Title_BU

Source on one of the Butler boards is saying SLU, XU, and BU will be announced shortly. It will be a 10 team league.

paulxu

Hi, this is Jimmy Carter calling....

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Bona Wolf for Pope

Luckily Muddy will follow Xavier to wherever the new conference fans will post.

Or do X fans get to keep this board? Is it to the victor go the spoils thing? Is anyone here named Victor?

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Bill Russell

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Medford

don't know who this guy is, but some marquette fans argue for his legit connections into Marquette and a reliable source:

https://mobile.twitter.com/WisBBYear...32520721948672

UD, Butler, XU.

True or not, I kind of wish this could just get over so everyone can move forward.

Muddy Waters

Here's another good but lengthy article published this morning about the possibility of an all-Catholic university conference.


Post-Big East, Catholic 7 Imagine New League (Associated Press - December 18, 2012)

Split gives like-minded schools a chance to mold a new, custom conference.

As a chunk of the Big East transforms itself into a mostly or even all-Catholic basketball league, the conference faces a choice: play up or play down its faith-based roots?

With Catholic higher education already struggling to strike a balance between faith and financial security, either course carries both challenges and opportunities.

On the one hand, the seven schools that announced Saturday they’ll set off on their own — St. John’s, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall, Providence and Villanova — have already made clear they’ll look to non-denominational institutions that otherwise fit their profile, such as Butler, to expand.

But even if they do so, the conference’s identity will likely lie with its core of Catholic-rooted schools.

Think of a non-secular Ivy League, but with much better basketball. It might take a leap of faith to believe these days, but the NCAA’s musical chairs game of conference realignment isn’t always just about money.

"If it ends up as all Catholic schools, that’s the way we’re going to talk about them," said Linda Bruno, a former associate commissioner of the Big East and former commissioner of the Atlantic 10 conference, who now leads the Division III Skyline conference.

But while it will be up to the school Presidents to decide whether to market the conference that way, she’s not sure that’s the best course.

"Why box yourself in?" she said. "They’re so much more than a Catholic basketball league. They’re going to be a national basketball league."

So far, that seems to be the marketing plan.

It’s also worth noting that five of the seven institutions now leaving the Big East are led by priests or members of religious orders.

Seton Hall installed its first lay President in 2010, and it’s widely believed that many such schools will soon follow, given the dwindling pool of academics from the clergy or religious orders.

That could encourage the current Presidents to try to put a mission-related stamp on the conference, a way to distinguish the schools in this particular league.

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Bona Wolf for Pope

What?

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njlsufan

I've figured it out. Marquette doesn't want Dayton because they don't want a certain UD poster on the new BE10 messageboard. Of course if he follows his favorite team Xavier over to the new board, Marquette is scr*wed anyways.

paulxu

Little Dickie's contest entry:

Dick Vitale‏@DickieV

If I were COMMISH of the 7 Catholic hoop schools-I'd want BUTLER - ST LOUIS - CREIGHTON - XAVIER - ST JOE'S to JOIN.

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res

Here's another viewpoint:

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...RENCE?SITE=AP&

"And while Butler's two recent runs to the national title game make it especially appealing, there's no shortage of Catholic colleges with creditable basketball programs that might aspire to such company, and where the played-up Catholic identity would be part of the appeal. Gonzaga and St. Mary's on the West Coast may prove too far away, but Creighton, Dayton, Xavier, Canisius and St. Bonaventure could all be potential candidates (as might Saint Joseph's and LaSalle in Philadelphia, but for the fact nearby Villanova would be unlikely to accept expansion in its own market)."

(See, Bill? It looks like maplehurst was prescient. )

Bill Russell

HA!

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Title_BU

Are we really still doing this? There are two locks, then probably one more. Billikens look good, from various angles.

Brando show from this morning.... http://www.cbssports.com/video/playe...o/jN7u760onT_o

Muddy Waters

Here's an entry from Dustin Dow (a sports writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer and former Xavier beat writer) in the CONTEST (the topic of this thread):

Big East for XU?

Enquirer crystal ball shows where conference shakeup might lead.

With potential for a shift of league affiliations should three Big East teams bolt for the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Enquirer presumed there would be major shakeups and we've hypothesized results for several conferences.

Big East

FRONTIER DIVISION

Dayton
DePaul
Marquette
Notre Dame (non-football only)
Saint Louis
Xavier

COASTAL DIVISION

Georgetown
Providence
St. John's
St. Joseph's
Seton Hall
Villanova

WINNERS: The five schools that weren't in the Big East last season (Dayton, DePaul, Marquette, Saint Louis and Xavier). Imagine Xavier matching up with Marquette and Notre Dame twice a year, while being able to keep its intense rivalry with Dayton.

LOSERS: Really, no one. The Coastal Division schools would lose their ties to the football-playing Big East members, but who cares? They didn't see a dime of the football money anyway.

EXCITEMENT FACTOR: 95. There are a lot of fans in the East who have been waiting for the all-Catholic league for quite some time, they just didn't think it would be called the Big East, which has the rights to Madison Square Garden for its conference tournament. This league is a basketball junkie's paradise.


Atlantic 10

Duquesne
Fordham
George Washington
LaSalle
Massachusetts
Rhode Island
Richmond
St. Bonaventure

WINNERS: Fordham and Duquesne. They can breathe a little easier. The opportunity to play in the NCAA Tournament actually exists if they can win the conference tournament, now with four fewer teams.

LOSERS: A-10 commissioner Linda Bruno's efforts to turn the conference into a basketball league on par with the Big East never really got off the ground, and this would end any hopes of that happening.

EXCITEMENT FACTOR: 70. The league probably could say goodbye to regular-season television, but we'd tune in for the championship game.

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That's not a prediction - it's a person expressing a preference. Not the same thing.

Ditto for RF1's silly post below.

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RF1

The Big East CYO-7 should take LaSalle, Fordham, SBU, and Duquense keeping their league footprint in the northeast and all the members small Catholic schools.

xu95

Muddy, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you know that article was written in 2003, when Dustin Dow actually worked for the Enquirer.