Final RSCI rankings out. Ayo to #30 from #24. Big 10 with a huge number of 18 players on final list. THT @ #47.
https://sites.google.com/site/rscihoops/home/2018-final
https://sites.google.com/site/rscihoops/home/2018-final
Illinois Hoops Recruiting Thread (May-June 2018)
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Romeo Weems to Depaul.
Slightly related, if UIUC was in Chicago (or a suburb of) how much better/worse does the hive mind think recruiting would be?
Just WOW!! DePud willing to get very gray in order to fill that new arena. Makes one wonder about JCL.
Meh, sour grapes. If a top recruit was committing to us, we'd be raving on how great job our coaching staff was doing.
This is Tim Anderson (Depaul assistant) and his connections. Very prominent figure in AAU and founder of Ground Zero Training that regularly trains HS, college, and professional athletes and players, many in preparation for the NBA draft.
FeelYourPaign
- So Cal
seems like a really great kid.Meh, sour grapes. If a top recruit was committing to us, we'd be raving on how great job our coaching staff was doing.
This is Tim Anderson (Depaul assistant) and his connections. Very prominent figure in AAU and founder of Ground Zero Training that regularly trains HS, college, and professional athletes and players, many in preparation for the NBA draft.
You got to root for kid that passes up Izzo for Depaul
https://www.freep.com/story/sports/2018/05/21/romeo-weems-new-haven-basketball-college/628361002/
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If he ever plays for the coach he's just committed to, DePaul has bigger problems.
Can someone explain to me how Jean Lenti Ponsetto has kept that job for so long?
They don’t really care about the program.
Someone tell Romeo
It’s not going to work out for DePaul. Times have changed and this isn’t the teams of Ray or Joey Meyer. That arena isn’t getting filled until the team is better and that team isn’t getting the talent with their current support levels and all they have to compete with.
Meh, sour grapes. If a top recruit was committing to us, we'd be raving on how great job our coaching staff was doing.
This is Tim Anderson (Depaul assistant) and his connections. Very prominent figure in AAU and founder of Ground Zero Training that regularly trains HS, college, and professional athletes and players, many in preparation for the NBA draft.
Tim Anderson=Tugs Bowen AAU coach.
You gotta think some well regarded administrator would be really excited to sink their teeth into that challenge. You've got this cool, decorated history, an amazing city, and in terms of an arena and the recent history a totally blank canvas to work on. Gotta hire the right coach for the on-court part of it of course, but they have uniquely broad questions to answer upstream of that. Who are they? Who should their fans be? What does their history mean to the program now? What's their relationship to the local high school scene?
As an Illini fan, I am happy to see them never be able to take it out of first gear. They could hurt us in recruiting in a way Loyola never will. But as a Chicagoan it's embarrassing.
City schools without football are at a major disadvantage given the current college sports dynamics, and many once prominent programs like DePaul, St. John's, Georgetown, etc. have really fallen from the limelight for a reason. Villanova is the lone survivor, and despite the amazing job Jay Wright has done, they still face a tough outlook moving forward. There is no real business model IMO. Sooner or later they will all move to obscurity.
Administrative decisions at DePaul with JLP have been mediocre but it would take a lot more than just hiring the right coach. They have made a major push in the HS/AAU scene with the hiring of Heirman/Anderson but the longer term outlook remains bleak.
I'll take the over on that vision of the Big East's future.
This made me laugh really hard. Thanks RRI !!
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I agree that the Big East will never get as lucrative a TV package as football conferences in terms of dollars per school per year. I don't follow the connection from no football to 'no real business model' and 'obscurity.'
I believe that splitting away from the football schools was a very smart move. They shed a lot of very weak basketball schools in the split (and then added Depaul??), increasing the value of their basketball rights. The basketball only schools will likely get paid much better in the new Big East than if they had stayed in the old combined football/basketball Big East.
The sagarin conference numbers from last year shows how big a difference there was in AAC vs BigEast teams.
1 85.35 BIG 12
2 84.03 ATLANTIC COAST
3 83.84 BIG EAST
4 82.89 SOUTHEASTERN
5 82.65 BIG TEN
6 79.78 PAC-12
7 77.26 AMERICAN ATHLETIC
For comparison, the Mountain West is roughly 6.5 points ahead of the Ivy League.
'They should add football.' Are you sure? A lot of the smaller division I schools don't have football programs. Many closed them for financial reasons. Those that do mostly struggle; barely surviving on the cupcake money. The Big East schools are mostly 5-8k students. Northwestern, a similar school, used to give tickets away to try and make the stands look non-barren. Few attended, even for free. No one cared.
But of course they also don't have football expenses. And they sponsor fewer sports in general.
These are leaner and meaner athletic departments, generally with pretty wealthy, loyal, and local donor bases. And they're somewhat insulated in the facilities arms race by the fact that so many of them play in NBA arenas. (Or the gleaming new arenas at DePaul and Creighton. Or an iconic Wrigley Field-like venue at Butler.)
And in terms of monetizing the rights to view their games, they know exactly what they are and what they're selling and it's a tight, very appealing package with an obvious built in audience. And they're not currently gorging themselves on the empty calories of cable subscription fees. If they have to go to an over-the-top streaming type model they will do very well.
The only thing that has really hurt them is not having the ESPN megaphone anymore.
Can they get UConn back somehow?
Totally agree with everything you said, except for your usual cable subscription fees alarmism. Even if the Big 10 and SEC are temporarily "gorging themselves," it's going to be very difficult for other conferences to catch up, because those tens of millions of extra dollars are being invested into all of their sports programs. And if/when that revenue stream takes a major hit, they will still make more than the others. The gap just may not be as large.
And UConn is going to fight until the end to get into a "power five" conference. They see themselves as an ACC or B1G school. If they wanted to join the new Big East, they would have done it already.
skyIdub
Winged Warrior
What's up with Braun?
It is "We Will Wndnesday"
FIFY
Without football all these schools are at a huge disadvantage. There is no real business model as far as revenue, audience expansion, conference negotiating power, TV contracts, overall athletic budget, etc. All the things that are happening, including conference realignment is driven primarily by football and football/basketball synergies. There is no coincidence of the demise of Depaul, St. John's, Georgetown, etc. They may have the occasional good season, like many other schools including mid-majors will have, but the outlook given current dynamics is definitely bleak.
You can see in their efforts to attract coaches, recently with Georgetown, previously with DePaul and St. John's. It is getting harder and harder to attract coaches, for what it used to be very attractive jobs. They can't compete with for the coaches in high demand.
Also, the statement that "splitting away from the football schools was a very smart move" is incorrect. That is not what happened. It was the strong football/basketball school's that broke away for more lucrative opportunities, leaving the basketball only schools with no choice other than to bundle together as opposed to partnering with mid and low majors. The leaving of the strong football/basketball schools left them in no man's land.
I don't think that's correct. I'm pretty sure that the basketball-only Catholic schools broke away first, although I think they could see that a split was inevitable, eventually.
https://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytim...rt-breakaway-for-big-east-basketball-schools/
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