This popped up in my news feed today. Watchstadium.com (parent of the CUSA Network and a bunch of other conference networks) polled CUSA basketball coaches & assistants to rank the schools in the conference on a number of different factors. They describe it as ranking the coaching job itself, but that's a pretty good proxy for the program as a whole.

Rice came in at #10 out of 14 schools. No surprises in the breakdown - the only areas where we even ranked in the top half were Geographical Recruiting Base (#4) and Budget/Resources (#7).

Quote:Where they win: “Academics, a great campus in Houston and the ability to recruit nationally. There’s plenty of kids within a stone’s throw.” – C-USA head coach

The knock: “While there are a ton of kids in the area, Rice can’t recruit a ton of them due to their academic requirements. They are basically an Ivy league school playing in C-USA.” – C-USA assistant coach

https://watchstadium.com/news/conference...1-30-2018/

The ranking categories are interesting but some of the assistant coach comments seem pretty flippant, like they did not really think through their responses. Rice Facilities are ranked 10th, which should be a serious wake up call to the Athletic Department leadership. A poor game day atmosphere ranking (#12) has a great deal to do with the lack of ability at Rice to fill the arena on a consistent basis. The inability to sell the program to prospects that want to continue to play ball professionally seems to be a bit off-base (ranked #10). Coach Wilson prepared a large number of players overseas to play ball professionally after their careers at Rice and a few to the NBA (Wilkes, Harris, Almond). I cannot comment on Braun or Rhoades success in this area, so may be the poor ranking is reflective on recent history.

This type of ranking does show how those in the Coaching fraternity think about the opportunity to coach at Rice. The school has a great deal of work to move the needle in this regard.

The important part of the summary...

Conference USA Basketball Coaches Rank the Best Jobs in the Conference - Stadium

Conference USA Basketball Coaches Rank the Best Jobs in the Conference - Stadium Wrote:Another advantage is the ability to prop kids.
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Also can get just about any qualifier and transfer into school
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You can get anyone into school

I've redacted the school names because it doesn't really matter... the only school other than Rice to have a positive reference to academics was ODU.

I will second the note about ODU's game experience. It's top notch (for a sub-P5 experience), and something Rice should aspire to. But that would require planning for that arena/convocation center that's been a rumored desire for a couple of decades. And then having strong business advertising ties, and overall creativity in the full experience. Haven't seen a live game at Rice since I graduated, but what little I've seen of live broadcasting (and poking my head in when empty) tells me that the current set up will not translate to the ODU level of experience.