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Post by HLFanaticus on Feb 11, 2019 12:55:26 GMT -6
It's been almost two years since the addition of IUPUI and the HL offices naturally have been mum on the subject of expansion. Since then however, North Dakota has joined the Summit; Cal Baptist and Dixie State have joined and been invited to the WAC, respectively. Liberty University and the University of North Alabama have joined the Atlantic Sun; and the Big Ten will go to 20 conference games, basically eliminating games against mid-majors. The League the HL longs to be or tries to emulate, The Missouri Valley, had a Final Four participant and regained its status as a Top 10 conference.
What is the next move for the Horizon League? Some have said that because the conference has fallen in ratings stature, it has become unappealing to potential invitees. This may be true, but in light of what's been going on I think mid-majors need to pull together in order to preserve their existence and this conference in particular! HL Commissioner Jon LeCrone has talked about expanding to 12 and to as many as 16 IIRC. A lot of GOR will be expiring around 2020 and new TV, Cable and other platform negotiations will begin. There will in all likelihood be some movement among the big boys with trickle down effect to the mids. Can this conference wait that long? Have they initiated invites and are just waiting?
Some HL fans have said this League needs to put together 3-4 years of sustained success and then make invites. Well, it's already been one year of mediocrity since that statement. Northern Kentucky might be gone by the time the Horizon has any sustained success. I'm not saying this League should invite teams that are from the bottom of the ratings poll, but the conference is nearing desperation mode.
Fort Wayne is the natural next addition and there is a rumor that the HL has had cursory contact with them. Robert Morris is also an HL fan favorite for addition although they don't have baseball and they carry Football, Hockey and LaCrosse, sports the HL don't sponsor.
Could the HL go the route of the WAC and the Atlantic Sun and invite strong D2 programs along with a PFW and/or Bobby Mo...to ease their transition and not put too much pressure on the league's RPI or NET status?
Southern Indiana (Evansville) is competitive most years in basketball. Their women won the D2 softball title. They have a brand new Hoops arena. Bellarmine is in Louisville and gives the league another foothold in Kentucky. Bellarmine also has an excellent basketball team which was ranked number 1 in D2 until they were knocked of by........Southern Indiana!
Bringing in those 4 teams solidifies the league's presence in Indiana, strengthens it in Kentucky and expands our footprint into Pennsylvania.
My choices:
Purdue Fort Wayne
Robert Morris
Southern Indiana
Bellarmine
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Post by tommyboy on Feb 11, 2019 14:03:16 GMT -6
I think the HL has to worry about the teams they already have. Can't imagine any school not considering it if it was a strong possibility.
It's one thing ( and I don't particularly advocate such a move ) to invite a D2 school in transition but, the process needs to have begun.
Agree that mid-majors should work together better for scheduling purposes.
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Post by HLFanaticus on Feb 11, 2019 16:20:57 GMT -6
I think the HL has to worry about the teams they already have. Can't imagine any school not considering it if it was a strong possibility. Agreed, but it seems that the ADs of this conference haven't done a good job overall of selecting good, qualified, high basketball IQ coaches. NKU, WSU, Green Bay and Detroit seem to have done the better job of selecting well, but overall, it's still a matter of recruiting. Why aren't we consistently getting the 3 and 4-star recruits? Our schools are located in major or large markets (with the exception of Green Bay & YSU). The HL schools have nice facilities, good overall academics and a few dollars. So what gives? |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2019 19:23:31 GMT -6
At this point only time will tell as to how the HL fares. They can add whatever team they want but will it matter? This conference has had chance after chance to get it right but have not done it yet. Case in point is my UIC team. At this point our AD is hamstrung with an extension for our head coach that he had nothing to do with. So we may have a couple more years of mediocrity before we can even TRY to hire the right guy and THEN recruit quality players and THEN put together a string of successful seasons. That could be 5-6 years down the road. It's probably the same for most of our teams. But if it matters, I don't see anything wrong with bringing up Div 2 powers or contenders. Southern Indiana and Bellarmine have been mentioned. What about Wayne State in Michigan?
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Post by gbphoenix1 on Feb 12, 2019 10:59:15 GMT -6
I can appreciate that Bellarmine or Wayne State make some sense. Yet I don't see the infrastructure commitment to make a real go of D1 sports from either school. I think in the D1 world kids are deciding with facilities being a major factor. Of the D2 schools mentioned only Southern Indiana has what it takes from that regard. Bellarmine plays in a 2100 seat gym. As for any other teams I think Fort Wayne is becoming an easier choice for fans. They have a solid team again, have baseball, the new branding of the school makes it more tolerable and they are great geographic fit. The league already let IUPUI in, so there is no longer a perception hurdle as the bar has been lowered! Just make sure they play all of their games and the Coliseum and call it a day. When deciding between Robert Morris and USI, I will go with USI. They are a better fit from most perspectives. If you bring in RMU the travel gets a little weird unless they were replacing YSU  With Fort Wayne and USI you can have UIC/FW and IUPUI/USI pair up. RMU has been solid at hoops and USI needs to go through the 5 year transition process so in the current world they are not a better choice. However, they have equal facilities, USI is public, has a better match for sports, is a better geographic fit, like much of the league is Adidas branded and actually averages more fans per game that RMU does. I would welcome either one but USI seems to make more sense for the league to me. |
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Post by ougrizz05 on Feb 12, 2019 11:24:13 GMT -6
At this point only time will tell as to how the HL fares. They can add whatever team they want but will it matter? This conference has had chance after chance to get it right but have not done it yet. Case in point is my UIC team. At this point our AD is hamstrung with an extension for our head coach that he had nothing to do with. So we may have a couple more years of mediocrity before we can even TRY to hire the right guy and THEN recruit quality players and THEN put together a string of successful seasons. That could be 5-6 years down the road. It's probably the same for most of our teams. But if it matters, I don't see anything wrong with bringing up Div 2 powers or contenders. Southern Indiana and Bellarmine have been mentioned. What about Wayne State in Michigan? I have not heard anything about Wayne State going D1. I don't think they will be doing that anytime soon either. FYI They are in Detroit and they play football. They actually beat UDM in mens basketball twice over the last few years too. |
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Post by ougrizz05 on Feb 12, 2019 11:27:34 GMT -6
I can appreciate that Bellarmine or Wayne State make some sense. Yet I don't see the infrastructure commitment to make a real go of D1 sports from either school. I think in the D1 world kids are deciding with facilities being a major factor. Of the D2 schools mentioned only Southern Indiana has what it takes from that regard. Bellarmine plays in a 2100 seat gym. As for any other teams I think Fort Wayne is becoming an easier choice for fans. They have a solid team again, have baseball, the new branding of the school makes it more tolerable and they are great geographic fit. The league already let IUPUI in, so there is no longer a perception hurdle as the bar has been lowered! Just make sure they play all of their games and the Coliseum and call it a day. When deciding between Robert Morris and USI, I will go with USI. They are a better fit from most perspectives. If you bring in RMU the travel gets a little weird unless they were replacing YSU With Fort Wayne and USI you can have UIC/FW and IUPUI/USI pair up. RMU has been solid at hoops and USI needs to go through the 5 year transition process so in the current world they are not a better choice. However, they have equal facilities, USI is public, has a better match for sports, is a better geographic fit, like much of the league is Adidas branded and actually averages more fans per game that RMU does. I would welcome either one but USI seems to make more sense for the league to me. Yeah, I think USI does make better sense. They are committed to upgrading facilities too. I also believe that we will add Fort Wayne at some point. Geographically both schools are a good fit. |
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Post by bear2020 on Feb 12, 2019 18:28:24 GMT -6
Seems like adding 2 would make most sense right now we all agree added fw and usi makes sense lets just hope our garbage commissioner will do something smart for once
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Post by gbphoenix1 on Feb 13, 2019 9:12:23 GMT -6
I know they were never on the radar but how smart would the league have looked if they would have pursued Lipscomb 3 years ago? Of course we don't know that their coach will stay and that the aren't a one trick pony. For as good as their team has been the last two years they have had very few games with more than 3000 people.
Nashville must be such a cool city because they have no time for basketball. For all the rage that Belmont is to outsiders, they don't draw very well either. They currently have two of the top mid major teams in the country separated by 3 miles and neither team gets more than 2500 on a regular basis. LU has struggled to crack 2000 on many nights. That is sad. I think any HL team having that kind of success would be 4k or more every night.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2019 17:30:03 GMT -6
I know they were never on the radar but how smart would the league have looked if they would have pursued Lipscomb 3 years ago? Of course we don't know that their coach will stay and that the aren't a one trick pony. For as good as their team has been the last two years they have had very few games with more than 3000 people. Nashville must be such a cool city because they have no time for basketball. For all the rage that Belmont is to outsiders, they don't draw very well either. They currently have two of the top mid major teams in the country separated by 3 miles and neither team gets more than 2500 on a regular basis. LU has struggled to crack 2000 on many nights. That is sad. I think any HL team having that kind of success would be 4k or more every night. A lot of us were mentioning Lipscomb as a partner with Belmont when Belmont was the rage, to open up the Nashville market. Nashville is a cool city, but Vanderbilt is the major program that gets all the college pub. Both programs would've benefitted from being in the HL. ESPN would've been a boon to both programs' attendance and notoriety. Look what it did for Oakland...and now for NKU. I'm confident some of their and Belmont's concern were the travel costs, especially on the Wisconsin trip for their Olympic sports. I think though, that the exposure on ESPN would've outweighed those costs. |
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Post by gbphoenix1 on Feb 20, 2019 13:58:01 GMT -6
I don't think the ESPN connection is worth much anymore. The league has very few league games on national tv. ESPN doesn't highlight HL games in their app. In fact under the conference search function on ESPN+ it lists all of their football conferences first and then alphabetical for the rest of their conferences. So pretty much the people who are watching HL hoops have paid $5/mo and are searching for it. Don't get me wrong the ESPN+ app works great but in this day and age there are tons of streaming options available so I am not sure what the ESPN affiliation is bringing to the league at this point other than a small amount of money per team.
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Post by ougrizz05 on Feb 20, 2019 14:08:57 GMT -6
I don't think the ESPN connection is worth much anymore. The league has very few league games on national tv. ESPN doesn't highlight HL games in their app. In fact under the conference search function on ESPN+ it lists all of their football conferences first and then alphabetical for the rest of their conferences. So pretty much the people who are watching HL hoops have paid $5/mo and are searching for it. Don't get me wrong the ESPN+ app works great but in this day and age there are tons of streaming options available so I am not sure what the ESPN affiliation is bringing to the league at this point other than a small amount of money per team. I personally am not a fan of ESPN+. One of the huge upsides of us joining the Horizon was being geographically close to our league schools. Also, being able to stream live games for free on the Horizon League Network. I was very happy with being able to watch every league game for free. Then there was ESPN3 which was free but now does not carry all of our games. So I feel kind of had by that. I'm not paying ESPN extra to watch Horizon League games. |
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Post by phearthephoenix on Feb 21, 2019 16:15:58 GMT -6
The League the HL longs to be or tries to emulate, The Missouri Valley, had a Final Four participant and regained its status as a Top 10 conference. Just to nitpick on this, as of today (2/21) the MVC is the #17 ranked conference and the Horizon League is #18 according to KenPom. #18 for the HL is actually a pretty significant improvement over #24 last year and #20 in 2017 but still down from #12 in the first post-Butler years (2013, 2014) followed by #14 and #16 in 2015 and 2016, respectively. I don't think any teams need to be added at this stage but if we do, might as well add Purdue-Fort Wayne since they have been competent in basketball lately and are a perfect geographic fit. No thank you to adding Robert Morris, I'm not sure who number 12 would be. As a league we need to get back to having more than one team in the NET / KenPom top 100 with the majority of the league teams in the 100-200 range and the bottom teams in the 200-250 category. The 300+ range is what really drags everyone down. |
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Post by tommyboy on Feb 21, 2019 20:13:17 GMT -6
I'd say the MVC has had trouble with replacements just as the Horizon. I'd bet the teams would jump to the MVC, if asked.
Still don't expect the HL to suddenly become proactive when they settle for being reactive.
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Post by HLFanaticus on Feb 24, 2019 7:30:49 GMT -6
The League the HL longs to be or tries to emulate, The Missouri Valley, had a Final Four participant and regained its status as a Top 10 conference. Just to nitpick on this, as of today (2/21) the MVC is the #17 ranked conference and the Horizon League is #18 according to KenPom. #18 for the HL is actually a pretty significant improvement over #24 last year and #20 in 2017 but still down from #12 in the first post-Butler years (2013, 2014) followed by #14 and #16 in 2015 and 2016, respectively. I don't think any teams need to be added at this stage but if we do, might as well add Purdue-Fort Wayne since they have been competent in basketball lately and are a perfect geographic fit. No thank you to adding Robert Morris, I'm not sure who number 12 would be. As a league we need to get back to having more than one team in the NET / KenPom top 100 with the majority of the league teams in the 100-200 range and the bottom teams in the 200-250 category. The 300+ range is what really drags everyone down. No problem with the nitpicking but I was referring to the MVC's standing during and at the end of last season. 18 for the HL is pretty significant, but it's according to KenPom. How about the NET or even the RPI which the NCAA did away with? This conference has quite a ways to go to regain a top 12-15 ranking again. I do agree though that Fort Wayne should be added. At this point they are about the only program that's being considered that could "help" the HL immediately. |
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With Fort Wayne and USI you can have UIC/FW and IUPUI/USI pair up. RMU has been solid at hoops and USI needs to go through the 5 year transition process so in the current world they are not a better choice. However, they have equal facilities, USI is public, has a better match for sports, is a better geographic fit, like much of the league is Adidas branded and actually averages more fans per game that RMU does. I would welcome either one but USI seems to make more sense for the league to me.
