Again, some people just don’t get how good of a league the MVC is. Great, so our second place team didn’t have what would be considered a “quality nonconference win”....ignoring the fact half of their team was hurt in non conference. How about 3rd place team? ...Or our 9TH place team, Northern Iowa? The MVC is, by every metric, a top 10 conference. Saying Loyola should just move conferences ignores that fact, and is just plain ignorant of the requirements necessary to do so. We will never be in a P5 conference, because we’ll never have a FBS football team. Nor should we. Same goes for the AAC, as long as WSU fills that there...and that conference is destined for implosion anyway. As long as DePaul is in the Big East, we won’t have a spot there. DePaul would never let that happen. So what options are left? What conference is 8-10 in ranking and reputation that we could get into......oh, hey, what about the MVC! They’re right there!

This whole conversation just glosses over, or flat out ignores, the fact that the committee, which is controlled by power 5/6 schools, moves the goalposts every time their “trusted” system of stacking the field in their favor is threatened. Years ago it was RPI...until mid major conferences started improving their RPI. Now, suddenly, RPI is a “flawed metric”. That narrative just so happened to start around 2006, when the MVC got multiple (more than just two) bids, with teams that won some tournament games. History and facts show that mid major schools who win 80% of their games vastly outperform middling power conference schools in the tournament. But money controls the decisions, and will always do so.

GRADDY Is si right !! We stay in the MVC--We at the moment are top dog--FOR THE MOMENT !! Our moving or not has nada to do with the footballers and the FIX

Ours is the best Conf for us--A-10 too big and spread out . BIG EAST ?? Well that is all DePaul has for now--Funny thing about that is they cannot compete in it--We could==If recruiting in Chgo is the thing--We will be winning that one for a LONG time --IF PM can be held onto !!

The MVC IS the spot for us--especially with VALPO !!

It is pretty straight forward to me. The biggest programs and not just the football schools have more resources because they have bigger budgets and more fan interest. That is the nature of the beast. A passionate topic like this would on a forum for a big school goes into the thousands. The best coaches and best players are going to go to the biggest programs. Loyola is not good because the best players went to Loyola but because the Loyola coaching staff figured out a way to win with players the other programs did not want. Congrats to the brilliance of Moser. However, unless the MVC can clone Moser and convince Moser to resist the millions he will be offered especially if he replicates his success, he will move on. As I stated in another thread the hope would be Moser leaves his mark by perpetuating his methods in his assistants. The reality is a player like Charles Mathews who came from Chicago will never choose a MVC school as his first choice. Teams composed of Charles Mathews like players more likely than not are going to beat teams composed of Clayton Custer's. Clayton is the exception and Charles is the mean. He is bigger, faster, and stronger. Unless you have a Moser to see the real diamond that Cluster is among the thousands of featureless six two shooting guards, you will lose big.

I pointed out the problems with Southern Illinois and was told I did not know anything because Southern Illinois was stricken by injuries. Yet what does that say for the rest of the league? A team stricken by injuries and broken down garnered 2nd place. If St Mary's is allowed in a team like FSU, Texas A&M, KSU, or Syracuse does not get in. All of those teams had deep runs ad knocked off a favored seed. All of those teams trounce Southern Illinois even if SI is healthy and every other team in the MVC other than Loyola. They showed they deserved to be in the tournament as much as St Mary's who lost to some truly awful teams.

The beauty of college basketball is unlike football the odds of an upset are much higher. You do not need to find 75 diamonds in the rough but just five good players. What is impossible in football is possible in basketball. That is great and I applaud that this and is what makes the NCAA tournament so much more exciting than the football BCS where Alabama wins because their 4th string RB and 5th string WR are 5 star studs better then anything 95% of rest of college football can have. That all said the reality is just like in HS sports teams with bigger populations and bigger budgets are generally going to be more successful than smaller programs. I truly enjoy observing coaches figuring out how to do more with less and knocking down goliaths. If Loyola was not playing Michigan I absolutely would have been rooting for Loyola. That all said I accept the reality that a mid major will have less room for error. Does not mean the truly great mid majors playing great ball will not get in the big dance. If St Mary's wants to get in, don't lose to crummy teams. Loyola took care of business. St Mary's did not. Other than insinuating I am clueless no one has responded to my counter case studies.

UM is second fiddle to MSU in the state for basketball. Tom Izzo gets all of the best recruits. This was not always the case as before the Fab 5 scandal UM was the team that selected which state players came to Ann Arbor. I tell my son life is not fair. You can do two things about it. You can rail about it and wail at the unfairness of the world, or do something like Moser/Beilien did and figure out a way to win regardless of the odds stacked against you. Is that not a more satisfying win than for someone to hand something to you because you think you deserve it?

Milk they are not case studies, you're sharing results of the system and saying "look! these are the results!" we are are saying "it sure would be nice if the system rewarded winning against top tier opponents instead of playing top tier opponents". The committee selected multiple P5 teams that had a sub .500 record against Q1 & Q2 opponents over mid major teams that had an above .500 record against Q1 & Q2 opponents, they did this because those P5 teams won more games against the Q1 & Q2 teams...but i digress because we are really just kind of bashing our heads into a wall here. As I said before we're not going to agree with you and you're not going to agree with us so we should probably just stop conversing with each other about it.

As for your claims about recruiting, some of what you say is true. Just as Michigan cant get the Charles Matthews level players out of HS, neither can Loyola. But I would think as a U of M football fan you would know that recruiting rankings arnt everything. For every Rashan Gary there is a Derrick Green. And all the top 25 recruiting classes in the world cant buy the Khaki King a top 2 finish in his own division. The games are not played on paper for a reason; teamwork, game planning and execution can defeat superior athletic gifts. That is why schools like Butler, Wichita State and Loyola have all been to the Final Four this decade despite not recruiting like Kentucky or Duke.

Odd line of thinking, considering a team like Northern Iowa, who finished second to last in the MVC, beat an NC State team who finished higher in the ACC than both FSU and Syracuse (beating both). Hell Syracuse barely got by Wake Forest in the ACC tournament, a WF team even Drake (4th in the MVC) beat this year. They had a great tourney run, but to claim they were some mighty beast of a team that a lowly MVC team would have no shot against is laughable.

Every time you respond trying to prove some point, the only point you prove is just how little you actually know.

I’m half convinced this guy doesn’t even read the posts he responds to. People keep posting the success of MVC teams in the ncaa tournament, against P5 teams, etc. and they go unacknowledged as he continues his echo chamber with brilliant analysis like scouring the rosters on espn.com.

This is inadvertently proving everyone’s point how living in a P5 bubble gives us these double standards.

PS. For the talk about how MVC teams would get trounced, an 8-10 MVC team sure led a 9-9 B1G team by 30 before emptying the bench for walk-ons.

I don't think you're ever going to find a way where everyone is happy, but I think right now the current system heavily favors power conference teams. Mid-major scheduling is tough and as a result teams like ours don't get many chances to win "quality" games. Why does Loyola get told that they need to schedule harder in non-conference, but they let Kansas State get in no problem with a non-conference SOS of 336?

The answer is typically because K State has more "quality wins." But as stated before is more really better? Here's my argument when it comes to only looking at the # of quality wins. Would anyone argue that Shaquille O'Neal is a better free throw shooter than Steve Nash? Shaq made 5935 free throws over 19 seasons while Nash only made 3060 over his 18 seasons, so Shaq is clearly better. Make that argument and people laugh at you because Shaq shot 52.7% from the line while Nash was a 90.4% shooter. But for tournament selection, they keep saying more is better regardless of # of attempts or location, and I think that is where mid-majors get upset. We get a lot fewer attempts and typically have to do it on the road or a neutral court instead of getting multiple chances to win at home.

For those who care, here's a link to a reporter asking Porter about scheduling and the committee selection process. Also, near the very end, someone asks him about scheduling DePaul. https://youtu.be/2x5AW0-H6oQ?t=503

He's nicer than me. I would have thrown DePaul and Northwestern (hell, even U of I) under the bus.

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Cigarboy sucks!

I will leave it at this. The NCAA has made it plain that non-quality wins are not calculated for determining tourney eligibility. The NCAA has made it very clear that a loss against a low quadrant team will be held against you. Therefore a lot of power 5 teams and other good mid major teams have to pick up opportunities for quality wins. I strongly disagree that power 5 teams will freeze out the mid majors because in conference victories are not a guarantee of getting in. Gonzaga played 5 teams from power 5 conferences and two strong mid majors. If Gonzaga had been upset in the 1st round of their conference tournament they were protected. St Mary's played an inferior non conference schedule. So to me it is clear that for any team that wants to be a player, schedule tougher games.