Conference Realignment Thread v. 2016

[Jet915]

What a mess UCONN football is, after giving Diaco an extension last year and raising his buyout from 800K to 3.4 million, he gets fired.

[JPSchmack]

So if I follow, your best argument for adding the Bonnie's is your guys will play low major opponents OOC so they can get to 9 OOC wins and then be a doormat in the conference to help get an extra team into the NCAA? Very altruistic of you. But it is a flawed argument. The extra game against a sub 150 RPI team (or worse if you stumble in the OOC), which is where your Bonnie's would be by end of the season, isn't going to help any bubble team from these league.

Conference play is a zero sum game... you'd "lose RPI" playing the new teams brought in to absorb Big East losses because their records wouldn't be good...
but EVERYONE ELSE in the conference would have a better record, so you'd GAIN RPI in every other Big East game and be better off… as long as the new guys are pretty close to your usual OOC win pct.

But adding a couple of meh 75-150 wins for Creighton and Marquette wouldn't have done a thing to push them into the tournament last year. But using Creighton last year as an example, it was earning top-25/Tourney team wins (Butler, Hall, Xavier) that even put them in the at-large conversation to begin with. If the Jays had a couple more shots at those types of teams, that would have helped them. Adding mediocre/non-resume wins, even if it would have put them over 20 wins in the regular season, wouldn't have accomplished anything resume-wise.

(Thanks for the stuff I cut).

I disagree with you. Not because I think you’re “wrong” but because I think you’re viewing the situation from an unrealistic view.

It reminds me of the Bona fans who complain about the OOC schedule every year: “We only have one decent game” on the OOC schedule! Then the committee screwed us, and they all say “If only we had played ANOTHER decent game on the OOC schedule! THEN we’d have made it!” We lost the road game at a BCS bubble school last year. We’re like 2-19 in road games against Top 75 BCS RPI teams. What makes these people think if we played ANOTHER game, we’d have WON IT? Statistically, we’d be likely to LOSE that game and be FURTHER from the bubble.

You’re saying the “only reason” you were “in the discussion” was because you had good wins. You’re freaking Creighton. You’re good at basketball. That’s why you got invited.

The only reason you were #100 in the RPI was because you played 12 Big East games against teams rated higher than you, and went 3-9.

Yes, if you played AT NEW TEAM instead of AT SETON HALL last year, you’re not moving up very far on the bubble. You’d have the same record/road win, slightly higher SOS; and your RPI would be like 94… and you’d be 2-9 vs the Top 100 Big East teams, and not in the discussion at all.

But BECAUSE you went 2-9 vs the Top 100 Big East teams, the odds are roughly 80% that the two games you’d lose off your schedule would be LOSSES vs those teams, not wins.


Let’s say NEW TEAM was 3-15 in Big East play last year, and you beat them twice instead of playing at Georgetown (Loss) and at Providence (loss).

Now you’re 20-12, 3-7 vs Big East Top 100. The “Oh, our SOS goes down because NEW TEAM isn’t very good” is incorrect. Yeah, the NEW TEAM has a not very good record…
But all your other Big East opponents are, on average, going to be better because they’ll have the wins over the NEW TEAM: They’ll be 13-3 against them. An average of a win better and you’ll play them 16 times. Plus adding additional OOC games at 9-3 makes your average SOS even higher.

So now you’ve got the same marquee wins, fewer losses, better RPI and “20 wins in the Big East!” You wouldn’t be guaranteed to make it, but it’s a far closer indicator of who you were as a program last year.

[pc5151]

The Bonnies to the Big East is a joke right? If they need an East Coast doormat I'd rather take Duquesne than the Bonnies. That being said it's stay at 10 unless Fox dictates otherwise.

[DudeAnon]

JP, give it a break man. We get your suggestion, we just don't like it. Any RPI gain from "possibly" beating SBU twice would be lost in brand equity by just being associated with SBU.

[GoldenWarrior11]

Noble commentary, JP. Unfortunately, the Big East will not lower its conference standards simply to stack the deck for the league to possibly get an additional team or two into the tournament.

What would St. Bonaventure add to the conference? It's not basketball prestige. It's not a strong fan base. It's not a big new arena. It's not a brand name coach. It's not a large endowment for the university. It's not a nationally ranked academic university. It's not a history of success in the NCAA Tournament. It's definitely not a big city campus.

Let's say that the Big East did want to rig the system to mathematically increase the odds of sending more teams to the tournament. If that was the case, they would undoubtedly look at schools like Richmond, Fordham, Davidson, Boston University, Northeastern, Dayton and Saint Louis ahead of a school like St. Bonaventure. Each of those schools brings stronger school endowments and larger athletic budgets, not to mention (in many cases) historically stronger basketball programs.

If/when the Big East expands, new schools will add value by elevating the conference by basketball play, academics and commitment to long-term sustained success - definitely not programs that will be expected to lose in conference play to just help out the teams above them.

[Hall2012]

I see what you're saying JP, but you're missing another point. Let's assume SBU goes 3-15 in league play as you said. Chances are, at least 1 of those 3 wins is going to come against that same type of Big East bubble team (a 6th or 7th place team, right? Since the whole point is to try to get an extra bid or 2?). So while you're scenario is certainly possible, the opposite could also be true. A bubble team that would otherwise be in the dance could put up a stinker of a game and end up replacing what would be an acceptable loss to CU or X with a resume destroying loss to SBU.

That's why you see so much frustration with DePaul and St. John's on this board. We don't say "oh goodie, they stink so 4 free wins to boost our NCAA resume." We know damn well that, though they're struggling, they have enough talent that on their day (or an opponent's off day) they're capable of beating just about anyone in the league. We all play enough "nothing to gain, everything to lose" games in OOC play, so the goal is to minimize the number of them we need to worry about in league play.

Example: 2013-14 Seton Hall:

Went 9-4 OOC with losses to Mercer, Oklahoma, FDU, and St. Peter's. Best win was probably Va Tech. By all means, Seton Hall was a "bad loss" this season. In the Big East, they beat Providence, Villanova, and swept both Xavier and Georgetown. Georgetown was a bubble team that got left out and Xavier ended up in the first four. Replace that sweep at the hands of Seton Hall with a sweep by any team with decent computer numbers - you get Georgetown in and Xavier straight into the field without going through Dayton. Plus, replace the SHU loss on Villanova's resume with again, a loss to any team with decent numbers, and they're a 1 seed.

[Bill Marsh]

What a mess UCONN football is, after giving Diaco an extension last year and raising his buyout from 800K to 3.4 million, he gets fired.

UConn seems anxious for its football program to get back to being competitive again. Even desperate. The last 2 coaches have been fired in 3 years or less. Doing that once is unusual. Doing it twice is unheard of. They really want to be positioned for a conference upgrade. Not having a football program that is competitive is a deal killer.

Equally important is attendance. UConn's early years in Big East Football routinely saw sell outs with average attendance at 40,000. For the third year in a row, average attendance was under 30,000 in 2016. Rumors here in Connecticut have been that season ticket sales are lagging even behind last year's pace. I think the AD felt he had to do something to revive flagging interest. No school has been hurt more by the demise of the old Big East than UConn.

[GoldenWarrior11]

Good thing UConn is in a P6 conference. If they weren't, it would certainly look like they would be doomed. Good thing they have been dominating the lowly peasants of the G4 in bowl games.

UConn had its fate sealed when they were passed over for Louisville in 2011. They are living on borrowed time, and the fact that they have to wait until after the new year to fire Diaco to save money on a buyout speaks volumes to their curent state.

[gtmoBlue]

Postby GoldenWarrior11 » Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:23 am

Noble commentary, JP. Unfortunately, the Big East will not lower its conference standards simply to stack the deck for the league to possibly get an additional team or two into the tournament.

The B1G has done this over and over...Penn St, Rutgers, Nebraska. The ACC added BC, to go along with their regular bottom dwellers. PAC-12 added Colorado. It's happening all over in Basketball for the sake of Football gaining a team or 2. What's so different in the BE emulating our major brethren to work the system?

We average 5 teams a year for the NCAAs. What is sooo terrible in milking the bids for 7 a year? That's an extra 500,000 to 600,000 USD/year (by 2020) for 6 years. That's free money we're talking about. It's insurance money...doesn't cost the conference a dime. I never heard of Jesuits walking away from a dollar, especially a free one!

[Bill Marsh]

Postby GoldenWarrior11 » Tue Dec 27, 2016 10:23 am

Noble commentary, JP. Unfortunately, the Big East will not lower its conference standards simply to stack the deck for the league to possibly get an additional team or two into the tournament.

The B1G has done this over and over...Penn St, Rutgers, Nebraska. The ACC added BC, to go along with their regular bottom dwellers. PAC-12 added Colorado. It's happening all over in Basketball for the sake of Football gaining a team or 2. What's so different in the BE emulating our major brethren to work the system?

We average 5 teams a year for the NCAAs. What is sooo terrible in milking the bids for 7 a year? That's an extra 500,000 to 600,000 USD/year (by 2020) for 6 years. That's free money we're talking about. It's insurance money...doesn't cost the conference a dime. I never heard of Jesuits walking away from a dollar, especially a free one!

BC was not a bad basketball program when the ACC recruited them. In fact they went to the tournament in back to back seasons, the 2 years before they ACC came calling and were BE champs and a top ten team in 2001. After they were in voted to join the ACC, they went to the tournament 5 of the next 6 years and were a top ten team again in their first season in the ACC. They've fallen on hard times in recent years, but that's been due more to the ill advised decision to fire Al Skinner and poor hiring choices with the 2 coaches that followed him.

BC is a perfect example of the fallacy in Scmack's argument. There are no guarantees that any program will continue to be either a winner or a loser. St John's, for example, was one of the best and most consistent programs in college basketball for 50 years. They've declined in the last 10-12 years, but who could have predicted that? OTOH, Butler was a nobody in college basketball for as long as St John's was a somebody, but in the last 10-15 years, they've been a very consistent winner. Who could have predicted back to back trips to the finals for them and that they would have come within a whisker of winning it all?

All a conference can do is bring in the best programs they can and hope for the best. Everyone will eventually have their ups and downs.