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Post by Black PantherU on May 15, 2024 15:47:59 GMT -5
It would not surprise me for MVC to add three teams to get members to 12. That should make it a stronger conference. If both WSU and NKU leave the Horizon they would need to replace fairly quickly or face death. I agree with this. WSU, NKU, + a football school. Also have been hearing from MVC members that they have been notified about a list of schools that have been contacted. WSU and NKU are included in that list given to MVC current member schools. I wouldn't go with a football school if I wanted to add 3 to the MVC and WSU/NKU were the other two. Missouri State isn't going to be the last football school to leave, it wouldn't be shocking at all to see UNI and Illinois State go for broke and try to get in the FBS mix now that the attendance requirement is dead. I'd think St. Thomas would be a better add (yes they have football but it's Pioneer League). As far as joining the MVC, I used to be the guy beating the drum to take that move for Milwaukee. Later I was pushing more A-10. At this point, having a basic understanding of our financial situation, I think Milwaukee should stand pat. For better or worse this group of public urban universities that makes up the core group of the Horizon League - GB, MKE, WSU, CSU, and later YSU, Oakland, and NKU (I don't much care for the alphabet soup Indiana schools) - fit strongly together. I think UIC fit this group well too, and the early returns in the MVC aren't great for them in most of their sports. I know we like to say the grass is always greener on the other side, but I'm peering over the fence and the Valley isn't the Valley I used to pine for. Wichita State, Creighton, MoState, even the temporary Loyola are all gone. The schools are somewhat mismatched - remember when the Horizon League had 6 public, 4 private schools? Now UDM is all that's left of that, with RMU thrown on the end. The Valley is 7 public and 5 private, with one of the publics leaving. It's also probably a hard sell to our university to increase the budget to match the schools in the MVC. I think we all expected UIC to struggle there even though their budget is strong. But I didn't expect Belmont, Valpo and Murray State to all struggle as well. How is the basketball after MoState leaves? It's better than the Horizon, to be sure, but we're going on what...15 or 16 years since they had an at-large bid? You're essentially running through a tougher conference to get 2 or 3 better spots on the seed line on Selection Sunday - and you're probably spending a few million more per year to just keep up with the Joneses. The best conference possible for most of us is whichever conference is the best non-football conference below the one we'll never get in. Milwaukee's never getting in the Big East because of Marquette. Wright State's never getting in whichever conference Dayton is in, for now the A-10 but maybe the Big East if Hell freezes over and the Jesuits decide being Catholic should involve loving thy neighbor and allow Dayton into the group. LOL I'm not even sure the A-10 is really worth the bump in spending for us. It would be nice to have our closest conference game back (Loyola is an hour closer to us than GB) but 14 schools is a lot, especially when damn near half the league sucks. The best would be somehow getting a bunch of basketball-centric mid-major schools in a room and putting together a new conference. There's enough in the HL, MVC and A-10 where you could put together a conference that slides in just under the Big East in the pecking order, and you could do it while maintaining a solid geographic footprint. You could probably put together a 12 or 14-team conference that's strong enough to get 3-5 bids every year. Again, the problem there (besides the logistics and politics involved with putting the league together) for Milwaukee at least is I don't think we'd be able to put together the budget to compete in that conference. I don't think that's different for any HL school. At the end of the day I think we're best off together. If WSU or NKU or both decide to leave for the MVC, I wish them well. At this rate someone's going to end up the next big fish in a small pond.
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Post by Black PantherU on May 15, 2024 13:14:28 GMT -5
In hindsight, the timing actually might work in Green Bay's favor, because I believe the portal is now closed, so the remaining current players can't leave to follow Sundance to Wyoming. Gottlieb can still recruit out of the portal to fill behind those who already left. I believe the players have a 30 day period to enter the portal. Correct, they have 30 days from Wicks notifying UWGB he was leaving. Douglas already entered the portal. He's been on Twitter liking tweets that bemoan the hire/say Pat Monaghan should have been promoted. I'm not saying that he definitely won't stay, but he's definitely dipping his feet. You know, if your coaches wanna sign another player.
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Post by Black PantherU on May 2, 2024 13:59:22 GMT -5
This was cool
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Post by Black PantherU on May 2, 2024 13:57:37 GMT -5
So Welage just isn't playing anymore?
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Post by Black PantherU on May 1, 2024 13:15:33 GMT -5
I feel for the coaching staff. I think we all know what it feels like when you have a project and you keep seeming to wall after wall. They know how high pressure this offseason is. They know we need quality players or we will be an island of misfit toys. I don't envy them at all but they need to keep pushing. A quality pg would play huge minutes here. Seems pretty bad when one of our insiders thought we'd have a lock but they chose to go somewhere else. What is the most we can offer in NIL? is that whats slowly us down? Milwaukee seems like they are putting together a solid team while we can't get any momentum. We have an alum who has built a pretty solid real estate portfolio. He's one of the best players we've ever had. The moment the NIL rules looked like they might change he began mobilizing. Set up the 501(c)3, started the networking, got donors who were interested to sign up. Recurring donations are a small but growing part of the equation - it turns out it's worth it for a lot of fans to basically add a Netflix subscription to help make the team better. It was enough that we were able to keep BJ Freeman from leaving last year. Florida, LSU and DePaul all offered him money to transfer and our NIL collective came up with enough to keep him around. Now, we've got some money in it but not enough to commit $500k to one guy so when BJ started picking up offers this year Coach Lundy just thanked him and moved on. That's really all you can do. There's still only ~150 schools with NIL Collectives. The university can't set it up. Employees can't set it up. So who at Wright State is going to step up and get the ball rolling?
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Post by Black PantherU on Apr 29, 2024 17:37:57 GMT -5
There's well over 1,000 players still in the portal. Patience, fellas.
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Post by Black PantherU on Apr 24, 2024 13:02:16 GMT -5
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Post by Black PantherU on Mar 28, 2024 11:08:41 GMT -5
If Blake’s article is accurate this is one of the dumbest decisions ever. If you are going to hire Clint, then hire him. You can’t give him a one year interm contract. He won’t be able to put together a staff or roster on a one year deal. He would basically be a dead man walking. I hope it is inaccurate. Look at Charlotte this season. Ron Sanchez left last spring, they elevated Aaron Fearne to interim coach for a year, finished third in their first season in the AAC and ripped the interim tag off Fearne in February. It's been done many times before. You're also running into a massive issue in your AD search if you hire a permanent head coach first. Whatever pool of candidates you have gets smaller when the AD can't pick their own head coach. And the candidates who drop off will be the best candidates. Everyone wants to hire their own guy. Next season isn't lost but it's better to sacrifice one season by giving Sargent time to "prove it." You've gotta get the AD hire done right first.
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Post by Black PantherU on Mar 27, 2024 12:19:02 GMT -5
Honestly shocked another program would want to hire Nagy at this point. The team has struggled most years under him without Loudon Love. This will sting for the short term but I think will be good for the program long term. I don’t think Nagy adjusted well enough to the portal era. Get ready for a team of transfers in next year. The perception of Scott Nagy's program is a lot more pessimistic inside the fan base than it is outside of it. We all think WSU is dangerous every single year. I think it's one of the best two jobs in the conference and I think most would agree. He's literally 167-91 at Wright State. Jim Larranaga won very little at Bowling Green in 11 seasons, had three NIT one-and-dones and then left for George Mason, where he won a couple titles and went to a couple NCAA Tournaments in his first eight seasons but didn't win a game. Then in 2006 he took them to the Final Four. In 18 years at Davidson, Bob McKillop had taken them to a few NCAA Tournaments and then in 2008 they went to the Elite Eight. Yeah, yeah, Steph Curry, yeah but McKillop recruited him. And these without mentioning that it took 40 years for Greg Kampe to break through and win that first NCAA Tournament game. Oakland didn't even go dancing in the HL until this season. What is that, 10-11 years? I think the expectations at our mid-major level are often blown out of proportion because we measure coaches by their NCAA Tournament appearances and conference titles, and if they don't get there they're seen as failures. You've got three regular season titles and two NCAA tournaments/HLT titles in eight years. I think that's an excellent rate of return. You finished two games back of the conference champion this season. Think of all the close calls over the year. You know how hard it is to beat a team three times in one season? Well, WSU almost did that against NKU. The margins at our level are razor-thin. I wouldn't judge Nagy too harshly.
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Post by Black PantherU on Mar 27, 2024 11:22:15 GMT -5
So with IUPUI becoming IU-Indianapolis, we're going to have to say goodbye to the "Ooey-Pooey" nickname. IUI...EEWEE? Eye-Why?
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Post by Black PantherU on Mar 27, 2024 11:18:07 GMT -5
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Post by Black PantherU on Mar 25, 2024 12:57:21 GMT -5
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Post by Black PantherU on Oct 12, 2023 12:02:26 GMT -5
I've seen my guys play. I'm not worried. Let's play some basketball. How good is the Horizon League this year? Best in what...11-12 years?
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Post by Black PantherU on Oct 12, 2023 11:44:44 GMT -5
Tanner Holden got his waiver
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Post by Black PantherU on May 23, 2023 10:41:28 GMT -5
Cool that Davis reunites with Linc Darner. I've always wondered why Darner got canned at Green Bay. The people who know don't seem to be willing to say, which I understand.
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