Opening Night

[soconjohn]

Affirm,
Don't let facts get in the way of the world you live in...haha

[Jasper]

Undoubtedly, he's on staff now.

Amen to that.

[Jasper]

Undoubtedly, he's on staff now.

Very possible, but if Richey wins enough to get a bigger job (harder than for Medved since Richey inherited a winner and lacks big-school assistance experience), the Furman job will be very attractive. An up-and-coming big school assistant could get into the picture.

Both very good observations. Medved had a much stronger resume than Richey. For Richey to attract bigger job offers, he would likely need to get FU into the NCAA tourney and actually win a game or two. Medved gets the credit for placing Furman in a competitive situation in the SoCon. Let's see if Richey will be able to improve on that.

[tya1]

North Carolina is playing Elon tonight - at Elon. Maybe because of Elon's prestige from those NCAA trips (or not) or Jerry Richardson's money (probably not) but mainly because Elon is opening a new building. UNC leads 63-45 at the half.

[Affirm]

The primary "issue" for any SoCon team is winning the conference tournament.

The best team has the best chance of winning the tournament.

Hence, the goal of any SoCon program is to field the best team in the conference. The secondary goal would be to at least be competitive with the best team so that a tournament win is bound to happen sooner or later.

Furman's exact record against any random SoCon program is irrelevant. Having more interesting out of conference home games would be nice, but the actual impact on the program is basically irrelevant compared to the impact of winning the SoCon tournament.

Last year's team had a 27.8% chance to win the tournament, which was quite high by historical standards. Wofford had a 4.6% chance and Mercer a 0.1% chance. Obviously, mediocre teams could go many, many years without winning, which is exactly what has happened at Furman. Medved brought the program out of mediocrity into serious contention. If Richey keeps the program there, or even elevates it slightly higher (this becomes increasingly difficult due to the natural constraints of the conference), Furman will return to the NCAA tournament.

As long as we wait 35+ years between NCAA tournament appearances, we should have the enjoyment of more interesting OOC opponents that we might occasionally beat like last night AND as long as we wait years and years between SoCon championships, we should be able to beat at least Wofford more frequently.