Compton

In terms of basketball I think the new Pac 12 is lined up to be the best mid-major. Outside the P5, but above the American, A10, and diminished Mountain West and West Coast.

I think for the time being. Attendance isn't great and I think a lot of alumni balk at the cost of staying in New York for 4+ days. Brooklyn is by far my favorite spot for it to be played, but I think we'll see more tourneys in the mid-atlantic and maybe mid-west in the coming years.

Side note: the 2026 A10 Tournament will be in Pittsburgh. I'd like to see a couple MVC schools on the schedule (as usual) - SIUC (which should be an annual match-up) with at least one of Bradley, Murray St., Illinois St., or Belmont. Also Missouri St. will be C-USA next season - it would be good to have them in a regular rotation now that they represent a different conference.

If by D1-AA you mean "mid-major" then yes. But the NIT's status as the de facto #2 tourney is being credibly challenged by the College Basketball Crown.

Congrats JGood! Really impressive.

LaSalle beating Saint Joe's, even at home, would indeed be miraculous.

We were in a better conference then. C-USA sent 4 teams to the NCAA that year, giving us the best record of any team not to go. We ended the regular season on a 7-0 run, including wins over #2 Louisville and at Cincy. We also had an earlier win over Dayton, who by Selection Sunday was ranked #20.

Was holding out hope for SLU to stay on a narrow path to the NIT. Would have been fun for Schertz, Swope, Avila and Co. to make another deep run in it. That seems to be fully off the table now. Now back to everything riding on an A10 tournament championship.

We've got unfinished CBI business after losing in the 2010 final!

I'll take the optimistic view as well. I think the experience of having been in the eye of the storm of conference realignment can only help.

Especially this early in the season when at the very least it's a learning opportunity for foul situations and close games down the road.

What's "stake mediocrity"?

That's just the thing! A lot of schools are exercising them. It's SLU that's coming up short. Let's take a look at games scheduled against P5 and D-II schools by teams that finished in the bottom 2/3 of the A10 last year: Duquesne - P5 Games: 1, D-II games: 1 Bonnies - 1, 1 George Mason - 2, 1 St. Joseph - 3, 0 LaSalle - 1, 1 Rhode Island - 1, 1 Fordham - 3 (possibly 4), 1 Davidson - 2, 1 SLU - 0, 2 GW - 1, 1 One team has the least P5 games and most D-II games.

I agree with all of that. If home-homes are a thing of the past, neutral sites are hard to schedule, and MTEs are unreliable, it might be worth considering away games (gasp!), which can be better for NET and not much different than a neutral site game from a fan perspective. There are good solutions to the challenges faced by schools like SLU, and none of them include playing two D-II games. Regional match-ups and rivalries should be nurtured. There was nothing wrong with playing SIU-C every year. Other folks have called for Bradley and/or Drake. Missouri St. is in a new conference. We now have two potential D-I cross-town opponents. P5 teams may have "absolutely no incentive" to schedule us (for home-homes), the same goes for us scheduling D-II programs (at all). That's what the pre-season/exhibitions are for.

I'm excited about the Schertz hire, but, if true, that's disappointing. I'd like to have a coach who wants to play the best and fire up the fans (which I believe Schertz did in Terre Haute). I'm sure there are political/personnel reasons that he might acquiesce to the schedule, so I suppose he gets a bit of a pass. But being okay with this year's schedule is not okay. It'd be better to have someone say "Yeah, the schedule isn't where we'd like it to be, for the players or the fans, but we're going to make the most of it." I'm not really interested in excuses like being bad last year or Ford leaving - Romar, Soderberg, Majerus, Crews, and Ford all had better first season schedules in a variety of circumstances. And there's really no use in finger pointing at anyone individually (Ford, May, Schertz, an Assistant Coach, etc...). Billikens basketball is first and foremost a marketing tool for SLU. The Athletic Department and basketball program have collectively undermined that purpose by putting together a garbage schedule. There will be fewer butts in seats, eyeballs on games, and general awareness and excitement around SLU and the Billikens because of it. They let the fans and school down. Hopefully this schedule is a one-off anomaly. But it's also a failure and should be called out.