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Basketball people chime in ... what is a realistic expectation/ceiling for UCF's basketball Program?
UCF has a great facility but I don't think you have the location advantage for Recruiting & other intangibles that apply to the Football Program's label as a Sleeping Giant.
UCF has a great facility but I don't think you have the location advantage for Recruiting & other intangibles that apply to the Football Program's label as a Sleeping Giant.
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I believe legit postseasons like with basketball and baseball makes it where there is no ceiling for any program. Butler in basketball and UC Irvine in baseball are testaments to that. Albeit lots of people would say and the stats say a team has to be in a major conference to be able to win it all.
Facilities are great. Our 9.5k capacity is above average. There are a few 15-20k seat arenas but there are tons 1-4k seat arenas in NCAA bball.
Recruiting is a tricky one to judge and measure. FL, TX, and CA produces tons of talent in all sports. However in basketball metropolitian hubs is where most of the talent is. Then there is regional signifcance in the Northeast and Midwest. FL with it's overall talent and great AAU programs might be a top 5 states to recruit in, it's definitely in the top 10.
Conference is a major one. The AAC is probably the 8th best conference out of 32 D1 conferences. The top 7 are the P5s plus the Big East and A10. CUSA is ~20th by comparison. 9-10 conferences get multiple bids per year. I really hoped that the AAC would be a top 5 conference when it was created. The top teams haven't produced and the bottom teams haven't got much better but there has been some big surprises with SMU and Tulsa. The AAC had 4 bids in 2014 and 2 in 2015. The AAC should be averaging 3-4 bids per year and 5-6 bids in good years IMHO. The AACs biggest problem is the bottom teams 6 teams bring down the conference RPI and the top 5 haven't done enough to get bids from out of conference play so they need the bottom teams to have good RPI to help build up the top teams resumes. SMU and Tulsa prove that any AAC can be the best one. The traditional powers UConn, Temple, Cinci, and Memphis still need to be good. The AAC needs to improve overall to be viable in the long term. That mostly falls on the bottom 6 programs to get better.
More on the conference. Basketball has always been dominated by the so-called power five conferences. The Big East was founded in the 1970s to overcome that obstacle. It was the Big East's status as The top basketball conference in the 1980s that got the Big East's status as a BCS football conference in the 1990s. The AAC should be trying to follow the same model. One unique thing about the AAC, is the AAC has a NBA team near almost all the schools. We should try to use the NBA arenas for big games and for marketing.
My expectation is UCF to be looking to get into the NCAA tourney every year and actually make it every ~3 years or so. One great sweet 16 or elite 8 year would put us over the hump of being a mid-major team in major conference to a major team in a major conference. All that would take is an at large 8th seed bid, beating 2 lower seeds and upsetting 1 or 2 higher seeds which happens every year. There is no ceiling that holds us back from winning it all. Making it to a final 4 would give UCF a decade of continued success in basketball. One great coach or 1 NBA quality of player or 2-3 amazing college players is all it would take to get into the top 5 AAC teams which should be getting bids every year.
Tl;dr UCF has the facilities, conference affiliation, and is in a recruiting area to be able to win it all. My expectation is NCAA tourney every ~3 years.
Now that we are a few games in the season, do you guys think the preseason write-ups/media guesses were correct in saying we are low tier AAC team? Think we will do better in conference than predicted?
Without BJ, odds are those predictions will probably have a chance to be correct.
With a healthy BJ, I think UCF could have done better than predicted.
Style of play (especially pts scored) is up this year and hopefully others can pick up the slack for BJ, especially on the home court.
just looking at the College Basketball culture of Florida/the South I would think some of these old BE schools in urban NE cities could have an advantage that recruits from Chicago, NYC, etc might find more appealing.
In the case of Football, Baseball, and Golf UCF has a huge advantage where we really shouldn't be any worse than Top 3 in the AAC every year.
K_L nailed it.
It's better and worse than preseason. The better is how great AJ Davis (transfer) has been and how good freshmen Chance and Tako have been, and others improving like Shaheed Davis. The worse is the loss of BJ who IMHO is the best player on the team. Those net out so we will be where we where were projected which is in the middle of the bottom half. IMO with BJ we go from 8th to 6th in the conference. Top 4 or 5 in our conference should at least be on NCAA bubble.
True its probably is that way now. That 30 for 30 Requiem for the Big East illustrated how NE talent never stayed in the NE until the Big East was formed and had incredible success in it's first couple of years both on the court and with exposure on TV with the newly formed ESPN.
Mike, the AAC commissioner, tried to get a special TV deal like the Big East did when they were founded. That's why I was so adamant that the AAC should NOT have gone with ESPN and instead go with Fox who was launching F1 so the AAC would've been showcased just like the Big East was with ESPN when they both started. I was going to talk to Mike since he was big time TV guy before being AAC commissioner about it, but him hugging me caused me to cut the convo short. Don't get me wrong, Mike is a good guy.
Tl;dr: we all would be much better off if everyone just listened to me.
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