(04-19-2020 03:22 PM)sctvman Wrote:  They have been behind since the mid 1990s with a few decisions. Some they made, some others made.

You have to remember CofC didn’t even go D1 until 1991. As recently as 1988-89, CofC was in NAIA and the only D1 games they played were Baptist College (now Charleston Southern) and Citadel. They were a D1 independent for four seasons. In the last independent season they beat Georgia Tech, 8th in the country at Tech.

They then went to the TAAC, which was horrendous for travel. Two schools in Louisiana, FIU, FAU, Mercer, Samford, UCF, and Georgia State. They weren’t allowed to play in the conference tourney until 1997, but stole an at-large in 1994 losing to Tim Duncan’s first Wake team.

In 1995 and 96 they got NIT at-larges, then they made the tourney in ‘97, beating Maryland as a 12 seed even though they were ranked #16 in the nation. They then lost to Arizona by four points in the 2nd round, the national champs. They then made it again in ‘98 and ‘99.

They announced they were going to the SoCon in December of 1995, but couldn’t play in the league until 1998-99 because the TAAC wanted two years notice of a school leaving. That meant two more years of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars and playing in mostly band-box gyms.

Football wasn’t a consideration at the time. The Citadel was getting 12-15K a game at Johnson-Hagood, and was even using CofC’s cheerleaders.

Also not building their arena until 2008 cost them a lot. If they had built it in 2001 or 2002, they easily could have been added to the CAA in 2005 instead of Northeastern, which would have been a boon to recruiting. Georgia State was also added.

That move was all about football, which Hofstra and Northeastern dropped after ‘09, but Yeager (the commissioner at the time) adding them and Davidson would have sealed them as one of the top mid-major leagues. Northeastern probably would have stayed in the America East.

Do you think CofC's move to the CAA in 2013 was not the best, considering it came AFTER VCU, Ga. State, ODU, and Mason had left? All the best basketball resources had been depleted. Meanwhile (and granted, no one saw this coming) the SoCon has surged up the NET/RPI rankings.

Do you think CofC would return to the SoCon if it could?

BTw, my brother is a graduate of CofC. We remember that '97 team that beat Maryland and lost barely to national champion Arizona. That was a heck of a team.