The Official Big East is Poverty Thread | Page 6 | The Boneyard

The Official Big East is Poverty Thread

ZooCougar said:
SMH at that article.

The football schools aren’t the ones who left. It was the Basketball schools. Specifically the Catholic 7.
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It's amazing how many people have forgotten the fact that we kept the name because they left us, and then they had to pay us $25 million each (with USF and Cincy) for the right to be called "The Big East"...
 
ecasadoSBU said:
The conference has notably regressed since 2020 in its production of NCAA bids and in the conference rankins. But in the key formative first 5 year period (2014-18) the league did a great job sending over half of its team to the NCAAs.

For some reason that decline in the league coincides with the arrival of Connecticut. I wonder if the rise and dominance of UCONN has in a way adversely affected the rest of the league. Or maybe the cause of the decline is due to the national landscape (NIL, $$$, Football conference consolidation)?

Whatever it is I hope the next commissioner can successfully navigate the Big East through this difficult NIL/football-led era.

I don't expect the Big East to ever again be the #1 NET conference at this point. I think it would be extremely difficult for the league to pull that off and requires vast amount of resources. But I do hope the league can compete for that #3/#4 spot year after year which is still pretty darn good. I just don't want the league to be locked-in into the 5th spot.
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UConn has had a very good run. It only lost 2 conference games in 2023-2024 so Big East bubble teams were certainly affected by UConn's success. I don't know if the NET rankings take those losses to UConn into account as much as they should, or if the Big East teams happened to drop off.
 
uconnyankee said:
Not sure she deserves fan fare. Big East is still weak and its stature has fallen against other BB leagues. The league needs a visionary that can take advantage of the leagues assets, which Val did not do.
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What assets are these?
 
uconnyankee said:
Let’s be honest. It’s still poop.
3 bids to tourney with 2 in same region is not ‘Power’….
Anyone that thinks this league without UConn is vastly different from A-10 is delusional.
Sure Nova, G’Town and St Johns have history. But it’s not translating to today. Only St Johns is actively competing today.
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Nova isn't actively competing today? They made a bad hire and now with their new coach they were back in the tournament in his first season and they have a top 10 transfer portal class for next season. Two of the last 10 national championships and another final 4 in 2022.

Did you throw dirt on UConn and bury them when they missed three straight tournaments and would've missed a fourth straight had Covid not cancelled the tournament?
 
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Interesting thread, evidently Xavier fired their new enrollment head. Sounds like a dysfunctional situation.🙃
 
dd356 said:
Interesting thread, evidently Xavier fired their new enrollment head. Sounds like a dysfunctional situation.🙃
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There was an article link within the comments that had this interesting yet alarming tidbit:
Xavier’s current freshman class was not what the university had hoped for, with enrollment coming up more than 200 students below the goal of 1,000. However, university officials are open about this struggle along with their efforts to correct previous shortcomings with the upcoming class of 2030.
...
Additionally, Xavier’s retention, or the percentage of students who continue with their education at the same institution from their first to second year, had dropped to as low as 77.5% in the fall of 2024. Similar institutions such as University of Dayton, Butler University, Loyola University Chicago and others tend to sit between 87% to 92%.
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Having what amounts to 3 out of 4 students return is pretty alarming for a school the size of Xavier.
 
Hoophound said:
I’m not really sure she deserves credit for Jim Calhoun, Jay Wright, Kevin Ollie and Dan Hurley, but I I’ll say, I’m glad the Big East is still a national player. I love it and it brings back so many great memories for me.

The next commissioner needs to have more forward thinking and he/she needs to be aggressive and outspoken. The new commish also needs the refs to be clear, if they keep trying to kill the golden goose, they will be the turkey.
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brett yormark for Big East commish!
 
dd356 said:
Good luck with that though. Getting payoff on investments like that are long term. In fact, I would bet that is a net negative cash wise. Pricing tuition for a never cherry popped med school when you are already out of market on undergrad rates isn't going to be pleasant. Ohio State and Cincy have long well established and well regarded medical programs. Who and how many you get in that pickle is anybody's guess, but even getting instructors won't be cheap or simple. What's interesting is that during Xavier's slide, Osu and Cincy have grown their enrollment fairly significantly while making a lot of campus improvements unrelated to academic programs. Nowadays with social media, et. al the bigger schools I think are at an advantage just from a social standpoint. Kids want to be were the action is.
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respectfully, med school isn't "kids".
aspiring doctors are not looking for social media/greek life/college gameday vibes.

They are looking for quality, academic rigor, prestigious faculty in their desired specialization, and connections to the right hospitals & health systems.

Case study: Hofstra University cancelled their FCS program in 2009 to divert that money toward beefing up their STEM programs because they knew where the money was. They have since upgraded their engineering school, and founded their med school which is allied with Northwell Health on Long Island, one of the most powerful hospital networks in the US.

I don't believe Xavier's med school plans has any bearing/effect on the basketball program's prospects, except to say they wouldn't be investing in such a costly endeavor if they didn't have a plan in place to attract the talent, who again, doesn't care about undergrad kid priorities.


EDIT - i may have misunderstood the comment and the "kids" reference is indeed referring to just getting undergrad numbers up at XU. If that's the case, then yes they need to pander to what "kids" want.
 
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Jetskies said:
aspiring doctors are not looking for social media/greek life/college gameday vibes
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Excuse Me Wow GIF by Mashable
 
Jetskies said:
Case study: Hofstra University cancelled their FCS program in 2009 to divert that money toward beefing up their STEM programs because they knew where the money was. They have since upgraded their engineering school, and founded their med school which is allied with Northwell Health on Long Island, one of the most powerful hospital networks in the US.
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Yep, and that was a school that had some success getting rank in the lower divisions and sent some of their players to the NFL (Wayne Chrebet, Dave Fiore [good guy when I knew him], and Lance Schulters).
 
RuffRuff said:
Similar to last season. Rothstein has 2 BE teams in his top 30, 2 more in his top 45 (Nova/PC).

It’s between P4 and mid major.
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Yeah. But the conference did well in the portal. Idk. I see UConn, SJU, PC and Nova all having very legit top 25 talent. I haven’t even considered who else might have good talent. There may be others.

It’s all guessing right now. These teams are being slapped together. I will continue to bet on the coaches more than the players and the Big East has some very good coaches. The 4 above in particular (I believe in Willard more than others).
 
Hoophound said:
Yeah. But the conference did well in the portal. Idk. I see UConn, SJU, PC and Nova all having very legit top 25 talent. I haven’t even considered who else might have good talent. There may be others.

It’s all guessing right now. These teams are being slapped together. I will continue to bet on the coaches more than the players and the Big East has some very good coaches. The 4 above in particular (I believe in Willard more than others).
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StJ doesn’t feel nearly as good. PC saw plenty go out, as did Nova. It’s hard to know what they’ll be. I do like Hodgson. If I look at the top 100 of the portal, it’s a wash - talent going in is same as going out. The BE may have picked up some 100+ talent.

Xavier will definitely be better. It’s a low bar for the BE - which is getting a bid.

It’s a league with zero juice at all. There are no future NBA players, no 5 stars. Its ceiling outside of UConn is winning a game or two in the tourney.
 
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RuffRuff said:
Similar to last season. Rothstein has 2 BE teams in his top 30, 2 more in his top 45 (Nova/PC).

It’s between P4 and mid major.
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Big East won 44% of its non-conference games against the other majors last year. Only one other “mid major”, the A10, won over 25% of its games against the other majors, as you define them.

Half the ACC isn’t trying, so the odds are pretty good the Big East is at least better than the ACC next year.
 
RuffRuff said:
StJ doesn’t feel nearly as good. PC saw plenty go out, as did Nova. It’s hard to know what they’ll be. I do like Hodgson.

Xavier will definitely be better. It’s a low bar for the BE - which is getting a bid.

It’s a league with zero juice at all. There are no future NBA players, no 5 stars. Its ceiling outside of UConn is winning a game or two in the tourney.
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That’s fair. I do think the Big East is going to have a renaissance. There’s just too much good coaching.

As we saw with the SEC this year and the B1G for the last 25 years, preseason hype is given not earned.
 
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