Xavier AD says expanding to 12 schools within 5 years

[Natty]

Ok top 25 probably not top 15

ESPN - #13 http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketb ... basketball
CBS - #14 http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... y/22036310
NBC - #17 http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports. ... on-top-25/
Fox - #15 http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketb ... uke-041312

That's a top-15 average from the big boys.

[aughnanure]

It's still all conjecture at this point--credit the new Xavier AD with getting his name and this interview blasted out about the Big east and A10 boards. No such thing as bad publicity--I find it funny that some folks on here indicate that Richmond has "to turn their program around". Yeah Sweet 16 from 2011 is decades ago. And they're certainly not scheduling for a NCAA tourney berth with games at Florida, against UNC (and possibly Louisville depending on how the the games go), Wake Forest, Air Force, Belmont, Ohio & Minnesota. And they need to invest in the program too huh? You mean like the 20 Million we just put into the renovated Robins Center putting in 4 video boards, hospitality areas (hi donors), better seating, new concessions, et al.

I don't mind taking shots at the program since they do have things they need to improve upon, but at least be knowledgable before you comment on a school program's progress or lack thereof.

Well I think you need to "turn it around" in regards of being the best team in Richmond. Richmond could make the choice much easier for us if they could be beating VCU at the time we call on them.

We've split the last 4 meetings with them including last year when we played twice. Trust me we want to beat them twice every year and vice versa. If you're commenting on whether we "own" the city we never will since they have way more alumni then we do, especially that stay local. Most of our student body is from the NE and they tend to go back there or somewhere else(its tough being in demand ) But I wouldn't say every team in the BE owns their city necessarily--the competitors may be different sports or pro teams in some cases. Xavier vs Cincinnati, Butler vs Indiana/Purdue, Marquette vs Wisconsin, St. John's vs Knicks, SLU vs Missouri/Kansas, etc and on down the line. I wouldn't say Villanova "owns" Philly either.

Well I never said "own" the city. That was another poster I was referring to. I don't even think VCU really owns it. UVA and Va Tech are the big dogs in the state (Georgetown in Nova) and would own Richmond much more than VCU if they ever had some real success. None of us really own our cities because we'll always be overshadowed by the huge state schools like Wisconin, Nebraska, Ohio St, NotreDame/Indiana, etc. But I do think you can become the clear #2 in the state, say behind UVA like Marquette and Creighton operate. We are the unholy private school invasion in these states and they will never treat us fully like their own until we do something like Duke, but even then half will hate us even more.

Marquette may not "own" Milwaukee, but UWM sure as hell doesn't either. That's what I mean.

[ElDonBDon]

The vcu ad says football is nowhere in his sights. And thats fine. However being a big state school, especially in a midsized town with no pro sports teams, the temptation to add football for vcu is always there. Old dominion just added football. Unc-charlotte just added football. This is not vcu-bashing for the sake of vcu-bashing, the temptation to add football is a legitimate concern, in my opinion.

Also with a public institution, there are some freedom of information concerns. Anyone remembe FOI being invoked with USF to get info on the big east? Maybe its not a huge concern, but its nothing to scoff at either, at least, it seems to me.

Finally, id like to have institutional fit, but its not a deal-killer to me (id love to have uconn or memphis the moment they drop fball). But guys, you heard X's AD, the presidents (and only?) The presidents will be making the decision who to add. All of this vcu talk is a moot point if thats true. Like it or not but those guys care waaaay more about institutional fit than they should. Anyone recall the presidents of the ACC expressing their dismay at having to have to add a lowly academic school like louisville. LOUISVILLE! They struggled with the decision of academic fit vs athletics with louisville. LOUISVILLE!

In a word, vcu will NOT be in this conference, its public and there are far better schools academically available (eg richmond, slu). The presidents care about academics first and vcu doesnt make that cut. But calling it a diploma mill is a)wrong b)extremely disrespectful

Now before any vcu fans jump in and start boasting about how its an up and coming school and comparing your sat scores to already-accepted conference members (eg seton hall, depaul), know that these schools are already in the conference. That is to say, from the perspective of the presidents, they are a sunk cost-they cant do anything about it. You want to compare academics, compare yourself to the potential members that you are competing against.

[MUBoxer]

Ok top 25 probably not top 15

ESPN - #13 http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketb ... basketball
CBS - #14 http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... y/22036310
NBC - #17 http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports. ... on-top-25/
Fox - #15 http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketb ... uke-041312

That's a top-15 average from the big boys.

The big boys in April is what you're going on about? Come on wait till the real rankings come out and talk to me

[GumbyDamnit!]

First, forgot about Lavin. Good job. but Pitino is NOT relevant since Louisville is not in the Big East. You're setting yourself up to be disappointed, that's all. None of these potential adds are slam dunks. Unless we're grabbing Gonzaga, they will all have question marks. And not every team can be a winner in this league. If we want Georggetown and Nova and Marquette and SJJU to be powers with great bids. Guess what? DePaul, Seton Hall, Butler are going to have give us a lot of their wins. Stop acting like we can't afford a bad team. Is the ACC considered a bad league because Clemson, BC, and Wake Forest suck? What about the B1G and Penn St, Iowa, Nebraska? Bottomfeeder teams help facilitate the success of a league just like the top teams do.

I just hate the "hire a big name head coach" like its just that simple. I mean "Tap the shoulders of your alums and appeal to them to support he program"? Everyone could be a "rising power to these easy directions.

Aug, a couple of things...

Do you have a sense of how large the Richmond alum endowment is each year? We're talking close to $2B. For a school that size, which is not an Ivy school, that is flat-out impressive. To put it in perspective that is larger than the following schools: Penn State, Kansas, Univ of Illinois, UCLA, Oklahaoma, BC, Mich St., and G'town (not to mention every other school currently in the BE--by a large margin). So when I suggest to get the alums involved it is not said in some canned, cliche' way. These are people with $ and influence who have shown the willigness to invest in the school they love. I would bet you could find a handful of large donors that would love to see Rich U. head to the BE. Secondly, with any strategic planning at a University like this, it's just good business to engage the Alums early in the process. If they wanted to build a state-of-the-art science building, they would tap the Alums on the shoulder, no? Why would we expect them not to do the same if they decided to focus on Men's hoops?

To your second point, I understand that it is not as simple as picking a BIG name coach off of some tree. But if you have considerable resources, like Richmond seems to have, why not get creative and aggressive and make something happen? I mean if Larry Brown can go to SMU, and Steve Lavin to SJU and in 3 years start landing Top 10 recruits, there has got to be someone out there that some Richmond Administration & Alum Committee could attract with a large slew of $ to make Richmond a perennial winner (and quickly). I mean what if they thought out of the box and offered Mark Few a $5M a year contract for 5 years? That's a drop in the bucket for them and they'd be getting +$3M or so from the TV $ in the BE anyway. Now that's a statement hire.

Lastly as a conference we should have ZERO interest inviting teams with the expectation that they will simply saddle up next to our bottom feeders and be the sacrificial lambs to our top teams. That is a loser mentality. I think it is a very bad thing when a SHU and/or a DePaul are constantly at the bottom of the league. You're always going to have "haves" and "have-nots" in any league. But when a program can't cycle through a couple winning seasons and a couple of tournaments, then they are of no long-term worth. That's why Depaul and SHU have to get their sh!t together soon. G'town, Marq, Nova and Xavier, etc. are going to have bad years every now and again. If the bottom teams can't rise up when that happens then it hurts your league. I'd rather see 8 teams beating each other up and hovering around .500 in league play than 3 at the very top, 2 middling and the other 5 well under .500. As a Nova fan I've always liked teams like Uconn, Syracuse and L'ville having success b/c our coaches knew where they had to get to to be true NCAA contenders. I say load it up with 10-12 GREAT teams and whoever ends up on bottom is fine by me.

[GumbyDamnit!]

It's still all conjecture at this point--credit the new Xavier AD with getting his name and this interview blasted out about the Big east and A10 boards. No such thing as bad publicity--I find it funny that some folks on here indicate that Richmond has "to turn their program around". Yeah Sweet 16 from 2011 is decades ago. And they're certainly not scheduling for a NCAA tourney berth with games at Florida, against UNC (and possibly Louisville depending on how the the games go), Wake Forest, Air Force, Belmont, Ohio & Minnesota. And they need to invest in the program too huh? You mean like the 20 Million we just put into the renovated Robins Center putting in 4 video boards, hospitality areas (hi donors), better seating, new concessions, et al.

I don't mind taking shots at the program since they do have things they need to improve upon, but at least be knowledgable before you comment on a school program's progress or lack thereof.

Well I think you need to "turn it around" in regards of being the best team in Richmond. Richmond could make the choice much easier for us if they could be beating VCU at the time we call on them.

We've split the last 4 meetings with them including last year when we played twice. Trust me we want to beat them twice every year and vice versa. If you're commenting on whether we "own" the city we never will since they have way more alumni then we do, especially that stay local. Most of our student body is from the NE and they tend to go back there or somewhere else(its tough being in demand ) But I wouldn't say every team in the BE owns their city necessarily--the competitors may be different sports or pro teams in some cases. Xavier vs Cincinnati, Butler vs Indiana/Purdue, Marquette vs Wisconsin, St. John's vs Knicks, SLU vs Missouri/Kansas, etc and on down the line. I wouldn't say Villanova "owns" Philly either.

I think he means "own" as in being the top College Hoops program in that city. The one that generates the most buzz. Temple has tons of ALums in Philly but for years Nova was the pinnacle of college hoops in Philly.

[Natty]

Ok top 25 probably not top 15

ESPN - #13 http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketb ... basketball
CBS - #14 http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketb ... y/22036310
NBC - #17 http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports. ... on-top-25/
Fox - #15 http://msn.foxsports.com/collegebasketb ... uke-041312

That's a top-15 average from the big boys.

The big boys in April is what you're going on about? Come on wait till the real rankings come out and talk to me

Since April VCU has added 6'8 240lb 5th-year FSU transfer, Terrance Shannon (7.9ppg and 5.6rpg in 21mpg last season). They also sent a player to the World University Games to represent Team USA, Treveon Graham. Graham joined fellow rising junior, Briante Weber as invitees to Chris Paul's Elite Guard Camp (fwiw, Treveon won the 1-on-1 competition among the other invitees so got a chance to take on Paul). And rising senior and current projected 2014 NBA 1st-rounder, Juvonte Reddic, impressed scouts as an invitee at Lebron James' Skills Academy.

If anything, VCU has gotten better since April. You don't get worse by practicing against Chris Paul and Lebron James.

[aughnanure]

First, forgot about Lavin. Good job. but Pitino is NOT relevant since Louisville is not in the Big East. You're setting yourself up to be disappointed, that's all. None of these potential adds are slam dunks. Unless we're grabbing Gonzaga, they will all have question marks. And not every team can be a winner in this league. If we want Georggetown and Nova and Marquette and SJJU to be powers with great bids. Guess what? DePaul, Seton Hall, Butler are going to have give us a lot of their wins. Stop acting like we can't afford a bad team. Is the ACC considered a bad league because Clemson, BC, and Wake Forest suck? What about the B1G and Penn St, Iowa, Nebraska? Bottomfeeder teams help facilitate the success of a league just like the top teams do.

I just hate the "hire a big name head coach" like its just that simple. I mean "Tap the shoulders of your alums and appeal to them to support he program"? Everyone could be a "rising power to these easy directions.

Aug, a couple of things...

Do you have a sense of how large the Richmond alum endowment is each year? We're talking close to $2B. For a school that size, which is not an Ivy school, that is flat-out impressive. To put it in perspective that is larger than the following schools: Penn State, Kansas, Univ of Illinois, UCLA, Oklahaoma, BC, Mich St., and G'town (not to mention every other school currently in the BE--by a large margin). So when I suggest to get the alums involved it is not said in some canned, cliche' way. These are people with $ and influence who have shown the willigness to invest in the school they love. I would bet you could find a handful of large donors that would love to see Rich U. head to the BE. Secondly, with any strategic planning at a University like this, it's just good business to engage the Alums early in the process. If they wanted to build a state-of-the-art science building, they would tap the Alums on the shoulder, no? Why would we expect them not to do the same if they decided to focus on Men's hoops?

To your second point, I understand that it is not as simple as picking a BIG name coach off of some tree. But if you have considerable resources, like Richmond seems to have, why not get creative and aggressive and make something happen? I mean if Larry Brown can go to SMU, and Steve Lavin to SJU and in 3 years start landing Top 10 recruits, there has got to be someone out there that some Richmond Administration & Alum Committee could attract with a large slew of $ to make Richmond a perennial winner (and quickly). I mean what if they thought out of the box and offered Mark Few a $5M a year contract for 5 years? That's a drop in the bucket for them and they'd be getting +$3M or so from the TV $ in the BE anyway. Now that's a statement hire.

Lastly as a conference we should have ZERO interest inviting teams with the expectation that they will simply saddle up next to our bottom feeders and be the sacrificial lambs to our top teams. That is a loser mentality. I think it is a very bad thing when a SHU and/or a DePaul are constantly at the bottom of the league. You're always going to have "haves" and "have-nots" in any league. But when a program can't cycle through a couple winning seasons and a couple of tournaments, then they are of no long-term worth. That's why Depaul and SHU have to get their sh!t together soon. G'town, Marq, Nova and Xavier, etc. are going to have bad years every now and again. If the bottom teams can't rise up when that happens then it hurts your league. I'd rather see 8 teams beating each other up and hovering around .500 in league play than 3 at the very top, 2 middling and the other 5 well under .500. As a Nova fan I've always liked teams like Uconn, Syracuse and L'ville having success b/c our coaches knew where they had to get to to be true NCAA contenders. I say load it up with 10-12 GREAT teams and whoever ends up on bottom is fine by me.

I agree with this and its why I like the long-term upside of Richmond. But I still think you're asking too much in such a short time-frame. If this was a 10-year forecast, I think I'd agree with you more. Hell;, i'd like to see how Drake does filling the Creighton void, or if Detroit can take another step (I have zero faith in Duquesne).

Still, throwing money at stuff can only take you so far. Love their endowment, but it doesn't necessarily mean that their alums are willing to shell out money for athletics - and honestly, ya kinda have to win first for them to. I'm not even sure where most of that endowment came from, but I'm assuming some good ole tobacco money helped early-on and has allowed them to grow so big. I don't know if that necessarily means there some huge donors just waiting in the wings to throw money at hoops. If you want Richmond alums to start shelling out their big pockets, nothing except for great on the court success or a Big East invite will compel them. And that's a lot, and a lot of luck, to ask for in ~3 years. Ya gotta sell them something especially in this "what have you done for me lately" mindset we have in sports and this timetable seems to say 2-3 years. I hope we just don't take the next one to make a Sweet 16 and draw the conclusion at that.

I guess my point is, don't get caught up in trying to make every single potential addition a stud. Can they be pathetic? Of course not, but your expectations I think are a too high. I never said they should saddle up and be sacrificial lambs, but someone will be every year regardless. There will never be 10-12 GREAT teams in this league. That will just hurt everyone b/c there's not enough wins to go around. Sure, ideally we want our bottom-dwellers to make some noise and compete for a spot every 3 years or so and make a tourney every 5-7 years or so to keep the fan interest. But in a league like this, there will in almost all likelihood be 1-3 teams that will consistently get beaten up on. They may switch out every 7-12 years, but not everyone can be good. It's only natural and it cannot be prevented. I think if we can 3 up top, 6 battling in the middle with 2-3 making the tourney, and 3 at the bottom facilitating the W-L records by giving up 13+ losses - the league will be successful.

^That plus I don't think there's really any substantive separation b/t the teams we are likely to add. SLU at least has a strong overall athletics program, great academics and a new arena. Richmond a huge endowment, great academics and a decent market and perfect geographic fit. Trying to make everyone's program fit into being the next Xavier, Gonzaga and Creighton is just foolhardy and gets away from the real arguments about why we should add any of these teams....at least in the next 2-3 years when we will eb making this decision.

Still disagree on big name coaches. What did Bobby Knight really do for TTech? Will SMU really see long-term success after Larry Brown leaves in 2 years?

[SJU87]

It'll be a step down if we accept Dayton, VCU and St. Louis. I've been a Big East fan since 1985 and we have to add schools like Temple, Memphis and either Uconn or Cincinati. Who cares if they leave , it won't break us up. If they do decide to join it'll be on our terms with ACC type penalties for leaving. No offense to Creigton and Butler fans, but theres some doubt they can compete long term in the new Big East. Mamphis and Temple have long histories of success and will step in and be a force in the new league.
So the Big East should take it's time and build a powerful league. If we don't got the teams we might lose MSG going forward and Dayton, VCU and St. Louis bring very little. Sure it would be nice having more Catholic schools and I feel bad for the fans, but I've been a fan of the Big East for years and hate to see a watered down league.

[Moliva]

To your second point, I understand that it is not as simple as picking a BIG name coach off of some tree. But if you have considerable resources, like Richmond seems to have, why not get creative and aggressive and make something happen? I mean if Larry Brown can go to SMU, and Steve Lavin to SJU and in 3 years start landing Top 10 recruits, there has got to be someone out there that some Richmond Administration & Alum Committee could attract with a large slew of $ to make Richmond a perennial winner (and quickly). I mean what if they thought out of the box and offered Mark Few a $5M a year contract for 5 years? That's a drop in the bucket for them and they'd be getting +$3M or so from the TV $ in the BE anyway. Now that's a statement hire.

I appreciate your observations but Richmond would not need to make a 'big splash' hire to compete at a high level in the Big East. Mooney is a perfect fit for UR and a very good coach. His abilities would only be enhanced by the exposure - see recruiting - that Big East Membership would bring.

Richmond needs a couple of big seasons to prove it belongs. I believe we'll do it.

Good luck guys.