Quote Originally Posted by MKE_GoldenEagleFan View Post
I get what you are saying, with the new league you can pretty much throw history out the window. Doesn't matter what they did in the Horizon, A-10, or MVC because we don't get tournament credits for that success either. Luckily so far all three seem to be recruiting good which will hopefully result in some more tournament success in the future. It will be hard to truly judge this new conference for at least another 2-3 years because you have to get through a full 4 years of recruiting to see if the impact is there. So far it appears its what everyone expected, still a solid league, but is not the same as what it was. Honestly from MU's perspective Butler, Creighton, and Xavier have all been more valuable to the conference to date that we have. If you have to pick a team that was expected to contribute to the new conference and has been a let down its been MU so far. Now I think we all hope that this year is the beginning of a turn around to the success we have become accustomed to over the last decade.
Not exactly what I meant. I do not think you can throw what a team did in another conference out the window. There is something to be said for being consistently good. But I do think you have to consider what kind of competition they did it against. Butler mostly did dominate the Horizon League, but they were bigger than the league. They played some very tough non-conference games, which is one of the arguments we used to hear from UWM fans. They deserve a home game because Butler gets them against big name teams. Still, had they been playing in the Big East instead, some of those years would not have been so good. Some years they ran the table. Some years they did not. They got beat out by UWM a year or two, and would lose some games to other conference rivals who just were not very good. But if you took Green Bay who dominated the conference last year and put them in the BE, they would have gotten clobbered. Would have come up with some competitive games, but probably would have wound up near the bottom. But the big thing is that each of these teams has made a commitment to top quality college basketball. They are going to spend the money. They are going to have the facilities, They are going to play competitive schedules. That is the value they bring to the conference. Long haul, they will go up and down, but I would not be surprised to see the BE consistently put six teams in the post-season. Under the old NIT format, I would have said 8, but with the NCAA running it, that is less likely, and I doubt any will accept bids to the lesser tournaments. As for Marquette, the value we bring to the table is not in the past two years. Sure, we were supposed to break out of the gate the first year and we didn't. But Marquette represents a historically strong and successful program with lots of name recognition. I do not think anyone is worried about Marquette after last year. They know we'll be back. Nobody was worried about Georgetown when they had a couple bad seasons. Good thing. Then they went to the Final Four.