MAC Teams - Present and Future

[LS71]

^ TF was starting to build something, but T. Boone waved $5 mil at him and he was gone. Can't blame him though, that's a lot of gelt...off to Benjamin U!

[Quann]

are you people serious, the MAC basketball teams are horrible. They got the auto 1 NCAA bid and zero NIT bids. vs the Atlantic 10 which got 2 NCAA and 4 NIT bids. Our basketball program is going to suffer big time in the talent level they can recruit. Oh yea, our team will still be competitive in the MAC but we are going to be watching sub level basketball. Might as well stay local and go to a good high school game.
Calapari must be pulling his hair out seeing how we are destroying the foundation he set up and making sure we had a competitive schedule to recruit high level players.

if we ever do get a good recruit, they will surely leave our team to go to a better league.

It's going to be so great to hang those MAC Conference Championship banners in the rafters next to the Atlantic 10 Championship Banners !! What a disgrace !!

Calapari must be pulling his hair out seeing how we are destroying the foundation he set up you're kidding right??? Umass hoops has sucked almost from the time he left (30 years ago???)

Spot on. Delusional post from pk77.

[DoctorJ]

NOTICE TO ALL UMASS HOOP FANS:

THIS IS MARCH. REMEMBER TO TAKE YOUR MEDICATION

[LS71]

March is when we can stop taking our meds. We need to start in November so we, as the Who sang.....don't get get fooled again....believing something is being built only to get let down again next March.. .

[WillHerndonFan]

Insider, in regards to your comment "Umass will have the best facilities and most investment in the MAC". Having a million dollar house in a neighborhood made up of $400K houses is never a good investment. Also would you be upset having a team that is talented enough to be in the NIT ? The MAC couldn't even get one team into the NIT, the league sucks ! I am glad that you agree that the quality of play will go down. if quality of play goes down, the talent level of your recruits will also go down.

KD68, the Atlantic 10 had 4 NIT bids and not 3 ( St Joes, VCU,Loyola, Richmond). So the difference in leagues is even worst than you thought.

All you needed to look at is Coach Franks facial expression and body language during the MAC announcement show to see what he thinks about the move and that's with him trying to look excited in front of his bosses.

It only matters if we are willing to pay to play. How did UCON get so good so fast! It’s not because of it storied history! Does anyone know the NIL numbers in UCON?

[Uminuteman]

Insider, in regards to your comment "Umass will have the best facilities and most investment in the MAC". Having a million dollar house in a neighborhood made up of $400K houses is never a good investment. Also would you be upset having a team that is talented enough to be in the NIT ? The MAC couldn't even get one team into the NIT, the league sucks ! I am glad that you agree that the quality of play will go down. if quality of play goes down, the talent level of your recruits will also go down.

KD68, the Atlantic 10 had 4 NIT bids and not 3 ( St Joes, VCU,Loyola, Richmond). So the difference in leagues is even worst than you thought.

All you needed to look at is Coach Franks facial expression and body language during the MAC announcement show to see what he thinks about the move and that's with him trying to look excited in front of his bosses.

It only matters if we are willing to pay to play. How did UCON get so good so fast! It’s not because of it storied history! Does anyone know the NIL numbers in UCON?

It's not?

Their combined record is 65–32. They have been to six Final Fours and are five time National Champions (1999, 2004, 2011, 2014, 2023).

[McKinney]

Insider, in regards to your comment "Umass will have the best facilities and most investment in the MAC". Having a million dollar house in a neighborhood made up of $400K houses is never a good investment.

To play devil's advocate. I like the analogy of kids trick or treating: UMass is the big house down the street handing out king-size candy bars in the MAC.

Also would you be upset having a team that is talented enough to be in the NIT ? The MAC couldn't even get one team into the NIT, the league sucks !

The NIT is supposedly prioritizing Power Conference teams now anyway. So who knows what's in store.

[harbo]

My biggest sticking point remains the fact that the MAC is only getting one hoops team into the Big Dance each year. Tough to convince a player that he will get a solid chance to play in the Big Dance (and generally as somewhere around a seventh seed) especially if he can come up big and lead the team to the MAC tournament championship. Otherwise you hope for a call for at-large bid for a mid-level conference team, or become comfortably numb with a lower-level tournament invite.

I get the whole "football rules college sports thing" and it is good that we are no longer an independent. There is extra money coming in, so how should the powers-that-be dole out the cash? I still feel that we fall short of envisioning what we can be (see my more than tongue-in-cheek suggestion a couple of months back that we should have been trying to catch on with some big-dog conference). Don't know if any exploration to achieve that was ever approached. And if not, why not?

Again, as I said in a prior post, apologies to the good MAC fans who were very hospitable participants on this board several years back. I just have different priorities for the sports that are emphasized. I was spoiled to our 9K attendance figures with hoops, while we were lucky to fill 70% of our 18K concrete palace down by Southwest.