Please get us out of the American conference!

[veryolddog]

Don't worry. Next year you will see more losses than you have seen in a long time. Perhaps these losses will season the team to come to the tournament. Might even see its first loss to USF next year. Baylor might even want to play UConn again.

 

[HoopsFan21]

Don't worry. Next year you will see more losses than you have seen in a long time. Perhaps these losses will season the team to come to the tournament. Might even see its first loss to USF next year. Baylor might even want to play UConn again.

We're playing at Baylor next season.

 

[Sifaka]

OK. I'll play.

Fact #1— UConn has been in the AAC during each of the last four years.

Fact#2— During those four years of AAC membership, UConn WBB has won
two national championships, and has lost two semi-final games by a single, overtime basket.

Fact#3— No other WBB college team has come close to that level of achievement.

Conclusion: AAC membership, for those prone to obtuse confusion of causality with coincidence, has had a determinative effect on revised Brazilian orthography
and frog mutations.

Brickbats invited.

 

[UConnCat]

We're talking regular season results and the old Big East, not FFs and the current disaster called the national conference landscape. Try to keep up....

The same 3 teams made the FF when they were in the old Big East a few years ago. You need to keep up or maybe stick to talking about the UConn boys.

 

[Confident Carl]

Worst thing that could have happened to UConn women's (and men's) basketball. Zero intensity & rivalries and gives us a false sense of confidence. In no way does it get the players ready for stressful FF games. Well, some say UConn plays a tough out of conference schedule. They do, but they occur mostly in the beginning of the year & feels more like glorified exhibitions than anything else. Again, it doesnt get the team ready for stressful FF games.

Wicked poor excuse! After this year the Red Sox will be saying please get us out of the American too!

 

[HuskyBandDad]

O. M. G. This thread.

 

[cferraro04]

It should be noted that the premise of the OP is that by getting out of the AAC that UConn would be better prepared for adversity, however, using the same premise that would also better prepare the teams in our "future new conference" as well, thus leaving no guarantee that the OP's goal would be accomplished by such a move.

 

[Confident Carl]

Don't worry. Next year you will see more losses than you have seen in a long time. Perhaps these losses will season the team to come to the tournament. Might even see its first loss to USF next year. Baylor might even want to play UConn again.

This type of disposition makes Geno want to pull his hair out. Two OT losses by highly motivated, talented teams on buzzer beaters and the world is coming to an end. Any team in the country would trade places with us in a New York minute.

 

[MD#12Fan]

Come on guys! The AAC is a good conference! No it's not! Yes it is! No it's not!
Do the math! Pick a season in the Big East and count the big conference games that UConn played. Then compare it to a season in the AAC. If you count USF, there are two "competitive" conference games for UConn. Do the frickin' math!
The AAC is a joke! Frankly it's not fair that UConn has to point toward the Final Four every year. Every other team in the country gets the challenge and satisfaction of winning their conference regular season and then conference tournament.
The OOC games UConn plays are great but we're talking apples and oranges. First of all, those games in November are meaningless. Teams are learning about themselves.
It reminds me of Gonzaga on the mens side. From New Years to March, worthless league games!
Watch the 30 for 30, "Requiem for the Big East" if you need to be reminded of what a great conference means! Look at Duke's schedule and count how many big conference games they played. Not even counting UVA, do you think NC St or Wake at home against Duke or UNC are big games? It's a cross between war and religion. UConn gets Temple and Cincinnati! Barf.
Now the solution to the problem is another story. We know football determines everything. But at least admit that there is a problem! Even a subtle difference like playing Villanova versus playing Temple in Philadelphia. One is a traditional rival, the other is not.

 

[Charliebball]

Worst thing that could have happened to UConn women's (and men's) basketball. Zero intensity & rivalries and gives us a false sense of confidence. In no way does it get the players ready for stressful FF games. Well, some say UConn plays a tough out of conference schedule. They do, but they occur mostly in the beginning of the year & feels more like glorified exhibitions than anything else. Again, it doesnt get the team ready for stressful FF games.

Don't worry, judging by next year's out of conference schedule there will be plenty of stress and several possible losses............perhaps losing a game or two would be a good thing for this team..............going undefeated in the regular season doesn't seem to be particularly beneficial to anything other then Geno's all time winning percentage............

 

[jonson]

What matters is how many teams you play that have a realistic chance to beat you if you are having an off day and they are playing lights out. The more games you play against this sort of competition the greater the odds that this sort of scenario will manifest itself.

This seems to me the essential point. It may very well be the case that, if UCONN were in a stronger conference, their record would not be all that different from what it's been in the AAC. And, as has been pointed out numerous times, the team won 4 straight national titles while playing in their current conference. But . . . as for the latter, those teams were led by a truly transcendent player and--if not for all 4 championships, at least for the final 3--would likely have been just as successful no matter what the context.

To me, the strength of conference argument is much more pertinent to a team like this one--that is, a team with a number of very good/excellent players but no Diana, or Maya, or Stewie. This kind of team would, I believe, benefit greatly from having to go through a conference grind in which there are a number of teams that might beat you if you play badly vs. playing in a conference where losing just doesn't seem a possibility.

Take the Pac 12, for example, the conference with which I am most familiar. A week after week Friday/Sunday schedule composed of home and away games against a number of teams that are well coached, have some talent, and play different styles (let's say, for example, Stanford, Oregon State, Oregon, UCLA and maybe even Arizona State, Cal, and USC this year) would in my view have gone a long way to exposing this team's weaknesses and so be a wake-up call, if not for the coaches (who probably don't need it), then for the players. That is, a conference schedule in which the team is scouted by coaches who are familiar with the program, are adept at identifying weaknesses and taking away what the team does best, who build and expand on what their peers have discovered earlier in the conference season, and so force a team (if it wishes to continue to be successful) to adapt and get better throughout the season. That's why a team can start the conference schedule looking like world beaters and end up with a string of losses as the conference season comes to a close. A situation like this is, to me, very different from playing a number of very good, even better, teams out of conference during the fall. So--even if the record of wins and losses would look just like the ones UCONN has had in the AAC, getting there would, I think, be a lot more challenging and, more important, provide a lot more information about what needs to be addressed by the time the NCAA Tournament begins.

 

[Longtime fan]

Worst thing that could have happened to UConn women's (and men's) basketball. Zero intensity & rivalries and gives us a false sense of confidence. In no way does it get the players ready for stressful FF games. Well, some say UConn plays a tough out of conference schedule. They do, but they occur mostly in the beginning of the year & feels more like glorified exhibitions than anything else. Again, it doesnt get the team ready for stressful FF games.

It is so true. And they are there because UCONN football is such a joke. Let's face it, there are no " world class " football players or women basketball players in Connecticut so, unless we can compete with teams recruiting in Florida, Texas and California, we are doomed. Our women's team is successful doing that, but the mens' teams are not. In fact, the men's BB team at UCONN is now a national scandal, with the coach fired, a new guy coming in, and all the committed players de-committing.

There was a time when both the UCONN BB men and the UConn women won a national championship. But they did not play in " puff" conferences against Division II or Division III talent.

Remember when games against Rutgers used to be a big deal? Now we get Tulsa.

UCONN women's BB is in an impossible position. Geno schedules as many OOC games against top teams, as is humanly possible But, due to conference obligations, most of those games come early in the season. As such, they are useful, but their competitive benefit does not sustain. Rather, UCONN gets forced to play 20 or so games ( including the tournament ) agains 8th graders. And idiotic, lazy commentators, get to
say, " UCONN has not lost an AAC conference game ever! They are 172 -0 ( don't focus on accuracy here )! Who cares? We beat no one. We could have done it with 3 against 5. I would like to break the thumbs of the next sports marketing commentator who references that AAC winning streak, as though they are revealing some meaningful insight.

The AAC wins are more like a long trail of garbage down main street, than a winning streak.

And no matter how hard the coaches and try to keep the players in focus for these games, nothing is gained and much, it seems, can be lost. So while other teams are battling and growing, UCONN is stuck in neutral, pretty much waiting for the time to pass and the real games to begin. And all it takes is to be " not game tough" by one point, to lose it all. And that has now happened in back to back seasons.

And don't tell me it doesn't hurt the players in some way. Overconfidence, boredom, dis-interest? At some point , those emotions are like a "weight jacket" during a workout. A toll is taken. Something diminishes. And in today's ( thankfully ) highly competitive women game, at the NCAA tournament level, that imperceptible damage can surface at the worst possible moment. Give Notre Dame 20 end-of-season games against SMU, or St. Mary's of the Mountains HS, and tell me how tournament tough they will be by the final four.

But there is nothing UCONN can do about it. That is the devils bargain.

And, in my view, it makes it much harder to win championships. No one gets a lot of pleasure , nor attains any real growth or development, playing against others who just can't do anything. That's why 8th graders play 8th graders, not high school seniors.

And that is why UCONN is trapped in hell. And it does hurt them. I am sure of it.

 

[UConnNick]

It is so true. And they are there because UCONN football is such a joke. Let's face it, there are no " world class " football players or women basketball players in Connecticut so, unless we can compete with teams recruiting in Florida, Texas and California, we are doomed. Our women's team is successful doing that, but the mens' teams are not. In fact, the men's BB team at UCONN is now a national scandal, with the coach fired, a new guy coming in, and all the committed players de-committing.

There was a time when both the UCONN BB men and the UConn women won a national championship. But they did not play in " puff" conferences against Division II or Division III talent.

Remember when games against Rutgers used to be a big deal? Now we get Tulsa.

UCONN women's BB is in an impossible position. Geno schedules as many OOC games against top teams, as is humanly possible But, due to conference obligations, most of those games come early in the season. As such, they are useful, but their competitive benefit does not sustain. Rather, UCONN gets forced to play 20 or so games ( including the tournament ) agains 8th graders. And idiotic, lazy commentators, get to
say, " UCONN has not lost an AAC conference game ever! They are 172 -0 ( don't focus on accuracy here )! Who cares? We beat no one. We could have done it with 3 against 5. I would like to break the thumbs of the next sports marketing commentator who references that AAC winning streak, as though they are revealing some meaningful insight.

The AAC wins are more like a long trail of garbage down main street, than a winning streak.

And no matter how hard the coaches and try to keep the players in focus for these games, nothing is gained and much, it seems, can be lost. So while other teams are battling and growing, UCONN is stuck in neutral, pretty much waiting for the time to pass and the real games to begin. And all it takes is to be " not game tough" by one point, to lose it all. And that has now happened in back to back seasons.

And don't tell me it doesn't hurt the players in some way. Overconfidence, boredom, dis-interest? At some point , those emotions are like a "weight jacket" during a workout. A toll is taken. Something diminishes. And in today's ( thankfully ) highly competitive women game, at the NCAA tournament level, that imperceptible damage can surface at the worst possible moment. Give Notre Dame 20 end-of-season games against SMU, or St. Mary's of the Mountains HS, and tell me how tournament tough they will be by the final four.

But there is nothing UCONN can do about it. That is the devils bargain.

And, in my view, it makes it much harder to win championships. No one gets a lot of pleasure , nor attains any real growth or development, playing against others who just can't do anything. That's why 8th graders play 8th graders, not high school seniors.

And that is why UCONN is trapped in hell. And it does hurt them. I am sure of it.

I hate to interfere with your AAC rant, but the Husky men won the 2014 NCAA title, and the Husky women won the 2014-2016 NCAA titles, all while members of the AAC.

You're looking in the wrong place if you think playing in a different conference would change anything for the women's team. I get that folks seem to want to blame someone or something for the two consecutive FF losses, due to the incredibly spoiled nature of our collective fanbase.

Even the men's team can succeed in the AAC, given the right leadership.

 

[tomcat]

And Uconn had sooo many conference losses back then.

#FakeNews

I thought that if there was one place where I would never seen the "fake news" BS, it would be the Boneyard. One reason is that politics is not allowed and folks, like it or not "Fake news" is nothing more than a political slogan, because without political context, it means absolutely nothing.

 

[Adios]

These schools are developing recruiting efforts comparable to lower end P5 schools, apart from USF: UCF, Tulane, Houston and SMU. Schools like Cincinnati and Temple would also have to allocate more resources to recruit better. The conference is slowly getting better. Would have been nice if Jose Fernandez could lead USF to wins (am not a fan of his).

 

[JellyBean]

OK. I'll play.

Fact #1— UConn has been in the AAC during each of the last four years.

Fact#2— During those four years of AAC membership, UConn WBB has won
two national championships, and has lost two semi-final games by a single, overtime basket.

Fact#3— No other WBB college team has come close to that level of achievement.

Conclusion: AAC membership, for those prone to obtuse confusion of causality with coincidence, has had a determinative effect on revised Brazilian orthography
and frog mutations.

Brickbats invited.

I liked this post because you dropped an obtuse reference. Well done.

 

[enigmatic]

Tell the football team to get better and do it on a consistent basis and maybe we can talk about getting a invitation to a P5 conference. My pick would be the ACC. But anyway, I dont know about the rest of the world but I like the direction the AAC is going as a whole. Mens BB got their fair share of teams in the NCAA tournament and look what UCF did in football with my Hawaii boy McKenzie Milton leading the way. Yes I agree the competition in WBB for our UCONN women isn't exactly the greatest at this point but we have to make the best out of it

 

[huskyrob1]

Worst thing that could have happened to UConn women's (and men's) basketball. Zero intensity & rivalries and gives us a false sense of confidence. In no way does it get the players ready for stressful FF games. Well, some say UConn plays a tough out of conference schedule. They do, but they occur mostly in the beginning of the year & feels more like glorified exhibitions than anything else. Again, it doesnt get the team ready for stressful FF games.

 

[socal613ws]

I mean unless they move to the SEC which has a 0.000 shot of happening cause of football, then idk where there would be such a huge advantage. SEC has Kentucky, Tenn, SC, Miss st so they would definitely be tested, but again not happening cause of football. Big 12 maybe if Cincinnati ever left the American they could be included but a lot of things would have to happen ie: leaving teams like Missouri a&m did last time

 

[willie99]

they won 4 titles as representatives of the AAC

they lost in the National Semi-Finals in OT on last second shots in back to back years

those are not problems, nobody can spin this thing in a negative way, they're awesome and they had another awesome year

the only problem I see here are people who think they have to win the national title every year, otherwise something is wrong with them.

 

[tomcat]

As to the principal argument here...
1. I would say that yes, UConn men and women have won national championships as part of the AAC. But there is absolutely no question that playing Tulane and SMU and Houston and for cryin' out loud, Wichita State and Cincinnati, not once but twice a year does absolutely nothing to help the team prepare for the tournament. Playing them once is punishment. Playing them twice is to descend into a lower level of Dante's hell.

2. Anyone who thinks that the Big East gauntlet wasn't harder than the AAC of today either was not there or just wasn't watching. Villanova was not a very tough team, year in and year out, but they had a style that forced good teams to really think hard about how to attack them. DePaul was DePaul -- tough and well-coached, especially at home. And speaking of well-coached, what about West Virginia? Mike Carey is a darn good coach and had some good years. And speaking of home, does anyone recall trying to play Rutgers at the RAC? It may not have been pretty, but it certainly was not easy, either. And, of course, Notre Dame and Louisville were part of it for a while as well. If you spend your in-conference time playing that group, one after another after another, you are better prepared than you would be otherwise.

3. No, it was not all salad days then, just as it's not all awful now. And like all great arguments, this one cannot really be answered, because we don't know what would happen if UConn were in a league that simply does not exist any more. The AAC may not hurt the other sports as much. You could argue that for men's basketball, the AAC is a reasonably tough conference. And from what I am told, you could argue that when it comes to football, what UConn plays is not really football, anyway. But for WCBB, the way the University played its cards way back when the leagues were shifting and forming was the worst possible outcome for WCBB short of abolishing the sport altogether. For that we can thank blockheaded administrators and egotistical sate leaders, except it's too late now, isn't it?

 

[willie99]

PS: the Big East was not a national power in women's basketball, people seem to be rewriting history too

4 straight titles out of the AAC, two losses in the national semi-final on last second shots in OT, and now the "team is not prepared" for the tournament

why? because they didn't win 6 STRAIGHT TITLES? Or would winning the title in only 5 out of 6 years qualify as being prepared. I just gotta know the answer to this question. Is 5 enough? Or is anything short of 6 a failure?

I also wonder why has UConn won more titles in those 6 years then all of the rest of the "prepared" world combined?

 

[BugsyCT]

Most of college sports prioritizes football over basketball. It's a money thing. Go figure.

 

[willingtonfan]

Tell the football team to get better and do it on a consistent basis and maybe we can talk about getting a invitation to a P5 conference. My pick would be the ACC. But anyway, I dont know about the rest of the world but I like the direction the AAC is going as a whole. Mens BB got their fair share of teams in the NCAA tournament and look what UCF did in football with my Hawaii boy McKenzie Milton leading the way. Yes I agree the competition in WBB for our UCONN women isn't exactly the greatest at this point but we have to make the best out of it

I hate to be the one to say this, as I would love us to be in the ACC, but it won't happen, and there is a reason. Our state's current US Senator and former attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, famously sued the ACC to block Boston College from leaving the Big East in 2003 to join the ACC, following Virginia Tech and Miami. There have been numerous credible reports that anger among ACC school athletic directors and its commissioner have been a primary reason for us being rejected when expansion of the league was considered. Given the legal costs incurred to defend the lawsuit (which never went anywhere -- school X in conference A has no legal right to have that conference continue to contain the same teams) the ACC would likely be unwilling to consider UConn for the foreseeable future.

 

[tomcat]

I hate to be the one to say this, as I would love us to be in the ACC, but it won't happen, and there is a reason. Our state's current US Senator and former attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, famously sued the ACC to block Boston College from leaving the Big East in 2003 to join the ACC, following Virginia Tech and Miami. There have been numerous credible reports that anger among ACC school athletic directors and its commissioner have been a primary reason for us being rejected when expansion of the league was considered. Given the legal costs incurred to defend the lawsuit (which never went anywhere -- school X in conference A has no legal right to have that conference continue to contain the same teams) the ACC would likely be unwilling to consider UConn for the foreseeable future.

Not to mention the fact that BC might have something to say about including UConn.