[UNCA Alum]

I think we basically have two choices...

a) Leave the tournament as it is
b) Go back to the old way where we played on a neutral court or at the Vines Center


Forcing Asheville, Charleston, High Point and Coastal to move to a larger arena while the other teams would get to play at home isn't really fair to those schools, but also might not be feasible. Often times we don't know the top seed until the final week of the regular season. It's not like the North Charleston Civic Center is going to say, "Well let's leave the first week in March open each year just in case our Bucs happen to get the top seed in the Big South Tourney!!" You have to book these venues months or even years in advance.. and I doubt they are going to willingly accept something that very well may not happen.

We have decided to start giving some meaning to the regular season. If Asheville is the #1 seed, it means you have to play at the Justice Center with 300 students literally two feet away from the court and in a gym that gets pretty darn loud. Not at the Asheville Civic Center, where UNCA doesn't even really play games anymore, the students would be 30 feet away, you'd have to deal with the smell of horse manure, and plenty of empty seats would make it possible to easily have a conversation with a guy three sections away.

Rewarding the team that won the regular season by giving them home court advantage in the tournament is more important, to me, than acquiescing every demand of the fan bases for teams ranked 2-8.

So some Winthrop or Radford fans might not be able to go and watch their team play in Conway on Saturday afternoon. Is that really more important than the players from Coastal being able to enjoy the advantages of winning the Big South regular season title and them being put in the best possible scenario to advance to the NCAAT?

[olldflame]

I've always been an advocate of holding the entire tournament in one place, in a facility equipped to accomodate it properly. Knowing where and when it will be held allows fans from all the schools to make their plans and attend the entire tournament if they want to. For a basketball junkie like me, the old days when we did it like this were heaven on earth. I find it curious that the conference has gone back to this for the women's tournament, but not for men.

The single site format doesn't make the regular season irrelevant. Seedings are still important, even if home court isn't at stake. Who you play in the first round is at least as important as where you play them. Quite frankly, home court in the final has not proven to be such a huge advantage over they years in our conference.

[WinthropEagleFan]

I've always been an advocate of holding the entire tournament in one place, in a facility equipped to accomodate it properly. Knowing where and when it will be held allows fans from all the schools to make their plans and attend the entire tournament if they want to. For a basketball junkie like me, the old days when we did it like this were heaven on earth. I find it curious that the conference has gone back to this for the women's tournament, but not for men.

The single site format doesn't make the regular season irrelevant. Seedings are still important, even if home court isn't at stake. Who you play in the first round is at least as important as where you play them. Quite frankly, home court in the final has not proven to be such a huge advantage over they years in our conference.

As a fan, I do miss the one-site format a lot...but I do like the new format from a competitive standpoint. I mean, the top seed has won 5 of the last 6 tournaments (so I beg to differ about your point that home court hasn't been an advantage in the finals)...I'm not saying the top seed should win it every year, but I do like the advantage of having home tourney games if you have a good regular season. And it does guarantee a full building and a great atmosphere for the finals (unlike a few of the neutral site finals I attended a decade ago).

[UNCA Alum]

The single site format doesn't make the regular season irrelevant. Seedings are still important, even if home court isn't at stake. Who you play in the first round is at least as important as where you play them. Quite frankly, home court in the final has not proven to be such a huge advantage over they years in our conference.

Don't know exactly when we officially went to the new format, but...

2004 #1 Liberty beats High Point at Liberty (home teams 1-0)
2005 #1 Winthrop beats Charleston Southern at Winthrop (2-0)
2006 #1 Winthrop beats Coastal Carolina at Winthrop (3-0)
2007 #1 Winthrop beats VMI at Winthrop (4-0)
2008 Winthrop beats #1 UNCA at UNCA (4-1)
2009 #1 Radford beats VMI at Radford (5-1)

I'd say 5-1 is a pretty good advantage, though I guess you could argue that the top ranked teams would have hypothetically gone 6-0 at a neutral court. But let's look back at what happened on neutral courts. I don't know the particulars, just whether or not the regular season champ won.

2003 #1 Winthrop loses to Asheville in semis at Vines Center (0-1)
2002 #1 Winthrop wins in Roanoke (1-1)
2001 #1 Radford does not win in Roanoke (1-2)
2000 #1 Radford does not win in Asheville (1-3)
1999 #1 Winthrop does win in Asheville (2-3)
1998 #1 Asheville does not win in Lynchburg (2-4)
1997 #1 Asheville does not win in Lynchburg (2-5)

[olldflame]

I was going from memory, and I guess the WU win at the Justice Center and the fact that LU hosted the single site tourney for several years and never won it stuck in my mind. As far as 2005,6 and 7 are concerned, does anyone think those Winthrop teams wouldn't have won anywhere the final had been played?

[Schfourteenteen]

I like the system the way it is. The semifinals grouping get us on ESPNU/360, and the first and final rounds are given to the top seeds. Television = $$$.

I dont like the neutral site concept unless it gets our first round games on TV(not gonna happen). It potentially kills the finals and - lets be honest - A packed Ski Lodge will always look better than the Vines with 500 people in it.

[Schfourteenteen]

As far as 2005,6 and 7 are concerned, does anyone think those Winthrop teams wouldn't have won anywhere the final had been played?

Even in 08 most of us Liberty people felt WU was going to win in the Ski Lodge.

[WinthropEagleFan]

I was going from memory, and I guess the WU win at the Justice Center and the fact that LU hosted the single site tourney for several years and never won it stuck in my mind. As far as 2005,6 and 7 are concerned, does anyone think those Winthrop teams wouldn't have won anywhere the final had been played?

The 06 and 07 finals went down to the last possession...not sure if homecourt can be given credit for WU pulling out those wins, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

[g-webb1994]

You aren't going to find many off campus arena that are small enough to not look 'empty' on TV, unless you curtain off the upper deck.

[kingaling42]

I think it's interesting that even at Kimbel in this WU/RU semifinal game- there are empty seats everywhere, especially behind the benches..

So I ask again, what would that look like at Liberty or the N. Myrtle Beach Civic Center or elsewhere and why is there always so much talk about the smaller venues when Kimbel's not filled anyway for this game that features 2 good teams, 1 of which from the state of SC??

[Cider Jim]

Score at the 4 minute mark of the first half:

Radford 16
Winthrop 22

[olldflame]

Winthrop is up 41-30 with 12:29 to play. Starting to look like the Radford dynasty may be over.

[Chris Lang]

Yeah, well Winthrop led by 12 last week with 9:25 left and we know how that turned out ...

[Chris Lang]

But Radford is shooting terrible, and the Highlanders aren't built to come from behind considering the way they shoot.

[Cider Jim]

Radford cuts it to an 11-point game with 7 minutes left:

Winthrop 47
Radford 36

The only bad thing about Winthrop winning is Realist will come on here and throw around the "D" word again.

[LUconn]

Man, Radford has looked awful. Art is being molested out there all game long but Radford just looks like they don't know what to do with the ball. You got the sense that once WU got up by more than 4, there was no way they could make up that deficit.

[Cider Jim]

Wow, that Winthrop steal & dunk at the end looked almost as good as SCAR's.

[LUconn]

Well Brad Greenberg, I guess you're here to stay.

[SuperJon]

I can't believe that Coastal didn't split the tickets and clear the gym after the first game. That's why it isn't full. There were only 100 tickets for each school.

[Schfourteenteen]

The ESPNU guys are retarded. "Oh why would a school be called the chandeliers? What is that?"

[LUnpretty11]

Since you represent the BSC, you should file a complaint. It's the beach chickens, that would make it easier on the announcers

[Kolzilla41]

Wow Coastal, your fans are pretty classy

[olldflame]

Coastal all over Asheville 46-25 at the half.

[ATrain]

Their gym is embarassing. Glad we're not playing there for two reasons:

1. Its an embarassment for a Division I program to play there.
2. It'd be even more embarassing because the ESPN curse would have us getting killed in said gym.

Coastal up 72-45 with 8 left to go.

[g-webb1994]

If Winthrop wins Saturday, I wonder if a certain somebody in Wichita, Kansas will be having even more buyers remorse?