squirrelgotdead
New member
And now with TINO's, and guaranteed semifinals, you lose your chance to earn your way in the event itself. So it's even more crucial to be excellent.
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Jealous of other Exempt Tourneys for Valley Schools
- Thread starter chitown fanatic
- Start date
And now with TINO's, and guaranteed semifinals, you lose your chance to earn your way in the event itself. So it's even more crucial to be excellent.
TheAsianSensation
New member
That's the bad part - you have to get your way into a 4-team event and so many of the tournament organizers will balk at inviting ANY mid-major into that spot. Unless you're basically Gonzaga. After all, with 6 power conferences, you can easily find 4 teams from there alone.
The Valley needs to hammer away at the 8-team tournaments, and hard.
chitown fanatic
New member
But what isnt being talked about in this thread is the most important factor: money! BU brings a solid fanbase with it wherever it plays. As I said, the one tourney organizer gushed about 300 traveling fans from Wichita...that's paltry compared to our showing. Ask the Gazelle group what they think of BU...based on CBI and other events, I'm sure they'd say bring em on! Even in these ABC postseason tourneys, we still always have the highest attendance
MacabreMob
New member
1 or 2 random lower finishes? Try 3 consecutive seasons. That is not a random happening when it happens 3 years in a row. Bradley was the much better team since the 2006 Sweet 16 year, until last season. You usually are more accurate with your facts.
Wichita State has had a worse record and finished lower than Bradley in 3 out of the last 4 seasons.
Here are the comparisons of the records and MVC finishes since both teams went to the Sweet 16 in 2006-
.................09-10.......08-09.......07-08.......06-07
Wichita St...25-10(2)...17-17(7)...11-20(9)...17-14(6)
Bradley.......16-15(5)...21-15(4)...21-17(5)...22-13(4)
TheAsianSensation
New member
To be fair, what we lack in exempt tourneys we make up for elsewhere. No one else has gotten the likes of Michigan St in their building like we did.
Stop using records and MVC finishes. Those can only be used AGAINST BU. If BU is better in those areas, then only the 'eye-test' can be applied. Come on Da Coach, don't you know the rules???
tornado
New member
I disagree -- although I'd bet if we knew the truth -- that close to 100% of all college basketball players have consumed some ethanol while they were under 21...so the only difference is that WE PENALIZE OUR PLAYERS for such an incredibly minor offense, while most other schools do not..
as for cheating -- that implies a willful effort to subvert the rules -- and I ask for even a tiny little bit of evidence...as even the NCAA admitted in their report the discretion was "inadvertent" and was unknown even to our staff until after the fact. And thugs?? Not since Deon Thurman -- and even then, he never raped anyone or stole a car..
squirrelgotdead
New member
Ok...sorry. 3 consecutive, but still random finishes. Which still should have been able to be sufficiently deduced from my original post.
Really, 3 consecutive lower finishes, versus 1 or 2 random? Hardly the same thing. To say that Wichita is consistently better over the last few is laughable, the exact OPPOSITE of what you're saying.
squirrelgotdead
New member
What I'm suggesting is that in the years prior, and now, for the foreseeable future, Wichita has been the exemplar of a winner, and will exhibit an ability to finish ahead of BU routinely. Those 3 years are outliers to any bystander looking at the bigger picture of the league situation, therefore, random. Which is precisely my point.
Name recognition means a lot as well. SIU hasn't "deserved" the tourneys that they get into but nationally people recognize "The Saluki's" same goes for the "Shockers".
I don't want to take anything away from Bradley but if I were to take a guess, if you polled 100 people on the east or west coast more people would recognize either SIU or WSU more so than Bradley even though the last 3 years Bradley has been consistantly better. SIU fans do not travel exceptionally well but random television viewers will recognize the name better than most mid-majors, even in down years.
In the end these tournament come down to revenue and a recognizable name generates more of that.
I don't want to take anything away from Bradley but if I were to take a guess, if you polled 100 people on the east or west coast more people would recognize either SIU or WSU more so than Bradley even though the last 3 years Bradley has been consistantly better. SIU fans do not travel exceptionally well but random television viewers will recognize the name better than most mid-majors, even in down years.
In the end these tournament come down to revenue and a recognizable name generates more of that.
squirrelgotdead
New member
On the West Coast, maybe. But, believe it or not, BU is still a very recognizable name all over the East Coast from it's glory days in the 50's and 60's...though that is rapidly disappearing, it is still prominent enough that BU has some unique benefit in that regard.
TheAsianSensation
New member
If I had to rank the Valley schools on name recognition as it currently stands:
1) Northern Iowa
2) Creighton
3) Wichita St
4) Southern Illinois
--tier--
5) The Drake
6) Bradley
7) Illinois St
8 )Missouri St
--tier--
9) Indiana St
are they still D-1?) Evansville
The sad thing is Bradley's marquee year (2006) they were overshadowed by Wichita St (had the same Sweet 16 and finished higher in conference) and George Mason (who overshadowed everything mid-major by the end). The year Drake was relevant, they were alone and didn't share any spotlight. Hence why people care slightly more about Drake (you should see ESPN pay much more attention to Drake in their preseason articles than they really deserved).
1) Northern Iowa
2) Creighton
3) Wichita St
4) Southern Illinois
--tier--
5) The Drake
6) Bradley
7) Illinois St
8 )Missouri St
--tier--
9) Indiana St
are they still D-1?) Evansville
The sad thing is Bradley's marquee year (2006) they were overshadowed by Wichita St (had the same Sweet 16 and finished higher in conference) and George Mason (who overshadowed everything mid-major by the end). The year Drake was relevant, they were alone and didn't share any spotlight. Hence why people care slightly more about Drake (you should see ESPN pay much more attention to Drake in their preseason articles than they really deserved).
squirrelgotdead
New member
You say everything is relative, but want to look at things in isolation. League finishes this decade:
2,8,5,6,8,5,4,5,4,5; avg. place 5.2
9,5,3,2,2,1,6,9,5,2; avg. place 4.4
Tell me which is consistently better, which has shown upward mobility not once, but twice, and who has shown an ability to contend for league crowns repeatedly. And then you can tell me what's random and what's not.
That may be true as I said I was completely guessing. That said however, ESPN is not going after the people that remember the 50's and 60's. I mean most of their viewers probably don't remember the 70's. Aside from recent success, SIU and WSU have unique mascots, Bradley doesn't, that helps the recognition value as well.
squirrelgotdead
New member
For the record, I would tie BU with SIU at 4th this point, I think SIU's recognition is all but gone at this point.
Maybe, but Bradley did get significantly greater media exposure to the point of the Sweet 16. I know for a fact multiple press agencies were in and around town the week before the tournament started, and outfits in LA, NY have familiarity with BU over the years and gave them advanced and concurrent press. Not something the other mid party crashes got. But then after that weekend WSU and GMU got much more focus.
TheAsianSensation
New member
Fair points. I guess a top tier of CU, WSU, UNI and a second tier of SIU, The Drake, and BU is more appropriate. I'd still have BU 6th, but we're basically on the same tier as Drake and SIU. I still do think SIU gets lingering credit for their series of high finishes back when the Valley was multibid every year.