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Message: [QUOTE="Bone Dog, post: 4848378, member: 12088"] Isn’t the Big East a little like a Mid Major conference? I guess what I mean is the distinction is pretty hazy especially at the margins if it’s just a question of [B]quality of play[/B]. And there are a couple indications of this. The Massey chart [USER=4]@HuskyNan[/USER] posted above shows us on the cusp between the P5 and the AAC WCC and A10. Maybe these aren’t exactly Mid Major conferences either, but they also resemble them a little, too. The term “Mid Major” is vague enough but there are some sharper distinctions apart from quality of play. Automatic NIT invitations for one and how well funded the programs are in the P5 or P6 compared to the mid majors. From the point of view of quality of play alone, the case of Lou shows where the overlaps are. She was the MAAC PoY and slipped seamlessly into UConn’s lineup and became one of our best players. If the MAAC is a typical mid major, their PoY was practically “plug-n-play” in the Big East, that suggests the BE isn’t so different. There seems to be considerable overlap in quality of play. What Lou’s case really shows is that even the P5 conferences aren’t really all that different from the so-called mid majors either, viewed simply in terms of quality of play. Lou could have started or been a major rotation player on almost any team in the P5. In many games last season she was the player opposing coaches focused on stopping. She might not have had the impact on other teams that she had at UConn. But that would probably be because not every coach would know how to use her as well as Geno did. And Lou is in the W. Did her stint at UConn improve her play or just her visibility? I think it certainly improved her confidence, and it probably gave her access to better competition in practices and in games. She might not have been drafted out of the MAAC. But I suspect she’d have found a slightly different path to the W. Talent will out. [/QUOTE]

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