Horizon League considering Detroit as tourney location?

[IndyValpo]

And why do I have to be an idiot.  Kampes recruited for 40 years, he starts 4 kids from Detroit and the tourney has never been in Detroit. You think Palenbizo came to Oakland over Valpo because of the tourney?

Here is the bottom line. If anyone thinks that the tourney in Detroit is not an advantage to Oakland and Detroit sadly they are idiots.

[HC]

He came to Oakland because he was promised that he'd get to chuck up 10 three pointers a game (unless his brother was lying). Idk Grizz: wrong link in this thread wrong person in your callout thread might be time to take a brief vacation from the message boards.

[a3uge]

He came to Oakland because he was promised that he'd get to chuck up 10 three pointers a game (unless his brother was lying). Idk Grizz: wrong link in this thread wrong person in your callout thread might be time to take a brief vacation from the message boards.

http://m.nwitimes.com/high-school/chesterton/chesterton-grad-palombizio-to-sign-with-oakland-university-for-basketball/article_23d87431-270e-5ece-844a-13bbf523184a.html

Valpo never gave him an offer. But the article does mention how he liked the idea of playing in Valpo once a year....

But of course nobody from Detroit would enjoy playing a conference tournament in their home town every year. I guess that sentiment only applies to region rats wanting to escape the lake effect weather.

[wh]

It's this simple.  The decision to hold the tournament in Detroit gives Oakland and Detroit a distinct advantage in both tournament play and recruiting. Period.  Whether Kampe openly admitted it, said something to the contrary, or said nothing at all is completely immaterial. Rest assured, he did back flips when he heard the news, and not because he's thrilled for the Horizon League. Historically, he has shown by the way he over schedules OOC opponents for the sake of big pay days that being a good conference teammate is not high on his list.

[valporun]

Since the Mid-Con tourney days, when we traveled to Fort Wayne for three years, which should have had a Valpo sway to it, then moving to Kansas City, where UMKC held home court, for a couple of years, we've seen there was no distinct, clear cut advantage set for any team. It just happened to be that Valpo was that good , but didn't dominate every year, like we could or should have done. I just don't see this being a recruiting advantage or home court advantage to either UD or OU, in fact, I don't see people in Detroit coming out of the woodwork to attend the Horizon League Championship Tournament in large, massive droves to support either the Titans or the Grizzlies just because the games are at The Joe. For those who want to chirp about the fact that our best team in a few years or ever doesn't get to host the tourney, you're going to fall on deaf ears like Chicken Little when the sky isn't falling. Valpo fans have been spoiled for quite some time. Now we just need the guys to put together a great season, and peak when the HL tourney is here so they can get a great seed and game in the NCAA Tournament, even if we had to go play in Detroit to get to the NCAA tourney.

[oklahomamick]

Since the Mid-Con tourney days, when we traveled to Fort Wayne for three years, which should have had a Valpo sway to it, then moving to Kansas City, where UMKC held home court, for a couple of years, we've seen there was no distinct, clear cut advantage set for any team. It just happened to be that Valpo was that good , but didn't dominate every year, like we could or should have done. I just don't see this being a recruiting advantage or home court advantage to either UD or OU, in fact, I don't see people in Detroit coming out of the woodwork to attend the Horizon League Championship Tournament in large, massive droves to support either the Titans or the Grizzlies just because the games are at The Joe. For those who want to chirp about the fact that our best team in a few years or ever doesn't get to host the tourney, you're going to fall on deaf ears like Chicken Little when the sky isn't falling. Valpo fans have been spoiled for quite some time. Now we just need the guys to put together a great season, and peak when the HL tourney is here so they can get a great seed and game in the NCAA Tournament, even if we had to go play in Detroit to get to the NCAA tourney.

Let's compare the conference tournament championship being in Valpo and against Oakland to the conference championship being in Detroit against Oakland.  The conference tournament in Valpo will be less than 20% Oakland fans.  The conference tournament championship game in Detroit would be more than 50%. 

You are missing the point.  In a 1 bid league you want to protect your best team and moving it to a neutral site does not.  Why protect the best team?  Better seed in the tournament and possibly a win thus giving the league more money. 

Would Valpo be upset if the tournament was being held 1.5 hours away at the Rosemont in Chicago?  (also 30 minutes from UIC and  2  hours from UWM).  I still would be upset because it's not on campus giving the best opportunity to the best team. 

There is no reward or advantage now. 

[elephtheria47]

NCAA tournament games are not held on campus gyms where you have 50% of your fans behind you. The current format may not protect the best team throughout the season, but I think it better prepares the winner for the NCAA tourney (big arena, not a huge amount of fans, sightlines, etc)

[VULB#62]

Although mentioned previously, a more long term impact has not received as much play in our discussions as it should:  the OU and UDM recruiting bonus. This "neutral" location provides these two schools with a substantial recruiting advantage in the Detroit basketball community. By leveraging the "you'll be playing in the HL tourney here every March in front of your family and friends" card, Kampe and McCallum (or his successor) will be able to keep more local talent home -- and there is great talent in Detroit. Over time this is a big difference maker in shifting the HL axis of MBB power to the Detroit area. Right now, every school has a shot at every kid they recruit, because there is no built-in advantage other than what each school can bring to the table.  IMO, in 4 years, these two schools will be dominating HL MBB and, with the HL tourney in Detroit annually, it will be self-perpetuating.

[Grizz]

Valpo can't recruit a kid from Detroit and say....You get to come home for the HL tourney every year.  Oakland starts 4 kids from Detroit now and everyone of those kids was there before the announcement. 

[VULB#62]

Valpo can't recruit a kid from Detroit and say....You get to come home for the HL tourney every year.  Oakland starts 4 kids from Detroit now and everyone of those kids was there before the announcement. 

But Valpo can't say you'll also be playing ALL your home games in front of friends and family as well.

And this gives OU and UDM a much better crack at the next level of talent that they might not have been able to get before.

[a3uge]

Valpo can't recruit a kid from Detroit and say....You get to come home for the HL tourney every year.  Oakland starts 4 kids from Detroit now and everyone of those kids was there before the announcement. 

We get it, Kampe already recruits perfectly in Detroit and thus, any more help isn't necessary - maybe even detrimental. Those 4 detroit commits... never going to get any better than that. We all know Oakland is a top 50 RPI at-large team this year.

Hey we're at it, let's convince ourselves that a statically well below average defender should win defensive player of the year.

[oklahomamick]

3/4 of the detroit kids came from other programs.

[VULB#62]

3/4 of the detroit kids came from other programs.

Precisely my point. Right now they can't hold them. Once Motortown Madness takes hold, they will not have to beg kids to come back.

[StlVUFan]

If there is an advantage, it's much more for UDM than for OU.  I'm amazed that all the vitriol has been aimed at Oakland over this.

Reminds me of our old friend RB fuming in March 2004 at the thought of Tulsa winning the bid to host the tournament in 2005 -- standing in Kemper Arena, which is in Kansas City, home of the UMKC Kangaroos.  His hypocrisy -- and he was forced to admit it -- had to do with the fact that ORU scared him, UMKC didn't.

Might the same be true here?

[valpo64]

Sometimes it seems like Lacrone is building new ties with King Kampe and the Detroit gang like he did sleeping with Butler...just sayin'.

[oklahomamick]

All we can do is complain and blog about it....And then watch Oakland and Detroit benefit. 

[valpopal]

If the Crusaders win the conference regular season, in addition to the loss of a home court advantage and the tremendous promotion of VU that would be received again by images of a packed and loud ARC on national television if the tournament were held at Valpo, there is a serious practical element to consider as well. The move of the tournament to Detroit not only takes away the opportunity for many VU fans who supported the team throughout the season to see the team in person, especially those with jobs or kids in school and others who cannot make such a trip due to lack of funds or poor health, but it also robs the Valparaiso community of a great deal of income that would have been produced. This would especially be true for the motels and restaurants, and their many employees, that would benefit greatly during the normal lull in sales usually occurring in March. I know Valpo residents who tell me they are upset by these issues.

[wh]

If we were regularly a 2 or 3 bid league, then holding the tournament in Detroit's and Oakland's backyard (or anyone else's) would matter very little. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There is only 1 prize - 1 highly coveted, ultimate prize that separates 1 program from all the rest.

This being the case the HL tournament championship is simply too important to unfairly weigh it's outcome in favor of 2 programs "within walking distance" of the tournament venue.

It is time to move to a better league. I have a gut feeling our administration is thinking the same thing. We deserve better than membership in a declining 1-bid mid major league centered in Detroit Michigan.

[blackpantheruwm]

I'm not angry at Kampe. I initially was annoyed when I heard the comments, but when I sat back and looked at the big picture, I realized I was just angry that he's a gamer and played the conference and Olympia into this HLT and I wish our athletic department could have been that smart.

[blackpantheruwm]

Would Valpo be upset if the tournament was being held 1.5 hours away at the Rosemont in Chicago?  (also 30 minutes from UIC and  2  hours from UWM).  I still would be upset because it's not on campus giving the best opportunity to the best team.

The Rosemont is about an hour away from MKE, 45 minutes if you're SRT4Driver (actually I'm not sure if he's on this board - long story short, the guy races cars even when there is no checkered flag).

[blackpantheruwm]

If we were regularly a 2 or 3 bid league, then holding the tournament in Detroit's and Oakland's backyard (or anyone else's) would matter very little. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There is only 1 prize - 1 highly coveted, ultimate prize that separates 1 program from all the rest.

This being the case the HL tournament championship is simply too important to unfairly weigh it's outcome in favor of 2 programs "within walking distance" of the tournament venue.

It is time to move to a better league. I have a gut feeling our administration is thinking the same thing. We deserve better than membership in a declining 1-bid mid major league centered in Detroit Michigan.

The problem here is that there's nowhere to go. The MVC isn't going to 11 and I doubt they'd go 12. If Wichita State actually moves forward with that ridiculous football idea and leaves the MVC, there's your shot. But that's an if-and-only-if scenario. The Atlantic 10 is incredibly scattered and still has 14 teams.

However, I'll humor this discussion.

Perhaps the discussion should move away from which conference to move to. Perhaps the discussion should move towards looking for outside the box thinking. Here's my plan, if I'm the Milwaukee AD/Chancellor, on improving the conference:

Make one.

It's not such a crazy idea. There is precedence in the history of college sports, and there's a recent sort-of-example if you look outside basketball.

The latter example I'm referring to is the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, or NCHC. A few years ago, Penn State announced its move to NCAA D-I for ice hockey. This was incredibly important because up to that point, only five Big Ten schools played ice hockey (Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State). Once PSU added hockey, the Big Ten could field a conference. The Big Ten schools were divided among two conferences: Minnesota and UW in the WCHA, and OSU, U of M and MSU in the CCHA. All five schools joined PSU to create the B1G for hockey, which sounded like a death knell to the other conferences.

Except it wasn't. The best schools of the WCHA and CCHA got together and created the NCHC, a brand new league that got an automatic bid immediately to the NCAA hockey tournament. The leftovers of the CCHA folded into the WCHA, making what had been the WCHA and CCHA into the B1G, NCHC and WCHA.

Guess which conference was worst off? The Big Ten. They will build up eventually, but their hockey programs are split between national powers (Minny, UW, Mich) and also-rans (MSU kinda, OSU). The conference hasn't got its footing yet. The WCHA, made up of all the dregs, has been best or second best of the three conferences since the realignment happened.

In hoops, this has happened before, and it's happened in the midwest. The Great Midwest Conference, created in 1990, pulled schools from several different conferences to make a borderline high-major conference - Cincy and Memphis left the Metro, UAB left the Sun Belt, Marquette and Saint Louis left the MCC (Horizon), and DePaul, one of the last independents. Dayton joined in 93. In 1995, after a slew of more schools from different conferences joined up, the Midwest name no longer fit (lots of southern schools). They became Conference USA.
___________

Long story short, you can create a conference by taking the best of different leagues and running with them. I'd shoot for an 8-team League, but 10 would be all right and the most I would go for. These are the schools I would consider for such a conference:

Horizon: Valpo, Oakland, Wright State, Milwaukee. Those should all be for obvious reasons. In the next state budget round we'll get our advance money for the practice facility, a project that is said to cost about $13 million (better than the one Creighton just opened). Wright State already has the facilities, with a nice $9 million practice facility and still-solid Nutter Center. Valpo doesn't have the facilities but succeeds and can own it's metro area, which albeit small would be entirely yours if you had a solid conference. Oakland has a nice game facility and is a strong program, although I'd rank them 4th here because I think most of their success is due to Greg Kampe, and he's 60 years old. Besides these four? CSU leans entirely on students and no one has ever gone to games. YSU is YSU. NKU is too new to D-I for this conference. Detroit is a shadow of what they once were. UIC can't put anything together, but I'd rank them 5th in this scenario. GB has no room to grow their budget.

Summit: North Dakota State, South Dakota State, Oral Roberts, Denver. The latter exists in an air hub so travel isn't as expensive as flying most places and therefore they can be a bit far-flung. Oral Roberts is traditionally strong, but I do think their status as a bandit program would scare me away too much. NDSU and SDSU would be a package deal and IMO a strong package to take. They both have great facilities - in NDSU's case brand-new - and they absolutely own two states that are growing. Their football programs are profitable to their universities, which is more than can be said about most I-AA schools. They're strong publics. I don't think any other conference school is close or even worth mentioning.

Ohio Valley: Murray State, Belmont. You're talking about two schools that succeed and have done so for a long time. I'm not familiar with budgets, but I'm sure Belmont could stand to grow its budget for this new conference. Murray State owns its corner of Kentucky. Belmont's president doesn't believe the Horizon or MVC are strong enough brands to merit full membership. My guess is a brand new conference would change that. Morehead State may be successful, but I don't think I'd offer membership based on what Kenneth Faried did in school. Others are non-starters.

Atlantic 10: Dayton, Saint Louis. Both schools used to be in the Horizon League and got left behind in the major hoops-only shuffle. The thinking around Marquette was that they'd both get invited not long after the start of the Big East, but that hasn't happened yet. I believe the Big East thinking now is that 10 is a good enough number and there's no reason to keep adding. VCU and the east coast schools are too far; Duquesne is probably the only school I would consider, but they have no recent history and they're something of a bandit program (although not as brazen as Oral Roberts). Other schools are too far east or too crappy.

Missouri Valley: Wichita State, Northern Iowa, Illinois State, Missouri State, Loyola. I think the Ramblers' problems are the same as when they left us - yeah they have facilities, but the donor base is ancient and they have no recent success. They get you entry to the Chicago recruiting base, but so does Valpo/Milwaukee. Missouri State's gorgeous JQH Arena is a great facility and the basis for a good program. Illinois State covers a lot of that central Illinois ground and could be a strong addition. Northern Iowa and Wichita State are obvious picks; the question isn't would they be invited but rather would they accept?

Working just from those five conferences, you could build a pretty great 8 or 10 team league:

8 team: Milwaukee, Valpo, Murray State, Belmont, Dayton, SLU, Wichita, UNI. Obviously I'm biased in putting Milwaukee in there, but we're a couple years from breaking ground on a high-major practice facility, so you can see I'm not just paying lip service. Also the people in Milwaukee have come out for big regular season games - we had 6500 at a recent Valpo game, 7500 for Marquette, 8k for GB, 10k for Wisconsin...when students are surveyed and asked the question "why don't you come to games?", the most common answer is "level of competition in the arena." Of those teams, Valpo, SLU and UNI have brought over 6k fans to the Arena. If we had a conference full of those games, I think our attendance would skyrocket. Valpo may sell out the ARC all season.

That conference is also 4v4 Public vs Private. There's something like 35 NCAA Tournaments in the past 20 years there.

This is obviously just an exercise. I think booting YSU out of the conference in the summer rather than adding NKU would have been everything we needed for 2015-16. But WH has a point - something is wrong in this league. I just hope we can fix it before it all goes to hell.

[StlVUFan]

If we were regularly a 2 or 3 bid league, then holding the tournament in Detroit's and Oakland's backyard (or anyone else's) would matter very little. Unfortunately, that's not the case. There is only 1 prize - 1 highly coveted, ultimate prize that separates 1 program from all the rest.

I like your "if" clause above, but for a slightly different reason.  It doesn't change my mind about the venue change (let's be clear, the format has *not* changed ... yet), but I do think one of the reasons given for changing to a neutral site is faulty for the very reason hinted at.

"IF we were regularly a 2 or 3 bid league..."  Remember one of the reasons given for why a neutral site is better is because higher conferences which often have multiple bids use a neutral site.  Forget for a moment whether there's actually a connection of any sort between site choice and number of bids.  Suppose there is.  It is certainly unproven that simply changing to a neutral site will cause the conference to have multiple bids.  It reminds me of baseball teams that shorten the fences to increase home run production, in spite of the fact that they do not have home run hitters, in other words, configuring your ballpark according to what you *wish* you had instead of according to what you *have*.

The fact is the HL is *not* a 2 or 3 bid league.  If that's your reason for switching to a neutral site, it's putting the cart before the horse.  You should wait until you *actually are* a 2 or 3 bid league, and *then* move to a neutral site.

*My* reason for liking a neutral site has nothing to do with bids, of course

[oklahomamick]

I think most of us recognize that winning the regular season may be a better determinant of a team's true ability. Milwaukee certainly wasn't the league's best team in 2014.  The HL should protect the best team with more than a double bye.  All Valpo fans should show up to Detroit wearing shirts that say "HL tournament should be in Valpo"  (That is IF we win the conference season)

[oklahomamick]

I just can't leave it alone.......

The AD @ Detroit gave out some numbers regarding all-session tickets for the JLA Horizon tournament. OU has sold 67, Detroit 59, Valpo around 40 or so, some schools only a handful. Milwaukee has worked out a package with the Greektown hotel and I believe is committing to a couple hundred. I got a sense that they were hoping things would be further along by now.  Olympia said there would be "growing pains" and there is "lots of work to do" -- see above advance ticket sales numbers. They are hoping for an OU-Detroit final. Sounds like UDM could play a last game at JLA next season, prior to the tournament. There are also discussions underway that could lead to the Titans playing an inaugural hoops event at the new arena in 2017. Olympia Sports bought a new basketball floor recently for the HL tournament. Next year, the HL awards for basketball might be rolled into the tournament weekend.

  Thats all for now. 

[valpo64]

They should have named this year's tourney the "La

Crone Memorial".  Could both items (Location and LaC) be gone after this year?