MVC 12 Team Schedule

[️ Fanatic]

When will we know the scheduling format for a 12 team conference? How many total games can each team play (conference / non-conference)?

[Da Coach]

There has not been any official announcement. The MVC schedule usually is released in August or September, but this one will be the first with a 12-team conference. The big question, as you suggest, is whether there will be 2 six-team divisions? Or one 12-team league??

[Nashville Cat]

Logistics would suggest two divisions IMO:

North: UNI, Drake, UIC, Valpo, ISU and BU.

South: MoSt, SIU, Murray, Belmont, Evansville and InSu.

Did I miss anyone?

Schedule would include home/away for in-division and alternating home/away out of division.

[BraveBird]

For some reason I was under the impression that the league had told member schools to plan for a 20 game conference schedule. Certainly that could change by the time the conference announces the schedule. If true, that would seem to lean towards a 12 team league and not divisions.

[Da Coach]

Logistics would suggest two divisions IMO:

North: UNI, Drake, UIC, Valpo, ISU and BU.

South: MoSt, SIU, Murray, Belmont, Evansville and InSu.

Did I miss anyone?

Schedule would include home/away for in-division and alternating home/away out of division.

This divisional format makes the most sense, and it fits with some comments that Doug Elgin made a couple years ago. Whether the MVC does this next year or not, I believe they will do it eventually.

However, the 2-division schedule format you suggest would only create 16 MVC games for each team. That wouldn't be enough conference games, and would stress each MVC team to schedule even more non-conference games than they do now. So the MVC would have to tweak that schedule format a little to get 18 or 20 league games, IMO.

[houstonbrave]

I hate an unbalanced schedule but the only thing worse would be a two division schedule with a 16 game conference schedule. With the difficulty of scheduling good non-con games it would lock us in to a one bid league almost all years.

[Nashville Cat]

Just for fun since the board is quiet, here's a 16 team conference suggestion that's fun (reference my previous post): add North Dakota St and South Dakota St. to North division and SEMO, SIUe to the South! Let's face it, the Horizon and Ohio Valley Conferences are endangered in today's d1 environment, as is the Summit League.

[Da Coach]

That is interesting to think about. My preference would be to add a mix of state and private schools, not all state schools. And, though though the Dakota schools do well in basketball, they are rather isolated and hard to get to. They would be a hard sell to the current MVC schools. And SEMO and SIUE are just not good enough and their facilities are inferior.
If the MVC were to add more schools, maybe it would do more to elevate the MVC to consider some of the schools from the bigger cities like UW Milwaukee, Cleveland State, Wright State, Detroit, Bellarmine, and maybe Lipscomb.

[️ Fanatic]

So in the spirit of not much to talk about... how will the format of the MVC ArchMadness Tournament be:
Bottom 8-teams have Thursday games: top 4 teams get a bye to Friday (% for Bradley to play in 4-5 matchup would drop)

[Mikovio]

I don't think SIUc would be too thrilled about adding SIUe.
There aren't many good expansion candidates and you don't want to add just to add because the revenue per team just gets diluted.
Milwaukee was a good candidate a decade ago and adding them would get Valley games on TV in Wisconsin but they've hit really hard times. Northern Kentucky is a program to watch as they're in the Cincinnati metro area and have good fan support in a good arena. Arlington was interesting but they tried to nickel and dime the league on their entry fee. I personally think Grand Canyon in Phoenix would be a good one for several reasons but the current members don't want all those flights.

[Mikovio]

So in the spirit of not much to talk about... how will the format of the MVC ArchMadness Tournament be:
Bottom 8-teams have Thursday games: top 4 teams get a bye to Friday (% for Bradley to play in 4-5 matchup would drop)

Yea that's going to be the format. Whereas in the past the focus was finishing in the top 6 to avoid the play in round, going forward you'll want to finish in the top 4. So instead of the top 60% getting a bye it's the top 33%. Regular season means more.