LOOKING AHEAD

[Rambler63]

Personally, I think the MVC needs to develop some swagger instead of constantly talking itself down.

Every damn year I read "One Bid League" and "Fire Elgin" posts. But frankly, if you look at a variety of metrics, this league is better than the A10, the WCC without Gonzaga, and sometimes the Mountain West. We ought to be talking UP our league instead of using the language the Shockernet board used to talk about the MVC. The MVC has "The Valley Runs Deep" theme to try to give ammo to people who want to take pride in the conference.

I don't know why it's such a chore to get people to speak well of this conference. We have great rivalries, historic basketball schools, a great footprint, very good attendance even at the schools that aren't doing so well on the court, and a very high ceiling. It's not hard to imagine what could happen if Loyola, Bradley, and some other team-- Missouri State? Drake? happened to catch fire at the same time. Obviously, the key thing would be getting some high profile OOC wins like Loyola vs. Florida last season, but it has to be done at more than one school....

Could there be too much focus on the conference season and not enough on non-con? Another thing to worry about is the basketball budgets.... Wichita State and Creighton had budgets in excess of $5 million several years ago. Today the highest budget is Bradley with $3.3 million. The lowest budgets in the league are lower than a lot of Ohio Valley and small major teams. We need to have the AVERAGE budget at around $3 milllion, which is still more than 25% less than the A10 average. That money can go into recruiting, scheduling, travel, scouting, consulting, strength conditioning, etc. It makes it much, much easier to directly compete with the middle ranks of the P5 conferences, the teams that get the at large bids that they don't deserve.

[VUGrad1314]

This man speaks truth. I talk up the Valley every chance I get and am sick over the fact that Valpo hasn't provided a better showing these first two years. I hope someday soon we'll be a credit to this conference. Why is it that people are so down on a league that has sent more teams to the final 4 in the last 5 years than the Pac 12 and as many as the Big 12. We're on--what--a 9 or 10 year streak of winning our first round games? This isn't a good conference it's a great one. It's far and away the best non-power basketball conference in the midwest. It rivals and even occasionally outranks the A10 and MWC as Rambler63 stated. Its programs all have incredible history and passionate fanbases. I agree that if we invested more in basketball we can get those at large bids. I will forever consider it an honor that my alma mater is a member of the MVC.