Halfway

[pawball]

UNI 9-0
MSU 7-2
CU 7-2
WSU 6-3
EU 5-4


Thots?

UNI's dominance is becoming disturbing to me. You mean to say no one can beat this team?????????????
They've already beaten CU and DU on the road, so their remaining challenging games are on the road against WSU,MSU, SIU and Evansville.

The good non-con RPI should help boost the chances of WSU or MSU getting an at-large bid for the NCAA as long as they take care of business at home and win at either SIU or Evansville, and win at Ind St and Ill St, of which none is guaranteed. In other words, MSU and WSU need to go 3-1 on the road and win the match they play against each other. Then I think they'd be shoo-in.

[JayJ79]

UNI's dominance (29-match conference win streak, if you count the MVC tourney) disturbs me less than Bradley's submissiveness (28-match conference LOSING streak, going on 29 unless they find a way to win at Illinois State on Sunday)

[45otseoj]

UNI's dominance (29-match conference win streak, if you count the MVC tourney) disturbs me less than Bradley's submissiveness (28-match conference LOSING streak, going on 29 unless they find a way to win at Illinois State on Sunday)

They didn't.

[JayJ79]

UNI's dominance (29-match conference win streak, if you count the MVC tourney) disturbs me less than Bradley's submissiveness (28-match conference LOSING streak, going on 29 unless they find a way to win at Illinois State on Sunday)

They didn't.

yeah, I wasn't holding my breath on that one.

[unipanther99]

Is Bradley still UNI's travel partner? I never understood how that made sense. Does that help UNI in some way? I really can't see how.

[valleychamp]

Is Bradley still UNI's travel partner? I never understood how that made sense. Does that help UNI in some way? I really can't see how.

Yes, they are our travel partner. And no, it doesn't help us.

IMO it hurts us because teams will be able to go pick up an easy win at BU while getting some rest for their starters before coming to UNI at full strength.

[JayJ79]

Is Bradley still UNI's travel partner? I never understood how that made sense. Does that help UNI in some way? I really can't see how.

the travel partners are arranged solely on geography, and have zero to do with merit/competitive balance.

Creighton, Drake, WSU, and MSU are the westernmost Valley teams, (with WSU and MSU, and CU and DU being closest together), thus they have those pairings.

In the east, the only team close to SIU is Evansville, and that leaves Indiana State to be paired with Illinois State. Even though ILS and Bradley are the closest of any two MVC schools, there isn't anyone left to pair with UNI, so they put BU and UNI together.

[unipanther99]

Is Bradley still UNI's travel partner? I never understood how that made sense. Does that help UNI in some way? I really can't see how.

the travel partners are arranged solely on geography, and have zero to do with merit/competitive balance.

Creighton, Drake, WSU, and MSU are the westernmost Valley teams, (with WSU and MSU, and CU and DU being closest together), thus they have those pairings.

In the east, the only team close to SIU is Evansville, and that leaves Indiana State to be paired with Illinois State. Even though ILS and Bradley are the closest of any two MVC schools, there isn't anyone left to pair with UNI, so they put BU and UNI together.

Wouldn't this make more sense: Evansville/Indiana State, Illinois State/Bradley, Southern Illinois/Missouri State, Northern Iowa/Drake, Creighton/Wichita State.

[JayJ79]

Wouldn't this make more sense: Evansville/Indiana State, Illinois State/Bradley, Southern Illinois/Missouri State, Northern Iowa/Drake, Creighton/Wichita State.

Using the NCAA's official travel distance calculator along with mapquest travel time estimates between the towns, and comparing those travel pairings with the existing pairings, I got:

SIU: (+207, 2:52)
BU: (-200, -3:08)
CU: (+174, 2:50)
UNI: (-116, -1:51)
ILS: (-105, -1:51)
MSU: (+42, :26)
WSU: (+39, :17)
INS: (-34, -:26)
DU: (-10, -:09)
UE: (+7, :08)

so, for example, for UNI, the trip from Cedar Falls to Drake is 116 miles shorter, and takes approximately 1 hour and 51 minutes less, than the trip from Cedar Falls to Bradley

Adding up all the differences, your proposed travel partner realignment adds a total of 4 extra miles, but saves 52 minutes of travel time. So essentially a wash when looking at overall travel time.

However, looking at the individual trips between travel partners (i.e. the distance a team has to travel overnight between their Fri. and Sat. matches):
under the current configuration, there are two long trips between travel partners: WSU/MSU (269 miles, 4:41) and BU/UNI (240 miles, 3:50)
under the proposed configuration, the two longest trips get even longer: SIU/MSU (311, 5:07) and WSU/CU (308, 4:58)

So I doubt they are likely to change.

[pawball]

Right now, the toughest road trip for everyone in the league is MSU-WSU, followed by CU-DU. Things change over time. Go back pre-Lambo at WSU, and that road swing wasn't so bad. Illinois St used to be near top of Valley when I first began going to matches. What makes The Valley so interesting now is that Drake, Evansville and SIU are much stronger than they used to be, and obviously that's added to the strength of the conference. I think Drake and SIU have capabilty of being very disruptive to teams that have been used to having their way over the next few years.