Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="tzznandrew, post: 4740690, member: 168"] I'm absolutely not changing definitions. A successful program makes the tournament regularly and makes deep runs. Regular trips to the second weekend, and some Final Fours. You aren't successful if you had a short run of success and then don't do anything for 20 or 30 years. Virginia is a bad example here. They were a solid program in the 1980s (2 and an E8), but basically irrelevant before and mostly after. They weren't a strong program by any means. They just hired a great coach. Until Bennet, they were very much akin to mid-1980s UConn—a stronger history because of those 30 year old runs, but essentially a mediocre program. By this I mean that it was the coach that elevated the program rather than vice versa. Georgia Tech had a solid run of tournament appearances from 1985-1996. Before then, they were only in 1 NCAA tournament [B][U]ever[/U][/B]. In that run, they made 1 Final Four, and 3 more S16s. If they kept that up, that's a good program! But, ummm... they haven't. That got blown out in the 2004 championship game and haven't made the second weekend since. I don't think 9 years of relevance (without a title!) and a blip is much history, frankly. Certainly history didn't start in 2015, but it didn't end in 2004, either. Or are we supposed to pretend San Francisco and CCNY are great programs? [/QUOTE]