There has been a lot of discussion on the board about us being in the A-Sun and wanting out of the conference. But, which conference would you like to see us in?

One beef I have heard about the A-Sun is the travel issue. The CAA? We would have to travel to New York and Deleware. The A-10? Rhode Island, Mass., and Missouri. The OVC? Trips to Eastern Illinois and Martin (UTM). How many fans would we travel with to those locations? I am using these conferences because they have shown up in other posts.

I know RPIwise we would be moving up but unless you are able to budget for the travel expenses involved with each conference then how can we justify a move to any of the other conference right now?

So, what is the best conference's "footprint" that fits ETSU? I would like your opinion and some justification for your choice.

CAA would be my top choice, however at this point I really wouldn't mind the Big South. The past couple of years they have shown a lot of progress and the travel wouldn't be bad at all.

My choices:
1) A-10
2) CAA
3) stay where we are

88- Do you realize how improbable it is to do what you are talking about?

To be honest, I don't like the way people are talking here.

I mean hell, I would like the Bucs to join the Big East.

But here's what you have to ask yourself- Why would the A-10 want us?

Why would the Big South want us?

They wouldn't right now.

Now, you change administration, you make a few changes, maybe, but otherwise you might as well ask if the Bucs should join the NBA!

If you move UP, you are going to have travel more . The CAA wouldn't be any worse for us than Georgia State.

Big South would have been easier than the ASUN.

If the ASUN splits into a North and South travel should be a little better.

But those road trips to Milligan and Tusculum will be easy on the budget after Mullin's next downgrade. That big road trip to LMU will be the highlight of the year. Maybe we could get a big crowd to go over to King to play Pitts and co. Get even for them storming our court with their 10 fans after they beat us for the first time in a long time.

Don't smirk, I never thought the likes of Gardner Webb would do the same to us. lmfao

I'm with you JW, I never thought I'd see the day. Milligan and LMU are within site. As a matter of fact, I suspect Milligan would have given us a game this year. Not because they're good (they're not), but because we were so bad.

The Belmont score against UCLA indicates the ASun doesn't belong in Division I. That was the biggest blowout of the tournament. Without a doubt, Belmont was the weakest team in the tourney, including the play-in teams.

And it indicates that you have no intelligence as to the game of basketball. Open your eyes folks, Belmont is BUILDING A PROGRAM, this was the second year of eligibility for both boulevard schools, and they both went to the postseason. Yea, they both got blistered, but how did ETSU do in its' first trip to the NCAA tourney or the NIT ever at the
D-1 level. Say what you want to say, fact is Belmont kicked our ASS in Nashville, and so did Lipscomb. I saw first hand the facilities at Gardner Webb, Belmont and Lipscomb, and folks, they have nicer, newer places to play. G-Webb could use some lighting and probably upgrade their upper ring of seats to chairbacks, and possibly a nicer scoreboard, but in comparison Western Carolina, UT-C, App and Wofford, they are comparable.
And don't give me that argument that they have great attendance, there was less than 1000 people at the Wofford game I went to, and Western doesn't draw CRAP for basketball.

Nothing wrong with Belmont building a program. That is the direction you want to go. Up, like Georgia State. Now are we going up ?

As I recall UCLA spanked us pretty hard even with a good ETSU team.

I remember us playing in the 60s and beating Florida State .

Not sure if that was our first time. I think so. If I remember we lost to Ohio State in the sweet sixteen. Pretty close game if I remember it correctly

If memory serves me we beat Dave Cowens who played for Florida State before going pro with the Celtics.

I also remember Jacksonville and Gilmore. Boy have they taken a tumble.

If I remember correctly, from the book on ETSU basketball ten years ago, ETSU played in the sweet sixteen the first time it went to the NCAAs.

I can't believe we're comparing ASun crowds with Southern. Just for accuracty, the NCAA keeps tabs on every school, every conference. The Southern averages almost twice what the ASun averages. The OVC doubles the ASun in attendance.

Of course, Wofford has a low attendance. We screamed when Wofford was allowed into the conference. But they're nowhere near as low as North Florida, Jacksonville, Kennesaw ...

Bucs win !

For those of you who wish to look at the 1968 bracket. Our Arizona victory was great, but you could make a case for this being our high water mark.

http://www.shrpsports.com/collbask/1968.htm

PS-Look at our ole friend/foe Davidson's run too !

But JW,

Don't you understand that Mercer and other ASun schools have made the Division II tournament many times? According to many posters, that's just as impressive as ETSU being in the Sweet Sixteen or Davidson being in the Elite Eight.

Heck, Lipscomb is just as good as any Southern Conference School. According to their apologist, their loss to UCLA was only because it was on the west coast and UCLA was SOOO Goood!

SC Upstate? That's not even a directional school. Is UPSTATE a direction? This is a low point for the ASun and a low point for ETSU.

Let's just quit it all right now.

kevster Wrote:But JW,

Don't you understand that Mercer and other ASun schools have made the Division II tournament many times? According to many posters, that's just as impressive as ETSU being in the Sweet Sixteen or Davidson being in the Elite Eight.

Heck, Lipscomb is just as good as any Southern Conference School. According to their apologist, their loss to UCLA was only because it was on the west coast and UCLA was SOOO Goood!

SC Upstate? That's not even a directional school. Is UPSTATE a direction? This is a low point for the ASun and a low point for ETSU.

Let's just quit it all right now.

s

When did Lipscomb lose to UCLA? was that before or after Belmont did.

Lipscomb, Belmont. Same thing. One plays piano, the other doesn't.

Add their enrollments together and the total is about half of ETSU's enrollment.

Add the seating of their basketball arenas together and you get about half of ETSU's seating capacity. (I'm noticing a trend here).

Of course, you could take Jacksonville, North Florida, Kennesaw and a few other ASun schools and total their attendance and it might total what ETSU draws for an average game.

Did anyone notice that in the championship game Lipscomb didn't even have a band with them? I thought that was a little bush league too.

Did anyone notice that they were ACTUALLY IN the championship game? The way their fans were I don't think they really needed one. Don't belittle the schools that are making the legit strides to be D-1 when ETSU keeps falling further and further. We'll see what happens in the next few years with this "master plan" but from what I'm seeing, ETSU won't be the next to graduate from the A-Sun, Belmont and Lipscomb will.

Nevertheless...it's still bush.

I would be surprised if there are ANY graduates from the ASun over the next few years. Why would another conference want any of these teams? It made sense that UCF and GSU were able to move up, but I don't see anything about Lipscomb or Belmont that would make them attractive to another conference.

I think we'll see the same teams in the ASun for at least two or three more years, with the possible addition of a couple of Division II schools. Average attendance next year? Probably about the same as this year. 1,500 for the conference as a whole.

BTW, is it just me - or does everyone go to the Belmont area of the forum when they click on ETSU at the top of the screen?

First, i'm starting to join the etsu fans on this one. their bickering and bashing of the conference bothered me at first. i'm still going to hold to the point that our league has been a little underrated. there has been some good basketball in this conference...the ga state teams were loaded, ucf had some teams that would have beat some of the best etsu teams. i did think yall were being too hard on the league since its been well documented that it is a down year in the league. the last two years has shown great parity with no dominant teams. that is still exciting basketball for the fans with great races. i think belmont is a little underrated. there offense is tough to stop. if they are hot they are capable of beating any team in the country. now when they are cold, or outathleted(pretty much every game) then they are still a decent team. don't knock belmont here.

Now here is where i'm agreeing with the etsu fans. hell we didn't want you either. as much as you complain about being here, we would be better served without you. the mistake the A-Sun made was not going all private school. we shouldn't have brought all the public schools in and tried to compete w/ similar conferences b/c obviously we are falling behind(although i think we are still much better than the big south). we should have tried to make a league similar to the patriot league, one with academic reputation and all the budgets being the same. a conf. of belmont, lips, g-w, mercer, stetson, campbell, birmingham southern, radford and maybe a few more eventually would be competitve for all.

right now etsu basketball budget is bigger than the whole mercer athletic department budget i'm sure. kennesaw st. has so many more students and when they are eligble i expect them to pass us. i used to hate playing troy and ucf, b/c they could recruit a different type of athlete(with not so good grades) and had such bigger budgets. and now we keep adding d-2 schools. i was fine with kennesaw...they were a real up and comer, but c'mon carolina upstate??? its getting rediculous and making our conference worse. the mistake was made a few years ago in not making this an all private school league. so now we get bashed by etsu fans all day long. well we don't want you either. and the sooner the commissioner lets go of this dream of half public schools half private schools the better off we will be.

I'm with you MuBear,

I think that's what we've been trying to say all along. We're not mad at the ASun. It is what it is. Mostly baptist schools with a c of c school thrown in. There's no reason an ETSU, CFU or GSU should play in this league.

Our recruiting will struggle mightily. No serious recruit will want to play in this league. The Southern was a good conference for ETSU. So was the OVC. The Colonial would be a good fit. The Big South was a step down from the Southern, but a leap up from the ASun.

We were led to believe that by dropping football, we were in for some real upgrades to our bball program. We bought it and got nothing for it. Now we're stuck and upset about it. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about it.

While our friends at Middle Tennessee State, Tennessee Tech, UT-Chattanooga and Univ of Memphis will have a legitimate shot of being a respected team in a respected league, ETSU can do no better than winning a league we should win every year. And you saw what happened this year. There's no hiding the fact that we've fallen hard. There was no step up. It was a leap, or stumble, downward. We're afraid it will continue until we become a middle of the pack ASun team every year.

How do you think Marshall or Memphis would feel about a move to the ASun? These are teams we used to beat when we played on a regular basis.