MVC targeting Valpo & Murray State to create 11 team league

[shocktheheart]

I can only speak for Omaha, but virtually no one in this city attends Maverick basketball games. I would anticipate the contributed attendance in St. Louis to be commensurate with Evansville.

Apparently you weren't in St. Louis last year. UE will bring plenty of fans when they are given a reason to do so.

What is plenty? 1,000? 2,000?

[Dawgbit]

So, Murray wins against Evansville by 2 points in both 2013 and 2014 while having NBA players on the roster and Evansville had Mockevicius and Balentine. Evansville won in overtime by 4 in 2015 and then by 32 points in 2016 with both teams in rebuild years. Looks like a pretty even matchup. It's a good rivalry.

http://www.ncaa.com/game/basketball-men ... -murray-st

Being equivalent to Evansville isn't a great way to ingratiate themselves to the MVC.

Oh I'm sure they would had "routinely" beaten Wichita State also.

[Cdizzle]

I'm not sold on UWM, HOWEVER, if we are going to add a 12th immediately and they can promise that they get their administrative crap in order I would take them over any other potential options.

Didn't the league just do this with LUC? Why not tell them there is a spot open as soon as they get their crap in order instead of letting them in and then hoping for the best?

[Bjhracer]

Some poster on here was curious as to my "vendetta" with Murray State. Let me help you out.

SIU quit playing Murray State in football about 10 years or so, based upon a decision by our A.D. after a game at Murray, where their players were absolute thugs. SIU had a running get a broken leg in that game. The Murray players were taunting SIU with "we f****d up your running back, great sportsmanship. Our AD at the time, who is now the AD at Colorado State said "enough". Their basketball program used to be coached by that snotty-nosed Mick Cronin, who routinely looked for cast-off thugs transfers (google Keith Jennifer) from other programs. Cronin is now at Cincinnati, speaks volumes. I have a friend who went to Murray on an athletic scholarship who had a run in with Mr Jennifer, who I have reason to believe may be in prison as we speak, so the way Murray runs their programs does not sit well with me. And there is no benefit to Wichita State leaving the MVC, you can try to pretty it up if you want. Instead of the league playing down to Murray and Valpo we should be striving to playing up to the likes of Wichita State, Creighton, and other members like SIU, Northern Iowa who have fielded very good teams that DEMONSTRATED POST SEASON SUCCESS.

Its nice you bring up things that allegedly happened over a decade ago. Murray runs a clean program, we graduate student athletes and the university does not condone or cover up and erratic behavior. Mr. Jenifer that you speak of did get arrested while here and was subsequently suspended. It was for possession of marijuana. Im sure no SIU players over the last decade has smoked pot. Guess you got one on us there. My inclination is that you just don't want to get beat by the Racers and don't want the healthy competition.

That's fine. Go ahead add UMKC and Omaha and see how fast your overall conference rpi drops. If you want multi bids and healthy competition the Racers are the obvious choice.

[jacksfan29]

Some poster on here was curious as to my "vendetta" with Murray State. Let me help you out.

SIU quit playing Murray State in football about 10 years or so, based upon a decision by our A.D. after a game at Murray, where their players were absolute thugs. SIU had a running get a broken leg in that game. The Murray players were taunting SIU with "we f****d up your running back, great sportsmanship. Our AD at the time, who is now the AD at Colorado State said "enough". Their basketball program used to be coached by that snotty-nosed Mick Cronin, who routinely looked for cast-off thugs transfers (google Keith Jennifer) from other programs. Cronin is now at Cincinnati, speaks volumes. I have a friend who went to Murray on an athletic scholarship who had a run in with Mr Jennifer, who I have reason to believe may be in prison as we speak, so the way Murray runs their programs does not sit well with me. And there is no benefit to Wichita State leaving the MVC, you can try to pretty it up if you want. Instead of the league playing down to Murray and Valpo we should be striving to playing up to the likes of Wichita State, Creighton, and other members like SIU, Northern Iowa who have fielded very good teams that DEMONSTRATED POST SEASON SUCCESS.

Its nice you bring up things that allegedly happened over a decade ago. Murray runs a clean program, we graduate student athletes and the university does not condone or cover up and erratic behavior. Mr. Jenifer that you speak of did get arrested while here and was subsequently suspended. It was for possession of marijuana. Im sure no SIU players over the last decade has smoked pot. Guess you got one on us there. My inclination is that you just don't want to get beat by the Racers and don't want the healthy competition.

That's fine. Go ahead add UMKC and Omaha and see how fast your overall conference rpi drops. If you want multi bids and healthy competition the Racers are the obvious choice.

Not my fight but I think its funny that a Murray St fan wants to talk about lowering the MVC RPI when you were 230 last year and 170 the prior year? In fact, if you look at Murray St over the past 5 years...

2016-17 230
2015-16 170
2014-15 64
2013-14 144
2012-13 113

Really not anything to write home about in there. The 64 is ok but followed by the 170 and 230? Not a good trend.

[Bjhracer]

Rpi is of course a flawed system. Yes the last 2 yrs have been bad years. Worst of the last 30yrs. Much of the actual rpi value though is based on the fact we currently play in one of the worst conferences in college basketball. OVC brings down rpi quite a bit.

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Aren't those like the 2 worst years in the last 30? Problem is clearly the coach. They were due for a bad hire after Gottfried/Cronin/Kennedy/Prohm.

There's no safer long term bet than one who's demonstrated success for 30 years.

[PantherU]

I'm not sold on UWM, HOWEVER, if we are going to add a 12th immediately and they can promise that they get their administrative crap in order I would take them over any other potential options.

Didn't the league just do this with LUC? Why not tell them there is a spot open as soon as they get their crap in order instead of letting them in and then hoping for the best?

If you're worried about our administrative problems, know this: I'm the reason you know about it. I'm the one who put a lot of that stuff out there. And I can tell you it's not going to be an issue.

The administrator who caused the 2014-15 APR ban entirely on his own has been gone for 3 1/2 years. They have put in all kinds of safe guards to make sure that never happens again. They've hired another person in compliance and the administrator overseeing men's basketball is not in that office. Before they were fired, the Jeter staff had rounded up most of the guys who hadn't graduated and got them there; we had a couple players who didn't even finish their eligibility with us come back and get their degrees here, to help the APR. For 2013-14, the last tournament year and before the ban was announced but after they found the problem, they finished with a perfect 1,000 APR score and unless I'm mistaken have done the same every year since.

The AD, while not my favorite person in the world and someone I'd rather see gone, got her reputation and the ire of a great many of our fans by how she handled the firing of Rob Jeter. The team won 20 games last year and had invites to all three postseason tournaments; she gave a poor reason for why she turned down the invitations, because she couldn't go public with the fact that she was lining things up to fire the coach. She also canceled the team's summer trip before the 2015-16 season for the same reason.

She's not a great person, but it doesn't take a genius to see she was doing it so she could fire the coaching staff after the season and replace them with someone she wanted. Does that help our case? No, but what it does show you is that the stuff that Amanda Braun did to get her reputation is entirely connected to firing a coach who is now gone. Her job is tied to the success of LaVall Jordan - she's going to do everything in her power to make sure he succeeds.

And even if you don't believe that, you should realize that picking the next member schools of the MVC based on one or two employees is foolhardy at best; AD's and coaches are stewards. What matters is the entire university, the fan base and the overall history compared to potential. You're not picking a school for the next five years, you're picking one for the next 25 years.

Some of you think the low attendance numbers this year have to do with a poor fan base. I think it's the opposite. Those fans spoke with their wallets in 2012-13 when the geriatric Andy Geiger moved the team to campus, and they're speaking now to how they feel about how the university handled the firing of Rob Jeter and his supporters in the athletic department. The university responded in 2013 by getting its ass back downtown; they learned their lesson with the Jeter firing as well.

This is a program that always sold out the Horizon League Tournament title game when it hosted, and always put 8k+ in for the semifinals. They have gotten 6k+ for conference opponents like GB, Valpo, Butler...they'll be able to sell fans on UNI and Bradley and Illinois State.

It should be noted that this season featured only four non-conference home games, with one of them being a non-D-I school. I've spoken with our current coaching staff; they are planning on highly elevating the non-conference schedule, and they told me that before Wichita State even left for the AAC so it's not something they're tying to a potential move to the MVC.

It looks like 4k is about where most of the conference is averaging. Milwaukee will get back to that in the MVC. I'm not worried about that. A winning Milwaukee will average 5k+, as it has in the past. I think a consistent 20-win MVC Milwaukee team's attendance floor will be about 4,500, and that's if I'm being conservative with my estimate. Once the Bradley Center is torn down and there's an entire athletic village in the block between the Panther Arena and the new Bucks stadium, I'm sure that floor is going to get higher.

As far as Loyola, I wouldn't expect us to need to do "administrative" clean-up because I would argue it already happened. If the MVC wishes it, I'd have no problem doing that so long as it's not ridiculous, which I have no reason to expect it to be. I don't know how the deal was with Loyola, but I know it would be nice to be in a conference with them again.

I wanna play Jesuit trivia. I wanna argue with Big Joe Rambler. I miss Sister Jean - which reminds me, I gotta get another Sister Jean bobble head because I seemed to have misplaced mine. She'd probably tell me I have to pray to Saint Anthony! I miss getting beers and burgers at Hamilton's before games (and I hear it's redesign as Bar63 is great).

I'm not familiar with the MVC's deal with Loyola. I just know they were our closest conference opponent (About an hour drive compared to 1 1/2 for UIC, 2 for GB and 2 1/2 to Valpo). I know that we won about 2/3 of the time after I got to school in 2005. I know we were a great fit for each other, just like we're a great fit with Valpo. And we will be a great fit for the MVC.

[ptownbraves]

http://thesouthern.com/sports/blog-mvc-roundtable-about-the-future-of-the-league/article_d2946ec8-144f-5675-ac7b-ae8cb7b94f99.html

The above link is a good blog by Todd Hefferman, SIU beat writer for the Southern. It contains the opinions of various MVC beat writers.

Thanks for the link, that was a good read. Definitely some good points raised by some of the people closest to the situation.

[uniftw]

I'm not sold on UWM, HOWEVER, if we are going to add a 12th immediately and they can promise that they get their administrative crap in order I would take them over any other potential options.

Didn't the league just do this with LUC? Why not tell them there is a spot open as soon as they get their crap in order instead of letting them in and then hoping for the best?

Yup, which is why I'm all for 11 until a 12th "proves" itself worthy and takes 3 steps a head of everyone else in the pack.