Just as we don't know a great deal about the A-Sun members, I thought you might want to know a bit about ETSU and the TriCities Area.

ETSU has approximately 12,000 students; a large portion of that number are graduate students, and as most regional universities a LARGE number of the total students are commuters. ETSU's primary majors are healthcare related, education and business. ETSU is a Carnegie "Doctoral Intensive" university, well on its way to becoming a Carnegie "Doctoral Extensive" institution.

ETSU's medical school is known as the James H. Quillen College of Medicine and is housed across the street at the Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Center. While the main campus of ETSU in Johnson City is approximately 300 acres, ETSU now owns/operates an additional 20 or so buildings on the campus of the VA Center just across the street from the main campus. ETSU offers doctorates in Medicine, Pharmacy, Education, Nursing, Physical Therapy and Biomedical Science. More doctoral programs are in the planning stages.

The TriCities area of Tennessee/Virginia is composed of the cities of Bristol VA/TN, Kingsport TN, and Johnson City TN. The immediate metro area is approximately 400-500,000 and more than 1 million live within 50 miles of Johnson City. Even though the area has a fairly large population, ETSU does not have the fan base that you would expect. The largest religion in Tennessee is UT, and the TriCities area has a huge congregation of UT fans. Just across the state line resides a significant number of Virginia Tech fans.

The area is a top 100 media outlet.

The area doesn't seem to have much in common with either Nashville or Richmond, and in the 1770s was known as the State of Franklin and wished to be recognized as the 14th state. That's why you will see so many things in the TriCities area named State of Franklin (road, bank, etc.) Not much has changed in over 200 years and geography is why ETSU fans will not see Lipscomb or Belmont as rivals, after all they are in Nashville and 5-6 hours away at a minimum. The common saying is that "Tennesse stops in Knoxville and Virginia stops in Roanoke."

Thanks for the info. I really would like to see ETSU become a member that hangs around for a while. They seem like a great fit for us, and a great fit for you all as well. I think a lot of rivalries will form. To me right now, you guys just feel like "THE team to beat". I think that's gotta be the feel in the whole league. It should be an exciting basketball season.

Not sure about the "team to beat." If this were a few years ago maybe not today it is a different story. We really struggled last year. Lost most of our inside game with the graduation of Fields and Wadood. Tim Smith had a good year at point but it was almost too distracting for the team when he announced his plans to expolre the possibility of entering the NBA draft, that now looks like an impossibility. The other SoCon teams took advantage of the lame duck season and beat up on the Bucs. Not sure what this season will hold. Hopefully good things but I will wait to see.