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Well, never having been to the tourney, I thought we would have a chance at a decent seed, playing anything but a 1 or 2 seed, in the first round. Playing a 10 seed might help us but getting a 7 seed is unlikely. Guess we'll have to see where we end up when we get to go...eventually...

I'm just trying to get us out of that last seed spot..but if the NCAA will put us there by default...oh well. I was just thinking that if we played anyone but a 6 seed or lower we might have a chance with some good experience during the year. Optimism on my part I guess.

I assume you meant out of 346 on the first figure as well.

Anyhow, as a fan hell yes I am happy with being 188. That puts you real close to being in the top half of the nation before even completing the D-I transition. 188 doesn't sound awesome but if you have any rational grasp of where we're at, being in the top half of the country ahead of 158 teams (most of whom have been in the D-I business a lot longer) coming off two years of a combined record of 13-45 is pretty damn good.

If, in 2006 as the Sugar Bears were wrapping up a 17-11 season in Division II, somebody came up to you and said "You know, in four years we're going to be Division I and be rated higher than Hawaii, Oregon State, Arkansas State, George Washington, Southern Miss, Army, Air Force, etc...", that would've probably sounded pretty good, right? Well ... here we are. And it still sounds pretty good.

You really need to think about it the same way you do with football, as if D-I is subdivided the same way (and, it probably should be). If you boot the 73 BCS-league teams out of the equation then it probably looks a whole lot more impressive. And given our very limited financial resources and fan support, there's no way you can really make an apples-to-apples comparison between UCA and those schools. It's the same level in name only.

So would it be nice to be higher than 188? Sure. But it doesn't really matter. 188 or 88, you're not getting an at-large tournament bid.



So all of a sudden winning the conference and going to the NCAA Tournament is something to scoff at?!? Really?!

I don't know if you've noticed or not, but the difference between UCA and UCONN is more than a couple of capital letters.

For them, sure it's pretty much a birthright and is expected every year. But that's the case for a select handful of programs in the nation, and all of them have tons more tradition and spend a lot more on women's basketball than we do our entire athletics department combined. That's a harsh reality.

It would be nice to get to a Top 25 (ranking, not RPI) level one day and consistently be a threat to not only make the tournament but to make noise in it. But to have that expectation now or any time in the near future is outlandish. Winning your league and making the NCAA Tournament is something to get downright damn giddy about, even if you get pounded by Tennessee in the 1st round.

This time last year we were wishing we could get 10 wins in a season. And now we have fans who roll their eyes at winning conference titles and going to the NCAA Division I Tournament? That tells me two things...

1. Coach Daniel has done a damn good job of making things happen in a hurry.
2. Some people have a skewered (read: grossly inflated) sense of where UCA stands in the grand scheme of things.

I think you could ask any low-level DI coach and they'll tell you the goals going into the season are to win the conference, win the conference tournament and make the NCAA Tournament. Having a good RPI or SOS isn't really what they're after. You tell a recruit you went 23-6 and won your league, they're thinking "that's pretty good" a lot more than they're thinking "yeah, but what was your strength of schedule?".

And, by the way, being in the Southland the SOS is never going to be great. Get used to it. Just learn to accept that it doesn't matter.



You mean like Nicholls' games with Louisiana Tech and LSU, and how much better that made them? They're cruising along at 4-22 and 1-13 in the league, so that worked out well.

Or maybe you mean like how much better we got from playing Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Miami and Kansas State in the past couple of years.

And Lord knows where our men would be right now, God love 'em, were it not for those games against Kansas and Memphis. If we hadn't scheduled those two games, we might be having a bad year. Fortunately, we stepped it up in competition and we're seeing the dividends now.

Lamar's RPI right now is 86. They played a pretty beefed-up OOC schedule with some Big XII and Big Ten teams in there.

1. The Sugar Bears and their piddly RPI still kicked that ass.
2. If they don't win the Southland tourney, they aren't making the NCAA Tournament and won't get a chance to show if they would get blasted or could beat a decent team. I don't think, if they fall short, they're going to look back and feel great about the season because they had a pretty high RPI.




Trey has already made this point, but I would like the satisfaction of typing it myself as well. What on earth leads you to believe that a Southland team is going to get a 7-9 seed?

Hey don't get me wrong, this is all stuff I'd absolutely love to see happen. UALR is knocking on the door of the Top 25 right now (as is Middle Tennessee in the Sun Belt). And while we aren't to that level yet (and don't have nearly as nice a facility, as much financial backing, or the media exposure), we can at least see that it's possible, in time if you can get and keep a quality coach. They've been able to do that with Joe Foley, and if we can somehow keep Coach Daniel around for a little while then maybe that's a possibility. But even still it's tougher sledding coming from a non-FBS league and being a neophyte D-I program.

But to put your expectations so high that things like winning conference titles and going to the NCAA Tournament aren't a big deal is just crazy. There's a difference between wishing and expecting. I think if that's what you're expecting, then you're going to be in for a lot of disappointment and might as well jump ship now.

Now, all of a sudden, going 23-6 and winning a league title and making the NCAAs at Central Arkansas just isn't cutting it and is falling short of your expectations and after a while of that, then the coach should go, right? If he's not meeting your expectations then a change should be made, right? Isn't that how it works?

All UCA has to do is go schedule and beat big-time teams, rip through its conference, conference tournament, make the NCAAs as a 7 or 9 seed and put it on a team from a school that's been Division I for decades and spends millions of dollars on paying for good coaches, recruiting good student-athletes, traveling them by jet all season to avoid the grind of 15-hour bus trips, giving them top-notch training facilities and a host of strength & conditioning coaches and dieticians and such to keep them in as good of shape as possible, and so forth. Seems like a level playing field, and perfectly reasonable. Right?

Da**. .. did somebody drink a couple of MONSTER energy drinks? Read my above post. Just stating the opinion of an optimistic SugarBear fan that thinks playing experienced teams during the year will help with the national view of them.
(Whether you agree with that or not thats fine)


Hey Trey....if you need content for the front page, just copy and paste the above message!

Beary, I hope this counseling session has helped. Did you need to vent? Seriously, it's one person's opinion on where he would like the program to go. We'll differ on opinions and that's fine. I'm extremely happy with the SugarBears progress, amazed at that, and look forward to even more!

All but maybe 20 coaches (from all sports combined) have as their first priority winning conference. That is where it needs to be. Even John McDonnell always said his first priority was to win the SWC/SEC.

By the way, not only is there more than a few letters difference between UCONN and UCA there is more than a little gap between UCONN and everybody, even Pat Summit's Lady Vols. I'm thinking Geno Auriemma has some special sauce..maybe importing aliens thru the Stargate.

History speaks pretty well what it takes to get in the Big Dance (as Nolan would say) from a non-FBS conference ...win your conference OR go undefeated in regular season conference and win a couple of games over FBS schools on the road. Maybe an exaggeration a bit but not much. The selection committee will then still make you a 16th seed playing in Latvia in the first round.

The key for SBs is to finish high enough to get a decent seed in the SLC tourney then be tough enough mentally and physically win the tourney. Add 2-3 wins over FBS (say Big 12 and SEC) schools on the road during the OOC schedule and get maybe a 10th seed which would give a decent chance to get to the Round of 32. Not out of the question but not easy. Then hope you can pull off a 1980s USA hockey streak.

I certainly agree that Coach Matt and the ladies have made tremendous progress and show even greater promise. Given SB history in b-ball I thought they would do well in b-ball during transition (say 18+ wins) but I missed the down years first. Next year we need to fill FC with paying customers every game...these ladies deserve that.