I don't agree that it's going to hurt the mid majors. Yes, they'll lose some of their best players who want to move up the ladder, but they'll also load up on players who wouldn't give them the time of day as recruits who are now moving down the ladder.

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Much of the player movement among the major conferences seems to be between them. Minnesota, which wasn't very good last year, had players transfer to Iowa State, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky if Carr doesn't go pro. Some guys who get no playing time may move down but the same reasons those guys don't go to Illinois State is true when they are transferring.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I think it's all going to work in stages. right now we have the guys moving around at the P6 conferences, Lots of them are making lateral moves to other P6 teams. Once the dust settles on that I believe we'll start to see a wave of players going from P6 to mid majors.

We'll also see mid majors pick up transfers from low majors, guys who are too good for where they are.

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Probably, but having the pick of "Guys that 2-22 Iowa State didn't want from Big Ten teams" isn't going to be a big win for the mid majors when the best players in the conference seem to be moving on. Drake was potentially going to be a ranked team next year until Kansas came calling. I doubt they find anyone close to as good as him to replace him.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

yea losing Yesefu definitely gonna hurt Drake, but let's see where some of the unhappy P6 guys end up before declaring doom and gloom for the mid majors. For every Yesefu there are 10 guys who were rated higher as prospects rotting on the benches of P6 teams. When those guys start trickling down to the mid majors we might see some of them develop into the players they were supposed to be. Happened with Semi Ojeleye transferring from Duke to SMU and also Grimes transferring from kansas to Houston who he helped make the F4 this year. Granted, those are high mid majors or low major schools.

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The really interesting aspect is that you don't have to recruit a guy as a generalist like you would if he were a freshman. Say you have a need at SG for next year on a team you think is good, go shopping at the transfer portal, just like a pro team with free agency

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Bill Musselman is turning Arkansas into a powerful program just by using that strategy.

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Fixed

Just signed a new contract today too, thank goodness.

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2018
#ExtendLafleur
10 More Wins

Williamson, Uguak, Clemmons and Hall return. Krutwig moving on.

That is pretty good news for Valentine in this transition. The first two are all conference defenders and he was the defensive coach.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Ramblers open tonight at home against Coppin State. They don't have a great OOC schedule except for the holiday tournament, which is stacked.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

massive news for Loyola. This is a big step up for them. Congrats Dolphin!

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That is a pretty nice move.

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

It's a small enough of a step up that I think it's likely to work. That jump DePaul made from Conference USA to the old Big East in the early 00's seemed like a good idea at the time, but proved disastrous.

They have shown over the past four years that they can play with bigger names. I wouldn't go as far as to say they had grown too big for the MVC. However, they had won the conference regular season in something like 4 out of the last 5 and had 3 of the last 4 players of the year. They also made two very notable runs in the NCAA tourney. You wonder if that was just a blip fueled by the great recruiting class that included Krutwig and Williamson. I think Loyola's success is still fragile.

You look at the last few years and it was galling when they didn't make the NCAA because they lost in the conference tournament. The A10 can almost guarantee a birth as a reward for a great season even if it hits a roadblock in the conference tournament.

I guess in a perfect world I would have liked them to stick in the MVC for a little while longer to see if they have a second generation of success. The conference landscape is shifting this year though, so you have to act now or possibly be left out for another decade.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

we'll learn a lot about this team and program over the thanksgiving weekend when they play in a tournament in the bahamas. They get Michigan State on Wednesday, Auburn or Connecticut on Thursday and then another power five. A couple of wins puts them in the top 25.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

These conference moves are risky. I would argue that Butler had most of their momentum stopped by moving to the crippled Big East. I don't know if they should have stayed in the Horizon or A10 but they don't seem to fit in the Big East and they've only gotten past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament once since they played in the title game and that was by beating a 12 and 13 seed to get there. Compare that to a place like Gonzaga that actually uses their terrible conference to get high seeds every year and build up the program by just crushing the bums night in and night out.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

This is smart analysis. There is something to be said for staying in a local conference as well rather than traveling thousands of miles to compete against slightly better opponents chasing an insignificant amount of additional dollars/prestige.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

There's no guarantee that Butler would have kept going to Final Fours if they stayed in the A10. In fact, I think they're in a pretty nice spot where they make the NCAA Tournament at least once every three or four years. Also, while they're not Catholic, I think they fit perfectly in the Big East. They're an urban, private school, without a football team.

Is the A10 really that much worse than the Big East right now? The Big East may have some better teams at the top, but they also have a pile of shit at the bottom.

On a completely separate note, what the fuck is Chicago State doing in the WAC? Their home game vs. California Baptist in January is up against a New Trier at Hinsdale South tilt, and I'd bet that the latter will have a bigger crowd if there isn't a snowstorm. Chicago State's attendance in the last two seasons before COVID averages about 440/game.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

It wasn't that long ago that Butler and Xavier left the A10 for the Big East, that should tell you something. The Big East also attracted Creighton and UCONN. Those are all quality programs. Is it as good as the Big Ten? No. But it's still a cut above the A10.

Chicago State has always been confounding to me. They should be able to roll out 5-10 good chicago area players who are good but fell through the cracks for different reasons. Instead, they are one of the worst programs in the country and have been for a long time. They will never get attendance, even if admittance were free.

Supposedly they will be better this year and this new coach is doing things.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Yes.


A10 needs to leapfrog a few other conferences before they can even be mentioned in the same sentence as the Big East.

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A bunch of those A10 schools are located in densely populated areas, but no one really cares about them because they're either tiny, have no tradition of basketball success, are largely commuter schools, or some combination thereof. Athletically, places like St. Bonny, Colgate, Richmond, Fordham, Duquesne, Davidson, and LaSalle are nonentities. Even the conference's state flagship schools like UMass and Rhode Island are absolute zeroes lacking the infrastructure to succeed in basketball--that's why the only guys to have won big at those places were notorious cheaters.

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it's nearly as bad as you suggest. St. Bonny is in fact in the top 25 right now. Richmond and Davidson have good teams every few years. There is definitely some dead weight though at the bottom. Dayton, Rhode Island, VCU and St . Louis are very good programs and usually have teams fighting it out for NCAA bids.

It's a multi bid league which is a massive step up for Loyola.

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I should have given St. Bonny some credit. They have been building their program for a while. And yeah, Richmond is good every few years. But no one really cares, even people who live in Richmond. Isn't Davidson fairly new to the A10? I think their program was better off before they made the jump from whatever nothing conference they were in and making the move to the A10.

Does being in a multi-bid conference help Loyola in the long run with recruiting if they're playing a bunch of teams no one cares about in Chicago? Playing against George Mason and Colgate every year sure isn't going to help them get good players from the Northeast.

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I would say being in a decent conference and playing on a somewhat bigger stage would help them with recruiting. Playing Bradley and Drake is certainly not going to take them to a higher level.

Yeah, Bradley and Drake aren't great opponents, but at least they help Loyola build a stronger regional profile/identity, which is a great asset for a school of their stature. They're kind of losing that with the move to the A10. The fit just doesn't seem good to me, but time will tell I suppose. From my perspective, though, this move seems to have a similar flavor to DePaul's misadventures in conference affiliation.

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Yes, being in a multi bid league will help recruit kids a lot more than promising them 2 matchups per year vs Drake, Missouri State and Evansville.

And playing vs teams like Dayton, St Louis, Rhode Island, VCU has a lot more allure than playing vs any team in the MVC. A10 has a lot more recognizeable teams/schools than MVC. Not sure about your angle saying that no one in those cities cares about the A10, very odd stance to take. All of those schools have good basketball followings and when they are good their towns all rally behind them. NO different than what Loyola experiences now in Chicago.

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colgate is in the patriot league with teams like holy cross and bucknell

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

I thought Dayton and SLU were leaving the conference? If that's not the case, then that changes things.

Rhode Island is going to help recruit kids in Chicago? They last made the NCAA tournament in 2017-18, when they had a different coach. VCU has greater name recognition, but they haven't exactly set the world on fire since Shaka Smart left and they seem to have embarked on a downward trajectory with regards to their basketball fortunes. UMass (maybe one NCAA appearance in the past decade), Duquesne (have they ever made a tournament?), LaSalle (one NCAA in the past decade), Fordham (never made a tournament), George Mason (haven't made the NCAAs in more than a decade), George Washington (one tournament in the past decade), etc mean little to people in the Midwest or elsewhere.

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