(04-15-2015 06:39 PM)CajunFanatico Wrote: (04-15-2015 05:52 PM)LUSportsFan Wrote: Some of this makes a good fable, but is revisionist at best.
UTPA was asked to leave because of the NCAA's decertification of UTPA's athletics program in 1996. UTPA is the only program I am aware of being asked to leave except for the early years of the conference.
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My understanding is that New Orleans was asked to leave in 1980 because of the gym size. As I understand it, UNO left in 2010 on their own. I recall reading numerous posts on this board wishing that UNO was not leaving. Their plan was to drop down to Division III, but decided to stay DI.
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Lamar left on its own terms due to some short-sighted leadership in my opinion. I can find NOTHING even hinting that Lamar was asked to leave; however, there are articles for the other two. It's interesting to note that Lamar had a new university president one year later.
In seven seasons in the Sun Belt, Lamar won:
2 Sun Belt baseball titles (almost four losing by one run in two other SBC tournament championship games). According to the Sun Belt Conference Wikipedia page, the two championships is as many baseball championships as all but one current Sun Belt member, South Alabama, has achieved in many more years of membership.
In the Sun Belt, the Lady Cardinals won:
4 consecutive women's golf championships
2 volleyball championships
1 regular season co-championship in women's basketball and made it to the SBC tournament semi-finals 3 times. (Men's basketball made the SBC semi-finals in their last year in the SBC.)
Since returning to the Southland Conference, the Cardinals have won:
1 regular season and 2 men's basketball tournament championships
3 baseball championships
8 men's cross country championships
8 men's golf championship (#3 in the nation one year)
1 women's basketball championship
5 women's cross country championships
6 women's golf championships (just won their third consecutive conference championship today setting the SLC record - which is still bested by their consecutive four year run the Sun Belt)
1 tennis championship
2 volleyball championships.
The four seasons of the American South wasn't too bad. It was a great basketball league. Louisiana Tech and New Orleans controlled men's basketball in that conference except for one year when Arkansas State tied the regular season. UNO's coach, Tim Floyd wasn't to bad of a coach back then. Louisiana Tech controlled women's basketball except for 1991 when the Lady Cardinals won the regular season. The Lady Techsters made it to the NCAA Final Four all four years in the American South. The Ragin' Cajuns and UNO controlled baseball.
For Lamar, the Lady Cardinals made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA basketball tournament while in that conference. Women's tennis chalked another conference championship. Men's cross country chalked up two more. Volleyball chalked up two championships there.
So, what the hell happened to Lamar athletics?
BTW, I can't think of Lamar basketball without thinking of Billy Tubbs. We sure had some fun basketball back in those days.
I still look forward to the return of the "good old days".
There were some poor coaching choices in basketball. Even so, the men's team has been to 2 NCAA tournaments (most recent was 2012) and a regular season championship since leaving the Belt. The team had the 6th best turnaround in the nation this past season hopefully putting the two Knightmare years behind us. Even after the bad two years under Pat Knight, at a 2,173 average, the Cardinals would have had the second best attendance in the Sun Belt this season.
The current coach, Tic Price, went to the NCAA while at New Orleans (when UNO was in the Belt) and at McNeese. He also took New Orleans and Memphis to the NIT. He has some baggage, but I think the team has bought in. The folks with the money seem to like him also so that can't hurt donations. He seems to be doing a pretty good job of getting some of the local talent stay home and got some decent players in a shortened recruiting season last year. He got a 3 star player from the Triangle to sign an LOI this year.
Football finished the season at 8-4 this year with a ton of school offensive records broken. The bad news is that the record setting quarterback graduated. I'm hoping attendance will pick back up to the levels for the first two seasons. One thing that I think will help is getting rid of two sub DI teams on the home schedule every year. There will be nine conference games starting this season so we have one money at Baylor. The Cardinals beat Baylor the last time they went to Waco. I hope the team has a respectable showing. The other OOC is a sub DI team.
Baseball is still chugging along with 4 NCAA appearances since leaving the Belt. Coach Gilligan achieved 1,300 wins the first game of this season. He has been at Lamar for 39 seasons and some are thinking it is time for him to hang it up. He does have a city street named after him. He was inducted into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame a few years ago, and his pro team in between his two runs at Lamar made the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown many years ago because of setting the consecutive wins record. Back to current history, this year is a down year so far with a 17-19 overall record. The bull pen is very weak. The trend in a lot of games has been build a good lead and lose it in the last one or two innings in way too many games. For example, the Cardinals had a 5 run lead in the 7th against Houston and lost by one in 10 innings. They lost to Rice by one run also. Baseball attendance is averaging around 750.
Men's cross-country / distance running has been a highlight over the years. Men's cross country won 6 conference championships from 2006-2011 and won the last two seasons. One of the runners currently has the best time in the country in the 5,000 meter.
Men's golf has been another highlight. Men's golf won 8 conference championships, finished #3 in the nation in 2007, and had 5 All-Americans and PGA players since leaving. Chris Stroud has earned over $8.5 million over his career so far and has 22 PGA top 10 finishes.
Women's Basketball is on the rise with with four post season appearances since 2010 (1 NCAA, 2 NIT's, and 1 WBI). They finished second in the conference this year.
Women's golf won their third consecutive conference championship today, a record number of consecutive SLC championships in the sport.
Men's and Women's Tennis is having a respectable season this year. Volleyball and women's soccer need some work.
Women's softball is in the third season. They run-ruled Texas in Austin 9-1 earlier this year. They are still growing and the new on-campus stadium is under construction. 440 turned out for the opening. They are averaging around 300 at home so far.
There have been a lot of improvements/additions to athletics facilities in the last five years. At 55,000 sq ft, the new athletics complex is 2,000 sq ft smaller than the one Georgia Southern recently built. Over $20,000,000 of a recent $132,000,000 investment giving campaign went to athletics. According to the Knight Commission, debt associated with athletics capital improvements went from $0.00 in 2012 to over $63 million in 2013, the most recent reported year in the database. Since that's debt on construction, that would mean that at least $83 million plus has been spent on athletics capital improvements in recent years if I'm adding correctly.
For comparison, here are some of the debt figures for some of the Sun Belt programs.
Texas State: $81 million plus
Troy: $61 million plus
South Alabama: $20 million plus
UTA: $39 million
Appalachian St: $73 million plus
Here's a link to the Knight Foundation database site...some pretty good information.
http://spendingdatabase.knightcommission.org/
) a chance to get "ran over" by Southern - I don't believe they would have been given this treatment over the past couple of years.