ESPN: Butler chatting it up with Atlantic Ten

[havoc]

Only way EVille leaves the Valley? Elgin and the have's start pushing bottom teams to commit more resources to men's basketball. If I were Wich St or CU, I would be pushing... As a Drake fan, I'd hope for more time...

UE recently moved into a new arena and is building a new practice facility. While these moves won't put them on quite the same level as the "haves," it is certainly a step in the right direction.

[title]

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/art ... /203200453

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As far as the A10 goes, only Xavier among member schools can consistently recruit Top 100/150 players on an annual basis like Butler can (and that was in the HL). When you can bring in 1-2 top 150 players a year and you're in a non-BCS league, you're going to be elite. 2013 already has top 100 Nolan Berry and from the look of it the other two spots are about 50/50 to go to another pair. Competition isn't exactly an issue. This move is mostly about aligning with peer (private) institutions.

[Coogles]

Will be interesting to see what happens next in the Horizon. Do they raid the Summit League for an IPFW or Western Illinois? Do they try to continue with nine schools?

Here's a theory that leads to this still helping the MVC (and its pretty lame):
If Butler leaves the Horizon and they don't add another baseball-playing team, the conference will lose its bid into the NCAA tournament (dropping to 5 baseball-playing members). Some of their schools might look to become associate members of the Valley for baseball, finally giving the MVC ten baseball teams

EDITED to add:

This story led to a top funny of the night. Someone suggested that the Horizon should add Chicago State to replace Butler. Talk about

The Horizon will undoubtedly add a program that will allow the conference to keep its bid for baseball. Adding Oakland accomplishes that and makes perfect sense geographically and competitively with the other conferece schools. The Summit hasn't exactly been a shining example of stability and Oakland would love to cut down on travel for its sports teams. Loyola, Valpo, and Detroit would be the only private schools left, but there's really nowhere for any of them to go barring expansion of the MVC or some miraculous call from the A10 somwhere down the line.