OSU President Gee's comments about UL...

[The Funster]

I think you've made some good points here, and I agree with you on the broad strokes. I'm not here to brag about UofL's academic profile with respect to UConn or any other school. Clearly, they have work to do but, I believe that they are taking steps to do so and, have made strides in that area of late.

Clearly the recent changing conference landscape has created opportunities for UofL, and they've been fortunate. That said, I believe that to a great extent you make your own luck. Louisville has worked hard as a school and athletic department to correct deficiencies and upgrade its profile nationally. As a result, they have been able to position the school as an attractive option to those conferences looking to add members - be it the BE in 2005, or the ACC in 2014.

As I've said numerous times here, UConn is a fine institution and I have always enjoyed watching its hoops programs - in fact, I'd say my favorite BE hoops team to watch not named Louisville. And I sincerely hope (and believe) that it's simply a matter of time before UConn is in the ACC. But, I'm not sure why it is you feel that Louisville supporters should hold their tongues or somehow feel sheepish about how or why the ACC selected UofL.

Would that have been your assessment to Husky fans, if it had been UConn who was selected?

I don't begrudge Louisville getting the ACC bid at all. Should Louisville fans be defending their school? Absolutely. Just not here. Over the last few years we've had a constant stream of CR winners coming here and alternately taunting, condemning or condescendingly offering their observations to us. Yeah, we're late to the FB but our short time here has seen us make strides that no one expected us to make in 10 years. We've continued to win titles in men's hoops. Our women's program is dominant. Uconn has other successful sports, too. In short, UConn wins. We've made great strides academically. Our only problem is that with each round of CR, the big wheel spinning has always stopped on a metric that did not favor our school at that particular time.

In all honesty, had UConn gotten the bid from the ACC instead of you, I may have stopped on your board once or twice to offer support but not returned. Visiting other teams board just ain't my style. Anyways, had you not gotten the ACC call, you'd probably be heading to the Big 12 along with Cincy.

You want to defend your school? Do it on your board. I'm afraid no one here wants to see you alternately whine and puff your chest out. Most of us here respect Louisville's recent athletic success. That doesn't mean we have to tolerate your antics here, though.

 

[upstater]

I guess Jurich must be a liar cause he said UCONN was essentially penciled in before UL made the late push. UVA and UNC must been lying when they said they wanted UCONN.

ACC is a desperate conference. They added commuter school because they are scared.

UCONN will end up in a better place sooner or later.

He actually said they were "penned" in, and a day later the UNC Chancellor said to everyone, "the decision had nothing to do with academics."

 

[pj]

This post sums up what everyone thinks of UConn fans. Adding Louisville only strengthened the ACC. If UConn had been added FSU and Clemson would've cut and run a long time ago.

You keep saying that and it's not true. Where would FSU and Clemson have run to? The Big 12? It's worse than the ACC on almost every metric except income. Travel to Big 12 schools would have been horrific compared to the ACC.

If UConn had been added FSU and Clemson would have made the same decisions they did, and so would ESPN.

The reality is probably that FSU had already decided it was sticking with the ACC and feared that adding UConn would cause the Big 12 to go to 14 with Louisville, Cincy, USF, and UCF. That would give them 3 major conference competitors within the state of Florida. By taking Louisville they forced the Big 12 to become more geographically extended with UConn if they wanted to go to 14 with an eastern division, making the expansion less attractive to Texas / Oklahoma / et al, and making USF and UCF more likely to remain stuck in a weak conference, since the Big 12 is probably their only possible upgrade. It was a strategic move by FSU.

The other possibility is that FSU tried to create a bidding war for themselves with the Big 12, in order to have leverage to extract more money from ESPN. If that's what happened, it might have worked.

 

[Marty Jackson]

Oh I dunno winning two BCS bowls in the last 6 years and a national title in basketball helps, not to mention averaging 50k for football with a God awful home schedule and 22k in a brand spankin new basketball arena that puts Gampel to shame. Want to compare AD budget/revenue? How about facilities? Big East championships since 2005? I'll let you choose.

As for football tradition, it's not really comparable. You guys were Division II 14 years ago. You've never had a double digit winning season since moving up. Your bowl record is 3-2. No BCS bowl wins. And a coach that cut and run for Maryland of all places. Louisville doesn't have a whole lot of tradition in football, but we've got a whole hell of a lot more than UConn.

You guys like to claim you have a share of the NYC market because it's "only" two hours away but don't kid yourselves. There are about 50 schools located within the same distance, do they get to claim NYC too? Is it divided up equally? How many people in NYC do you think will watch UConn battle Tulsa on a Tuesday night come 2014? Being located near a large TV market and delivering said TV market are two different things. If UConn delivered NYC you'd be in the Big 10 instead of Rutgers. Needless to say, you weren't.

So congrats on being a better school. I'm sure your future conference members will be amazed.

Funny... Are you now suggesting the sugar bowl and nc in bb were factors for being taken ahead of us?

 

[tzznandrew]

Lville since they joined the big east has been on a rip. the ad and the admin there get it. They took that upgrade and BCS connection and made it count. They did everything they possibly could. From football to soccer to baseball to bball. They win just like uconn wins. If you look at the big east since Lville joined I imagine both Lville and uconn are at or around the top in championships and national ships also. Lville was and is a fun school to be around because of that. Uconn loves to have good other sports and Lville brought it in that regard. The same can be said to a way lesser degree at Marquette. They came to the big east and instead of stinkin they went for it and really became a solid program. They put out pros and won games. Great coach hires etc....other big east teams sucked but those 2 came in a gave a poop.

Lville is brutal academics wise. Wvu bad without the top award ppl to boot. Wvu has a state identity they need to serve to a certain % of its population wise, I'm not sure Lville does or just has no choice based where it sits in the academics world not being a flagship.

I find it funny when schools rip uconn for the acc "passing us over". It's pretty simple to read and listen to understand what's going on with bc and the acc not wanting to take uconn until they have to. It is what it is. We all know that ESPN preferred Cuse and uconn and fsu's study showed wvu-uconn-Lville in that order for worth to the acc. It just came a time when fball had sucked in the acc for a decade and so the first flash in the pan they could see they had to grab. Then ESPN ran with it and pumped you guys because that's what ESPN does.

Every school that has moved to the acc from the big east over the years has gone down the drain. Bc sucked, Miami sucked and guess what Pitt and Cuse are going to continue to do? Vt has been ok. They lose the big game every year. The acc is about duke and UNC bball. You won't top those 2. Then the acc is about fake perception where they prop Clem and FSU on a sec level. I. FSU has been the school that never lives up to hype for a while now and Clemson got gang screwed by wvu not to long ago. The move was nothing more than the acc needing immediate perception to save itself in the cr world. It won't last as usual.

Uconn and Lville bball are the 7th and 8th best programs of all time. It's close. We are younger in a smaller time line but have done more or less depending on which stat you throw out there. It's not worth arguing over. We are literally the 2 best schools outside the 6 blue bloods. Instead we as a group with zona, MSU and fl should all be claiming we're the new bloods in a 2nd tier of schools or something. Fight a good fight, not a stupid one.

Based on how the acc sees things. There expansion list now has Cincy on top followed by temple, Memphis, USF and UCF. Uconn better just aim big.

This was a coherent, well-thought out, and interesting post. I enjoyed it.

I take it you hadn't huffed anything before posting?

 

[tzznandrew]

Ollie has proven to me he can take a roster with a decent amount of talent and lose 10 games. In Pitino's second year at Louisville he took a roster full of walk ons and transfers left over from Denny Crum and went to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Wanna know how many players on that team were drafted? 0. How many players on this year's UConn team will be drafted?

A depleted roster (only 10 schollies), with a number of regulars (Lamb, Oriakhi, Drummond, Smith) from the previous year and the title team, having left due to the team being barred from both the NCAA and the BE tournaments, was 19-7 (9-5) and up against #7 Georgetown before a string of injuries brought them to 20-10. All in all, not bad. I was impressed. They were an NCAA team were it not for ridiculous sanctions, and almost certainly will be again.

Pitino is a hall of famer. It's difficult to be one, and it's too soon to say definitively that Ollie will be one. But it's an auspicious start.

 

[cardsfan123]

Funny... Are you now suggesting the sugar bowl and nc in bb were factors for being taken ahead of us?

You're right, it's almost as ridiculous as suggesting academics play a major part in conference realignment.

 

[cardsfan123]

Uconn was not added because our profile is too much like other ACC schools. Our academics, basketball, and football profiles are similar to ACC schools.

You're 1/3. The ACC didn't want another Boston College, which UConn surely would've become had they been added. Basketball is clearly headed on a downward trajectory. Football is a joke. At least you can get a good degree at UConn. You've got that much going for you.

 

[cardsfan123]

A depleted roster (only 10 schollies), with a number of regulars (Lamb, Oriakhi, Drummond, Smith) from the previous year and the title team, having left due to the team being barred from both the NCAA and the BE tournaments, was 19-7 (9-5) and up against #7 Georgetown before a string of injuries brought them to 20-10. All in all, not bad. I was impressed. They were an NCAA team were it not for ridiculous sanctions, and almost certainly will be again.

Pitino is a hall of famer. It's difficult to be one, and it's too soon to say definitively that Ollie will be one. But it's an auspicious start.

Did Pitino have any more talent than Ollie last year? We had one lottery pick (Dieng) an early second rounder (Smith) and a late second rounder (Behanan). That's the difference between a good coach and a great coach, when you can win a title without overloads of future NBA players.

Strong had a record 0 players drafted from the Sugar Bowl team, the first time a school won a BCS bowl and didn't send anybody to the NFL. That shows how much young talent we've got, and how well coached they are.

 

[Dann]

This board has bird flu.

 

[BobbyPs Ghost]

I don't begrudge Louisville getting the ACC bid at all. Should Louisville fans be defending their school? Absolutely. Just not here. Over the last few years we've had a constant stream of CR winners coming here and alternately taunting, condemning or condescendingly offering their observations to us. Yeah, we're late to the FB but our short time here has seen us make strides that no one expected us to make in 10 years. We've continued to win titles in men's hoops. Our women's program is dominant. Uconn has other successful sports, too. In short, UConn wins. We've made great strides academically. Our only problem is that with each round of CR, the big wheel spinning has always stopped on a metric that did not favor our school at that particular time.

In all honesty, had UConn gotten the bid from the ACC instead of you, I may have stopped on your board once or twice to offer support but not returned. Visiting other teams board just ain't my style. Anyways, had you not gotten the ACC call, you'd probably be heading to the Big 12 along with Cincy.

You want to defend your school? Do it on your board. I'm afraid no one here wants to see you alternately whine and puff your chest out. Most of us here respect Louisville's recent athletic success. That doesn't mean we have to tolerate your antics here, though.

Wow, I wonder what your response would have been if I hadn't said that I like UConn and hope they get into the ACC? BTW, who's whining?

 

[tzznandrew]

Did Pitino have any more talent than Ollie last year? We had one lottery pick (Dieng) an early second rounder (Smith) and a late second rounder (Behanan). That's the difference between a good coach and a great coach, when you can win a title without overloads of future NBA players.

Strong had a record 0 players drafted from the Sugar Bowl team, the first time a school won a BCS bowl and didn't send anybody to the NFL. That shows how much young talent we've got, and how well coached they are.

A lot of time NCAA talent is different than NBA talent. UConn's 1999 title team had Rip Hamilton play in the pros. That's pretty much it (El-Amin was drafted in the second round and played a year, Voskhul bounced around a little).

Your title team (other than the horrific Ware injury) was healthy. It had a senior point guard who was 3rd-team All-BE. It was anchored down-low by a junior Dieng, a 1st-team All-BE player who won BE Defensive POY (and, if you hadn't noticed, UConn's glaring weakness was rebounding and interior defense, since they lost Drummond, Oriakhi, and Smith), and a junior Russ Smith, who was 1st-team All-BE and 3rd-team All-America.

UConn had Napier (who was injured for 3-4 games at the end of the year), who was 1st-team All-BE. They had a talented but still inconsistent Sophomore Ryan Boatright at the 2, a Freshman Omar Calhoun, and a Sophomore DeAndre Daniels playing the 4 for us (when he's really going to have to be a 3). Let's not talk about the 5 position. They also had almost no one off the bench to spell these guys.

This comparison of talent is ridiculous. Louisville was the favorite going into the tournament for a reason, and won for a reason. UConn was projected in the bottom half of the BE for a reason as well, an would have made the NCAAs were it not for the ban.

 

[upstater]

You're right, it's almost as ridiculous as suggesting academics play a major part in conference realignment.

As usual, you missed his point.

 

[upstater]

You're 1/3. The ACC didn't want another Boston College, which UConn surely would've become had they been added. Basketball is clearly headed on a downward trajectory. Football is a joke. At least you can get a good degree at UConn. You've got that much going for you.

I agree football is a joke. 4-4 against Louisville, and also beat Louisville on the road in Louisville's best season ever.

 

[The Funster]

You're 1/3. The ACC didn't want another Boston College, which UConn surely would've become had they been added. Basketball is clearly headed on a downward trajectory. Football is a joke. At least you can get a good degree at UConn. You've got that much going for you.

You are an ass. You probably knew that already but by this post you let everyone else in on your secret.

 

[The Funster]

Wow, I wonder what your response would have been if I hadn't said that I like UConn and hope they get into the ACC? BTW, who's whining?

My response would have been the same. If you don't like what a UConn fan says on a UConn board, why bother to come?

Ah right, you want us to validate you and if we don't you get in a snit.

Good luck.

Get lost.

 

[BobbyPs Ghost]

My response would have been the same. If you don't like what a UConn fan says on a UConn board, why bother to come?

Ah right, you want us to validate you and if we don't you get in a snit.

Good luck.

Get lost.

Interesting, I DO validate you and you STILL get into a snit.

I thought this was a sports board - guess I made a mistake.

 

[cardsfan123]

I agree football is a joke. 4-4 against Louisville, and also beat Louisville on the road in Louisville's best season ever.

Congrats. You beat us and still managed to have a miserable season (Western Michigan, really?) And it bought Pasqualoni another year of performing slightly below average. We should be thanking you actually.

 

[upstater]

Congrats. You beat us and still managed to have a miserable season (Western Michigan, really?) And it bought Pasqualoni another year of performing slightly below average. We should be thanking you actually.

Yep. It was pretty miserable. This is what I've been saying to you. It is beyond pathetic though that your best season ever includes a home loss to a miserable team, and a solid thumping from one of the laughingstocks of college football (Cuse) a team UConn has dominated. This shows that your so-called football hype is full of hot air.

 

[The Funster]

Interesting, I DO validate you and you STILL get into a snit.

I thought this was a sports board - guess I made a mistake.

Read you post. You want to poke me with a pointy stick with the whining comment and then trot out the faux outrage when I give it back. What can I say?

 

[specialisthusky]

This is pathetic. What happened to the intelligent thoughtful Ville fans that used to visit this board. These 2 remind me of UK fans back in 2011.

 

[Hoophound]

You're right, it's almost as ridiculous as suggesting academics play a major part in conference realignment.

Academics did play a small role in your addition to the ACC. They will play a big part in UConn going to the B1G.

 

[BobbyPs Ghost]

Read you post. You want to poke me with a pointy stick with the whining comment and then trot out the faux outrage when I give it back. What can I say?

Here was my post - in a response to another poster's comment - the majority of which, I agreed with.

"I think you've made some good points here, and I agree with you on the broad strokes. I'm not here to brag about UofL's academic profile with respect to UConn or any other school. Clearly, they have work to do but, I believe that they are taking steps to do so and, have made strides in that area of late.

Clearly the recent changing conference landscape has created opportunities for UofL, and they've been fortunate. That said, I believe that to a great extent you make your own luck. Louisville has worked hard as a school and athletic department to correct deficiencies and upgrade its profile nationally. As a result, they have been able to position the school as an attractive option to those conferences looking to add members - be it the BE in 2005, or the ACC in 2014.

As I've said numerous times here, UConn is a fine institution and I have always enjoyed watching its hoops programs - in fact, I'd say my favorite BE hoops team to watch not named Louisville. And I sincerely hope (and believe) that it's simply a matter of time before UConn is in the ACC. But, I'm not sure why it is you feel that Louisville supporters should hold their tongues or somehow feel sheepish about how or why the ACC selected UofL.

Would that have been your assessment to Husky fans, if it had been UConn who was selected?"

Where in this post - or any other - have I accused you of whining?

 

[BobbyPs Ghost]

This is pathetic. What happened to the intelligent thoughtful Ville fans that used to visit this board. These 2 remind me of UK fans back in 2011.

What are you talking about? Am I running UConn academics or athletics down? No, I am not. Have I stated that I like UConn sports and hope that you all get into the ACC or B1G whichever you all prefer more? Yes, I have.

It seems the sum total of my transgressions here include supporting UofL and saying that they aren't so bad when you guys talk about what an "underserving glorified commuter school" it is. Sheesh...

 

[The Funster]

Where in this post - or any other - have I accused you of whining?

Sorry, not playing word games with you.