xudash

Yep. You know it's coming. Olean will be to blame for jet lag and everything else. Muddled will start posting Mapquest maps with charts and graphs and commentary. He'll explode every time you guys take UD out in the Reilly Center.

xu95

Dayton can get in.....if they invite enough teams to go to 12. If they stop at 10 than Dayton is out of luck.

This has nothing to do with being Catholic. They will prove that by making Butler the second invite after Xavier. In fact, they might make Butler the first invite just to prove the point.

Marquette doesn't like Dayton. I don't know why and I don't care to know the history. I can promise you with 100% certainty that it isn't because Chris Wright dunked the ball one day in Chicago and his nuts got implanted in someone's face. It has absolutely nothing to do with it. It is probably for the same reason that Xavier never gets an invite to the Maui Classic.....the Marianists stick together.

I think there are two things hurting Dayton. 1. They are not consistently in the NCAA tournament (I know SLU isn't either but Marquette likes them) so the league will not be able to rely on NCAA credits from them, and 2. A boatload of people in Dayton already watch college basketball on ESPN and it isn't because they are watching Dayton play because Dayton is hardly ever on ESPN. Therefore, ESPN already has the Dayton market and putting them in this league won't change that any, however, there is a good chance that more people in St. Louis or Omaha would watch ESPN if their team was actually on ESPN.

bprichard

Good points all. I think there is still a chance that Dayton can get in with a 10 team league. Other than Marquette, I think the other teams are probably fine with Dayton vis a vis St. Louis because they realize that even though St. Louis sounds like a good market, SLU just doesn't carry the market. (I think Georgetown and Villanova kind of hold their noses about most Midwestern schools.) But it's still dicey for the exact reasons you mentioned.

Personally, I just wish it would all get sorted as quickly as possible. Invite Dayton, don't invite Dayton, then we can just move on and play basketball games.

Bona Wolf for Pope

So it has nothing to do with being Catholic, but being Marianist (or not) IS a factor? I think you kind of contradict your point there (for the record, I don't think it's catholic, but private certainly helps).

If Dayton is hanging their hat on their rivalry with Xavier to give them a boost, the league still gets that game in the OOC if they want it. Is Dayton going to stop playing X if they're in separate leagues?

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MudFlap

X and Butler are locks. All we know right now.

http://www.indystar.com/article/2012...=mod%7Cmostcom

bprichard

Petulant reaction from Geno Auriemma: http://espn.go.com/womens-college-ba...heir-money-ran

El Shaqtus

Somebody needs to send Geno some cheese for his whine.

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RIP Coach Rick Majerus 12/1/12. You were the one that said it was OK to think big at SLU. You were right.

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Medford

So Geno, the demise of the Big East is all the fault of 7 basketball schools, not the fault of all of the departing football playing schools or those still in the Big East that habe publically stated how they would like to move elsewhere? I wonder if he knows how to find the word ironic in a dictionay. what a blowhard.

bprichard

He doesn't seem to realize that UConn made their own bed with their insistence on building a I-A football program. Otherwise, they would have been right there with the BE7 instead of stuck with Cincinnati as the two football programs with so little interest from the fanbase that no one wants them.

DoubleJayAlum

I think UConn made their own bed by getting busted cheating and not being eligible for the NCAA tournament due to APR issues.

Of course, if that wasn't enough, publicly begging for the ACC to take you in when they took in other BE teams probably doesn't create a lot of trust and camaraderie with your conference mates.

DoubleJayAlum

I don't think the article states that. I do admit that the statements by Butler's President certainly seem to point toward the move rather than away from it.

We are experiencing the same thing here. Back a year and a half ago, when Creighton was rumored as a possible A10 candidate, our AD and president went to every media outlet (TV, radio, newspaper) and denied that there was any jump forthcoming or that it had even been seriously considered.

With the new speculation about a potential move with the BE 7, the response is substantially different. There have been no TV or radio appearances by either the AD or president. Likewise, all official media inquiries are being forwarded by the AD's office directly to the President of the University. The President's only comments to date have been a rather provocative, "no comment."

I hope that is a positive sign.

Title_BU

Butler President James Danko is from Villanova. Butler is going to the Big East when invited.

But, that statement was just stating the obvious, the University is going to do what suits its self interest.

xu95

Sorry, I was rambling. My not Catholic point was to the league not caring if you were catholic or not. My Marianists point was to why Marquette might not like Dayton.

Muddy Waters

Apology accepted.

Try to do better next time.

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Palestra1

This sucks for the A-10, but it's a smart move for the BE7 and the invitees. I can't see any way that Xavier and Butler aren't invited (and accept) for a variety of reasons. It's harder to read the tea leaves after that. From the A-10's perspective the best outcome is for Creighton to be team number ten and for the BE7 to stop at ten at least for now. My gut feeling is that they are only going to ten right now to maximize revenue per team. I don't think any of the teams likely to be added beyond ten is so valuable as to not cause the revenue per team to drop and I don't think they'll only go with nine teams even though that number might produce slightly higher revenue per team.

Beyond that, I think (unfortunately) that team ten is more likely to come from the A-10 than it is to be Creighton. The Blue Jays are a great program but my hunch is that they're going to be conservative in how the build the new conference and that would include keeping the conference footprint as compact as possible at the beginning. If they do start at ten members, I expect that they'll reassess after a few years and it wouldn't surprise me to see them go to twelve teams (or more) at that point. As much as they're trying to chart their own course and separate themselves from the current FBS chaos, they're still going to affected by changes in those leagues which is why I expect them to be conservative in their approach.

On a slightly related note, I expect UMass to end up in a "best of the rest" FBS conference at some point in time. I don't know when that's going to happen, but I do believe that their days in the A-10 are numbered. Regardless, the A-10 will soldier on and prodcue good teams. And, of couse, other than Xavier and Butler being locks for the new league, my prognositcations may be completely wrong.