12 or 8/13 is better than getting 6/10, despite all three being roughly the same percentage - because you have 1 or 2 more chances for deep tournament runs - and THAT is where prestige, excitement, and ratings come from. When ESPN and CBS announce the bracket on Selection Sunday, you want your conference closer to the top of the "Bids by Conference" graphic. Casual onlookers aren't saying "Well, Conference X got Y per cent of its teams in." They're saying "Oooh - look at the Big East! 11 bids! Wow! They're the best conference!" Never mind that that 11 bids was only 55.5% - still great, but it doesn't sound as impressive.

I've argued for years and years that conferences need to encourage their members to win 80% of their non-con games. If you win more than that, you either scheduled too easy or your team is much better than you thought it was. If you win less than that, you're hurting your conference because you drag down their RPIs, they lose chances for top 25/50/100 wins, and they lose games to you - but you have no chance to help the conference with an at-large bid because you're 16-14.

Then, if I'm a conference looking to expand, I look for teams that win 80% of the time non-con on a regular basis (among many other factors obviously).

That's all well and good. No arguments anywhere. But this:

D. You can time your announcement to minimize blowback (like I said, Friday of the NCAA Round of 64 and it gets zero attention).

If you have to time your announcement so it receives as little attention as possible, is that really an announcement you want to be making?

[JPSchmack]

D. You can time your announcement to minimize blowback (like I said, Friday of the NCAA Round of 64 and it gets zero attention).

If you have to time your announcement so it receives as little attention as possible, is that really an announcement you want to be making?

You're taking issue with a hypothetical?
With my response to the question of "What do we do about all the people who don't see that conventional wisdom is unwise, of which I am one?!"

That's a message board hypothetical, not a real world one.

[Flyer75]

i am not sure why the XU fans are trying to convince me or the vast majority of UD fans that they need to join the BE. I can tell you that if you polled the long time UD season holders and the admin the vote would be vastly in favor of staying in the A10. Why would UD want to lose control? There is no financial need to change, UD is financially set for the long haul and more. The BE has become the FOX networks (sports and news and entertainment divisions) property, with all that baggage associated with it. Yes the BE is interesting to many UD fans as many of these schools have a long history of playing UD expecially XU Depaul, Marquette, even VU, and SHU, and SJU from the 50 and 60s, It is just not worth it in the long run. We are lovin where we are at, everything is good, why change?

I haven't seen any XU fans trying to convince you that UD needs to join the Big East. I have seen many trying to convince UD fans that they have no chance of every joining the Big East. I can also say that you come off in the same way as some one who got rejected by the hot girl, and then starts talking crap about her. I encourage level headed UD fans like UD Flyer Fanatic to post here. While I don't agree with everything he says, he is a gentlemen and conducts himself appropriately. UD fans like you and ohiohsbball who come here and are disrespectful of the Big East only makes the Fan Base of UD look bad. Although I will give you credit, you at least admit that you are a UD fan, ohiohsbball can't even do that. Now lets get to the "points in your argument"

1) UD is better off in the A-10. In certain ways this argument is true. The A-10 is depleted and is in need of a new flagship. I say depleted because an A-10 without Xavier and Temple is has dropped a peg. Adding a VCU helps but does not make up for the fact, that there is less competition in the A-10. Dayton has the resources, and the coach (Finally) that can help them become the top dog in the A-10. Doesn't mean they will, I am still waiting for their first regular season conference title. And yes I realize that you had three A-10 west championships but the East champion always had the better record and you shared one of those with Xavier. That's right Dayton has been in a conference since 1988 and has not ever been the best team in their conference. As such staying in a watered down A-10 will give the Flyers a easier path to the NCAA's. Maybe its me, but I don't want the easy path. I want to stand toe to toe with the Blue Bloods of the game and see if X can beat them.

I'm going to preface this post by saying as a Dayton fan, I want in the BE....not for the money or television so much as I can see where college basketball is heading and that is a total power conglomeration of P5 + BE schools ruling the roost and I want Dayton in that.

Second, I'll argue a bit against the bolded part. The A10 is really no different with or without Xavier and Temple. Yes, they were the flagships, but other teams will and have taken their place. The A10 was always a 3 bid league for the most part...with Temple and X. Guess what...it still is. The conference RPI is basically holding serve in the 6-7 spot exactly like it always did with Temple and X. In fact....the league got it's highest number of bids the year Xavier and Temple were both out. Now, it remains to be seen if VCU and Davidson year in and year out prop up the A10 with their RPI and OCC success.

I went back to '00-01:

00-01: 3 bids
01-02: 1 bid (no Temple)
02-03: 3 bids
03-04: 4 bids (no Temple)
04-05: 1 bid (no X or Temple)
05-06: 2 bids (no Temple)
06-07: 2 bids (no Temple)
07-08: 3 bids
08-09: 3 bids
09-10: 3 bids
10-11: 3 bids
11-12: 4 bids

Now, the following year...Temple is gone from the league and it's Xavier's last season:

12-13: 5 bids (a record, No X)
13-14: 6 bids
14-15: 3 bids

There isn't even close to a 3 year period where X and Temple were in the A10 that netted 14 bids.

Do I think the A10 is better then the BE? No...but let's not rewrite history here and act like the A10 was some power conference when Xavier and Temple were in it. Not much has changed, in fact, with a very small sample size one could say the conference has gotten better through other means such as adding VCU and Davidson and teams winning games in OOC.

[CoachK]

Because ultimately there will be conferences who will be the winners, and conferences that will be the losers, when it comes to college hoops.

There is no guarantee that the BE will be a big winner, though it seems headed that way right now. However, the A10 will always be an also ran.

The best time to get off the Titanic was when there were still lifeboats available, not when the keel was above the waterline. Same applies here.

That first sentence is true. Except it's not binary, it's relative.

There's 22 non-FBS conferences in college basketball.

The Big East is always going to be THE BEST of them.
But the A-10 is always going to be the NEXT BEST after the BE.
The West Coast Conference and MVC will probably always be the next best after them.

So it's not a sink or swim for the A-10. It might be for Wichita State if UMass were to get an AAC invite and the A-10 reached out to them... but it's still relative.

JP,

I'm sorry, but what does "NEXT BEST" mean? That the BE and A10 are close in positioning on a list? You know it's not that simple. Just look at this year:

Rank Conference Avg. RPI
1 Big 12 0.6039
2 Pacific-12 0.5926
3 Atlantic Coast 0.5853
4 Big East 0.5751
5 Southeastern 0.5677
6 Big Ten 0.5646
7 Atlantic 10 0.5441
8 American Athletic 0.5340
9 Colonial Athletic 0.5242
10 Summit 0.5149

Are you suggesting that 4 to 7 is no big deal, or that the A10 is the next non-P5 conference after the BE? So what?

The rankings and the projected seedings between both conferences evidence material differences in positioning. Perception has otherwise met reality this season, with new deals like the BE/BIG challenge, which incidentally launched Xavier's season with our win in Ann Arbor. The money differential and the media differential are HUGE between the BE and A10. There just isn't any other way to see that.

The narrative will come down to how many teams did each conference get into the Dance and how well did they do, but that will be combined with the total body of work when it comes to forming perceptions about conferences. Even so, the Big East is working its way through to a better positioning in the Dance, and while success in the Dance can be up to match-ups and the whims of Hoop Gods, I like the Big East's line-up when it comes to being well positioned for advancing in the tourney this year.

I'm not suggesting the A10 is sinking. You're technically right about the A10 being the NEXT BEST non-P5 conference at this time, but I'm not sure what that means when it comes to long term success.

If I'm doing my math correctly, this suggests that the Big East is closer to the #1 conference than the Atlantic 10 is to the Big East. And 3 times closer to the ACC than to the Atlantic 10.

[JPSchmack]

If I'm doing my math correctly, this suggests that the Big East is closer to the #1 conference than the Atlantic 10 is to the Big East. And 3 times closer to the ACC than to the Atlantic 10.

You're talking about a radically different thing. Where's the Big East, A-10, ACC and Big XII gonna end up in the 2018-19 in Conference RPI? Who knows. That's schedule dependent, OOC schedules change. That's math rankings relative to one another.

He was talking "big picture" conference realignment winners & losers. The Big East is positioned ahead of the A-10 because of media rights. They'll be competitive with the BCS conferences because those conferences are allocating their resources for football first, and the Big East has less resources, but are basketball first. The Big East will be in the 1-6 range of conference in Conference RPI almost always, maybe a bad year dip to 8th.

The A-10 is going to be a poor-man's Big East, virtually always. But they'll also be in the bottom half of the "Top Third of NCAA basketball" virtually always. We're gonna be 5th to 10th every year. That's just who each conference IS.

Talking about math and decimal points is an IN-SEASON calculation or a "conference configuration" discussion.

But the OP of the subject was talking about the silliness of a suggestion that Dayton would decline a Big East invite because they're better off in the A-10. They very well could be better off as the big fish in the A-10's small pond rather than one of 12 piranhas devouring each other in the too strong Big East. But there's $4 million reasons to make that bad decision. They'd accept the offer if it came. ANYONE outside the Pacific Time Zone, who doesn't have FBS football would accept a Big East invite.

My point was more to the fact that the Big East invite not arriving is not a death sentence or doomsday scenario. The A-10's existed in the Big East's shadow for decades now, and gotten their share of bids/money/success. And that will continue. If you take Dayton, SLU or (God willing) Bonaventure, the A-10 will take Wichita State and lose no ground.

[UD Flyer Fanatic]

I can't help but wonder (as the Flyers have spent the last week and half playing in half filled HS gyms on the road), what our conference RPI ranking could be if we had the ability to shed some of our cellar dweller programs. I've always thought the cream of the A10 was pretty good even after the recent departures of Temple, Xavier, Butler... I do agree its good to have those bottom teams that lift up the rest of the conference's W-L record, but we have too many of them. Maybe I'll do the math and find out...

But the A10 has been remarkably resilient to the point made above. But not enough to not desire a BE expansion invite in the future. I just hope that in the event we have the achievements to earn such consideration, we'd be a serious candidate. It's this point (not being considered regardless of our achievements) that concerns me most. That said, the new members of the BE have clearly earned their place and I tip my UD cap to X, Butler and Creighton.

[JPSchmack]

I feel the discussion is breaking down… But both those recent tangents are narrow focused discussions of my overall point on “Why the Big East gets more bids with 12”

Quite simply: College basketball is a zero sum game.

In every conference season, for every conference win, there’s a conference loss.
For every non-conference win, a non-conference loss.

The number of bids you get as a league is relative to how your conference does OOC, and who’s in the top half of the league.

Adding two schools who are almost as strong OOC as the current Big East, but weaker than the current 10 members puts 1-2 more of the current Big East members into the NCAA tournament, virtually every year.

[JPSchmack]

I can't help but wonder (as the Flyers have spent the last week and half playing in half filled HS gyms on the road), what our conference RPI ranking could be if we had the ability to shed some of our cellar dweller programs. I've always thought the cream of the A10 was pretty good even after the recent departures of Temple, Xavier, Butler... I do agree its good to have those bottom teams that lift up the rest of the conference's W-L record, but we have too many of them. Maybe I'll do the math and find out...

But the A10 has been remarkably resilient to the point made above. But not enough to not desire a BE expansion invite in the future. I just hope that in the event we have the achievements to earn such consideration, we'd be a serious candidate. It's this point that concerns me most. Most of the current BE has clearly earned their place and I tip my UD cap to X, Butler and Creighton.

Well, that depends obviously on whom you dropped. Historically, you’d want to dump Fordham & Duquense because their historical OOC has hurt. This season, those two did just fine OOC. Dropping programs is NEVER realistic. So you’d basically have to work on they hypothetical that: Fordham joined the Patriot League right before we invited George Mason, so we didn’t invite the Patriots. Then when Charlotte left, replaced them with Davidson for 12 teams.

In that scenario, last year we’d have been .6408 OOC instead of .6074. So that’s a .0100 increase in EVERYONE’S RPI. Which is good.

But we’d also have 10 more conference losses as a group of 12. Fordham and GMU played each other once. And went 7-27 against everyone else. We’d be 17-17 against each other instead of Fordham/GMU.

For NCAA bids, it would really depend on “who plays whom” in those new games you have to assign.

The A-10’s “problem” really isn’t the number of “bottom programs” in the league. It’s that there’s too many “NIT/CBI programs” in the third quarter of the group. Basically, consider each program:

Contender Programs (top 9 NCAA seeds)
Bubble Programs (Seeds 10-12 & missing the NCAA cut)
NIT Programs (teams that should be 65-125 in the RPI)
Dweller Programs (Teams that are going 4-14 in conference and won’t make the post-season)

The A-10 has (in general)
3 Contenders, 4 Bubble, 4 NIT, 3 Dwellers

The problem is our NIT programs (I.E. UMass last year) too frequently beat our Bubble programs (Richmond, last year) and we send 3-4 to the NCAAs instead of 5-6.

You want to have a 2-to-1 ratio of postseason programs and non-postseason programs. Basically, you expect everyone to split with their group, beat the groups below the and lose to the groups above them (obviously with a few exceptions mixed in, because it’s basketball and match ups). But generally speaking, IF you beat below/lose above & split your group, a 2-to-1 ratio makes 2/3 of your conference NCAA candidates, and 3/4 of them probably dance.

The best cast scenario for the A-10 isn’t dumping two dwellers. It would actually be losing Fordham to the Patriot and UMass to the American.

Then we’d be .6286 OOC, still better. But we’d have:
VCU, Dayton, Davidson (dancing); URI, RICH, GW, BONA (Bubble candidates), half of which dance
LAS, SJU in the NIT; GMU, DUQ, SLU as dwellers.


On the other hand, the Big East has:
4 Contenders, 4 Bubble, 2 NIT, 0 Dwellers.

And their conference schedule sends two Bubble programs to the lower groups, like Seton Hall last year, and two NIT programs to the dweller group: like Creighton last year.

If they added two dwellers, they’d be:
4 contenders, 4 bubble
2 NIT, 2 dwellers.

The top 8 would have 3 more wins and they'd send 7-8 to the dance every year.

[ta111]

JP, as a Flyers supporter, I know the fan base really hasn't concerned itself with BE inclusion because we have been very successful these past 3 years with NCAA tourney invites and wins. I also understand that if 4 mill was thrown at the administration they would jump at it. However, I'd like to know your take on whether Dayton is better off staying in the A10 for purposes of tourney inclusion or would have a better chance in the BE.

[DudeAnon]

Ok JP. Val just emailed me and said I have 4 choices for expansion and have to select 2 before the end of the day. Pick for me and explain your logic:

VCU
UD
SLU
SBU