We had 8 wins against D-I competition this year...and UNCW was still # 1 in the league in attendance.

We have one of the lowest budgets in the league, yet are forced to spend insane dollars for our Men's and Women's teams to travel long distances to relatively empty gyms, where we have no recruiting footprint and never will. And of course, the travel puts a heavy strain on our non-revenue sports as well.

Some felt that after Drexel scored the greatest comeback win in college basketball history, that momentum would continue into the game with us 2 days later, on a Saturday night. Not so. Those who predicted that failed to recognize that Delaware is a rivalry game. UNCW is not. Only about 900 fans attended, and it sure didn't look like that many were there on video.

I don't think UNCW will leave on its own accord unless we were to get an extremely unlikely invite from the Atlantic-10. So, it will take some moving and shaking from the northern schools to make that happen.

If and when that does occur, where should we go? There was a time when I would have hated and instantly rejected this statement, but I'm coming around to the Big South. Yes, it's overall a pretty awful basketball conference. But if we could somehow convince Charleston and Elon to come with, it could work. 2 games a year with each of them along with UNC Asheville and Winthrop wouldn't be the worst thing. And when you look at the attendance figures, you'd notice that Liberty, Winthrop, and UNC Asheville all draw better than Hofstra, Towson, Northeastern, and Drexel.

The Big South also doesn't have the problem the CAA has where they struggle to determine if football or basketball comes first. Only 4 member schools in the Big South have football, and none of them are very good at the FCS level. Thus, its a basketball-first league.

If we're going to in a 1-bid league anyways, we might as well join one that makes some geographical sense, and one we can win with some consistency, no?