Elgin: Play difficult schedules

[Khan4Cats]

It's sad that the conference has had to resort to bribery to get teams to schedule up at all...

I agree. Instead of bribing teams to schedule up, there should be a penalty for scheduling down-unless those games are part of a tourney that gets you a shot at some big boys. Schools want home games at all costs-make it cost a little, they'll make it up in tickets and concessions. Use the conference money where it will improve all like upgrading officials, for instance.

[BirdmanBB]

It's funny to me that it is the Redbird fan who opposes rewarding the best teams and those who play difficult schedules. I say take it a step further and let a team keep 50% of their NCAA units and let those who have never contributed to the league but keep sponging off of those who earn the money fend for themselves.

Damn Straight. A deal like that would likely keep us and many other valley teams at the bottom in the long run. Like JWA said, I think we are more painful about our teams scheduling than you are about it. We get it, it sucks. I would love for us to get better games, but that is neither here nor there when we are talking about this sort of incentive. You put this in place and we will be sponging off the league forever since it will be a factor in us and others being stuck at the bottom and right now, that would include SIU. Yeah....i'm sure Lowery wants to get an incentive to schedule better tournaments so SIU can get the casht they need to pay him off.

[Ali]

If you haven't read it yet, on The MVC Report (http://www.mvcfans.com) I offered an alternative idea to the financial incentives discussed by Elgin - just give the earmarked money to the best schools to buy better games or incentivize home-home or neutral sites games with BCS teams. Set aside 5-10% of the NCAA payout each year and make an investment in upgrading schedules which should pay off in the long run.

This makes a lot of sense but you'll never get some of the league bottom feeders to agree to give up some percentage of their NCAA take to help out those with better chances at NCAA time. I think UNI will be back at the top eventually, so it could help us and I'd support it.

[Khan4Cats]

Well it's fluttering around that the tournament UNI will be in next year will be an 8-team affair with 5 teams coming from the BcS conferences (two of the teams mentioned are regulars in the top 10) and three mid-major schools (UNI and two schools who have appeared in the Final Four in the last several seasons-well one officially and one no longer officially, I believe).

[valleychamp]

Well it's fluttering around that the tournament UNI will be in next year will be an 8-team affair with 5 teams coming from the BcS conferences (two of the teams mentioned are regulars in the top 10) and three mid-major schools (UNI and two schools who have appeared in the Final Four in the last several seasons-well one officially and one no longer officially, I believe).

Nope. That's impossible. Only Creighton and Wichita get invited to those tournaments.

[WSUbballer]

Well it's fluttering around that the tournament UNI will be in next year will be an 8-team affair with 5 teams coming from the BcS conferences (two of the teams mentioned are regulars in the top 10) and three mid-major schools (UNI and two schools who have appeared in the Final Four in the last several seasons-well one officially and one no longer officially, I believe).

Nope. That's impossible. Only Creighton and Wichita get invited to those tournaments.

Your shtick is getting kind of tiresome. Nobody said that, but I think it's safe to say those two have gone to a lot more of those kind of tournaments compared to the ones UNI has ended up with in the past.

I asked for your predictions in the "where will your team finish?" thread. Did you not see me ask that or did you just ignore it?

It's easy to pick apart predictions when you don't lay some down yourself.

[unipanther99]

Your shtick is getting kind of tiresome. Nobody said that, but I think it's safe to say those two have gone to a lot more of those kind of tournaments compared to the ones UNI has ended up with in the past.

is that really true?

Here is our recent exempt tournament history with the "major" programs we played. 2007-08 was the only year we didn't travel to one of these, and we hosted that year (McLeod Center was a year old).

I think it shows UNI has a fairly solid history of holding up our end with Elgin's request to play in exempt tournaments. Maybe WSU and Creighton's are better, but I didn't have time to research all of them. Please feel free to add them if you want.

2004-05: Las Vegas Classic - Played Cincinnati
2005-06: Las Vegas Invitational - Played Dayton and LSU (thanks, Khan)
2006-07: Basketball Travelers - Played Washington
2007-08: Basketball Travelers - hosted (UMass, Cal-Poly, NIU)
2008-09: Chicago Invitational - Played Marquette and Auburn
2009-10: Paradise Jam - Played DePaul and Boston College
2010-11: Las Vegas Classic - Played Indiana and New Mexico
2011-12: South Padre Invitational - Providence
2012-13: Atlantis - loaded field

[WSUbballer]

While you are right that UNI has played in a lot of exempt tournaments, they haven't exactly played BCS teams every year in them. And I would say the ones WSU has been to have been of higher caliber, higher prestige, in front of national tv audiences, and against much better competition:

2003-04: Paradise Jam: Played Boston College
2005-06: South Padre Invitational: Played Illinois
2006-07: Las Vegas Classic: Played New Mexico and USC
2007-08: Puerto Rico Shootout: Played Baylor
2008-09: Old Spice Classic: Played Georgetown, Siena, and Michigan State
2009-10: CBE Classic: Played Pittsburgh and Iowa
2010-11: Maui Invitational: Played Connecticut and Virginia
2011-12: Puerto Rico Tipoff: Colorado, Maryland/Alabama, Purdue/Temple/Iona/Western Michigan

Again, my main point was refuting valleychamp's sarcasm in saying that "only WSU and CU get into those types of tournaments". While partly true, I think WSU has fielded better than UNI in that department over the years.

[Khan4Cats]

Your shtick is getting kind of tiresome. Nobody said that, but I think it's safe to say those two have gone to a lot more of those kind of tournaments compared to the ones UNI has ended up with in the past.

is that really true?

Here is our recent exempt tournament history with the "major" programs we played. 2007-08 was the only year we didn't travel to one of these, and we hosted that year (McLeod Center was a year old).

I think it shows UNI has a fairly solid history of holding up our end with Elgin's request to play in exempt tournaments. Maybe WSU and Creighton's are better, but I didn't have time to research all of them. Please feel free to add them if you want.

2004-05: Las Vegas Classic - Played Cincinnati
2005-06: Las Vegas Invitational - Played Dayton
2006-07: Basketball Travelers - Played Washington
2007-08: Basketball Travelers - hosted (UMass, Cal-Poly, NIU)
2008-09: Chicago Invitational - Played Marquette and Auburn
2009-10: Paradise Jam - Played DePaul and Boston College
2010-11: Las Vegas Classic - Played Indiana and New Mexico
2011-12: South Padre Invitational - Providence
2012-13: Atlantis - loaded field

The 2005-2006 tourney also had us play on the road at LSU with Big Baby Davis. We won that game. And LSU went on to play in the Final Four that year.

We have played in our share of these tournaments and gotten quality opponents pretty much every year. This year it could easily be argued is our worst year in terms of competition in these events other than the year we hosted.

The nice thing for UNI is that we get to play Iowa and Iowa State every year. While they haven't been great teams recently, they are still regular BcS opponents that we have that other Valley teams (other than Drake) do not get the chance to schedule without going to these events.

I think Elgin's point is that is important for Valley teams to go out and get into these tourneys to have a chance at the big boys if they refuse to schedule us otherwise. Right now the strategies of holding out for home and homes or late buy type games have not been getting us what we need as a league.

Wichita State has been able to get into some of these upper tier tourneys. I don't recall what Creighton's schedule of tourney's has been. The "Dale Howard Classic" should not be considered a prime example of a quality MTE. It is nothing more than an attempt to get Iowa or Iowa State a neutral court game in Des Moines.

Of course all of these arguments are still moot if we don't go out and win the games we get.

[dannyobyrne]

Under Altman, Creighton's list is actually pretty terrible. I, for one, assumed we were having trouble getting in these types of tournaments, but it would now seem Dana just didn't want to play in them, which is absolutely inexcusable. Remember in 07-08 when we were in the Vegas Thanksgiving tournament -- with a field that included North Carolina -- and he backed out so that he could take his young team on a foreign trip. We were in the bad Vegas Tournament (Christmas one) the following year. Also in the recent past, we had been in the little brother Hawaii tournament (not Maui). Altman set up the crappy MTE with Iowa State last year, and I would think it might have been a little too late for Mac to get anything going for this year, hence the crappy Iowa MTE. Next year we're in Vegas over Thanksgiving -- Wisconsin, Arizona State -- and the following year in Anaheim, two top-notch tournaments that we didn't even sniff in Dana's last 10 years.