(12-06-2017 04:55 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(12-06-2017 04:44 PM)ken d Wrote:  I was watching when Greenberg made that comment. I don't think it had much to do with money. He was speaking, I believe, about UConn's prospects for future success on the basketball court.

When UConn got left behind, and the AAC was trying to salvage/reinvent itself, one of the narratives I kept hearing was that UConn hoops was so strong it would be able to elevate the basketball fortunes of the other AAC members. That they were a national brand who was sure to remain that way post Big East. When I challenged that narrative, and questioned whether UConn could retain its lofty status on its own, I was dismissed out of hand by Husky fans.

My take was that Calhoun and being a member of the Big East is what made UConn successful, and that they only had a short window to show they could sustain success without either of those things. I think Greenberg is saying that they can't, and that they have shown that they can't. They aren't elevating their conference, and the AAC isn't elevating them the way the Big East, with its strong local flavor, did more than 20 years ago.

It may be too late for UConn. The aura of a perennial national contender may have been permanently shattered. And if they are both a football bottom feeder and a so-so basketball program, their future looks bleak. Maybe they could recreate their success by returning to the Big East and maybe they can't. But it's starting to look like it's their only chance.

To be sure, I don't think UConn's basketball success has much to do with whether it's in the Big East or AAC. (This is MUCH different than football, where being in a P5 conference as opposed to a G5 conference means EVERYTHING.) The NCAA Tournament format allows for schools like Gonzaga, Wichita State and VCU to transcend whatever issues there might be with their respective conferences. While the AAC isn't a power football conference (regardless of the attempted "P6" branding), most reasonable observers would at a minimum call it a major (if not power) basketball conference that will regularly get at-large bids to the NCAA Tournament.

Now, I do think that the fan perception difference between Wichita State and UConn is that Wichita State fans are going to be seeing the best conference games that they have ever had in the AAC, while a UConn fans are going to look at those same conference games as being way less attractive than what they had a few short years ago. Gonzaga and Wichita State never really lost anything near the magnitude of the drop-down that UConn experienced, so that constant comparison to the old days is going to be there in a different way. This is more about fan interest as opposed to the ability to actually compete on-the-court, though. Schools can definitely win on a national level in the AAC for basketball.

Eh, I'm not so sure about that. Non-UConn AAC schools have been pretty soundly out-recruited by the Big East schools over the last couple years. There are inherent advantages to playing in the Big East and having the tournament at MSG to sell to recruits, and that matters when it comes to competing for titles in March and April.

In an ideal world UConn and Nova would be perennial top 10-to-15ish contenders (almost like a northeastern version of the Duke-UNC axis that the ACC rotates around) while the rest of the Big East would supply a few other strong teams in the rankings on a yearly basis, resulting in an 11-team conference that routinely places 5-7 teams in the tourney.