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Speculation about speculation


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Dan Wetzel has posted another article at http://cbs.sportsline.com/b/page/pressbox/...6380385,00.html

Two statements of note:

"The Catholic schools will immediately look to expand, and although religious affiliation will be important, geography and a commitment to basketball first will be the most important factors in finding new members, administrative sources say."

"The question will be how big does the Big East want to get? Nine teams? Ten? Twelve? Other possible expansion teams include Saint Louis and Richmond."

If Dan's information has legitimacy to it, then we can draw the following two conclusions (1) the big east schools want to add programs with a "commitment to basketball," and (2) SLU is unlikely to make the cut if the conference is limited to 9 teams, but will probably make the cut if (and it's a big if) the conference elects to go with 12 teams.

We need Marquette, DePaul, Xavier, and Dayton to lobby for a 12 team conference.

I am of the opinion that the midwest catholic schools may actually be hurting themselves by not being the initiators in this proces. If SLU, Marquette, Dayton, and Xavier got together to form their own conference, then they could set the agenda rather than waiting for the Big East schools to set the agenda.

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back in the day of the cbs.sportline.com days i was an assistant to the college basketball chat room. dan visited the board on occasion to answer college basketball questions. he was an east coast guy no doubt. never had a good thing to say about the midwest and scoffed at my mention of the billikens. absolutely no respect. wetzel has no more information about this thing than you are i do and is just throwing out his thoughts.

the east coast media is not even thinking about what st louis has to offer. imo st louis is a far more important choice than dayton and except for marquette's last two year record, there is nothing more special about the milwaukee market as well. lucky for st louis, the conference makeups wont be decided by andy katz and dan wetzel but by university presidents and i am telling you that if this happens, i will be shocked if biondi isnt in the middle of the thing.

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The Big East is fighting to stay together. While this is option 1 this may be too late. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/20/sports/n.../20college.html

Option 2 is still keep the 5 football teams together and add ND, others (CUSA teams) and readd Temple. It is NOT clear a basketball conference would necessarily form.

Option 3 is if the football schools go elsewhere or implode make the Big East a basketball conference. This is probably the best case (and least likely) for SLU to get into a mostly Catholic basketball supaConference.

It is also not surprising to see football nut Donna Shalala spearheading Miami to the ACC (the woman who once while Secretary of Health & Human Services of the United States of America, filed a letter of support for Barry Alvarez's son at a student disciplinary hearing at the University of Wisconsin).

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