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A10 Conference

Still wondering whose brilliant idea it was to invite VCU to join us in the A10. Whoever participated in that fiasco should lose their Spider card.
 
I know a lot of us on this board thought inviting VCU would not go well for us....but few could have forecasted this bad.
At the time I was a proponent of staying in the CAA. Thought every year you have a really good shot to win that tournament. JB showed we could compete in the A10. But we have not put ourselves in positions for bids. And the A10 is worse without Xavier.
 
One reason for the downfall of the A10 conference is the coaching drain. Big East has two of rhe best coaches in the nation in the championship game, both A10 former coaches. GMU had English, now in Big East. Basically VCU hires a legit coach at every turn and the rest get guys with major flaws. Hopefully SLU can get the Indiana State coach.
Downfall of the A10? 2nd best outside of power conferences and 9 teams in top hundred, sounds pretty good to me.

I do agree that there was a time when more teams in the conference were ranked in the top 25, but it is much harder today for mid-majors. In addition to all the previous advantages power conference had, we now have strongly rigged qualifications for post season play with heavy reliance on NET for NCAA and guaranteed spots for NIT, regardless of NET. Mid-majors also have to deal with major differences in NIL funding and immediate transfers. Revenue for the NCAA is driven by the power conferences and most decisions they make will benefit power conference at the expense of mid-majors.
 
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Downfall of the A10? 2nd best outside of power conferences and 9 teams in top hundred, sounds pretty good to me.

I do agree that there was a time when more teams in the conference were ranked in the top 25, but it is much harder today for mid-majors. In addition to all the previous advantages power conference had, we now have strongly rigged qualifications for post season play with heavy reliance on NET for NCAA and guaranteed spots for NIT, regardless of NET. Mid-majors also have to deal with major differences in NIL funding and immediate transfers. Revenue for the NCAA is driven by the power conferences and most decisions they make will benefit power conference at the expense of mid-majors.

Some uptick in a10 this year but overall still a trend down & this year uptick changed nothing. Hopefully more uptick but tbd.

Ncaa qualification has always been hard. Our program hasn’t been successful enough and/or the commitment to & value of ncaa inclusion is what makes it hardest. Of course we want to every school wants to.

NIT qualification is now easier. I’m not sure why ppl having trouble with that. I think there were 18 schools who won reg season & did not win their tourney. Now some of those in ncaa anyway and a few would be invited to NIT anyway. But it’s maybe 10 spots that opened in NIT that would not have been there. That’s not including handful of teams that decline NIT too.

Getting nit home game much harder. Getting into nit much easier.
 
I rate this year a successful one with both men’s and women’s which rarely happens unless lacrosse.
Beginning of the year most pundits on this board saw us a 500 team or slightly under or above. Based
on those estimates, we over achieved. We did not end the way we wanted on the Men’s side but still
in my book a strong year. Now if we go NIT let’s get pumped and push some more Ws . Plus let’s root
and support our ladies cause as you know any kind of positive media exposure can only help our recruiting.
Thanks Spider Basketball for a great 23-24 and thanks to the great fan support this year.
 
Downfall of the A10? 2nd best outside of power conferences and 9 teams in top hundred, sounds pretty good to me.

I do agree that there was a time when more teams in the conference were ranked in the top 25, but it is much harder today for mid-majors. In addition to all the previous advantages power conference had, we now have strongly rigged qualifications for post season play with heavy reliance on NET for NCAA and guaranteed spots for NIT, regardless of NET. Mid-majors also have to deal with major differences in NIL funding and immediate transfers. Revenue for the NCAA is driven by the power conferences and most decisions they make will benefit power conference at the expense of mid-majors.
A10 has certainly fallen but it’s not really an assault on mid majors. There are currently five mid majors in the top25.

A10 had a decent year but didn’t get much NET love. Objectively the league continues to be down and has hemorrhaged talent both programmatically and with coaches.

We have to get better as a conference in the OOC slate to get better NET consideration I think, that then would put at least a few teams in the at large discussion.
 
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It seems even more obvious to me u have to schedule ooc hard to have a chance. A weak non conf is always a bad sign if u r on on bubble. & all the insiders say committee considers it highly too. Look at teams like Pitt and Indiana State this year. Look at Dayton.
 
VCU is in their 8th a10 final in 11 tries. If u go back to CAA it’s 15 finals in 20 tries. With that type of performance it’s amazing we have anyone here let alone a decent % regularly say this is year vcu falls apart. Maybe that’s wishful thinking over belief.

But at little ol’ Richmond when we get eliminated any year even as the 1 seed we r expected to give out attaboys and participation trophies.

7 miles yet worlds apart
Half those posters work for the University or are Mooney friends/family. No true fan not personally associated wuth admin or Mooney would be giving attaboys out year after year.
 
It seems even more obvious to me u have to schedule ooc hard to have a chance. A weak non conf is always a bad sign if u r on on bubble. & all the insiders say committee considers it highly too. Look at teams like Pitt and Indiana State this year. Look at Dayton.
What I was saying is that it’s not good enough to schedule hard, you have to win at a decent clip, and more importantly, the conference on the whole has to have a strategy to manage the OOC slate to boost your bottomdwellers from entering the conference schedule with a bunch of anchor NETs.
 
Six A 10 teams make meaningful post season (NCAA + NIT). The truth is it was a down year for the conference and it is still better than the CAA.
Yep. I think the A-10 was much more highly thought of by the committee than anyone thought. Our 3rd place team, Dayton got a 7 seed, Duquesne who started 0-5 in the league and finished 6th got an 11 seed.

If we would have won the tournament with our record/resume, we certainly would have been at least a 10, possibly and 8 or 9 seed in the tournament. Joey Brackets always had us penciled in as a 12, so shows what the pundits know.

And then we put 4 teams in the NIT, despite the supposed advantages of the P6 with the NIT. Reflecting back after last night, I think it is fair to assume that while the A-10 numbers didn't look great as to the NET, our league did very well in the eye test for those making the decisions.
 
man he does not have a lot of coaching experience at all. That could be a disaster for a program with it's first taste of real momentum in a long, LONG time.

3 years an assistant at Cleveland State, 2 years at DUQ. That's all.
Usually the worst decision a program can make is to hire within. You are a D-1 college basketball program why do you not want to do a full search for the best possible candidate. If ends up being an internal candidate, fine, I guess they earned it.

Plus this guy has zero D-1 head coaching experience. No way he gets hired if it isn't an internal hire.
 
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