NCAA Tourney/Bracket thoughts

[CreaseRat]

The ACC tournament will become less meaningful as the parity and talent pool increases. Those extra games won’t have the same impact as they do now. No one on this board can look 5 years down the road and accept that the ACC won’t be as dominate (in lax) as it has been. The ACC needs an AQ in men’s lax, but there isn’t a push to do anything about it because lax isn’t revenue generating yet.

Right now the tournament serves a limited purpose, only giving ACC teams the ability to increase their SoS and add quality wins.

The ACC needs an AQ in men’s lax and people have this idea that ACC/MCLA school will convert to Varsity. I coached at an MCLA school for 4 years and I can tell you there is minimal investment, interest and push from the school admins to do it. The majority of admins don’t even acknowledge that the teams exist. Waiting for VT, GT of FSU to go varsity will be a looooong wait. It just isn’t going to happen. FSU has supposedly been going varsity for about 10 years.

Right now there are teams in the MCLA that could easily give D3, D2 and some low to mid level D1 teams a good game. The talent pool is tremendous. MCLA is the real deal and there are some really talented players that decide to go play at a higher level MCLA school over a D2 or 3 school simply because it’s UGA, or GT, etc. More and more of those players are starting to flow into the D1 ranks and mark my words, in 5-10 years he playing field will be very even across the board. We’re already starting to see it. Go coach or attend some of the upper level tournaments in the south and you’ll see what I mean. Transplants moved south/west for jobs and brought knowledge with them. Now that knowledge is moving on to the 2nd generation of coaches down/over there.

If one of the better ACC MCLA teams made the varsity jump, they would be on a similar projection as Michigan. Michigan is in their 7th year as a program and now just becoming a .500 team. I thought it would have taken 4 years to get to .500 (all classes recruited by coach) but it didn't. I think part of the problem was, they let their MCLA coach be the coach at the varsity level. You would have a better understanding than me if there is a recruiting process at MCLA schools or if its just walk on to campus and tell the coach you want to try out.

 

[OnlyOrange]

MCLA schools most definitely recruit. With the limited amount of NCAA scholarships, and the increasing cost of tuition, lots of kids are choosing to play at an MCLA school because They aren’t going to get a scholarship, don’t want to go to school far away from home, and it’s a lot cooler to play for UGA and match up against Vandy, FSU, GT, etc. than it is to go play mid level D2/3 against No-Name State. I could see the MCLA rivaling the NCAA in talent in the newer areas like the west coast, mid west and south.

The MCLA has a strong admin, good website and communications, established conferences, and even gets internet streaming of games. Trust me when I say the NCAA will compete with the MCLA for talent.