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Message: [QUOTE="RF2044, post: 1695028, member: 40"] There is very little in the last paragraph of your post that I agree with. The fact is, signs of the slippage are already tangible. As members of the Big East, they were contending for national championships. As members of the AAC, they are now contending for NCAA tournament berths. They didn't make it to the tourney last year, and that's after making their conference championship game. Think about that for a second, and then reflect upon what that means for their circumstances. Uconn making the CC game of the BET would make them an NCAA shoo in any year. They wouldn't have made the NCAAs this year, either, if not for a miracle 80 foot shot in an early round of their conference tournament, after finishing in sixth place in their conference. Their situation has changed as a function of their AAC affiliation, no matter what people would like to pretend. Just because the decline didn't involve them falling off of a cliff doesn't mean that their program isn't in a worse spot than they were 5 years ago. In five more years, they will be in an even worse position than they are now relative to P5 counterparts unless they get rescued by the ACC [won't happen], B1G [won't happen], or Big 12 [within the realm of possibility], and their program will continue to face an uphill battle to fend off decline. The revenue divide is another impediment working against them. And let's face facts: they are currently playing in a mid-major conference. Look at who they play. Those loathsome 4 championships can never be taken away--but those days are in the rear view mirror for their program, and getting further away with each passing year. Their improbable win in Ollie's first season was incredible and impressive. Can't take that away from them, and certainly noone can dispute those four titles, but it was accomplished with Calhoun's players, with the team fresh out of Big East affiliation. This feels like a pedantic pissing match over what "irrelevant" and "mid major" mean to different people. There are certainly a lot of mid majors who crack the bottom half of the top 25, and a few who do even better than that. So in that sense, maybe "irrelevancy" is the wrong label to apply. But for uconn, it seems likely that fighting to stay relevant--i.e., remain in the top 25--will ne the new normal instead of being title contenders anymore. [/QUOTE]

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