A loss of THAT magnitude does absolutely nothing to build up a team's momentum or confidence. Players like to play in games they think they have a chance of winning.
This is, indeed, the great tease. It appears that UCONN is stuck where they are, because the football program is minor league, and no major conference wants them. Since football seems to be the driver, UCONN basketball pays the price. It is, indeed, hard to watch the games where we are 40-50 points better than the opponent. Hard, also, for competitive players and the coaches. But it is what it is; a pre-season of sorts. Work stuff out ; get freshmen some court time ; get used to travel, etc. there are schools in the conference who could compete, but no one has really stepped up to the opportunity. Frustrating. Soon, it will be March.
Not sure who you are trying to convince given how astute this forum is so let me call out "rubbish" on your last paragraph. The AAC is/was a POOR WCBB group having to follow the lead of the Men's programs who due to lack of interest of Power 5 had to cobble together their dance cards. With NO ONE truly worthy of WCBB postseason thoughts on an annual basis, the UConn games are a great bar and recruiting tool for all these other programs to aspire too. This has in fact improved many of the programs, most notable USF who is hoping to be considered an annual NCAA team. Temple shows promise based on what Staley started and Cardoza is continuing. The others are making some strides with great freshman and strong recruiting classes but are not there yet. All the best coaches on the way up want to measure how they do- think Geno in 90's vs Tenn, think ND, MD in 2000's and now Texas, Louisville, MSU and SC. To get better you need to play the top. I don't think any true character coach "ducks" Teams at any time of year. Just my view on seeing the elite teams who want to grow the game behave.I read something in an article last week that made me pause for a moment. It said that programs that play weak OOC schedules sometimes pay for it down the road because they fail to play ranked or "quality" teams that will properly prepare them for conference play, and it hurts their overall RPI. Unlike UConn that front loads their schedule with top 15 teams out of necessity because they only have one other conference member (USF) that is ranked, most other major programs have several ranked teams in their conference that will raise their RPI to a respectable or desired level during the season. We saw this the first two weeks of conference play around the country. A surprising number of top ranked programs lost in the first two weeks of conference play to unranked teams.
That theory made me pause for a moment to reflect on what UConn is doing in the AAC. They certainly aren't playing any conference games that prepare them for post season play, yet they continue to dominate the tournament field every year anyway. Critics that complain that UConn is in a weak or sub-standard conference fail to realize that being in a weak conference is more of a liability that an asset for that reason. Prior to playing Maryland, I predicted that UConn would win for this reason.
Up to that point, Maryland had not played enough teams that prepared them to play UConn. The Terps had only played two ranked teams: #23 Arizona State and #7 Louisville prior to taking on the Huskies. True, they kept the margin of victory to 6 points (87-81), but they had the Huskies on their home court the first game after the Christmas break; and should have been able to close the deal on a win. NONE of the teams they played prepared them for what they were going to experience against UConn.
And as for becoming an independent, Who in their right mind would want to schedule UConn in January or February when they are trying to prepare their team for post season play? Aren't you suppose to try and build momentum going into the post-season? Who in the AAC looks forward to playing UConn, and suffering a 30-50 point loss?
Let's just end this Maryland fallacy right now. Last year they lost in MSG by 10. Now they lose to a sick, weakened, inexperienced and short benched UConn team at home by 6 and this is improvement? Bah. To me Baylor showed far more in their loss to UConn than Maryland's ever will. Otherwise, Oh Wise One you have all the right of it.I read something in an article last week that made me pause for a moment. It said that programs that play weak OOC schedules sometimes pay for it down the road because they fail to play ranked or "quality" teams that will properly prepare them for conference play, and it hurts their overall RPI. Unlike UConn that front loads their schedule with top 15 teams out of necessity because they only have one other conference member (USF) that is ranked, most other major programs have several ranked teams in their conference that will raise their RPI to a respectable or desired level during the season. We saw this the first two weeks of conference play around the country. A surprising number of top ranked programs lost in the first two weeks of conference play to unranked teams.
That theory made me pause for a moment to reflect on what UConn is doing in the AAC. They certainly aren't playing any conference games that prepare them for post season play, yet they continue to dominate the tournament field every year anyway. Critics that complain that UConn is in a weak or sub-standard conference fail to realize that being in a weak conference is more of a liability that an asset for that reason. Prior to playing Maryland, I predicted that UConn would win for this reason.
Up to that point, Maryland had not played enough teams that prepared them to play UConn. The Terps had only played two ranked teams: #23 Arizona State and #7 Louisville prior to taking on the Huskies. True, they kept the margin of victory to 6 points (87-81), but they had the Huskies on their home court the first game after the Christmas break; and should have been able to close the deal on a win. NONE of the teams they played prepared them for what they were going to experience against UConn.
And as for becoming an independent, Who in their right mind would want to schedule UConn in January or February when they are trying to prepare their team for post season play? Aren't you suppose to try and build momentum going into the post-season? Who in the AAC looks forward to playing UConn, and suffering a 30-50 point loss?
Interesting. But no matter how high the bar or its use as a recruiting tool, the fact remains no one looks forward to a twice yearly butt whuppin. Yes many players have said how playing against UConn forced them to improve their games, but heed the word "forced". Not one enjoys eating the poison, and yes as Carnac said, it does nothing to improve your late season confidence and is a sure momentum stopper. That was C's point. Yeah steel sharpens steel and his thrust of the point, that even the most sharpened of swords in the WCBB drawer would hesitate before being bashed against a rock before the duel begins, is valid.
I agree that UConn couldn't do it by itself. My point was: why can't a deal be made among the schools that are regularly Top 25 WCBB contenders to have all of them avoid their regular season conference schedule and instead play each other? Is Duke or Notre Dame going to miss playing Clemson? Is South Carolina, Tennessee, or Mississippi State going to miss playing Arkansas or Alabama? Every conference has bottom feeders that don't offer the elite teams in their conference any serious opposition. So why not form a WCBB-only "league" from among the elite teams in all conferences?
Have to think this would be just the rich getting richer. And no one wants to be the tail end of tha virtual league.
So... UCONN didn't understand that fielding a competitive football program was the key to being in a competitive conference? Blaming others for your problems usually results in you taking no action to fix your problems.
