kreed5120

Calhoun to Cincy and Randy Bennett to Arizona State

I don't feel the two are mutually exclusive.

My comment was also more about building to the strength of the current roster.

We'll see how things play out, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the Zips try to win with defense next year. Young and Eric have the capability of being All-MAC defenders. Cody, not sure how big of a role he'll have but certainly figures to be in the rotation, has decent size for a guard. As someone else pointed out the closest we've come to a win in the tournament was against UCLA and that was a defensive focused team.

Whatever one wants to call it there is distinct gaps in the level of play between the conferences. Duke can make it to the title game and even win this year. That doesn't change the fact if you look from top to bottom the ACC as a whole was much weaker than the B1G and SEC this year.

It's not really a P4. It's a Big 2 with SEC and BIG. Big 12 has still managed to remain competitive. It doesn't seem like the ACC schools have the money to compete in both football and basketball. Probably on even footing with Big East.

It's probably a loophole since they aren't paying any specific player directly.

Alabama must have saw my earlier comments. They're putting on a shooting clinic in the 2nd half.

It's not even that Alabama is shooting particularly well. They're only 44% from the field and even that percentage is a bit inflated from the run outs. Even if they had a couple fewer 3s fall they would be up comfortably in this game. They're spanking Texas Tech with effort. They nearly have them outrebounded 2:1. Nearly have as many offensive rebounds as Texas Tech has total rebounds. They're not giving Atwell any opportunity to catch and shoot. Forcing Anderson into bad shots. Pretty much taking away what Texas Tech does well. Edit: This is an opponent that Texas Tech needed Toppin. They're too one dimensional offensively.

It looks like Utah State's run is over. It might provide some more clarity to the coaches search as Calhoun was linked to Cincy job. Interesting enough I saw an interview from Calhoun who said last year Utah State had $800k in NIL. This season they increased it to $2.3M. He said he was the 2nd largest contributor as apparently he put up $150K. His phrasing was if he's asking others for money it only felt right for him to lead by example.

Not really anything NCAA can do. The minute they tried to place a cap players will challenge it in court and would win.

Gerry McNamara to Syracuse. Not that Groce was really a candidate for the position, but it's a positive that this hiring doesn't open up another vacancy that might have been.

I'm not sure how Shrewsberry is a serious candidate. His run at Notre Dame has been pretty terrible. Nored might be our best hope.

I guess I was being too generous to TCU.

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

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.

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.

I thought I saw Texas Tech was something like 28th in 3-pt defense coming into the game. They did a really great job of contesting and running us off the line. If you eliminate the broken plays where we got a look off transition or offensive rebound before defense could get set, I think only Lyles and Evan were the ones consistently getting open looks. Evan wisely passed up most those looks. That was probably by design as Texas Tech could live with either shooting them. Scott hit some, but given his logo range it becomes a bit more challenging to limit him.

As @Illini Zip said it's not about getting more mid or low majors in. It's about getting more .500 P4 teams in like Auburn. It would be a similar setup to now. Just instead of bottom 4 conference winners competing for 2 spots it would be bottom 8 conference champions competing for 4. The same with the last 4 in for at-larges would become the last 8. This setup slide anyone below the bubble line 1 seed down since fewer low majors would make it to the round of 64.

This is kind of my thoughts as well. Eric might draw a little more attention than one might expect because of his size and ability to guard multiple positions. I feel of the two he's the one more likely to be lost because someone desperate comes in last minute and offers him something absurd that we can't match.

Even if he signed it's still not a guarantee. I'm almost certain Oats signed an extension with Buffalo and then was in Tuscaloosa a month later.

If I'm to be honest I'm not sure there is much college basketball could do to grow in popularity. March Madness does extend into April already. The Final Four this year extends from April 4-6. If they pushed it to start in April then you would be competing directly with the Masters (April 6th-12th), NFL Draft (April 23rd-25th), NBA Playoffs (starts April 18th), and MLB opening day (it already overlaps slightly here but bulk of tournament is over beforehand). IMO March Madness wouldn't be what it is today if it had to directly compete with those other events that I mentioned. You might disagree and that's okay. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Time will tell. I would imagine we'll know more very soon, perhaps by weekends end. Schools like Butler or Cincy are going to want to fill their vacancies in the coming days that way whoever they hire has a chance re-recruit players on the current roster before the portal opens up.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dustin Ford was offered the job under said scenario. Especially since the closest thing to a Groce hire (coach with previous MAC success) would be Hurley and he doesn't fit the culture we've built. In that case I don't feel it's a given that either leave

Of those schools it's not surprising to hear Gonzaga (doesn't even feel right calling them a mid-major), VCU, and St. Louis are spending significantly more than other mid-majors. I wasn't aware of High Point, but evidently it's an elitist private University. There are talks of expanding the tournament, perhaps to 76 teams. Under that scenario the bubble line would be pushed back so using this year as an example instead of Akron being a 12 seed it would become a 13 seed with an expanded tournament. Things are probably going to get worse for mid-majors before they get better.