2021 MBB coaching carousel thread

Summit, Horizon, MVC, OVC, those leagues are all Greek to me.

 

Johnson hire is a big #OneofUs (he’s from Minneapolis and played and coached at Minnesota). He also is the only Black head coach or administrator in the athletic department, which is good because they’d been raked over the coals in the Strib for that recently.

That said, he also has no head coaching experience and appears to be coming cheap for an athletic department that has big pandemic related revenue problems. Feels like a very low ceiling hire unless he’s a big diamond in the rough.

 

Now that UConn has re-entered the Big East and rendered its Catholic- and private-school exclusivity moot, VCU would make a heck of a lot of sense to be a 12th Big East team (although the Siegel Center, a great venue, is on the small side).

 

I like the idea of Loyola as the 12th team (assuming you couldn't pull Wichita State out of the American Athletic Conference) so you can split the teams East/West and have an 18-game conference schedule (your division home-and-home), the other division once, alternating three home / three away)

 

Is Dayton a consideration given its being private, Catholic and having a premier venue? Did Xavier make UD’s exclusion part of their entering the Big East? Or does UD’s academic profile not fit the conference?

It always seems like a sleeping giant given its the only game in town in a pretty sizable city, has one of the country’s jewels of an arena and provides logical rivalries to both Butler and X given the proximity and ease of travel for fans of both.

 

There have been whispers here and there of such a move, and it does make a lot of sense. There's a history (albeit brief) with VCU being in the same conference as Xavier and Butler. It's a program that throws most of its resources into men's basketball given the lack of football. Siegel is a great arena, seats just a shade under 8,000, which isn't all that smaller than Hinkle. It would be a huge step up in competition, though, because really only DePaul is a bottom feeder in the Big East. Everyone else is at least reasonably competitive. VCU has gotten used to 20-plus win seasons and replacing games against La Salle and Fordham with games against Marquette and Georgetown on a regular basis would probably cue down on that some. I wouldn't say VCU has outgrown the A-10, but there's a handful of really good programs in that league (VCU, UR, Bona, Dayton, Davidson, St. Louis, URI) and a bunch of middling dreck.

 

Conte Forum (also a great venue) seats like 8500 at BC and that sure didn't keep the school out of either the Big East or the ACC.

 

That's where I come in. Not sure if it is true - and maybe someone closer to the situation can confirm or deny - but I've heard that Moser's wife has some serious money, like "fuck you" money that will make things like getting a big-boy raise at Indiana irrelevant to his thought process.

 

As a fan of another A-10 team, there is wide speculation that that is the case. It would also border somewhat on market saturation in a way, although I agree with you that the prospect of regular Dayton, Xavier and Butler matches should override that. Then again, the Big East is particularly craven in prioritizing conference success over things like maintaining non-conference rivalries. (PC-URI got cancelled this year, and Dayton-Xavier have played one game since Xavier left the A-10, and that was a neutral court season tournament game in 2015.)

 

That might be true. From a friend with knowledge of the situation, when Moser was at UALR, the family also had a house/condo (can't remember which) in Chicago. He wasn't making two-house-payments kind of money at a mid-major like UALR.

 

The size of your television market is far more important than the size of your venues.

 

Alas for the ACC, the television market here for BC games once it left the Big East for the ACC may be large in theory, but it's microscopic in practice.