https://www.postandcourier.com/sports/wi...ba5dc.html said the CAA has a neutral site tournament because most players will not get to play in the neutral site NCAA Tournament. The article claims that the CAA has 4 teams within 150 miles of D.C. and 6 teams within 300 miles. In addition to the 4 teams, Google Maps says W&M is 156 miles away. It doesn't make sense to say 4 teams within 150 miles if you could say 5 teams within 160 miles. Google Maps says 7 teams (not 6) are within 300 miles, with Elon 297 miles away.

Neutral site tournaments are a lot of fun. I was able to attend every year in Baltimore and made it down once in Richmond. It does feel special when all the teams are there at the same time.

If you have fan bases to support it, they are the best way to go. With how spread out our conference is, it is difficult. Add onto it the small fan bases we have and it really does not make a lot of sense. I think the more sensible thing to do would be have the first 2 rounds at the higher seeds and then finish at a neutral place, like DC for the semis and finals on a Saturday/Sunday. I am also ok with the semis or finals being located at the top seed, whether they advance that far or not as a reward for their regular season.

Finding a good location that can get people in the door will be a challenge when the footprint spans from Boston to Charleston. That is just reality. Richmond made sense when you had the Virginia 5. With 3 of them gone it is tough, since the footprint grew, not shrunk. DC is the most logical, but they didnt have an appropriate sized arena, which is why Richmond always made sense. With the smaller arena I think it has a lot of potential to be fun again. If games are packed and people are screaming, it should be a good atmosphere like it was in Richmond, as opposed to everywhere it has been. Sadly, I think it will be attended similarly to Baltimore, and we wont get that excitement. Richmond was always a lot of fun in the dump, unless you played VCU. Any other game was fine down there. We do not have any truly home court advantages in our league at this point so there is not a lot of worry there. Their fans always brought it, so you couldn't fault them for that.

If you're going to have a neutral site tournament, I still prefer the opposite of what dan10 suggests, which is the way that the America East used to do it. You can still have a neutral site tournament to lead up to the finals. Then they should give the teams a few days off for the players to rest their legs and build up hype among the winning schools. Then play the final in arena of the highest remaining seed, giving 10% of the tickets to the visiting team. This would give the schools some time to hold pep rallies and really build up excitement among the students. The extra days off would also result in a better played championship game. Then you're guaranteed a packed house, and a game that looks much better on TV. In the past, the argument against this plan was that it makes our conference seem "small time". Well guess what? The CAA is "small time". Heck, they don't even have a TV contract.

I'm with you. Higher seed hosting generally makes sense. I think the CAA might be in a dress for the job you want, not the job you have situation. We want to be a premier mid major again but aren't one currently. I still love the atmosphere of 10 different teams and fanbases there even if it's not as great as it used to be.

(03-15-2019 07:17 AM)J.B. Wrote:  If you're going to have a neutral site tournament, I still prefer the opposite of what dan10 suggests, which is the way that the America East used to do it. You can still have a neutral site tournament to lead up to the finals. Then they should give the teams a few days off for the players to rest their legs and build up hype among the winning schools. Then play the final in arena of the highest remaining seed, giving 10% of the tickets to the visiting team. This would give the schools some time to hold pep rallies and really build up excitement among the students. The extra days off would also result in a better played championship game. Then you're guaranteed a packed house, and a game that looks much better on TV. In the past, the argument against this plan was that it makes our conference seem "small time". Well guess what? The CAA is "small time". Heck, they don't even have a TV contract.

The quality could be better with more rest. When the America East had a neutral site tournament before the Final, the Semifinals were Sunday and the Final was Saturday, which I think is too big a gap. This time the Semifinals were on Tuesday, and 3 days rest before the Final is better than 5. I hate to say it, but Matthews Arena has a capacity of 5,066 for Basketball, and Northeastern averaged 22 percent of that, so can we guarantee that they would sell out if they hosted the Final?

It would sell out as likely as we are selling out neutral court games currently.

For a neutral site tournament the way that the CAA is currently structured, it would seem to me that the ideal location would be north of JMU and south of Towson, five schools north and five schools south of the location, but that requires schools with sufficient fan bases that travel and a sufficient number of those the area interested to pick up tickets as those whose schools lose and leave to keep the arena reasonably occupied.

I'm not sure that ideal exists, but a small arena in Washington is the best shot. We'll see if it works or if it's on to plan c...

It depends on some of the gyms if you give 10%. At UNCW or CofC (each seats 5,100 or 5,200), 510 tickets would probably be plenty for anybody except for maybe W&M or Elon or if they were playing each other.

JMU’s new gym seats 8K. When we were in the SoCon, and even the first couple CAA years in Baltimore, CofC would bring 200-300 fans max, even when we were in the championship.

The same well-heeled alums and parents of the players. That would be who would go for a road championship in most places.

I wouldn't complain about JMU in terms of location, but I'd rather it not be on a team's home court.

(03-15-2019 07:22 PM)EvanJ Wrote:  I wouldn't complain about JMU in terms of location, but I'd rather it not be on a team's home court.

Especially THAT court.

I think the DC arena will sell out easily, for better or worse. A slightly larger (~7k capacity) arena would probably be better, but at least for TV/atmosphere wise it'll be a packed house.

The Baltimore W&M/Northeastern final in 2015 drew 5,700, and I'm not sure if more than a few hundred of them were Northeastern fans. DC is a better location for W&M, since it's so close to Northern VA, and probably has more alumni of every CAA team save Towson.

They need to do something different...

CAA made a bet with sitting the tournament in a vacation destination city in an Era where we expected UNCW and CofC to be perennial contenders over the upcoming years. It was a reasonable option. Keatts abrupt departure really hurt that plan.
I don't know what DC will draw but most of it depends on the viability of the immediate schools around it.

I really think the conference needs out of the box thinking.
I would play the first two rounds on campus sites leading to the final 4.
This would be played at a neutral site over a Saturday and Sunday.

Having the finals over one weekend should encourage travel.
Plus being only two wins away should energize fans.
Still having things on campus locations to start should limit upsets. In the end you want your best teams representing you in the tournament.

(03-22-2019 03:25 PM)matrojan Wrote:  They need to do something different...

CAA made a bet with sitting the tournament in a vacation destination city in an Era where we expected UNCW and CofC to be perennial contenders over the upcoming years. It was a reasonable option. Keatts abrupt departure really hurt that plan.
I don't know what DC will draw but most of it depends on the viability of the immediate schools around it.

I really think the conference needs out of the box thinking.
I would play the first two rounds on campus sites leading to the final 4.
This would be played at a neutral site over a Saturday and Sunday.

Having the finals over one weekend should encourage travel.
Plus being only two wins away should energize fans.
Still having things on campus locations to start should limit upsets. In the end you want your best teams representing you in the tournament.

We’ve discussed this a bit on the UNCW board. Campus sites aren’t ideal for quick turnaround following the end of the reg season because sometimes the rankings aren’t solid until the final games are played. It’s a great idea, but still not ideal given how far our conference spaces itself out geographically without regional divisions.

It would be a nice refreshing change regardless though, especially given the stale same old same old from CAA leadership. Need to do SOMETHING or this conference is going nowhere fast.


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(03-22-2019 04:54 PM)CG_Hawk06 Wrote:  We’ve discussed this a bit on the UNCW board. Campus sites aren’t ideal for quick turnaround following the end of the reg season because sometimes the rankings aren’t solid until the final games are played. It’s a great idea, but still not ideal given how far our conference spaces itself out geographically without regional divisions.

It would be a nice refreshing change regardless though, especially given the stale same old same old from CAA leadership. Need to do SOMETHING or this conference is going nowhere fast.

Beyond the issue of campus sites on short notice, if they end the regular season on Saturday, play on campus sites on two of the weekdays, and play in D.C. on Saturday, teams could play five games in five places in ten days from Thursday of the regular season through Saturday of the tournament. The alternatives would be making the regular season end earlier, not inviting every team to the tournament, or making the tournament end on the final weekend. Making the regular season end earlier is impossible unless they play CAA games in 9 weeks without each team having 2 Thursdays off. The Northeast Conference, which has 10 teams, and the Atlantic Sun, which has 9, had every game at the better seed. They had 8 team tournaments so there would only have to be three rounds. In the Atlantic Sun, Stetson was eliminated by a tiebreaker, which is rare because most conferences invite every team. Ending the tournament on the final weekend would be competing for attention with many conferences including all of the top ones. If you live in Philadelphia, you could be less likely to drive to D.C. if you could watch Villanova in the Big East Tournament that day without leaving home.

The CAA has already committed to the dates for the three years in D.C. I don't know if they can change the format if they wanted to.

(03-23-2019 11:17 AM)EvanJ Wrote:  

(03-22-2019 04:54 PM)CG_Hawk06 Wrote:  We’ve discussed this a bit on the UNCW board. Campus sites aren’t ideal for quick turnaround following the end of the reg season because sometimes the rankings aren’t solid until the final games are played. It’s a great idea, but still not ideal given how far our conference spaces itself out geographically without regional divisions.

It would be a nice refreshing change regardless though, especially given the stale same old same old from CAA leadership. Need to do SOMETHING or this conference is going nowhere fast.

Beyond the issue of campus sites on short notice, if they end the regular season on Saturday, play on campus sites on two of the weekdays, and play in D.C. on Saturday, teams could play five games in five places in ten days from Thursday of the regular season through Saturday of the tournament. The alternatives would be making the regular season end earlier, not inviting every team to the tournament, or making the tournament end on the final weekend. Making the regular season end earlier is impossible unless they play CAA games in 9 weeks without each team having 2 Thursdays off. The Northeast Conference, which has 10 teams, and the Atlantic Sun, which has 9, had every game at the better seed. They had 8 team tournaments so there would only have to be three rounds. In the Atlantic Sun, Stetson was eliminated by a tiebreaker, which is rare because most conferences invite every team. Ending the tournament on the final weekend would be competing for attention with many conferences including all of the top ones. If you live in Philadelphia, you could be less likely to drive to D.C. if you could watch Villanova in the Big East Tournament that day without leaving home.

The CAA has already committed to the dates for the three years in D.C. I don't know if they can change the format if they wanted to.

I'm sure that the contract could be broken with a substantial penalty payment. There seems to be some of that sort of thinking going on within CAA basketball schools lately...

My suggestion wasn't necessarily with next year in mind. I think it is reasonable to give "geographic center" another go. If it fails i think out of the box thinking needs to be considered

Sorry guys. My suggestion of having the the conference tournament in one place and the championship game on the campus site of the highest seed a few days later is still the best option for this conference. And I'd even be willing to put in a rule that would hurt Drexel (if they were to host) that would force Drexel, due to the small capacity of the DAC, to play the championship game at another city venue like St. Joseph's or the Palestra.

My option is foolproof. This way, you can still sell tickets in advance to every school in the conference, and not have to gamble on certain teams advancing to the final to draw a larger crowd. Fans can also travel knowing that then entire neutral portion of the tournament would be over in 3 days, or 2 days for the higher seeds, making the opportunity to travel to the tournament more viable.

And there is NOTHING BETTER than a mid-major championship game in a campus arena. I've experienced many of them, and trust me...they are the best. And you can't argue with me on this one.

I like neutral site tournaments. If it's not entirely at a neutral site, I'd prefer only the final at a campus to the whole tournament on campuses. With that, players would still get a neutral site tournament experience that the CAA wants players to have. A downside of a campus final is if you get something like Charleston at Hofstra or Northeastern where the away team has much higher attendance and where Charleston could have fans who are willing to travel to D.C. for 2 or 3 games but not to New York or Boston for 1 game.