AndShock wrote:SWOMO is an interesting case because my perception of them is so much different than reality. When I think of possible top-100 teams in the Valley for next season, SWOMO is really the only one that comes to mind and they weren't even in the ballpark last season.
I think next year is going to be really ugly for the Valley and it kind of hurts even more that it's happening Wichita State's first year in a new conference. Wichita State is gone and the Valley is going to slap itself with the reputation that they're horrible without Wichita State. I do think the Valley has the potential to be solid in a couple years, but at this point it does like we've all been saying that forever. I don't think the Valley will ever be a legit multiple-bid conference, which is just as much a product of the current college basketball landscape as it is the Valley not being good enough.
I think Medved will have Drake as a top 100 team in a few years, same thing with Wardle and Bradley. Give Muller a couple years to build back up. Moser seems to have a solid thing going. Jacobson is Jacobson. Valpo is Valpo. Half the conference floating around the top 100 is pretty respectable. The problem is that to get an at-large it seems like the conference needs to have 3-4 teams floating around the top 30. It's gonna take a perfect storm for that to ever happen. Looking at the Mountain West this year, I think it's totally reasonable to think the Valley might have those exact same numbers in a few years. The problem was that the MWC was getting 0 at-large bids this past year, even with a top 30 team.
Those predictions about who is going to be good will be very unpopular on this board. I agree with them.