UCAFANS.COM | GO UCA BEARS!

Just happened to go on to the Southland Conference site and saw where divisional play has been approved beginning next season.

The Bears and Sugarbears will be in the Eastern Division with Lamar, McNeese State, Nichols State, Northwestern State and Southeastern Louisana.

Western Division members will be Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin, Texas A & M Corpus Christi, Texas State, Texas-Arlington, and Texas San
Antonio.

According to the website, basketball and volleyball teams will play divisional opponents twice and opposite divisional teams once for a 16 game or 16 match schedule.

As a part of all of this, the release also said that Lamar and Stephen F. Austin really wanted to play in the Western Division. To bring a sixth team into the division, a compromise was apparently reached where SFA and Lamar will rotate every four years with each school missing one home and one road matchup in one of the divisional sports with each of the western division opponents.

Looks like things are getting set.

Thoughts ?

Burly Bear

I wish UCA could have been put in the western division, so we could be in there with SHSU, Texas State and UTA...Either way who cares we're getting out of the GSC!!!!!

Mens' basketball-wise, you got the tougher division. Lamar, McNeese, NW State and SELA are all strong programs. McNeese always finds their way into the SLC tournament regardless of how good, bad they may be.. NW State is #1 this year. Lamar has Billy Tubbs and a typically nice fan following (especially with winning) and SELA went to the NCAA tournament last year (and Hammond is one of the tougher trips).

Womens' basketball-wise, the west is tougher. NW State has had the best womens' program of the division, a traditionally strong program. The stronger squads are easily in the west though with UTA, UTSA, A&M-CC and TxSt.

They are changing after this year. This year, it's campus sites all the way to the finals. Higher seeds in each round get that game. So if NW St is the #1 seed and goes all the way to the finals, all their games are in Nachitoches while if SHSU is the #2, they get a home game in each round until they would run into a #1. ESPN2 televises the game of course.

After this year, it goes to a location, a contracted place for the whole tournament. The process will be like all other championship events. I'm thinking the top contenders will be Beaumont, Corpus Christi and Shreveport/Bossier City, based on facilities...

In the SLC, the Shreveport/Bossier City thing never worked out. When SHSU hosted SFA in the tournament final, we had one of our largest crowds ever, of over 5000. I personally think this format works fine because those home crowds will show up and you earned those home crowds, ya know? If the SLC tournament is in Corpus Christi, fans from most of the SLC won't be interested in going in for the tourney.

I think the current setup is about the worst thing I've ever heard of.

The current setup is actually very well-liked by fans especially after having a single-site led to very bad attendance in the past. Our AD at SHSU said he likes the current setup, but will go along with the SLC and see what kind of response we get...

I think it's going to be a flop, especially if the single-site is far away enough from the schools who have a chance to compete. You won't be seeing many students making the trips, that's for sure. It'll look bad on TV too when there's an empty arena on ESPN2. Atleast at the schools, if the host school won, you got the "flooding of the court" that your used to seeing when a school wins the bid to the NCAA tournament. Now at a single site, you may get a handful or two jumping on the court...

The event just did not succeed at a single-site and you'd think the SLC learned their lesson. Apparently, they're going to experiment again. Granted, things have changed (better marketing, sponsorships, etc), but if the local community does not bite on it or the host team does not qualify (or goes out first round), I don't see it being that much of success...

Only advantage is no surprises on fans/teams in terms of traveling somewhere and making last minute plans because there was an upset or something...

That sounds like a pretty big deal to me.

If I were a fan of any school other than the one getting to host, I'd be both very unhappy and broke. Your team is at a decided disadvantage with the travel that comes with bouncing from place to place and playing in another team's home gymnasium. And from a fan standpoint, how much traveling can you do? It's a lot easier to make a trek to one place and stay for a couple days (and get to see all the teams get after it) than it is to be at School A one day and School X 649 miles away the next, or two days later.

I don't like the competitive unbalance of it all. It's harder to score an upset in a road game. And, it also takes away the tournament feel. Tournaments , at least on a conference level, should be in one common spot. Obviously you can't do the NCAA Tournament like that, but it's 65 teams. I don't like they've gone to their pod system, even.

Sure you want your product to look good on TV and to have good attendance, but a lot of that responsibility falls on the fans – who should be in favor of the single-site plan unless their school is a perennial power who would likely host for the duration most years.

If UCA has gone to SFA, NSU, and TSU and then has to turn around and have the championship at McNeese ... I don't know many fans making all those trips. I don't know many coaches and players who would have a lot left in the tank after making all those trips.

I guess I'm leaning more toward the side of competitive balance, neutrality, and logistic ease instead of just attendance and the potential for a few seconds on TV with people jumping around on the floor.

I don't know why a lot of fans, even students, wouldn't go to a neutral site tournament. Road trips are fun, you get to see a ton of basketball and break from the daily grind of your life.

It might be a little pricey, but if you load up several folks and carpool and pile people in beds and in sleeping bags on floors in your hotel room, it's not going to be that bad. Universities can help out, too. They take fan buses to football games – why not roll one out for your conference basketball tournament?

And as for that moment where you've got people rushing the floor ... it doesn't take much to make that a special moment. If you've got 3,000 rushing the court, or just the team, coaches and maybe 5-10 other people on the floor, it's all the same.

Given the choice of being in Tupelo last season when the Sugar Bears won the thing on a last-second shot and there were just a handful of people there, or being at Tech this past football season when hundreds of people stormed onto the field ... I'd take the basketball game. It was more climactic, and it's the game itself – not the number of people running around afterward, that make it what it is. If your team wins a championship, you should be able to enjoy it with just one other person there.

The TV people can take care of it on their end by, instead of going with a wide shot of the court and awaiting the rush, you use your floor camera and get good and tight on the players and coaches celebrating and the other team's dejectedness. Still looks good, and you can't tell it's in an empty arena.

So, to make a long post short, hooray for a neutral, single-site tourney.

I had rather do the neutral site gig any day of the week, but you must take into the consideration the attendance or lack there of when coming up with a plan. The GSC tournament is a prime example with it moving from Tupelo to Southaven, Mississippi .

Burly Bear

Has the SLC considered keeping the tournaments on campus, with the exception being the tournament be held at the same campus throughout. Basically rotating through the SLC schools, that way every year one school gets to host a particular men's or women's tournament.

I believe the Sun Belt did this in the past, or still does it this way.

Yep, they're taking attendance into consideration but all they're doing is moving it from one single, neutral site to another single, neutral site. They aren't putting it on a campus or on multiple campuses or anything else resembling the SLC's setup. I'd have to look at a map, but there's got to be some somewhat-centrally located place with a facility to handle such a tournament. Texas isn't hurting for big cities with big arenas, but I don't know if the SLC Tournament would be much of a draw in any of them. You'd just have to look around.

Another FYI, a big reason it went campus-site was for the higher seeds to win so the SLC could try to get a higher seed. Seeing as the SLC has not won an NCAA game outside of one play-in game since Karl Malone was at La Tech and Lamar was cruising to regional semifinals in the early 80s, no team has won a game.



Conference does a bidding process across the board...

Also keep in mind, there's a vast difference between the ability of some schools to host a conference tournament over others in terms of facilities, administration, etc. Some schools in the SLC, it'd just be a huge mess...

Any idea when they are suppose to announce where the conference tournament will be held next year ?

Burly Bear

I'm assuming at the SLC meetings this summer. The bid process is probably open now and we'll see how things fall. I think Corpus Christi or Shreveport/Bossier City is going to get it. A&M-CC has quite the machine there and because it's their first year in the SLC, it would not surprise me to see it there...

SHSU is going to go for hosting the SLC softball championship in 2007. We got the new ballpark and that's a big deal for us because of the re-emergence of our program. Probably will go for baseball in 2008.

I was looking at your facilities and unless UCA is able to land a Little Rock site, it doesn't seem you guys are favorites for much of the more marquee sports. Little Rock might be nice for the conference basketball tournament. Hmmm...

Volleyball facility looks a bit small. Could you set up volleyball inside Estes? Seems like it would not be a big issue. Cross country is always good, sure you got a place nearby. I'm sure golf could easily be done if you guys got some nice golf courses nearby. Golf for the most part has been done in the Houston area though (Kingwood) or near Huntsville (Trinity).

Alltel Arena in North LR has hosted at least one Sun Belt Tournament, are about to play host to the SEC Women's Tournament, so I'm certain it can hold the SLC Tournament the way it sounds. A willingness for them to do so is a different question.

I would think Dallas/Ft Worth/Arlington area
Houston area
Shreveport/BC area

would be good locations for a SLC neutral site tournament IMO as well. There are or were arenas not currently used by the NBA teams at one time still in use, Reunion Arena, what I know as the Summitt in Houston among others...

At one time Volleyball could be played in the Farris Center, with the old rubber floor, I have no clue about now, others would know for sure.