@heralddispatch: HUNTINGTON - Conference USA basketball programs could play home-and-home series against the five closest league opponents under one 18-game conference model being discussed by the league's athletic directors.
@heralddispatch: HUNTINGTON - Conference USA basketball programs could play home-and-home series against the five closest league opponents under one 18-game conference model being discussed by the league's athletic directors.
I wish they'd had time to get a little more data on the bonus play experiment.
I suppose this is as much about cutting costs as it is about the concept not working out as planned.
Not so much about bonus play as it is about a group of the top C-USA teams not being good enough to be able to take advantage of it.
So it didn't get us multiple bids or higher seeds, fine. Arguably a bigger sample size, different breaks here in there in a given year, maybe it does make a difference. Not sure I agree it couldn't have helped eventually - but even if we're a one (low seeded) bid league no matter what, what resources were wasted?
https://dentonrc.com/sports/conferen...31cc412db.html
The league source said that options for a new format are being considered. Among those options is an 18-game conference slate that would have the league’s teams play home-and-home series against the five teams closest in the league from a geographical standpoint. Teams would face their other eight opponents in the league once.
On the CUSA board there was a lot of complaining about travel costs, but some of those posters really really really want to be in a Div. III style bus league for some reason. Like they really freak out about travel, I suppose if you're at the edge of the conference as we were for so long in the WAC that's more of a concern than it is when you're in the center, as we are now (or if you're UTEP and used to it and probably know to just keep quiet and keep your head down on the subject). Not every alternate scheduling solution would have a tighter geographic footprint anyway (I think the proposed schedule going forward places some emphasis on this).
The other issue they complained about was the slightly shifted schedule - I guess it changed the days of the week on which those games were played? That seems like a fixable problem, if it's really a problem.
Only other issue I could think of would be not playing a rival as often as you might with divisions or a more geographically centered schedule - but that wouldn't really be a loss for us.
Again, I can see the argument that the idea never paid off or even that it was never going to (although I'd still argue that it wasn't given time). But I really don't see that it hurt anything. It's no worse to me than any other schedule you could come up with for a league so over-stuffed. It was an out-of-the-box idea. And even with no extra bids or better seeds, in theory you had a better slate of games because the tiers would have been playing more evenly matched teams late in the season.
Not really that big a deal to me. I heard lots of noise from basketball peeps about it. Most of them were against it.
IMO, it wouldn't matter how well the idea worked as long as we continue schedule so poorly OOC.
I say save the money on travel costs, like others have said we are a one-bid league.
This story was interesting, I'm not surprised ODU didn't like the bonus play - their fans complained a lot on the message board, partly they didn't get any bump but the bigger issue is that they're out at the edge. And yeah - the travel money savings idea is fine (if they even choose that plan) and I guess AD's didn't like not being able to schedule the trips until fairly last minute. I get that.
The underlying problem is that CUSA has too many teams. You just can't make a very good basketball (or football) schedule with 14. So you end up with something unbalanced either competitively, or fiscally, or both. If nothing else the bonus play was a halfway creative effort that I still think had potential to pay off. But the other concerns just ensured a pretty short rope.