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Margin of victory is not a factor in RPI, so if we lose to Purdue by 1 or by 30, it will be all the same. Now for ratings like Sagarin and KenPom, a close loss would have a very different effect on our ratings than a blowout.

For anyone interested in end of game etiquette check out this great blog post from Ken Pomeroy.

https://kenpom.com/blog/the-evolution-of-end-game-customs/

Lots of great examples from the pre- and early shot clock era where there was no problem with playing out until the final whistle and adding a meaningless dunk or alley-oop at the end of the game. Over the last 20 years or so things have changed a lot.

Agreed respect is earned but brand is a whole different item. Valpo is already one of the best "brands" in the conference. Brand doesn't mean we're the best, it just means people recognize the program.

Brand is a tricky concept to measure, but I got some interesting results looking at Google Trends. Below is a rating based on number of Google searches for a school's men's basketball team from within the US over the last 90 days. All school's values are relative to Valpo, which I gave a value of 1.000. So a score of .5000 would be half as popular as Valpo and a score of 2.0000 would be twice as popular as Valpo. Anyone over 1.000 was more popular than Valpo and anyone under 1.000 was less popular. Here's how we stacked up relative to the rest of the MVC

UNI - 1.5455
ISUb - 1.3636
MSU - 1.1600
SIU - 1.0000
Bradley - .9706
ISUr - .8621
LUC - .7500
Evansville - .6667
Drake - .6111

Here are the Chicago area schools - something to think about when considering how much coverage Valpo does/does not get from Chicago media.

Notre Dame - 23.8889
Northwestern - 11.0000
Illinois - 9.0000
DePaul - 2.5385
UIC - 1.1538
NIU - .8000
Loyola - .7500
Chicago State - .3611

And lastly some other random programs that I thought people might be interested to see:

Butler - 5.4000
Xavier - 4.1667
Dayton - 2.2857
SLU - 1.4444
Oakland - 1.0857
Murray State - .8333
Belmont - .6429
NKU - .3333

I have to agree that the Bloomberg info does not look accurate. The person they list as chief financial officer has been retired since 2012.

I know it keeps being referred to as "Power 5" because of football, but in basketball with the Big East it's at least a Power 6, if not a Power 7 or 8 if you look at the AAC and A-10 who are regularly going to get multiple bids.

You state this as if it is an unalterable fact, when in reality it is the exact rationale for the current push to 20 games by the Power 5. They want the Power 5 to be just as dominant in basketball as football and can't stomach the reality of a Power 6, 7 or 8. Success by Big East, AAC or A-10 teams is even more of a detriment and threat to them than the 1-bid mid major leagues. I guarantee that Villanova's and UConn's recent national championships were far more galling to the Power 5 than Butler and VCU's Final Four appearances. 

So while you may think the power leagues are moving to 20 games to get even more bids, the argument can be made that they've already accomplished that.  This move is just twisting the knife.

You are right, they have already accomplished taking bids from the mid-majors - but you are wrong about it just being a way to twist the knife. This is about taking YOUR bids (BE, AAC, A10). They still want more bids, and you guys are the only ones with any left. Look for the Gavitt Games to disappear as soon as contractually possible.

The Big East is looking to fight fire with fire by floating the story of going to 20 games themselves, but the reality is that all potential expansion candidates have at least one major issue. So the Big East is in a tough spot unless Gonzaga relocates a thousand miles to the east, SLU finds another Rick Majerus or Xavier finally gets over their fear of adding Dayton. You guys are the ones in the cross hairs now. With the resources and tradition of the Big East you are in a better position to fight back, but ultimately, the balance of resources and clout is still on the other side. Just ask Chris Holtmann.

One of the long range master plans showed a garage south of Mueller and west of Linwood House. There is a "road to nowhere" there currently on Campus Drive South. You can see it on this overhead:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.4620017,-87.0450114,276m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

But those master plans go out like 30 years, and many of the proposals in it may not happen for a long time, if ever.

If a garage was built there, in itself it wouldn't offer great parking for the games either. But if students could be forced there to leave more spots in the lot west of Memorial Guild, then I suppose it could help improve things on game nights at the ARC.

I physically walked out the distance from the Porter Hospital garage to the ARC when I was working for the Crusader Fund. It is the same distance as the middle of the softball field lot. So, on the positive side it's the same distance as many people park already. On the negative side, I don't think the softball lot is considered ideal parking by most fans, but rather the place you end up when all the good spots are gone. In addition, people are just not used to parking up by the hospital garage, and I think the perception is that it is further. Lastly, on a cold windy night, walking along the new sidewalk with the open soccer field to your west can be pretty rough compared to the relatively sheltered walk along Union Street.

I noticed someone on the MVC board make the "Valpo's not used to tougher competition" argument. I went back and checked the KenPom numbers, and (a little to my surprise) they backed up the poster's thoughts. Despite our strong non-conference scheduling over the past couple seasons, our 4 year average KenPom strength of schedule rating is the weakest of the 10 current MVC members. You really can't discount the difficulty of having your 18 conference games being against tougher competition from top to bottom. Here is how the numbers shook out.

Team       4yr Avg KenPom SoS
UNI          3.54
ISUr          1.80
ISUb          1.56
BU          1.25
DU          1.15
MSU          0.99
UE             0.04
SIU         -0.58
LUC         -0.74
Valpo      -1.22

[On the other I agree that comparing Valpo to Wheaton is an apples to orange comparison.]

I would not criticize Wheaton College - their admission standards are significantly better than Valpo and have graduated top 500 CEOs. they are doing something right.

On the other I agree that comparing Valpo to Wheaton is an apples to orange comparison.

Here's a nice interactive tool that I use for one-on-one comparisons between my alma maters and other universities. It has a pretty comprehensive scoring and grading mechanism.

I plugged in Valpo and Butler just out of curiosity.  I think you'll find the results pretty interesting:

https://www.collegefactual.com/tools/college-combat/#butler-university~valparaiso-university

Enjoy.

wh - thanks for sharing! This site is outstanding.

I think a lot of concern about the Law School stems from the size of the 2017 1L class.

https://www.theindianalawyer.com/articles/44565-valparaiso-law-incoming-class-significantly-smaller-but-posts-higher-lsats-and-gpas

Valpo definitely has important issues that need to be sorted out with the law school and student retention. However, are the schools that expressly appeal to conservative Christians really doing that much better than Valpo? The numbers are below. Wheaton certainly looks to be on a different level, but Taylor and Calvin don't look demonstrably different in their profiles to me. And if you start to look at other conservative Christian schools in the area (North Park, Bethel, Huntington, Concordia River Forest) you will see more profiles that look like Taylor's (or worse) and none that are as impressive as Wheaton's.

School	Wheaton	Calvin	Valpo	Taylor
Category	Nat Lib Arts	Reg. Coll.	Reg. Univ.	Reg. Coll.
Rank	63	1	4	2
UG Enroll.	2,456	3,807	3,294	2,131
Acceptance Rate	79%	75%	83%	80%
4yr Grad Rate	82%	62%	54%	66%
Endow. (millions)	388.0	129.1	204.7	76.7

I'm pretty sure that the ceiling in Hilltop is too low to accommodate a varsity volleyball game.

A couple thoughts related to this thread.

1. I think the US News categories are basically just based on what levels of degrees a school offers.

Bachelors only = liberal arts college
Limited masters degrees = regional college
Many masters but no PhDs = regional university
PhD granting institutions = national university

So "moving up" categories would require creating new PhD programs. TIU does offer a couple PhDs.

2. Valpo's traditional student body has come overwhelmingly from the general (non-minority) HS population in the four Lake Michigan states (WI, IL, IN and MI) plus Lutherans (especially but not exclusively LCMS) nationwide. Both of these groups are currently shrinking. There will be fewer high school kids graduating in these states each year for the foreseeable future, just as there will be fewer Lutheran confirmands nationwide. To maintain enrollment the university will either have to pull a continually higher share of kids from the same shrinking pool, or expand into pools it has not been able or willing to pull from in the past.

Anyone thinking of going should definitely sign up for the alumni event:
http://alumni.valpo.edu/s/1347/17/page-1col.aspx?sid=1347&gid=1&pgid=2146&content_id=2923

IrishDawg, agreed. The MVC is a much better conference. But I think I may give the Horizon League the honor of having the best potential team next year though. All of OU's best players are seniors & they bring in Kendrick Nunn who played his first 3 years with Illinois before getting kicked off the team after his domestic assault charges. Another troubled but very talented red-shirt transfer for Kampe & Co. It's tourney or bust for that team.

There is a lot of bottom feeding to pedestrian teams in the HL still: YSU (may be a tad better next season), Cleveland State, UWM, IUPUI, Green Bay got decimated by transfers, WSU took a huge blow in losing Alstork.

Next year might be a down year in the MVC because a lot of teams are so young but the teams will still have a lot talent on the rosters. MSU & Loyola will be the favorites.

Don't forget that Oakland has now lost two starters from last year that had eligibility to keep playing, but will not be on the roster in 2017-18 (Isaiah Brock and Stevie Clark). Without those guys OU is still the favorite to win the HL, but they are probably no longer the borderline at-large, "win an NCAA game", type of team that they might have been.

2015-16 Final KenPom Ranks for 2016-17 D1 Home Opponents
Southern Utah - 342
Coppin State - 333
Ball State - 155
Rhode Island - 82
Indiana State - 168
Santa Clara - 244
Chicago State - 347
Non-Conf Average: 238.7

Oakland - 79
Detroit - 172
Green Bay - 127
UIC - 335
Wright State - 146
Northern Kentucky - 255
Cleveland St - 289
Youngstown St - 281
Milwaukee - 114
Conf Average - 199.7

Overall Average - 216.8

2016-17 Final KenPom Ranks for 2017-18 D1 Home Opponents
Southeastern Louisiana - 231
Samford - 166
Utah State - 130
Non-conf Average - 175.6

Illinois St - 49
Indiana St - 199
Loyola - 97
Bradley - 217
Drake - 258
Southern Illinois - 150
Missouri State - 134
Evansville - 154
Northern Iowa - 169
Conf Average - 158.5

Overall Average - 162.8

I wanted to take a quick stab at this question. First, I checked for similar schools to Valpo - private Universities ranked in the top 10 of US News' Regional Universities rankings (for any region). No schools in the West, Midwest, or North regions currently sponsor D1 scholarship football (either FBS or FCS). Three schools in the South region did, Elon, Samford and The Citadel. I ignored the Citadel since it is so different as a military institution. That left Elon and Samford. According to the latest EADA data, they both spend in total around 5.3 million dollars a year on football. Valpo spends 1.1 million. So that looks like an annual gap of about 4.2 million dollars. Endowments usually pay out 4% of their total each year, ideally with investment income exceeding that amount so that the endowment can fund its purpose in perpetuity. So, a 105 million dollar endowment would generate the roughly 4.2 million dollars needed per year. In addition, a one time investment of 20 to 30 million dollars in facilities would probably be needed. So let's say 130 million dollars. The cash pay out for Powerball is currently 443 million, which after taxes is maybe 221 million? So you could completely fund a move up to FCS and still have 90 million left over for yourself - if you were so inclined. Best of luck to you!

For all of the complex methodologies that these various rankings (Forbes, US News etc.) come up with - they can all be pretty well approximated (especially for private and/or non-engineering only schools) by using a single variable - how wealthy are the families that send their children there?

Check out this awesome data set from the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html

and here is the specific page for Valpo.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/valparaiso-university

The challenge for Valpo is that many of the schools we'd like to be grouped with academically and/or athletically (Creighton, Davidson, Gonzaga, Butler, Xavier, St. Mary's (CA), Belmont - to name a few) all have significantly more potential financial resources among their alumni and parents.

EddieCabot isn't just a Butler fan. He's a Butler fan whose every post is a parody of how deluded he thinks the Valpo fan base is. Eddie might actually be the person on this board who agrees the most with Grizz's opinion of Valpo and its fans. The fact that it was one of Eddie's posts that set off Grizz has to be one of the most hilarious and meta things to ever happen on this board.

Remember, those numbers are for households with televisions, not total population. Interesting to see that other than Chicago, Des Moines is the largest market with an MVC team.

The US is divided in to 210 Nielsen "Designated Media Areas" - basically where you get your local ABC/CBS/NBC affiliate station from. These range from NYC at number 1 with over 7.3 million households with TVs to Glendive Montana with 4,050 households with TVs.

The average size of the HL markets is 1.22 million households. The average size of the MVC markets is about 715,000 households. If you ignore Chicago, which is common to both conferences, and also an outlier for its huge size, the average for the other HL markets is 904,000 and the average for the other MVC markets is 320,000, or about 1/3 the size.

Here are the full numbers for both conferences.

City, Conference(s), School(s), Rank, Households w/ TVs

Chicago, MVC/HL, UIC/Loyola/Valpo, 3, 3484800

Detroit, HL, Detroit/Oakland, 13, 1845920

Cleveland, HL, CSU, 19, 1485140

Milwaukee, HL, UWM, 35, 902190

Cincinnati, HL, NKU, 36, 897890

Dayton, HL, WSU, 64, 498270

Green Bay, HL, UWGB, 68, 441800

Des Moines, MVC, Drake, 69, 427860

Springfield MO, MVC, Mo St., 75, 414570

Paducah KY/Mt Vernon Ill., MVC, SIU, 83, 388340

Cedar Rapids/Waterloo IA, MVC, UNI, 90, 342610

Evansville, MVC, UE, 103, 284040

Youngstown, HL, YSU, 115, 260000

Peoria-Bloomington, MVC, Bradley/Ill St., 118, 244050

Terre Haute, MVC, Ind St, 155, 139600

I was most interested in what the KenPom data said about "elite" status and not on the definition of who is and isn't a mid-major. The folks having the conversation seemed to be using a solely conference based criteria (ie. P5, BE and American are major - everybody else is a mid), so I just went with that. I think there are strong arguments both ways.

[5. Gonzaga]

Similar to the conference realignment discussions, I think the 6 year average KenPom rating leads to some interesting insights on this topic.

Of the top 64 teams, just 9 are traditional mid-majors (they are from outside the Power 5, the old Big East and the Mountain West). Of those 9, 4 have been recently poached by the power conferences and no longer count as mid-majors.

5. Gonzaga - you can't get more elite than the Zags, only Kentucky, Kansas, Louisville and Duke have been better.
12. Wichita State - no longer a mid-major with move to American
22. Creighton - no longer a mid-major with move to BE
23. VCU - the nation's premier remaining mid-major after Gonzaga - definitely elite
28. St. Mary's - KenPom shows pretty clearly that they are already elite. Multiple at large bids, plus a top 30 AVERAGE ranking over the last 6 seasons. Both their 2013 and 2017 teams were better, according to KenPom, than the 30 win team that lost in the ARC in 2016. Maybe bias against their small facility, along with the Gonzaga shadow keeps people from realizing just how good the Gaels have been.
33. Xavier - no longer a mid-major with move to BE
39. Butler - no longer a mid-major with move to BE.
44. BYU
45. Dayton - I think the Cougars and Flyers are on the edge of elite status, but based on their top 50 average, you can still make a strong case - though there is a definite gap compared to the other mid-majors above them, both current and former.

Interestingly, there are no mid-majors ranked between 46 and 64. Then, from 64 to 100 the majority of teams are in fact mid-majors (21 of the 36). So when we talk about "making the jump" it really is a major leap (not just an incremental step) to burst forth into this "elite" and "national" group. Below are the mid-majors who ranked in the top 100 on average over the last 6 years. This is the "best of the rest" group of programs that have done the most, WITHOUT making the leap into "elite" status. It seems likely to me that if another programs does move up, it will come from this group.

65. Northern Iowa - no one's done better, without breaking out nationally, than the Panthers.
67. Middle Tennessee 68. Davidson 71. Belmont 73. Harvard 74. Illinois State 76. New Mexico State 78. Richmond 80. St. Joseph's 81. Valpo 82. Iona 84. St. Bonaventure 85. SFA 86. Princeton 87. Akron 88. George Washington 93. Louisiana Tech 94. South Dakota St. 98. Vermont 99. UMass 100. Rhode Island

Lastly a couple other programs worth mentioning.

103. St Louis - Rick Majerus got them a couple elite seasons at the beginning of the 6 year window, but the last three years have been brutal, and the average puts the Billikens just out of the top 100. Based on their almost new 80 million dollar arena and the amount of money they are willing to spend on a new coach, there is definitely an expectation that St Louis can be a lot better than where they are currently at.
104. Murray State - Two recent down year's after Steve Prohm's departure knocked them out of the top 100, but they have a large and engaged fan base for a mid-major, plus decades of domination in the weak pre-Belmont OVC.
192. Grand Canyon - They rank low because of their recent transition to D1 and because they are in the WAC. However, their ties to USA Basketball and Jerry Colangelo along with major financial resources as a large for-profit university are unique attributes that make a lot of people single them out as a potential breakout program, even though there's no history to back it up yet.

When evaluating programs moving forward you can certainly argue about how far back it is worthwhile to look, however, I think the data you'd least want to throw out is the most recent. It's the data most reflective of the roster you'd bring into a new conference and also the "what have you done for me lately" reputation that your coaches have to leverage (or fight against) in current recruiting battles.

All that being said...ask and ye shall receive.

From 2010-11 through 2014-15 Murray State does edge out Valpo 7.40 to 6.51.  In addition apparent MVC standard bearer UNI looks even better at 10.95.

Its incredible how close Murray State and Valpo are. Definitely two of the standard bearers of Mid Major hoops.

Considering the sheer numbers of possessions, games and opponent's efficiency ratings over the course of 16 years, that is a lot of math to come out with almost the exact same answer for each team, and certainly a compliment to both programs.

However over the last 7 seasons - which our MVC detractors should note includes three seasons without Alec Peters, and one season where he was a true freshman who averaged 12ppg - Valpo has been even better, relative to both Murray and everyone in the MVC not named Northern Iowa. Here is the same graph (same teams, same scale) for just the last 7 seasons.