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Message: [QUOTE="champs99and04, post: 2510236, member: 488"] We're not in this conference because of basketball or football. We're in this conference because of the fan base. That's the number one reason. Most of the basketball fans couldn't care less about any of the other programs, a significant chunk of the football base doesn't like basketball, and the women's base is their own bread entirely. Sure every school has their own dynamics as far as which sports are popular, but UConn feels unique because of the northeast sports landscape. This isn't Wisconsin where everybody who is an alum of the school or grew up in the state goes to football, basketball, and hockey games without asking questions. It's a saturated market and by extension you have to build a base purely on entertainment/winning rather than culture, tradition, etc. That leads to an environment where you're picking up smatterings of people for a particular sport depending on which ones are good at the time. Nobody would care about women's basketball if they weren't the greatest program ever. I think that's obvious. Now, do I think the basketball program would benefit from joining the Big East in the short term? Yes. There is an unavoidable conflict of interest that is likely going to end with somebody being unhappy. You can grill Ollie all you want for his coaching, and it has been bad, but there are a lot of guys who are less than perfect as coaches who win games because they get great players. New England is a rich recruiting market and I cannot imagine playing in the AAC helps us. Does that mean we should drop football? Obviously not. Conference is a factor but only a single factor and it's certainly not worth ditching a titanic investment to help win a recruit every couple years. If Ollie was falling just short against the blue bloods I could see the OP's argument, since he's not it is obvious that he's been the primary limiting factor. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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