New Conference Make-up?

[ChicosBailBonds]

Take a long look at 8 and tell me why we need more than this right away.  There is no conf championship game so divisions make no sense unless you are going to do away with the tourney idea and just invite the winners of each division for a championchip game.  That would not make $ sense.

Georgetown
Marquette
St. Johns
Villanova
Seton Hall
Providence
DePaul
Xavier

In my opinion it is because our RPI won't be strong enough as we will have to play 14 or 15 non conference games and it will be difficult to find enough slots.  It will be like the old GMC days where we have so many non-conference games it becomes very difficult to keep your strength of schedule.

I'd prefer 10 to 12 conference because it also gives you more stability if one or more want to leave.  You need a buffer.

[77ncaachamps]

Love the Zags. Great bkb elite program.

Love St. Mary's. Means I can drive to MU games in about an hour.

But NO to both. Not only geographic outliers but the expenses are going to be much higher for the Western BE schools than the Eastern ones.

I'm down for VCU. Dayton. Wichita State. big bkb centers.

[Avenue Commons]

Georgetown, Villanova, Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's, DePaul, Marquette, Xavier, Butler, Creighton, St. Louis, VCU. Keep it at 12 - that's a good line up of olympic sports, especially soccer.

Agree with above but have Dayton instead of VCU.

[MU82]

We need to add the strongest programs we can to raise the overall league RPI. That's why we need Gonzaga and St. Mary's in addition to Butler, Creighton and Xavier. That would put us easily in the top 4 conferences in terms of RPI.

This would be my choice, too. Of seemingly available schools, this brings in the cream of the crop from both the west and the heartland to go with the strong east footprint we already have. Get 'er done.

[dwaderoy2004]

Best teams possible should be the criteria, for the TV contract, national cachet and RPI/tourney purposes.  Of the schools being bandied around these five have the highest average Sagarin rating over the last 12 years:

Gonzaga - 86.10
Xavier - 84.37
Butler - 82.15
Creighton - 81.98
VCU - 80.72

For comparison sake, MU is at 84.72 over the same time period.  Saint Mary's is right behind VCU at 80.43, so if we want to add a travel partner for Gonzaga and/or limit it to private schools, that is an acceptable tradeoff IMO.  For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone wants SLU (77.90).  Here's where I got my data from:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/a-smart-breakaway-for-big-east-basketball-schools/#more-37883

[chapman]

Agree with above but have Dayton instead of VCU.

The advantage to that would be having all private schools.  We could then call the conference the Big Privates and say we are a Big Private member.

[JoBo2756]

Best teams possible should be the criteria, for the TV contract, national cachet and RPI/tourney purposes.  Of the schools being bandied around these five have the highest average Sagarin rating over the last 12 years:

Gonzaga - 86.10
Xavier - 84.37
Butler - 82.15
Creighton - 81.98
VCU - 80.72

For comparison sake, MU is at 84.72 over the same time period.  Saint Mary's is right behind VCU at 80.43, so if we want to add a travel partner for Gonzaga and/or limit it to private schools, that is an acceptable tradeoff IMO.  For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone wants SLU (77.90).  Here's where I got my data from:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/a-smart-breakaway-for-big-east-basketball-schools/#more-37883

Re: SLU, It's a Catholic school in the midwest with a commitment to growing its basketball program.

[dwaderoy2004]

Good for them.  Let them build up in the A10.  We don't owe them anything, and they will drag down the conference RPI in the meantime.

[MU82]

Best teams possible should be the criteria, for the TV contract, national cachet and RPI/tourney purposes.  Of the schools being bandied around these five have the highest average Sagarin rating over the last 12 years:

Gonzaga - 86.10
Xavier - 84.37
Butler - 82.15
Creighton - 81.98
VCU - 80.72

For comparison sake, MU is at 84.72 over the same time period.  Saint Mary's is right behind VCU at 80.43, so if we want to add a travel partner for Gonzaga and/or limit it to private schools, that is an acceptable tradeoff IMO.  For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone wants SLU (77.90).  Here's where I got my data from:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/a-smart-breakaway-for-big-east-basketball-schools/#more-37883

St. Louis TV market is larger than any of the 5 you mention.

SLU is not one of the schools I'm digging, but you wonder why they'd be considered and that's a major reason why.

[dwaderoy2004]

Yeah, but no one in St. Louis even cares about them.  They struggle to break into the top 100 in attendance every year.  Don't you think basketball fans, even people in St. Louis perhaps, would rather watch Gonzaga or VCU over St. Louis?  And now that Majerus is gone (RIP) I think any momentum the program has shown will be lost.  As someone else said, SLU stinks of mid-major, and we just don't need that in this conference.

[Tums Festival]

If Gonzaga was willing to go it alone so to speak, I'd take VCU over St. Mary's. Imagine a VCU-Butler conference game or games every season, especially in the conference tourney in MSG.

[dwaderoy2004]

Agreed.  Our reason for leaving was for basketball, so we need to make decisions based on basketball, not TV markets or religious affiliation.

[brewcity77]

But NO to both. Not only geographic outliers but the expenses are going to be much higher for the Western BE schools than the Eastern ones.

If they come as basketball-only, Gonzaga flies to all their games. Expenses will be higher, but what does their WCC television contract get them? Is it even $200K per year? They'd be multiplying that at least five-fold, if not ten.

[Marqevans]

We have to have Creighton.  I want revenge for them upsetting us at home in the early 70's using what Al called the "Creighton delay".

[dwaderoy2004]

If they come as basketball-only, Gonzaga flies to all their games. Expenses will be higher, but what does their WCC television contract get them? Is it even $200K per year? They'd be multiplying that at least five-fold, if not ten.

And for the other schools, we already have to fly to USF every other year.  How is flying to the West Coast all that different?  An extra hour...tops?