Big East as predator

[MayorBeluga]

So yesterday, whilst at the BC, had an interesting discussion with Gato. Apparently he and MUAlphaB were discussing the state of the Big East compared to the A10. Recall the A10 got 6 bids, SLU, Dayton, VCU, GW, St. Joe's and St. UMass. The Big East got only 4, Nova, Creighton, X and Providence (we obviously blame Creighton for the difference).

Should the Big East go and destroy the A10 the way the hated ACC destroyed the old Big East? This is not a question of expansion for sake of expansion since most here agree 10 teams is optimal. It's not a television markets discussion either. Rather, should we expand to ensure our primacy as the top non-football conference? Adding say 4 of the teams that made the tournament guts the A10, leaving it as a shell.

I admit, I'm not sure. I like 10 teams, but this move could be masterful since it destroys a potential competitor.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

I'm still not sure adding more top-tier teams is the best move. You take Dayton & SLU as the philosophical fits, maybe VCU (or Richmond) and UMass (though they are going D1 in football) so you aren't entering conflicting markets, but then what do you have? There's still no one to lose. You end up with 12 of the 14 teams within a game or two of .500, mostly low seeds for teams that do get in and a bundle of teams that are probably good enough to play in the tourney but may just get passed over by the NIT (St. John's, Georgetown, Marquette all fit that bill this year) as well.

We'd probably have to go divisions at that point, not sure how that would work best. Play your own twice and 6 of the 7 in the other division once, rotating the team you don't play? The drawback there of course is that some teams you wouldn't see every year. Would we want to miss Villanova and Georgetown home games annually?

I still fully believe the Big East this year was by far superior to the A-10. Any top-7 Big East team would have at worst been third in the league, and I think even Marquette may have shared the league crown with an overrated SLU team. But while they have 6 decent teams, they also have 6 very bad teams that had losing records.

46-7. That is the record of the 6 A-10 teams that made the tournament against the 6 A-10 teams with double digit losses. 46-7. That's a 0.868 winning percentage. That's a minimum of 7 wins per team against terrible competition, and no one took more than 2 losses against them. Those 6 terrible teams are just as much the reason the A-10 got 6 bids as anything else. Because they didn't cannibalize themselves like the middle of the Big East did. Had Marquette played 9 games against those 6 teams we'd have won 7 or 8 of them as well. Go .500 against the rest of the league and we have 12 wins and are dancing with ease.

Fourty-six and freaking seven! This is why I am not such a huge fan of adding a bunch of very good teams. Because everyone thinks more good teams will prop this league up. It won't. They will drag it down, and they'll get dragged down right along with the rest of us. Pomeroy will rate us the 2nd or 3rd best conference and we'll have no more bids to show for it. If you really want to destroy the A-10, don't take the cream of the league. I'd recommend Dayton, Richmond, St. Bonaventure, and Duquesne. Everyone will laugh as we take the perceived weak links, but I expect that come March, we'd be the ones laughing last.

[unclejohn]

No. Dumb idea. Then you wind up with an unwieldy mess of teams that are not necessarily good fits, but which you cannot get rid of. This being the first year of the NBE, I think it will take a while for things to settle down. If the BE is going to expand, it will likely add a team or two from the A-10, mostly because of geography. Where else are teams going to come from? But I do not see much point in doing it just to torpedo another conference. And it is unnecessary. The A-10 had an unusually good year this year. It is not often going to get more bids than the BE.

[Gato78]

The concept has nothing to do with basketball other than eliminating the competition since I too think the A-10 was overrated. This is exactly what the ACC did to us. We cannot sit still. This year, the A-10 had 6 in the tourney. We had four. Can we claim superiority? Not this year. The question is whether we act in a manner that ensures there is no question. Take VCU and Dayton (not convinced by SLU) or UMass and go to a 12 team. All of a sudden the A-10 cannot compete with the BIG EAST. Just need Fox's permission to do it!

[kneelb4zerg]

The concept has nothing to do with basketball other than eliminating the competition since I too think the A-10 was overrated. This is exactly what the ACC did to us. We cannot sit still. This year, the A-10 had 6 in the tourney. We had four. Can we claim superiority? Not this year. The question is whether we act in a manner that ensures there is no question. Take VCU and Dayton (not convinced by SLU) or UMass and go to a 12 team. All of a sudden the A-10 cannot compete with the BIG EAST. Just need Fox's permission to do it!

Oh come on. Of course we can claim superiority. Overall, the league was clearly better, even if it didn't result in more tourney bids.

This year was an aberration because two of the BE flagship schools had down years.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

If you take two of the A-10's tourney teams, they'll likely add 1 to get back to 12 and either Richmond or La Salle are good enough to slide up to the 6th spot in the conference. They could still get 5-6 bids per year with their current setup.

Why did the A-10 get so many teams? I'd argue conference record was a huge part of it. The 6 A-10 teams totaled 67 conference wins. 47 of them came against the bottom 6 teams. That's over 70% of their wins against teams that suck in their own league.

This reminds me of White Men Can't Jump. "Sometimes when you win, you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win." If we add teams like VCU and SLU, it will look like we are "winning" but as a league we will really be losing. But if we add teams that can come in and lose, we will really be winning.

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EDIT: I know this seems completely counter-intuitive. Think of it like the stock market. When everything is high, people want to buy when they should be selling. When everything is plummeting, people want to sell when they should be buying. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Someone has to lose. The problem with our current league is that we don't have enough teams that are going to do that.

[BLT]

Jim mentioned the flaws with RPI in the selection process. These big mega conferences will always get more teams in. On average, 40-50% of the better conference teams.

Parity is not rewarded with RPI but being able to feast on conference bottom feeders are. TCU won zero conference games in the B12 but helped get more teams in by improving every team's RPI by just playing them. The bottoms of the B12, A10, and AAC were putrid, but their conferences will be collecting more than their deserved credits.

In the Big East, DePaul or a Seton Hall can beat a bubble team on any night. Providence wins the BET and is rewarded with an 11 seed. Parity is rewarded in the NFL, not with RPI and the NCAA. Change the ranking system or expand.

[IrwinFletcher]

Well, if that scenario played out, an overwhelming majority of the posters on Marquette message boards would have to explain why the BE doing this is OK, but the ACC doing it to the BE is evil.

I think we also need to be careful in talking about the greatness of a conference in a 1 year period. A10 had a great year, but is UMASS going to continue with the success they had this year? Will SLU? Dayton? St Joes?

They could easily be back to being a 3 bid conference and we will be looking back at this season as an anomoly.

[kneelb4zerg]

Well, if that scenario played out, an overwhelming majority of the posters on Marquette message boards would have to explain why the BE doing this is OK, but the ACC doing it to the BE is evil.

I think we also need to be careful in talking about the greatness of a conference in a 1 year period. A10 had a great year, but is UMASS going to continue with the success they had this year? Will SLU? Dayton? St Joes?

They could easily be back to being a 3 bid conference and we will be looking back at this season as an anomoly.

Yes exactly. A-10 isn't going to be a perennial 6-bid league. What, for example, makes anyone think that SLU is going to do anything under Crews once Majerus' recruits are gone?

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

The RPI is crap. No disputing that. All the more reason they should use Pomeroy or a similar system. Green Bay, Southern Miss, Belmont, and Toledo were teams that some felt should be on the bubble. Pomeroy had them ranked 61, 60, 109, and 110 going into the tournament. The reasons those teams didn't get at-large berths is because they simply weren't as good as teams that did.

Well...maybe not NC State. NC State didn't deserve it either. But there's the ACC for ya.