Ranking the A-10 Jobs

[Bos8]

An interesting look at Atlantic 10 jobs by Jeff Goodman of Watch Stadium. Goodman has been pretty plugged in to the New England recruiting scene.

https://watchstadium.com/news/atlantic- ... 0-17-2018/

[Da_Process_Survivor]

the History/Tradition category seems way out of left field.

0% chance we are 9th in the conference there...and even less odds that Davidson, LaSalle, Bonaventure, UMass or VCU are ahead of us in it.

[Rhodymob05]

“Bad campus, not much tradition and name recognition. Apathetic fan base unless they are winning.” – A-10 assistant coach

Is this a quote from 2001? I don't know how you walk around that campus today and say its a bad campus. That has to be an old quote lol.

[wpbrown8267]

The knock: “Bad campus, not much tradition and name recognition. Apathetic fan base unless they are winning.” – A-10 assistant coach

I guess they haven't been to the campus lately with the renovations and additions, prob one of Martelli's minions

[ATPTourFan]

The buy games category is confusing. When was the last time we were bought for a true buy game?

[TruePoint]

It’s funny that the rankings and the quotes Goodman used are laughably off base, but then we still end up fourth, essentially tied with St Joe’s for third. That actually does seem about right and not sure how much it would change if the rankings were closer to reality (we would jump St Joe’s into third). Not bad considering we’ve never been one of the cache schools in the league and under Baron we were closer to being a drag on the conference than one of its leaders. Get the practice facility done (and fix the tradition/history score) and we are right there with VCU and Dayton, which is I think where we see ourselves.

[rhodysurf]

the History/Tradition category seems way out of left field.

0% chance we are 9th in the conference there...and even less odds that Davidson, LaSalle, Bonaventure, UMass or VCU are ahead of us in it.

Thats a bizzarre thing to say. VCU and UMass have been to a Final Four

[Billyboy78]

When speaking of tradition, I think you look at the entire history of the program.

[RF1]

the History/Tradition category seems way out of left field.

0% chance we are 9th in the conference there...and even less odds that Davidson, LaSalle, Bonaventure, UMass or VCU are ahead of us in it.

Thats a bizzarre thing to say. VCU and UMass have been to a Final Four

Its not bizarre. UMass has a Final-4 that was vacated and only had NCAA wins during a single five year span (92-96) under one coach (Calipari) with the last tournament victory being back in that Final-4 season of 1995-96. URI actually has one more NCAA appearance than UMass with four different coaches getting tournament wins. UMass is 11-9* and URI 8-10 all time in the NCAA tourney. URI however was a national player back in the forties with NIT runs when that tournament mattered and many associate the invention of the fastbreak with the school. URI (14-16) leads in NIT bids with 15 versus 13 for UMass (13-14).

As for final fours being the barometer, both SBU and LaSalle have done that with the Explorers actually winning the national title back in 1954. These were however a long time ago in a different era and mean little today.

[Rhody_NYCT]

Sorry but Jeff Goodman went out of his way to make us look bad. What a jerk. He even knocks us in the "where they win" section by saying we have "easy admissions." I am honestly shocked that he chose to run the quotes that he did. The whole article is painful to read...pure preseason garbage in my opinion.

[theblueram]

Sorry but Jeff Goodman went out of his way to make us look bad. What a jerk. He even knocks us in the "where they win" section by saying we have "easy admissions." I am honestly shocked that he chose to run the quotes that he did. The whole article is painful to read...pure preseason garbage in my opinion.

Goodman should try and apply for our PharmD program. Good luck with that.

[Bos8]

Sorry but Jeff Goodman went out of his way to make us look bad. What a jerk. He even knocks us in the "where they win" section by saying we have "easy admissions." I am honestly shocked that he chose to run the quotes that he did. The whole article is painful to read...pure preseason garbage in my opinion.

Goodman should try and apply for our PharmD program. Good luck with that.

So when he talks about easy admissions, that isn't exactly what he talks about. Every school has different admission standards for athletes. You'd be pretty surprised. I've sat down with coaches from good academic schools who just need a player to qualify through the NCAA to be admitted. I've also sat with coaches from schools that aren't quite on the same level academically, but they may not be able to get that player through their admissions. It certainly varies from school to school. (Think along the lines of the Old Prop 48. Someone like Cuttino Mobley may not have been admitted if he wasn't an athlete. Also a school like GW who may have had a much better admissions score 10-15 years ago when Hobbs was there.)

[Shaolin Swat]

Sorry but Jeff Goodman went out of his way to make us look bad. What a jerk. He even knocks us in the "where they win" section by saying we have "easy admissions." I am honestly shocked that he chose to run the quotes that he did. The whole article is painful to read...pure preseason garbage in my opinion.

Goodman should try and apply for our PharmD program. Good luck with that.

So when he talks about easy admissions, that isn't exactly what he talks about. Every school has different admission standards for athletes. You'd be pretty surprised. I've sat down with coaches from good academic schools who just need a player to qualify through the NCAA to be admitted. I've also sat with coaches from schools that aren't quite on the same level academically, but they may not be able to get that player through their admissions. It certainly varies from school to school. (Think along the lines of the Old Prop 48. Someone like Cuttino Mobley may not have been admitted if he wasn't an athlete. Also a school like GW who may have had a much better admissions score 10-15 years ago when Hobbs was there.)

Exactly, it's not "easy admissions" in the sense of the school having no academic requirements. It's "easy admissions" in the sense that if the team wants to bring a player in, the academic standards are more forgiving.

[Seawrightspostgame]

Oh yea baby! Give me the job that puts me living in Dayton, OH, over the job that puts me living on the southern coast of Rhode Island. This list is awful.

[Obadiah]

The methodology here is suspect. G First why do you need these nine specific categories in ranking best coaching jobs in the A-10 when a smaller more relevant number will do? The "Buy Games" category is particularly meaningless. The "Recruiting Base" is parochial given the geographic expansion of conferences, improvements in travel and the population density and geographic compactness of the eastern seaboard. Also just because a category lends itself to measurement doesn't give it relevancy which is why the "Admission Requirements" is silly. The fact that some categories are more important than others is totally ignored.

This ranking is suspect on many fronts, but the URI rank on History/Tradition is way off. Also, any creditable study would summarize the rankings in a more sophisticated manner. For example, using the comments of one person to describe knocks on a program is a lazy approach, which underlies why of all these comments, the URI one is the most absurd!

Shame on Jeff Goodman for this shoddy work and if The Athletic has any hope in their goal of one day replacing the local newspaper on sports across the country, they will have to up their game hugely.

[ATPTourFan]

To be sure this is not The Athletic. It’s Stadium Network.

[Bos8]

To be sure this is not The Athletic. It’s Stadium Network.

Good catch. Apologize for the mix up, I edited my original post.

[TruePoint]

Obie - spot on. Totally agree with your assessment of Goodman’s methodology (or lack thereof). I had similar thoughts re: recruiting, but games and admissions. At present, we are recruiting at the top of the conference (they have our recruiting situation as 12th), we haven’t been bought for a game in years (they have us 11th). We were also hurt in the tradition and “selling pros” categories, which seems off to me. Tradition obviously they just screwed up, but the selling pros thing is crazy. Davidson had an all-NBA player, but that would be like Central Michigan being considered a top NFL producing place because Antonio Brown went there. URI has had guys in the NBA, could have another one or two this year and a lot of guys playing overseas. Not sure how empirical the analysis was here, but it doesn’t seem like the methodology makes any sense.

[brady1]

Goodman’s a nitwit. Heard he got got his RHODY feedback from Tom “moron” Moore.

GO RHODY!

[theblueram]

Looking at the Mason board, seems they want a new coach.

[mjg13x]

Another component to our history argument is that we (well, Keaney) invented the fast break. I'd like to think that's a pretty decent contribution to the sport and should be rewarded in that category.