Xavier, Butler, Creighton official?

[Edrick]

Flyer 11, I am not hope but when I return ill post on why Richmond is superior to Dayton (neither needs to be added though)

SLU and Creighton are self-evident.

Stopping at 10 for 3/4 years is what we need to do. There's no reason to water down the product.

[Flyer11]

Flyer 11, I am not hope but when I return ill post on why Richmond is superior to Dayton (neither needs to be added though)

SLU and Creighton are self-evident.

Stopping at 10 for 3/4 years is what we need to do. There's no reason to water down the product.

Alright, after this response, I am done. I am taking purpieschu advice. Should have done it earlier like he said

Flyer11

[ruechalgrin]

I am sorry, but Dayton is the clear choice over Richmond. Very few reasons to choose Richmond over Dayton exist (some do, particularly location and endowment), but pros for Dayton massively outweigh pros for Richmond. For me, it is +12 Dayton, Richmond +4 = Dayton crushes Richmond (admittedly I did not weight the factors).

(1) Attendance (Massive Advantage Dayton +2): Dayton averages 12,000-12,500 a game whereas Richmond averages 5,500-6,000 a game. Dayton will average 13,500 if they are part of the Big East selling out each game. There is even talk about building a new 18,000 person arena which again will be basically sold out if Dayton is invited in the Big East. There is not much else to do in Dayton and everybody supports the program.
(2) Fans Travel (Massive Advantage Dayton +2): Dayton fans travel to games, hence they are invited to the most prestigious exempt tournaments every year where they consistently have the best turn-out even versus BCS teams. This will translate into butts in seats at all the Big East venues. You literally will have 1,000 fans from Dayton attending games at Seton Hall, at Providence, at St. John's, etc. with corresponding revenue for Big East teams and buzz in the arenas for TV.
(3) Mission (Advantage Dayton +1): Dayton is a Catholic institution that shares a similar mission to the 9 of the 10 charter members. The Catholic Presidents will care about this. Butler's massive basketball success (2 final games in the last 5 years) trumped this, but Dayton's mission, being Catholic, and having deeper relationships as part of the National Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities will help.
(4) Facilities (Slight Advantage Dayton +.5) - Except for football, Dayton has slightly better sports facilities with the key differentiator being the UD arena which will soon become the venue with the most NCAA games played.
(5) TV (Slight Advantage Dayton +.5 & arguably Advantage Dayton & arguably Massive Advantage Dayton). Richmond is the number 58 market whereas Dayton is 64. However, Dayton households watch college basketball which arguably gives Dayton a massive advantage over Richmond in terms of actual viewers (this is what the tv executives care about). http://www.basketballforum.com/atlantic ... -12-a.html Also, UD dominates the Dayton market for TV (Wright State is negligible). The talk about overlapping markets between Dayton and Cincinnati is funny. Honestly, very few people from Cincinnati watch Dayton basketball (except alums) and very few people from Dayton watch Xavier basketball (except alums). The Dayton market is dominated by UD basketball. Even Ohio State grads living in Dayton often adopt Dayton for their college basketball team.
(6) Basketball success (Neutral) - I looked at basketball success over 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, and total success by NCAA visits. Richmond 5 Years = 2, 10 Years = 3, 30 Years = 9, Total History = 9. Dayton 5 Years = 1, 10 Years = 3, 30 Years = 7, Total History = 14. We could then look at NCAA wins, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, etc. and basically it comes down to slightly better success for Richmond recently and more long term success for Dayton. Weighing more recent success more (2 Sweet 16s the last 30 years versus Dayton 1), but recognizing Dayton has been in 2 Elite 8 and a Final Championship Game, gave it a wash.
(7) Academics (Advantage Richmond +1) - I hate US News World Report, but Richmond about 30 best national liberal arts college and Dayton about 100 best national university. Richmond more selective and slightly better scores.
(8) Olympic Sports (Advantage Dayton +1) - Women's Basketball is being built into a powerhouse at dayton, same with volleyball, soccer, etc., etc.
(9) Alumni (Massive Advantage Dayton +2) - Dayton has over 100,000 living alumni whereas Richmond has 45,000 living alumni. This matters for attendance, tv support (even in non-core markets), traveling, basketball support, etc. Dayton turns out more than 1,500 new alumni every year whereas Richmond turns out 600.
(10) Endowment (Massive Advantage Richmond + 2)- Richmond leads here at $1.8B versus Dayton's $450M. This is a material advantage for Richmond
(11) Location (Advantage Richmond + 1)- Only real reason to choose Richmond which would give nice split between Eastern and Western Divisions, but Marquette may want to be in the East which would cut the other way. This could be material if Marquette does not want to be in the East due to travel costs (but does not look like a huge factor by picking Creighton which is really far West).
(12) Rivalries (Advantage Dayton +1) - Dayton has traditional rivalries against Xavier and St. Louis; and budding ones against teams like Creighton where Dayton had a home and home series recently. Also historic (but long-forgotten) against Marquette and DePaul.
(13) Buzz with College Sports Media (Advantage Dayton +1) - Every game at UD Arena, the national media waxes eloquently about the support of the Dayton community, the passion about college hoops, the First 4 where 10,000+ were at every game even when it was the bottom 4 teams playing-in, etc., etc. There will be a buzz with the Dayton addition.
(14) History with the Big East Schools (Advantage Dayton +1) Dayton has a long history with all the Catholic Colleges and Universities in the Big East. Richmond probably has a better relationship with Georgetown, but that is it.

[PMThor]

Flyer supporters
I would not suggest trying to make logical arguments to Edick. Granted UD has not been stellar the last 20 years but neither have we been the portrait Edick tries to paint. I don't believe his outlook will change with education or logical arguments. His arguments are largely emotional nothing more. I suspect he hangs out with the likes of PMThor. I would suggest not wasting your time and ignore. Just my humble advice.

What the Hell did I do? I deliberately stayed out of here because I'm obviously biased and think dayton would be a terrible choice. As for reality, I think dayton is going to get the nod, no matter how much I don't want that to happen.

EDIT. I forgot to mention, this doesn't have to be an either Richmond or dayton choice. The Big East could just call it a day at 10 for the near future. That's a real possibility.

[SpiderFan]

First post on here, been reading for about 2 months now as the rumors of expansion c7 schools have been mentioned. Got to the point where I'm a little frustrated with these Dayton posters and their bias. So to answer some of the questions they were posed earlier about us. First of all I think Dayton is a good program, but I think ours is just as good, plus recently we have a much better track record of success in basketball. Not an opinion, a fact. Although figures aren't readily available because we're private, there was a report last year that we spend the most on basketball overall in the A10. We just approved spending about 15 million on renovations and fan friendly improvements to our arena. We just upgraded all locker rooms, office, etc. We have been to the NCAAs 2 times in the last 3 seasons not counting this year. We're going to be good next year as well no matter what league we're in. Hence the increased competition for next year in facing UNC, possibly Louisville, Florida, Minnesota and Wake. We have the largest endowment of the A10 school and most current BE schools at almost 2 billion. Our academics are the best in the A10. As far as Olympic sports we routinely won the A10's Commissioner Cup for overall athletic excellence over all sports in the conference. We have just committed $10 million to starting a lacrosse program to compete nationally. The drawback was we dropped men's soccer and men's track. Please note that the league we are in next year for lacrosse (Atlantic Sun) is just starting up for 13-14 and we had a provision written in to let us out after just one year. I don't think that's a coincidence with the new Big east forming and soon to from a league in that. In our A10 home games we have averaged over 7200. We do not draw like Dayton since our school is only 3,000 undergrad. But extrapolate that out and we're drawing 2.5 times our student body size. I'd say that's pretty impressive. We charter all our basketball flights.

When we joined the A10 in 2000-01 we have been very competitive in that league since day 1, except for 2 seasons when Jerry Wainwright killed the program with this moves. I'm sure some DePaul fans can sympathize with that since they experienced the same problem. BTW we owe them for taking him off our hands. We completely paid for our own on campus football stadium that was built a couple of years ago. I know this isn't a football-based league but it shows our commitment to athletics. Our president knows that to raise our national profile even higher than it is, will be done through athletics.

I'm not saying we're a better choice than Dayton, just providing our positives. There is a reason that GTown and Nova are pushing for us, its not a coincidence. I don't know if we'll get extended an invite, I'm certainly hoping so.

I understand all there is about TV markets too since I work in TV Sports, and the differences to TV execs are going to be negligible. Look forward to getting back to my roots since I'm originally from CT and grew up on BE basketball and believe it or not I hate UConn, so i'm sure I'll get some love on this board.

Good luck everyone in their postseason tournaments, and don't worry about us and the A10 tournament, we're in.

[DawgLover]

As a Butler fan, I feel fortunate that there seems to be little doubt that Butler will be in the BE as of this year (although I'll feel a lot better after it's officially announced), so I'm in a little different spot than (and feel some sympathy for) the SLU/Dayton/Richmond supporters who don't have that same level of comfort about their team's prospects. Still, I find it remarkable to see all of the effort expended by a fas of those programs trying to convince those of rival schools or of existing BE members that their school deserves to be selected. It makes for interesting reading, and I'm learning a lot about these teams (and their supporters), but unless you think that the decision makers haven't already chosen the schools and are lurking on this board to see if they can pick up some data that will help them decide, I'm struggling to see the purpose. It's not like one of the message board members is going to call up the decision makers and say, "You know, this guy on the HLOH message board made some really good points that you ought to consider about why Wassamatta U ought to be the 12th BE member."

Maybe there's a cathartic effect.

Then again, I never was big on those bar arguments about whether the 1968 UCLA Bruins were the best college basketball team ever, or whether it was the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats or the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers. There's no way to prove who's right and there's no logical conclusion to the argument.

Still, if it makes you feel better to make the case for your team, I guess that's what message boards like this are all about.

[pki1998]

Just ask the big east teams that Dayton has played how bad they been. Dayton will do great in the big east. You can't go by what has happened in the last 2 years to dayton BC they got killed BC 6 players left program when Gregory took Georgia tech job.

Sorry I don't think the C7 are exactly shaking in their boots becuase they might have to play Dayton. You don't want us to look at the last two years, fine. The simple fact is that Dayton first joined a conference in the late eighties, and the have NEVER won a regular seaosn conference title. Sure they won a couple of a west division titles of the A-10, but the east division team clearly had a much better record. When was the last time Dayton was a serious challenger for the regular season conference crown late in the season?

There is a reason that X, Butler and Creighton are the top three choices, and that there is discussions about UD, SLU, and Richmond. All have good points all have negative points.

[pki1998]

I'm not emotional. Dayton just isn't a Big East basketball program.

They aren't getting into the conference now and that is a good thing. UD has no business in a high major league, they are a middling Mid Major.

It's clear the presidents have reservations, with more failure they won't be taken. It could be years before we go to 12. By then, who knows who'll be considered.

If you aren't emotional, please make the cases for Creighton, Richmond, and SLU over Dayton (talking strictly about the program). Don't give me that SLU is in a better TV market because we already know that. I want to know what separates those programs from Dayton.

Flyer11

SLU is challenging for a conference title. When was the last time UD did that? Creighton has won conference titles, and the MWC is on par with the A-10. Richmond made the sweet 16 two years ago. From a pure basketball perspective Crieghton and Richmond have been better programs for quite a while. SLU has really invested in their program the past couple of years and it has been paying dividends. Time will tell if they are a splash in the pan, but right now they look pretty strong.

[XU85]

Personally, I would like to see UD in over UR, because I think it will provide the UD faithful additional targets for their insane intensity, and hopefully reduce the level of Xavier envy.

Quite frankly, I am amazed that UD hasn't been much more successful given the facilities and fanatic support the Flyers enjoy.

[augkash]

Conference champs? Or NCAA or NIT champs? I'll take any of last 2 any day