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PostPosted: Sun Mar 20, 2022 3:20 pm 
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SLU alum/season-ticket holder here.

Happy to have Loyola help strengthen the western reaches of this conference. I am going to assume the league has the good sense to always have SLU, Loyola and Dayton in the same "pod." Its makes sense geographically and, more often than not, doing so will ensure that our collective NET rankings will remain high.

Looking forward to coming up to Chicago for a game.

Roll Jesuits


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 11:09 am 
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I know that the current success of the team makes it easy to write-off those dusty days before 2018, but I want to point out that a lot of what made Loyola great was in place in the early-2000's. While the team was not winning like it does now, the players were good kids who went to class, graduated and have gone on to make the world a better place. And, despite our record, there were some exciting moments worth celebrating. Blake Schilb scoring in the final minutes to beat Butler in Indy comes to mind...

Mertz2003 wrote:
I should've added that the fans that did care during the dark ages get extra appreciation :)


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 11:16 am 
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SLUDrew - I'm looking forward to the Rambler/Biliken match-ups. When you come up to Gentile, make certain you stop at Bruno's for a pre or post game drink. It's stumbling distance from the court. Ask anyone in a striped scarf for directions. I think we need to get ahead of the curve on this rivalry and start promoting it to our fans. Perhaps we can get Amtrak to set-up a special fan deal to get big crowds to each other's arena? Dayton is a great match-up but not nearly as easy as St. Louis. The drive always feels longer than the distance, flights are scarce and the airport is far, far away from the city. But, once you get to Dayton, the game-time atmosphere is electric and the city is a great place to visit. And, of course, there's the Pine Club...

Look forward to some great Jesuit/Jesuit matches next year!

SLUDrew wrote:
SLU alum/season-ticket holder here.

Happy to have Loyola help strengthen the western reaches of this conference. I am going to assume the league has the good sense to always have SLU, Loyola and Dayton in the same "pod." Its makes sense geographically and, more often than not, doing so will ensure that our collective NET rankings will remain high.

Looking forward to coming up to Chicago for a game.

Roll Jesuits


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 1:08 pm 
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Blers42 wrote:
Oceaneer wrote:
As an FYI, the 2023 and 2024 Atlantic Ten Tournaments will once again return to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. This fairly new 19,000 seat arena is the home of the NBA Brooklyn Nets.

Image


Looks awesome, but the distance is an issue.


Well, our group might go the first year, but we have always gone to the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. With this so close to the NCAA, it would be hard to do it every year. We have been doing that for over 30 years or so. To be honest, I wish the A10 was finished earlier. I think its good late in the year to get rest and few more days really helps teams heading into the NCAA.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 22, 2022 5:33 pm 
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Mudville21 wrote:
Blers42 wrote:
Oceaneer wrote:
As an FYI, the 2023 and 2024 Atlantic Ten Tournaments will once again return to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. This fairly new 19,000 seat arena is the home of the NBA Brooklyn Nets.

Image


Looks awesome, but the distance is an issue.


Well, our group might go the first year, but we have always gone to the first weekend of the NCAA tournament. With this so close to the NCAA, it would be hard to do it every year. We have been doing that for over 30 years or so. To be honest, I wish the A10 was finished earlier. I think its good late in the year to get rest and few more days really helps teams heading into the NCAA.


I understand your sentiment regarding resting players, but it can be a double-edged sword. We saw what happened after the long break between the MVC tourney and the NCAA tourney this year. We did not look like the same team.


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PostPosted: Thu Mar 24, 2022 8:34 am 
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Mertz2003 wrote:
JPSchmack wrote:
ahunte1 wrote:
Bona brought a ton of students, which was cool. Doubt we'll be able to do that unfortunately


I'm a Bonnie. Our fan base has been described as "a cult, but in a good way." We had a lack-luster showing in the A-10 tourney crowd because the expectations for this season were so high and the mid-Dec to mid-Jan injuries and performance just kicked us in the nutz. (I now have this next weekend off from work, because I requested it off in October when I expected to follow the Bonnies around for two weeks, I didn't go to A-10 because I was saving my money).

There are A-10 fan bases who always show (Dayton, VCU) and two fanbases who can match in good times (Bona, Davidson), but it's just really hard for Bona/DC to look impressive when they have such a small alumni base. They are bottom 10 in Division I in enrollment.

I went to the 2018 NCAA Tourney in Dallas (watching you guys beat Miami from an airport bar on my connecting). I got to the arena, and we had 4000 fans in the place going crazy and yelling their faces off. We had a louder and better crowd than Florida; Florida's enrollment (59,000) was far larger than our total living alumni (29,000).

When you see A-10 crowds, remember that St. Bonaventure and Davidson have 2,000 students. We are freaking tiny. But our attendance is double our enrollment. I'm not trying to talk trash at all, I really respect you guys and love that we got you into our league because you help us; I'm just saying, you average 3,200 fans for a campus of 12,000 under, 16,000 total in a market of 9,618,502 people. St. Bonaventure averages just under 4,000 a game, with an enrollment of 1850, and a market of 24,000 people.

But again, I hope you beat Ohio State by 90.


To give you some background on Loyola...while we have strong basketball history, there was about a 25-year period where Loyola basketball was irrelevant even on campus (including when I played). The school was very much a commuter school and was on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 2000s. They got out of the financial issues through a plan of massive enrollment expansion and campus redevelopment. The last phase of that plan was investing more heavily in sports, which began right before we entered the Valley around 10 years ago.

I say all that to say there is a huge missing age bracket in our fan base. The alumni who remember the glory days of the 60s are largely the ones who funded a lot of the new athletic buildings, and many of the current students go to Loyola in part bc of the basketball team's success. However, the alumni from the 90s and 00s did not experience any school pride in athletics during our time there, and a huge percentage were commuters.

The Loyola that the A-10 is getting is a very large private school with an awesome campus and in a great financial situation. Loyola now owns basically the entire thriving neighborhood around campus and some prime real estate downtown. Our athletic facilities are incredible for the mid-major level, and the fan base will grow exponentially (compared to what it has been) as we move forward.



I graduated in ‘09 and will vouch for the few of us who attended different sports events. I was on the e-board of the then Rowdies, and attendance was always rough. The only games I remember seeing large crowds were Butler, Purdue, and UIC. Fast forward a decade and having Loyola in the Valley and achieving success in March definitely helped kick up enthusiasm in alumni support. Especially true for my fellow 2000s grads.


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2022 9:52 am 
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Rhode Island hired Archie Miller, and UMass is reportedly hiring Frank Martin today. Those were the two big-budget A-10 programs that had been underachieving recently. It's definitely going to be tough sledding in this conference.


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2022 12:03 pm 
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Mertz2003 wrote:
Rhode Island hired Archie Miller, and UMass is reportedly hiring Frank Martin today. Those were the two big-budget A-10 programs that had been underachieving recently. It's definitely going to be tough sledding in this conference.


unlike the MVC, while including a number of state schools, none of them were the flagship university of a particular state, like UMass and URI; hence the private A10 schools always have to try to keep up with those programs.


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PostPosted: Fri Mar 25, 2022 4:47 pm 
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m52 wrote:
Mertz2003 wrote:
Rhode Island hired Archie Miller, and UMass is reportedly hiring Frank Martin today. Those were the two big-budget A-10 programs that had been underachieving recently. It's definitely going to be tough sledding in this conference.


unlike the MVC, while including a number of state schools, none of them were the flagship university of a particular state, like UMass and URI; hence the private A10 schools always have to try to keep up with those programs.




Public state flagship schools and college sports in New England are far different from what you are accustomed to in the midwest. The publics here are not flush with loads of money. They are relatively "new" schools in comparison to the uber prestigious private schools of the region of which many go back to the 1600's and 1700's. There is still very much an educational elitism in New England with the many old private schools viewed much more favorably than the publics. Most of the New England politicians and important business people went to places such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, MIT, Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, and Bowdoin instead of the region's public colleges and universities. For all of these reasons, the public schools in New England are not government funded to the same degree as those in the midwest. Schools such as URI and UNH are actually near the bottom US flagships for state support. State subsidies have actually dropped in total dollars in the last two decades. Because of this, some of this area's state schools aggressively recruit out of state students as they can charge higher tuition rates. URI's undergraduate enrollment is a bare majority from in state RI. The only New England state school that you could make some midwest comparisons to would begin and end with UConn.

As for the private versus public dynamic in the A-10, the state schools are disadvantaged in some regards as they must disclose all spending on athletics. The private schools can keep this info private and many of them spend much more than UMass and URI who are mid range in league spending. College sports throughout much of the northeast are not viewed through the same lens as the midwest. People here therefore are not as accepting to massive amounts of money being spent on athletics and coaches. Take a look at the college football landscape in New England compared to the midwest to get a better understanding of the differences.

Another thing worth noting for both UMass and URI is that they are not the most popular and most followed college sports teams in their state as is often the case with flagships. Boston College and Providence College are the big sports schools playing in the higher profile conferences in the respective states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. These schools are in the population core capital cities of both states. UMass is some 95 miles from Boston and URI is 30 miles from Providence. While that may not seem far in the midwest, it is considered long trip in New England. BC and PC also benefit from the demographics of the region as RI and MA are among the most Catholic states in the US. RI for a long time was 2/3 Catholic. This is due to Irish, Italian, and French-Canadian being among the largest ethnic groups in these states.


Last edited by Oceaneer on Wed Mar 30, 2022 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Mar 30, 2022 9:19 am 
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For those of us slightly concerned about our roster for next year, at least we aren’t future conference foe LaSalle. They have 12 players in the transfer portal, with no incoming freshman class. Ouch….


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