Sign me up for the Mid-major super conference (geography be damned):
Gonzaga
BYU
Boise St.
Houston
Memphis
Davidson
Cent. Fla
Dayton
VCU
and Loyola (Chi)
That conference is getting 4+ bids a year, for sure!
Well... I'm not so sure about that. The major conference have expanded their schedules in recent years. As a result, P5 teams that get a break in their schedule during Jan-Mar don't tend to schedule challenging non-conference teams into that slot the way they used to a decade or so ago. I'm not saying it is impossible, but it would be difficult.
And it would be made even more difficult by Gonzaga's geographic location. Ain't no way a legit SEC, ACC, or Bten school is going to fly 3+ hours cross country to play a home-and-home with the Zags in the middle of their conference schedule. So, Gonzaga would need to pull this off with either a Pac 12 or a B12 team.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Yeah, I suspect the real issue is that potential opponents have no control over their conference schedules.
Looking at Gonzaga's schedule, it seems that nearly every WCC game is Thur/Sat. So, even if Gonzaga let it be known that they were looking for a top non-conference opponents on any Monday or Tuesday in Jan/Feb, there would be few P6 teams who would potentially be able to accommodate. To Jason's point, this is especially true if you consider the travel to/from Spokane.
Duke was able to schedule Elon with almost zero notice, but they were just down the road and I suspect Gonzaga would want to schedule someone better than Elon.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Conference realignment is and always will be a silly topic so no need. Pretty solid list otherwise, though Memphis is about to fall off a cliff between sanctions and how weak the remaining American Conference basketball programs will be (replacing three of those four above with a lot of Rice, UNT, UAB, and Charlotte weaklings).
For sure, but as good as the "top" of the WCC is in a given year, it will continue to be countered by the cupcake nature of the bottom of the conference. Even the worst ACC team would beat Pepperdine at least 95/100 times, and by a huge margin. That will continue to be an albatross on the Zags resume for years to come, and arguably is why they need that crazy non-conf schedule.
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The one thing I really respect about the PAC-12 is its ability to actually count. So that's a hard no on Gonzaga to the PAC for me.
Surely the ACC's record of 14-5 in the NCAAs dispelled the story (I would say "myth") that the "ACC was weak this year." Early season losses to historically weak teams made the dork poll numbers sag. In fact, several teams were slow to develop. but we had some very good teams by midseason -- and we placed three teams in the Elite Eight as well as two in the FF.
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How about the whole thread? (link)
bigeastgonzaga.jpg
This ESPN article keeps track of actual conference changes for 2022-2023. Of interest: Nate James and Austin Peay make the somewhat lateral move from the Ohio Valley to the Atlantic Sun.
Conference RPI (basketball): #25 OVC, #26 A-Sun
Conference RPI (football): #19 OVC; A-Sun starts football this fall
If you're wondering why, the Atlantic Sun is more geographically relevant for recruiting purposes, and the Ohio Valley is trending down -- Murray State and Belmont are also moving, to the Missouri Valley.
They'd have to be really, really intentional about it - like, "Hey, Tommy, you guys are playing Arizona State this weekend and thus have a lighter schedule than you would have most weekends. How about getting together with your old pal Mark?" Or tell Jim Phillips that you know math and that 15 ACC teams means there's one team without a game each weekend, and you want to play some of those teams.
I'm not sure I understand this. A weak ACC would still have been better forging then Gonzaga had, but doesn't 14-5 in the NCAA tourney prove that the ACC was anything but weak? If Carolina beats Kansas, then the ACC goes 15-4 in the tournament with 3 teams in the 8s, 2 in the final four plus the championship, and the only reasonable word for the ACC would be dominant.
Last edited by howardlander; 04-08-2022 at 03:25 PM.
and 2 of those 3 wins were Miami against very mediocre teams. It's great they won, but they also got roflstomped when they eventually faced kansas.
Raw record is silly. Unc was far better than expected, miami was slightly better than expected. All in all, the ACC was probably slightly better than estimated pre tournament, but the bulk of that was UNC putting it together.
April 1
Maybe, but aren't the bottom teams of a 15 team conference always there for a reason? Possibly some of the lower level ACC teams looked bad because they were hammered by the top and middle of an under appreciated conference. Doesn't mean they didn't improve from their pre-conference schedules. Pitt was so bad that they managed to crush a national finalist team on the road. Boston College did manage to beat Wake, but I agree we can't say much for Louisville, NC State or Georgia Tech. But 3 pretty bad teams in a 15 team conference is probably about par for the course.
Miami was an 11 seed and Carolina an 8 seed, mostly because the ACC was perceived so poorly. They still managed to win 8 tournament games. Wake and Virginia should have been in the tourney.
Both Wake and UVA were out by the 2nd round of the NIT. If they had gotten in, I suspect the ACC’s record wouldn’t be quite so stout. (And I forgot that one of ND’s wins was in the play-in game.
There have been lots of years where the middle and bottom tier ACC teams were decent, even NIT worthy. Yea there’s always a few stragglers but a deep conference doesn’t have roughly half its teams below .500 overall for the season. A meat grinder it was not.
Not sure you can judge them by the NIT. Isn't there kind of a history of teams thinking they were snubbed lacking focus/motivation/results in the NIT. But I agree they were both disappointing.
I might agree with this point also. But I still think there were more good teams in the ACC than was generally recognized. The national finalist had 6 conference losses, Duke had 5 conference losses, and Miami made it to the round of 8 with 7 conference losses (including the ACC tourney losses). Heck, the team that was good enough to win the conference tournament had 9 conference losses. Those losses weren't all to each other.