(01-14-2019 01:12 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  

(01-13-2019 02:06 PM)WhoseHouse? Wrote:  

(01-13-2019 08:58 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(01-13-2019 08:50 AM)Tigersmoke4 Wrote:  Any conference with UCONN, Memphis, cincy, Temple and Houston is not mid-major no matter what arbitrary line you've made up in your mind.

The AAC has been in every way a mid-major conference on the court the past 5 years.

That could be changing right now, this season, because the AAC certainly has the potential to be a 'power' league like the Big East, but so far, that's how it is been. The AAC has just not performed up to its potential. That's why it added Wichita State, to try and shore up the flagging basketball.

Here's a critical fact to bear in mind that your list of teams reminded me of: While schools like UConn and Temple and Memphis have strong basketball pedigrees, they are not blue-bloods, which means their national interest is highly correlated with performance.

Blue bloods like North Carolina and UCLA and Kentucky *always* matter. Their national brands are permanently elite, doesn't matter if they have a Final 4 team or are slogging through a mediocre, disappointing year. That's not true of Memphis/UConn/Cincy type teams. If they are "down", their profiles drop considerably.

So their mere presence doesn't guarantee power status from a brand POV either.

UConn is a blue blood, UCLA is not. Nobody cares about the ghost of John Wooden.

Wow. Any UCLA fan will tell you that they are not happy with the performance of the basketball program, which is one of the reasons Alford was fired. I do have respect for the UConn basketball program. But even in bad times, the UCLA program is still good. In the last five seasons, from 2014 through 2018, UCLA has:

1. Made three Sweet Sixteens
2. Had 11 players drafted into the NBA, seven in the first round.
3. Beat Kentucky three straight seasons (2015-2017).

UConn won the national championship in 2014 and has had three players drafted into the NBA in the last five years, one in the first round.

UCLA clearly has better talent and as their wins over Kentucky show, they can beat anyone. The problem has been, they can lose to anyone, as their loss to Liberty shows. They get the talent that the other top programs get, they just have not been able to get the talent to consistently win. UCLA is not an easy place to coach at and it requires the right fit at head coach.

I'm sorry but if a program with 4 nattys (the only metric that matters when talking about blue blood) in the last 20 years, is not considered to be a blue blood, then UCLA simply is not. Neither is Indiana. People need to stop living in the past. The list goes: Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Kansas. Drop off. UConn, UCLA. Wooden's gone. Knights gone. Nova and Sparty have done more to warrant blue blood status than UCLA as of late. Doesn't mean UCLA isn't a good program. Doesn't mean they're not relevant. **** Gonzaga's relevant. Nevada's relevant. But my god, if producing NBA talent is all it takes to be a blue blood, then Texas is a blue blood. I'm good with calling it a short list of 4 real blue bloods (if people really just want to leave off UConn) but UCLA is off that list until they win another one.