The irony is with the fact there was near unanimous agreement before the tournament began that any of the top eight or nine teams in the league could make a run at the championship and now that it has happened everyone is suddenly surprised.

We can beat the non-conf schedule drum to death, and some people just aren't going to understand how hard it is for most of the league to schedule to the RPI. But one thing is clear. With the exception of Tech most of teams in the league had a lot of underclassmen. I think this bodes well for next year, but we will see.

Lastly, these last two years are a perfect reason why a conference tournament is not worth the risk unless you're making a lot of bank for the league and I don't believe C-USA - even back in the day - made a lot of money off conference tournaments. I guess it takes an Ivy League education to figure this out. Oh and oddly enough the two most rivaled programs in the Ivy will square off for a winner take all today -- all without a conference tournament.

And if I were the boss I would do away with the conf tournament. I would simply extend the regular season by two games with the top four teams playing each other even if it meant a third game against each other and the rest of the league from five on down would play based on geography. Auto bid would go to team with reg season championship.

I want to win but I accept that it is bad for the league. I have thought for years that a one bid conference should send its regular season champ. I am not changing my mind now that the shoe is on the other foot. It gives you a better seed which means better chance for a win and units. Nothing against the teams that get hot I just think it's bad business. Of course it's too late now so...Go Blue!!!! Plus it will be awesome for a team with no D1 athletes to make the dance....

If there was one team that was definitely superior to everyone else, and they lost I would say yeah it completely sucks for them. This goes for your Murray Sates....


I respect what LA Tech did, but good God man...WE beat the Bulldogs and we want to run our coach out of town on a rail. They were not head and shoulders above the league, so I don't feel too bad for them here.

Tech only graduates 3 this year so we aren't necessarily senior-laden either. You're right too. It is ironic that everyone is surprised.

UAB has won every single home conference game this season. We won again, on a strange floor but the kids are still sleeping in their own beds.

I agree, going in there were favorites but we all knew that there were going to be upsets, we just didn't know who would go down.

That's why they call them upsets.

Put up the money to host the tournament. The home team has always had an advantage in the C-USA tournament, but others have managed to win in Memphis, El Paso, and Tulsa.

We beat our heads against the wall for years playing in the Memphis Invitational. We're not going to apologize for being good fans when we finally get a tournament here.

(03-14-2015 10:49 AM)UAB Band Dad Wrote:  UAB has won every single home conference game this season. We won again, on a strange floor but the kids are still sleeping in their own beds.

I agree, going in there were favorites but we all knew that there were going to be upsets, we just didn't know who would go down.

That's why they call them upsets.

Actually UAB is staying at the host hotel

I will pull for either, but UAB wins in Birmingham.....

Not apologizing as someone who has had to go to Memphis, Tulsa, UC, etc. you know what the Memohis fans said? Put in a better bid for the tournament. No sir. No sympathy from me. I won't apologize for being a good fan and supporting this thing by buying extra tickets when I didn't have to and trying to make sure people get to the games and helping promote it. No sir. Put in a better bid next time. I'll happily travel to Nashville, Shreveport, or Biloxi. I won't apologize for walking around the area welcoming people to Birmingham and thanking them for coming and talking up their school even if they were beaten that day or night.

One more thing. Those bitching better check to see how many tickets your fan base bought and people you brought. Kudos to The ones that did.

Now go suck on a pacifier.

All I know is that if La Tech, ODU, UTEP and UAB all played each other or at least two of the three RPIs would go up and it would give a team a chance to not have to add a bad loss and sit around and wait. If we had this set up we would be getting two teams in this year even in a bad season. As a result we get one now and that is indeed bad business.

(03-14-2015 11:40 AM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote:  All I know is that if La Tech, ODU, UTEP and UAB all played each other or at least two of the three RPIs would go up and it would give a team a chance to not have to add a bad loss and sit around and wait. If we had this set up we would be getting two teams in this year even in a bad season. As a result we get one now and that is indeed bad business.

Not worried about Home cooking complaints in this post, or the naysaying nimbobs of negativism! if UAB plays better than MT, they win and deserve it. If MT outplays UAB, we win and deserve it! Compliments to t B'ham for the foresight to get the tournament. Everybody knows these deals are helpful to the local economy. Nashville will make $160,000,000 (Million) the next ten years with SEC being played at Bridgestone Arena! While CUSA is tiny by comparison; it has to make a positive for the smart city that has it!

So is all this parody because our teams are better than we thought or worse than we thought?

So I will stand by what I have said all along, the regular season champ should win the auto-bid.

(03-14-2015 12:43 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  So is all this parody because our teams are better than we thought or worse than we thought?

I think a parody. Of what? I don't know.

No,no,no,no,no, and no.
The beautiful thing about basketball is everyone has a chance.
Even if you suck the first half of the season, you theoretically have
a puncher's chance for redemption.
Do not take that magic possibility away.


Stop whining about home court. You wanted to join C-USA.
Welcome and thank God you're not in Memphis this week.

(03-14-2015 01:22 PM)Noodles Wrote:  No,no,no,no,no, and no.
The beautiful thing about basketball is everyone has a chance.
Even if you suck the first half of the season, you theoretically have
a puncher's chance for redemption.
Do not take that magic possibility away.

Yup, I couldn't agree more

I think the OP is right. A conference tourney is an idea that has come and gone. Attendance for them is declining nationally, and it's difficult for fans to attend. You've got midweek games with fans having to make travel and vacation time commitments not knowing if they get knocked out on day one.

Some of the early games at the SEC didn't look to have more than 2000 fans in the house.

Having said that, I love basketball so the more games the merrier. And there's always the chance for a Cinderella story, a team making the dance that wasn't supposed to--UAB perhaps?

But there's really no rationale for these things and I doubt they make money. As for Nashville making $160 million over 10 yrs for the SEC tourney, I take that with a grain of Chamber of Commerce multiplier effect salt.

Conference tourneys were only created to make money.

If you're not making a lot of money off the tournament then you are losing it when you can't get multiple teams in the dance or at least having your best team in the dance which has a better chance of more wins and thus more units. The financials of the NCAA tournament units/credits now far outpaces the revenue of a conference tournament. Leagues have been slow to adapt to the growth of the NCAA tournaments revenue model.

So, if you approach this from the 'well I like to see the crap teams have a chance' that's fine. But I will have to agree to disagree with you on the basis that it's simply not what's best for all of us collectively which is why we join conferences in the first place.

One last thought about the tournament thing that I don't like now and have never liked (funny how the Western fans aren't here to say I only say this when Middle wins the regular season) is what we force teams to go through to get the automatic bid after playing their asses off for four months. The automatic bid is a highly coveted accomplishment by every single school in every single league. It is the only guarantee.

So, it's just complete asininity (new word just made that one up) to award such a monumental treasure based on putting teams through a guantlet of having to play three games in three days or four games in four days. We go all season playing one to two games per week. Rarely if ever does a team play three games in a week yet we're going to ask the top two, three, four teams to play three games in three days to get the automatic bid? I'm sorry but that's just utterly stupid. You don't have to do that in the NCAA Tournament so why put your own teams through it? It just doesn't make any sense.

I want to see the league step in and put some scheduling requirements on the league members to drive us toward better RPI numbers. There is no reason why the top three or four teams in the league aren't all in the top 50 annually and that's guaranteed top 50 opportunities. We just need some leadership from the league and I know this won't happen but some more creative thinking than a 20th century conference tournament.