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I understand your point. But even if you have lost all empathy for the young professional athlete, you probably still want to protect your financial investment.

Head had a solid freshman year at Lipscomb the year before his sophomore season at Arkansas State, where he seemed to be blocked on the depth chart. I'm hopeful he can be a solid contributor next year.

Somewhat worried about retention but I think they'll reload regardless.

Poor man's Lebron. All positions. Hope he sticks around. Flashes of a highly skilled scorer. Young and Eric M are certainly legit starters next year. Marvin and Zack are role players. I love them but they are not 25-30 minutes players. I don't know enough about the red shirts or incoming freshmen. Head only averaged 2.5 points a game the year before. We need help. Gotta find a big.

Too bad. It's their job now.

Would need to put on a lot of muscle as well. He can probably only play the 2 or 3.

If you watch him it's obvious that defense wasn't stressed in Europe. He has some offensive skills but he needs to put on some muscle and focus on his defense in the off-season.

As far as I can tell, he's always been a guard. He certainly has the size to be a stretch 4, but would need some significant development. And who knows if that's what he wants or if he wants to stay.

Nice try. https://jmusports.com/Facilities

What’s the deal with Stankovic? Are we assuming he is going to develop under Dustin? What the thinking on him and how he fits into next year?

I think it was @clarkwgriswold that once called the winner of the NIT, the best of the losers. That stuck with me, because it’s so true. I don’t think the NIT could ever draw significant attention during the NCAAT. Personal and institutional pride gets in the way of everyone trying their hardest. But if I were to try, I would avoid bragging rights or pride altogether. Hold the event at a unique or special location and give financial reward for every game you advance. The money could go to the players or in the team’s collective. I remember Michigan State once played North Carolina on an aircraft carrier. That was must see TV. And I always liked the Maui Invitational. Something like that with only 16 teams could draw some interest for fans, players and the general public.

Degrees from Harvard and Yale? Dude basically just went to the same school

The network is basically only reruns of impractical jokers for 361 days of the year. I'd rather have a strong NIT with those big schools, and hopefully the big fanbases would still watch. Just like bowl games, the Europa League, etc. Once teams decide they are "too good" for a level of competition it ruins the whole system

This year there was something like 8 million total if you add up viewership for those 4 games with the Miami/SMU drawing the largest audience of 2.5 million. How many people do you think tune into TrueTV on a Tuesday or Wednesday night if those college basketball games weren't being played? 10s of thousands maybe? That would mean putting a random play-in game adds ~2 million more viewers than whatever they were otherwise going to air. I don't disagree that an expanded tournament does more damage than good for mid-majors and am personally not for it. That said, it's obvious live sports, even ones that might not be appealing to most, drive a much larger viewing audience than random re-runs or whatever else True TV runs. TBH I only ever watch that station for March Madness. For that reason an expanded tournament has value to a CBS, Netflix, Amazon, or whoever else bids for the next media contract.

The bubble this year was so bad, if this year they expanded with this criteria, the last spot in relative to kenpom would be between 18-14 Indiana, and 16-16 Baylor. This year was the first time I have ever really watched a first four game with Miami. I would say most people don't watch those games and doubling that amount so we can see more games potentially like UVA vs Colorado State a couple years ago isn't going to make march madness more popular. It would also be a shame to have 4 conference tournament champions just missing out on the round of 64 each year. It would also put even more pressure on those teams in the low ranking conferences to switch conferences. Its a slippery slope to encourage more conference realignment at all levels. Who would've thought that college basketball would be more like the premier league before college soccer

Yep, MLB should have figured out they really messed up their schedule when pitchers started to use pine tar on their fingers. Not for competitive advantage, but just so they could get any kind of action on the ball.

MLB will never get it. Too much money involved for them to cut back. I'm always amused when during the wild card or first round someone plays an "on this date" clip from something that happened in the World Series years ago.

You could take 3 weeks off the front and back ends of the MLB season and I wouldn’t miss a second of it. Greed has them starting and ending the season in miserable cold weather.

That "ceiling" is the result of today's NCAA basketball circus, not the program. The days of Cinderella in the tournament are over. Sure, you'll get an occasional first round upset or a brief run but it's all about NIL and transfers now making it much tougher on the non "power" schools.

I think we have to remember that these guys are still developing physically throughout their college careers. The adjustment from high school to college is already challenging enough for most. Add too much to their plate and I fear you will see a lot more injuries.

I agree that the landscape has changed a great deal and winning in the NCAA has become far more difficult for the have-nots. But I’m grateful Groce & Company with the support of Bud Wentz doesn’t share your opinion on there being a ceiling for Akron. Keep swinging guys!!

Expanding the tournament doesn't alter the calendar. Just instead of playing 2 Dayton games on Tuesday and another 2 on Wednesday they play 4-6 each day. What you initially proposed was shifting the schedule back multiple weeks. That would make it so earlier rounds would be in competition with the masters and later rounds would be in competition with events like the NBA playoffs or NFL draft. Conference tournaments and March Madness are the only games that 75% of college basketball fans even care about. I talked to fans sitting near me at Rocket Mortgage arena who claimed to be Akron fans, but they knew very little about the team and didn't go to a game at the JAR all season. If you want more regular season games that is still achievable. There are gaps in the regular season that teams don't play for 10+ days. Also, teams could play more than 2 games a week some weeks. I just don't think adding more regular season weeks is suddenly going to make people care more about the regular season. Most just care about the excitement of the single elimination tournaments and/or their office pool brackets. Without it they could care less.

Pretty much. They won't underachieve, but it's clear winning Saturday in Cleveland is the ceiling.

We'll get some good replacement players but they won't be NCAAT winning players because ceiling.

If CBB is worried about competing against The Masters, things are worse than I think. I think last year had the most Sunday viewers for The Masters ever. It was still several million viewers less than the final four. People watch The Masters because there is nothing else on TV and there will always be a certain number of people who like trust fund guys chase a ball around. Also, the final four isn't even played on Sunday. If CBB wants to expand the field, fine. They should get rid of conference tournaments if they do that. It would make the regular season more meaningful. Given players are professionals now, I don't think scheduling a 40+ game season would be unreasonable. 40 games is slightly less than half of NBA games. College football plays over half the number of NFL games. The expanded number of games would help weed out the field and give more time for the cream to rise to the top.