Horizon/OVC

vatusay · Wed Mar 25, 2015 6:34 pm

Swimming/diving and mens/women's tennis could easily be cut. Does anyone besides the athletes/coaches care or follow them at all? Hate to be so blunt but seems pretty obvious.

Wed Mar 25, 2015 7:17 pm

meganeck wrote:Haven't studied the OVC enough to comment too much, but initial reaction is we have problems competing in the Summit, so I don't know how we would be competitive in the OVC.

Strictly from a basketball perspective, the Summit League was 21st on RealTimeRPI's list of men's basketball conferences. Ohio Valley is 25th on the same list, and that includes Belmont and Murray State. You remove those teams and the best team in the conference this last year was Eastern Kentucky at #156 RPI. That's worse than both of the Dakota State schools (NDSU & SDSU) which are both just under 100. ORU is #163 on the list. We were last in the Summit this year, but we likely would have been ahead of 2 or 3 teams (Tennessee State, Austin Pea, maybe Jacksonville State) in the OVC this year.

On the women's side, the Summit and OVC are pretty close (Summit is ranked 25th best RPI, OVC is 26th).

I don't know about the other sports, but I think that moving basketball to the OVC would give us a small bump in winning % right away. Plus we're competing with smaller schools and smaller media markets that are much closer to where we are in financial ability.

WIU0812 · Wed Mar 25, 2015 8:32 pm

Ya unfortunately looking at it financially it makes the most sense for school and dropping tennis and swimming.

Tere North · Thu Mar 26, 2015 12:03 am

OVC Basketball championships are held in Nashville. While they play the championship at the Municipal Auditorium, the Bridgestone arena hosted the Women's Final 4 last year with OVC as the host. Certainly don't see the NCAA tourney, or even a regional host site being in SD, but Nashville is a proven commodity. And yes, OVC gets an autobid just like the Summit.

OVC is split into a east and west division, playing home and away within the division and alternating outside the division, with the tourney drawing from both divisions.

LocalFan · Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:10 am

Tommy Bell squandered a perfect opportunity to cut tennis last year when there was a GA acting as interim coach. No one would have had to lose their job. Very short sighted, and now we have 2 tennis coaches. If student enrollment is declining, why shouldn't the number of sports supported also decline?

Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:23 am

Tere North wrote:OVC Basketball championships are held in Nashville. While they play the championship at the Municipal Auditorium, the Bridgestone arena hosted the Women's Final 4 last year with OVC as the host. Certainly don't see the NCAA tourney, or even a regional host site being in SD, but Nashville is a proven commodity. And yes, OVC gets an autobid just like the Summit.

OVC is split into a east and west division, playing home and away within the division and alternating outside the division, with the tourney drawing from both divisions.

Actually, the new arena in Sioux Falls, SD will be one of the Women's NCAA Regional hosts next year: http://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-wom ... onal-hosts

sealhall74 · Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:46 am

How many and what sports are offered is just one more way the Dakotans are kicking our butts right now. NDSU goes with only 7 men and 7 women sports and seem to be doing pretty damn well with that limited offering. BTW, they also have double the athletic training/strength and conditioning staff we do and can wisely concentrate those resources on fewer programs. That other DI school up north (UND) goes with 9 men and 10 women sports. However, whether by accident or design, NDSU and UND do not compete with each other when it comes to recruiting for the "lesser" popular sports like wrestling (NDSU), swimming/diving (UND), hockey (UND), and tennis (UND). Kudos to them for doing the best they can with what they have.

WIU0812 · Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:00 am

It is going to upset some people such as the parents and I would assume we would honor the scholarships, but we are going to have to eliminate our school down to around a 12 sport school between women's and men's sports. Its great to offer all of the options, but times are tough and some of the sports we offer are either dieing or just do not have the following that is needed to justify supporting it. They could drop a couple sports to a club level and compete that way with very limited funding and most would have to be done by them through independent fundraising and their own funds. I think keep the below sports and eliminate the rest until times get better, unless I am forgetting some major sport of the top of my head.

-M Basketball
-W Basketball
-Football
-Baseball
-Softball
-Volleyball
-M Soccer
-W Soccer
-M Track & Field
-W Track & Field
-M Golf
-W Golf

vatusay · Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:06 am

Men- Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, Track, Golf.

Women-Volleyball, Basketball, Softball, Soccer, track, golf.

Works for Title IX. That eliminates Tennis, Swimming, and Cross Country (which i didn't even know the school had haha).

As mentioned before, I like the Idea of a rifle team because i could see WIU being very successful nationally. Which is always nice.

Edit: WIU0812 we seem to be on the same wavelength lol.

sealhall74 · Thu Mar 26, 2015 9:09 am

I think the DI requirement for sports offerings is minimum 7M/7W or alternatively 6M/8W.