Mid-majors look at schedule plan

[kaygee]

From ESPN's Andy Katz's blog:

Mids looking at scheduling plan
posted: Monday, March 27, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Standing courtside just before Sunday's Elite Eight tip-off, two of the sport's new power brokers -- the commissioners of the Missouri Valley Conference and Colonial Athletic Association -- were scheming about a new scheduling plan.
Doug Elgin of the MVC and Tom Yeager of the CAA were discussing a new plan to help their top teams schedule next season.

Elgin and Yeager said they were going to solicit the commissioners of the MAC, WAC and Horizon League to form a consortium of sorts to schedule a challenge among the top five teams in each league. So, for instance, Bradley could play at Nevada in 2006-07, and then the Wolf Pack would return the game the following season.

Elgin said it will be tough to pull off since a lot of schedules are already done, but the commissioners are going to try to hammer this through in the coming weeks.

When asked what he thought of the idea, Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese said that when he was chair of the selection committee, he always looked to see what mid-majors the bubble mid-major teams played. He said it would truly help if they scheduled each other.

Elgin and Yeager said this new scheduling plan wouldn't have anything to do with the ESPN-sponsored BracketBusters event, which matches some of the top-rated mid-majors for a game in February with a return game the following season. This past season, BracketBusters produced George Mason-Wichita State, a game that was repeated in the Sweet 16. Next season, Wichita State will play at George Mason.

[JimmyLemke]

Hey everyone, just got back from Myrtle Beach last night, it's good to have the internet back!

I think that if they are including 5 conferences together in this thing, they may be trying to force a new "High-mid major" grouping of conferences.

That would certainly be a great step up, and would get each of these conferences a better chance for at-large bids.

[milwsport]

This sounds like a great idea and it will help more mid majors to get into the dance by beefing up their schedules. This is the same thing the BCS conferences do. they play each other and that ups their RPI. With so many poor mid majors when we open league play it tears our RPI down and this can help counter balance that.

[Pantherholic]

i'd like to see a MVC/HL Challenge much like the Big 10 and ACC have. that'll get us familiar w/ (hopefully) our future conference opponents.

[JimmyLemke]

We're not in the Missouri Valley, why would we be in their conference?

That's almost as stupid as the Marqueer's being in the Big East.

I like the idea of UWM being in the MVC, but I'd like it even more if the HL got better. Somehow, I'd like to keep the rivalry with Butler going.

[SRT4driver]

jimmylemke said:

We're not in the Missouri Valley, why would we be in their conference?

That's almost as stupid as the Marqueer's being in the Big East.

I like the idea of UWM being in the MVC, but I'd like it even more if the HL got better. Somehow, I'd like to keep the rivalry with Butler going.

Or as St. Louis being in the Atlantic 10 Conference? I'm not sure geographical location matters a whole lot anymore to schools with the money for travel expenses. At least as long as the geographical location is somewhere in the same general area of the country with the other schools.
Jimmy, did you know that Butler, Detroit, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Memphis were all members of the Missouri Valley Conference at one time or another. Not sure how up on your geography you are, but most of those schools are all A LOT further east than Milwaukee is. There's a few schools in the MVC today that aren't exactly in the "missouri valley" geographically, either.
In fact, here's a map showing the current MVC schools: www.midmajority.com/conference.php?c=VALLEY
See if u can find Milwaukee on there, and let us know what u think, ok?