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Season's over, so what, other than recruiting, is there to talk about? Baseball just started, and the Bears just made an awesome acquisition (though several months to wait for the fun on that one)... But, I still find myself idly wanting to think about topics related to Bradley. So, how about impractical (or impossible) fan ideas for college basketball?
So, first up-- Illinois has 12 D1 teams in college basketball. I've thought for a while that it'd be fun to create an "Illinois Challenge." A preseason tournament sort of thing to cause in-state schools to play each other for a bit of fun and bragging rights. First bit of business is to find a way to seed the teams, and I've selected RPI, despite its flaws. I used a website (warrennolan.com) that tracked RPI into the postseason. Final Illinois rankings are as follows:
1 - Illinois
2 - Illinois State
3 - Northwestern
4 - Bradley
5 - Southern Illinois
6 - Illinois-Chicago
7 - DePaul
8 - Loyola (Chicago)
9 - Chicago State
10 - Eastern Illinois
11 - Western Illinois
12 - Northern Illinois
The "most fun" would be a 12-team tournament but that would result in 3-4 games for each team and even for a impossible thread that seems a bit ridiculous. Another less but still ridiculous format would be to break it up into 3 seperate 4 team brackets, so two games for each team. 1-4, 5-8, and 9-12 play a tournament complete with a consolation bracket. Again, though, seems unlikely that any team would ever sign up for a two game commitment.. So that leaves you in something like a bracketbuster format... So one game for each team... 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, and so on. So if there were a theoretical "Illinois Challenge" in 2009 you'd get the following:
ISU@Illinois, Bradley@NWU, UIC@SIU, Loyola@DePaul, EIU@CSU, and (battle of the titans) NIU@WIU.
Think that'd be fun, and give one of us a crack at U of I every season... Which is the problem, I'm sure U of I wouldn't want to take the risk of entering into something like this.
So, first up-- Illinois has 12 D1 teams in college basketball. I've thought for a while that it'd be fun to create an "Illinois Challenge." A preseason tournament sort of thing to cause in-state schools to play each other for a bit of fun and bragging rights. First bit of business is to find a way to seed the teams, and I've selected RPI, despite its flaws. I used a website (warrennolan.com) that tracked RPI into the postseason. Final Illinois rankings are as follows:
1 - Illinois
2 - Illinois State
3 - Northwestern
4 - Bradley
5 - Southern Illinois
6 - Illinois-Chicago
7 - DePaul
8 - Loyola (Chicago)
9 - Chicago State
10 - Eastern Illinois
11 - Western Illinois
12 - Northern Illinois
The "most fun" would be a 12-team tournament but that would result in 3-4 games for each team and even for a impossible thread that seems a bit ridiculous. Another less but still ridiculous format would be to break it up into 3 seperate 4 team brackets, so two games for each team. 1-4, 5-8, and 9-12 play a tournament complete with a consolation bracket. Again, though, seems unlikely that any team would ever sign up for a two game commitment.. So that leaves you in something like a bracketbuster format... So one game for each team... 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4, and so on. So if there were a theoretical "Illinois Challenge" in 2009 you'd get the following:
ISU@Illinois, Bradley@NWU, UIC@SIU, Loyola@DePaul, EIU@CSU, and (battle of the titans) NIU@WIU.
Think that'd be fun, and give one of us a crack at U of I every season... Which is the problem, I'm sure U of I wouldn't want to take the risk of entering into something like this.
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