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A surprise announcement today at U of R, as AD Keith Gill submitted his resignation, immediately, for personal reason.

Here is John O'Conner's story.

http://www.richmond.com/sports/college/s...46d46.html

Spiders haven't been to the NCAA hoops tourney since 2011. That's what caught my eye.

If they were in the CAA since 2011, they probably would have made the Dance during that time. They should come back to the CAA. :-)

The undercurrent from the West End is that several BIG donors, who are Basketball First guys, laid down the gauntlet. BAsically, give us WHAT we want or WHO we want to make basketball successful.

Sounds to me that the large donors are willing to compromise the admission standards in order to win. That is a big difference between W&M and most schools, and I hope it remains such.

It sound's like UR is in the, moving on up mode, and the AD was stuck in neutral.

We do it today so I'm not sure what you are referring to.

(05-10-2017 07:40 PM)tribe64 Wrote:  Sounds to me that the large donors are willing to compromise the admission standards in order to win. That is a big difference between W&M and most schools, and I hope it remains such.

I had mentioned on another thread, UR hasn't been the same since the day VCU left the CAA and joined the A10. Much of their frustration stems from their ongoing losing streak against the Rams and the slow meltdown of the A10 as a power bbl conference. The problem is there isn't really anywhere for UR to run now. So, yes there is frustration apparent - they have got to find a way to compete against VCU. And its not just academic standards that may be a hurdle - UR is a country club culture, not an urban melting pot.

Comparing any of this to W&M is misplaced in my view. We have turned a corner - slowly but with certainty - in bbl. We have flourished with the withdrawal of VCU, ODU and Mason. We are in a league where our academic standards don't hinder our chances. We have other issues though, covered before, where we need a mind change - the nonsensical scorning of post season opportunities, the lack of investment to pull in a few decent home games to Kaplan against P5 schools (no excuses please - others do it!), among others.

Academics aren't an excuse at W&M, it's just a fact - just like Harvard or Davidson. Those are examples we should be emulating, not Georgetown and Villanova who have long developed basketball cultures.