MBB: St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[Gregory Sager]

Sager - You mentioned your beloved North Park team. You didn't address the rest of their schedule. At least we have some discussion going, while I wait to find out where that poor scheduling Fontbonne team will be playing. For the second year in a row.

Give me a break, man. I can only type just so fast.

[pantherpride06]

Sager, I've said that I don't think that Wester's scheduling tough pre-conference teams cost them the title.  To make it more clear, I'll state it like this...


WEBSTER DID NOT LOSE THE SLIAC CHAMPIONSHIP BECAUSE OF THEIR PRE-CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

I realize that North Central and Greenville played this year and last year.  I also know how hard it was to con them into coming and playing Sager.  I would not have thrown that out there if I didn't know how difficult it was to get them to come play. 

And yes, "deep packets."  North Park travels to Cal-State East Bay, Millikin traveled over to Ohio, Illinois Wesleyan was in California, Carthage was in Texas, Elmhurst was in Orlando, Florida, North Central was in California....  On the other hand...

Fontbonne went to California, Westminster went to Hawaii....  Not really major trips among the entire league.  Trips to Wisconsin or Kansas/Arkansas.  Not quite sending most of your league to the Southwest, South or West Coast.  Money, my friend.  Money.

As far as the McKendree game, we've played McKendree every season since 1943 when we won 28-20.  So, we do schedule the Bearcats each season. 

You know, even being here at Puget Sound.  We struggle with scheduling because of our geographic isolation.  We can't get teams to come out nor do we have the money to fly all over creation to play games.    The men traveled to play in Wisconsin to get some other in-region games.  Sad that in-region is all the way across the country. 

It is money and coaches willing to schedule teams such as Greenville, Blackburn, MacMurray.... the mid to lower tier teams in the SLIAC.  And having the money to travel.  We don't have that at Greenville.  I helped with our budget.  Why play St. Louis Christian, because we don't have the money to drive to Chicago, play someone, stay the night, and come back.

[fcnews]

Sager - It is Tradition. It's playing in a opening weekend tourney that has alot more meaning then just basketball. It allows the kids and the families a trip with Museum visits and "The lighting of the lights on Michigan Ave."

I didn't make this obvious enough. More meaning then just basketball, is very long frienship and fellowship with people that have been important to us for quite awhile. D III basketball has a lot more to it then just trying to fill some committee's criteria. MBI did things for Coach, through his past trials, that can't be explained to someone with blinders on. We don't schedule MBI. It's not a classic. It's a tourney. With good christian fellowship.

Again, this is fun entertainment while waiting for the "Hoopsville" show starts. And we get to hear our name mentioned. Two weeks ago the host didn't even know about our program. Thanks go to Titan Q for mentioning to him, on air, who we were.

[Gregory Sager]

Sager, I've said that I don't think that Wester's scheduling tough pre-conference teams cost them the title.  To make it more clear, I'll state it like this...


WEBSTER DID NOT LOSE THE SLIAC CHAMPIONSHIP BECAUSE OF THEIR PRE-CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Then why insinuate? What invite speculation? Heck, why even bring up the subject in the first place? Yes, it hasn't escaped anyone's notice that you're the one who came on the board today and brought up the subject of non-con scheduling vis-a-vis Webster's stumble.

I realize that North Central and Greenville played this year and last year.  I also know how hard it was to con them into coming and playing Sager.

Hmm, I don't remember playing NCC or Greenville this year. You'd think I would've remembered getting tired from two nights of going 1-on-5.

I would not have thrown that out there if I didn't know how difficult it was to get them to come play.

As I said, every league and every coach has specific scheduling difficulties. Greenville's problem, as opposed to a St. Louis-based SLIAC school such as Fontbonne or Webster, is that it's out in the sticks and is thus a less desirable weekend travel destination. It's also pretty far downstate as compared to, say, Eureka (which is much more centrally located as far as midwestern D3 campuses are concerned). It's a problem around which the Greenville coach has to work, and he might have to agree to a 2-for-1 contract or take on more NAIA opponents such as McKendree and Harris-Stowe if he can't find a sufficient number of D3 coaches willing to travel to Greenville as part of a two-year contract. But I still don't see that as an excuse to put Logan Chiropractic and Concordia Seminary on the schedule.

And yes, "deep packets."  North Park travels to Cal-State East Bay, Millikin traveled over to Ohio, Illinois Wesleyan was in California, Carthage was in Texas, Elmhurst was in Orlando, Florida, North Central was in California....  On the other hand...

Fontbonne went to California, Westminster went to Hawaii....  Not really major trips among the entire league.  Trips to Wisconsin or Kansas/Arkansas.  Not quite sending most of your league to the Southwest, South or West Coast.  Money, my friend.  Money.

Don't confuse a bigger budget with "deep pockets." CCIW budgets are bigger than SLIAC budgets, but they're a long, long way from being "deep pockets" types of budgets. Most CCIW teams cannot afford overnight stays more than once per season, for instance, so in terms of the average in-region game the travel situation is basically the same for CCIW and SLIAC teams, except for the fact that the CCIW's more central location vis-a-vis the larger pool of D3 teams means that the hours spent on the bus are a little fewer on average for CCIW teams than for SLIAC teams.

Aside from Wheaton and perhaps Illinois Wesleyan, there are no Daddy Warbucks schools in the CCIW -- and even Wheaton is very conservative when it comes to apportioning money to the athletic department's annual budget. NPU teams hold plenty of bake sales and stuff in order to be able to travel, and I know that NPU is not the only CCIW school forced to do that. The NPU men's basketball team in particular runs a concession stand at North Park football games to defray the travel costs for the annual snowbird trip. And the Vikings haven't been to Hawaii in 16 years. The Bahamas trip was going to be the first big splurge that they've had since then ... and it fell through. I hope that they had refundable tickets.

As far as the McKendree game, we've played McKendree every season since 1943 when we won 28-20.  So, we do schedule the Bearcats each season.

Good for them. And they should find more opponents of that caliber, or a reasonable facsimile of McKendree's caliber.

You know, even being here at Puget Sound.  We struggle with scheduling because of our geographic isolation.  We can't get teams to come out nor do we have the money to fly all over creation to play games.    The men traveled to play in Wisconsin to get some other in-region games.  Sad that in-region is all the way across the country. 

As I keep saying, everyone's got his own sad song to sing where scheduling is concerned. We all know about the NWC's, because all you have to do is look at a map to see it. Lots of NWC schools try to make the best of a bad geographic situation by scheduling SCIAC schools and the Cali indies such as UCSC and Chapman, since West Coast flights are cheaper than flights to and from the midwest.

MIAA schools have a unique problem, too, in that lower Michigan is a peninsula and thus trips to Illinois and Wisconsin often end up being out-of-region (since Michigan is placed in a more eastern administrative region of the NCAA), and yet those are some of the geographically closest opponents that the Michiganders have. As I said, everyone's got his own scheduling problems. The SLIAC is not unique in that regard.

It is money and coaches willing to schedule teams such as Greenville, Blackburn, MacMurray.... the mid to lower tier teams in the SLIAC.  And having the money to travel.  We don't have that at Greenville.  I helped with our budget.  Why play St. Louis Christian, because we don't have the money to drive to Chicago, play someone, stay the night, and come back.

I'm sure that if you took a map and a compass and drew a circle radiating out from Greenville that covered the area to which you could bus in an afternoon and return from in an evening after a game without requiring an overnight stay, you could find a sufficient number of opponents that weren't club teams, Bible schools, or grad-student squads. Perhaps there wouldn't be enough D3 schools within that radius to fill out a non-con schedule every year, but you'd still be able to find enough decent opponents to keep you from scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of competition.

[y_jack_lok]

All I am saying is that Webster has gone 42-10 in the last four SLIAC Seasons

pride, that would be 52-10 (12-2 in 04-04, 10-4 in 05-06, 14-4 in 06-07, and 16-0 in 07-08)

Still though, A eureka team that I thought would be in the bottom group of the standings with Mac, BC and Prin, was instead playing for a spot in the conference playoffs.  Why, because they won 6 vs the bottom group, and defended home court vs MU and GC.    For that, I have to give Coach Wilde credit.

Credit, yes, but COY, no way. You clearly said earlier that he was your pick for COY)

Coach of the year  in a shocker the Eureka Coach  Chip Wilde

[Gregory Sager]

I didn't make this obvious enough. More meaning then just basketball, is very long frienship and fellowship with people that have been important to us for quite awhile. D III basketball has a lot more to it then just trying to fill some committee's criteria. MBI did things for Coach, through his past trials, that can't be explained to someone with blinders on. We don't schedule MBI. It's not a classic. It's a tourney. With good christian fellowship.

I don't have blinders on, fcnews. If there is a substantive, faith-based reason behind this annual MBI tourney appearance by Fontbonne that you haven't heretofore revealed, then I can certainly appreciate that reason. As a Christian and as an alumnus of a Christian school, I am more than amenable to an explanation of that type.

[Ralph Turner]

Games against schools in Texas are in-region.  TLU and Schreiner would make great opponents.  ETBU and LeTourneau could use some in-region games, altho' they say they have tight budgets.

[fcnews]

Sager - Coach McKinney has had a competetitve relationship with MBI since his Missouri Baptist University days. Coach McKinney is a two time cancer survivor (colon and then lung removal) 12 yrs. ago and then five years ago. During both situations there were somethings that MBI team, coaching staff and institution did that were above and beyond basketball. As long as MBI gives FU a good opponent the first round, this trip will happen. FU has seen Wm. Penn twice and NAIA Hannibal-LaGrange that I can think of in the past few. MBI has moved the dates and this year kept the date flexible until after the NCAA Convention to make sure we have a viable week end.

All the FU opponents can Pee and moan about these two games but it's not going to change as long as Coach is still at the helm.

[pantherpride06]

Just to go back to our comments about scheduling...  Hope College's Women's Basketball Coach had a ton of great comments on the issue.  Many of the same comments...

1. Finding Teams to schedule / who want to play
2. Trying to Schedule games with a large league schedule
3. Trying to Schedule games on the weekend
4. Balancing Education schedules
5. Traveling 5+ hours on a bus (Not wanted)

Very interesting because its some of the same comments made on this board.  Before you get upset Sager, I'm in now way comparing Hope Women's Basketball to SLIAC Men's teams.  However, as a NCAA III program to another, it's the same issues.  Jumping on a bus to travel to Eureka (3 Hours) and Westminster (2.5 Hours) is tough.  At Greenville, we don't travel on charter buses because of the budget.  So, we travel on mini-buses or people movers. 

It's not worth arguing anymore.  But, I really enjoyed what the Hope Coach said.

[fcnews]

Sager - Thanks for keeping the conversation lively yesterday. You were probably a great debater. You do a good job backing up your statements with some evidence of fact.

Compare our conferences endowdtments to any CCIW school and yes you would be considered "Daddy Warbucks". FU falls into the bottom of the SLIAC figures.

Yes we travel. Don't think for one moment that it has anuthing to do with the size of our budget. I'd venture a guess and say, we have the most part time head coaches around. We travel well because we do a great job of fundraising. Plus our AD is a "great" fundraiser. And, our kids are require to pay a lot of out of pocket expenses. Shoot the kids pay for their "tennies and sweats", which were free at my HS.

I agree with PantherPride. It is a school by school problem. There are no blanket statements. We do what we do, we have accepted it.

Now let's all listen for the true brackets and we can start a new line of discussion, afterwords.

[hopefan]

If the SLIAC women's draw is any indication of where the men will fit in, we're in trouble

[fcnews]

Well it appears Pride will be busy this weekend. UPS women are hosting.

[hopefan]

FC gets his wish  -  VERY EXCITING   -  traveling, not playing the top team, a neutral court game!!!    I am so happy for coach and FCnews...

[fcnews]

Goin' to Jackson, Jackson, Jackson

We went from the shortest trip last year, to the longest this year.

A trip is a trip. Nice reward for Fournie and Dressler.

FU will be leaving on wednesday. Bring 'em on let's lace it up.

[fcnews]

Thanks for the comments Hopefan. This chat room has kinda gone dead. FU got a best case senario. I know the NCAA doesn't do seedings. But, with the Host being Millsaps, playing MH-B on a nuetral floor is like a 2 v. 3 game. It would appear to be a much more winnable game then Augie @Augie. I know that does not mean much for a conference still looking for it's first tourney win.

FU is a fun place today. And, I have a plate of crawfish in my future.