Cyniclone
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I Root For: ODU
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RE: WTF: CUSA Never Ceases to Amaze
I still believe that a traditional tournament setup in a far-flung conference like CUSA is never going to fly, certainly not when juxtaposed with our memories of the CAA in Richmond. Home court or home-neutral tanks the attendance when the host team bows out, and true neutral ends up being inconvenient for most if not everyone. And home sites throughout sings low-major at a time when CUSA already spends too much time in that choir.
CUSA should do one of the following:
1. No tournament at all. Regular-season champ gets the autobid. Have everyone round robin once to get to 13 games, then divide the league into top seven and bottom seven, and play everyone in your half of the conference while reversing the home court (i.e. if ODU travels to Middle Tennessee in the first part of the regular season, ODU hosts them in the second part). This way everyone gets 19 games, the good teams get more games against other good teams, and the best team gets the bid (bottom-half teams are ineligible for the autobid at this point, to avoid a good No. 8 team storming through outmatched competition and ending up with the best record in the conference while the other good teams are beating each other).
1a. Eight-team tournament using the above scheduling. If you don't mind going further down the NASCAR postseason rabbit hole, then take all of the top-seven teams, and the eighth seed is whoever has the best record in the bottom half. Seeding for the top seven and champion of the bottom seven would be determined by record against that team's half of the league over the course of the season. Tiebreaker is head-to-head, then best record against the top seed, and so on down the line.
2. Round-robin postseason. Take the top four or five teams in the conference and have them play each other on a neutral site over a long weekend. The best teams are likely to have the best support, and they'll also get multiple good games to burnish their NCAA/NIT bonafides, whatever ones they may have by then.
All are unconventional solutions. In some cases, unconventional and convoluted. But I think we can all agree at this point that the tournaments we've been having are not the best way to a) get a good crowd or b) send the best team to the NCAAs. So I say roll the dice on something innovative. If it doesn't work, then fall back to the traditional bracket.
Oh, and speaking of rolling the dice, put whatever tournament in Biloxi permanently. Riverboat casinos, decent weather, proximity to New Orleans. Put the women's tournament in Hattiesburg and have the semis and finals in Biloxi. I'd go.
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05-06-2017 11:09 AM |
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