Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="JeremyCuse, post: 5634346, member: 43"] Army's inability to make the tourney consistently boils down to three major issues 1. Their schedule is usually mediocre. They do suffer because some of their in-conference foes are bad but they usually compound it by then scheduling Mercer and a similar type school that kills their RPI. They also usually only scheduled 2 real power OOC games which was usually Rutgers and up until a few years ago Syracuse. Obviously we had a few down years when Gait first came in and Rutgers has been pretty much a mess since since their 2022 tourney run. They have opened it up a bit with UNC and Yale and this year added Michigan so that should help a bit (though it didn't last year especially with how bad Yale was). The other problem is they seem to add schools when they are looking at down years ie Yale last year and now Michigan. They also keep playing Umass which isn't doing them any favors either. 2. They keep losing games they can't afford to. If your Army you don't need to be undefeated to make the tourney but when your conference is mostly a mess you can't lose in the semi-finals in back to back years when you get a 1st round bye. 2 years ago they lost to BU and last year to Gate. Not even making the finals of the Patriot is gonna cost them 9 times out of 10. 3. This comes back to #1 a bit but the Patriot has been mostly a dumpster fire. BU and Gate have both been solid the last few years but beyond them and Army obviously it's been a mess. Loyola has been horrific, Bucknell is losing to Holy Cross, Navy is in a death fight to get to .500 and has canceled games with tougher opponents, Lehigh has been way up and down and Lafayette while improved just had it's first winning season last year since 2010. With how bad their conference is they need more power OOC games and need to jettison Mercer and Umass. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?