We snubbed Ft. Wayne

[wh]

Fort Wayne wins again, but is that a good thing?
(By Tom Davis of The News-Sentinel)
Mastodons having trouble finding games due to growing success
Sunday, December 18, 2016 8:12 PM.

From the article:

"The coaches understand the quality of our basketball," Coffman said. "But I'm not sure that their fan bases do. Even with the top mid-majors in the Midwest, they're not psyched to play us because they know it is a quality game, if they care about their RPI it is good for their RPI, but their fan base doesn't necessarily recognize that."
Take Valparaiso for example.
The Crusaders are a dominant mid-major program (9-2 this season) with a potential NBA Draft pick (senior forward Alec Peters). In 12 of the past 13 seasons, Fort Wayne and Valpo have played each other, however, when Coffman called to schedule a game this season he got a familiar answer (from most programs), but a surprising one from Valpo.
"They had Alec Peters back," Coffman said, "they knew that they were going to be good this year, we've played that game (12 of the past 13 years), and they wouldn't play us this year."

[oklahomamick]

Welcome to the table mastodons

[NativeCheesehead]

Did we disrespect Tom Davis' mother in the past? I mean seriously. 

[a3uge]

This is most likely just Tom Davis being Tom Davis. Valpo was invited to the Las Vegas relatively early, and did successfully schedule Oregon and Kentucky as true road games. As Valpo learned last year, the selection committee doesn't really value road wins, so Valpo probably didn't want to head to Fort Wayne.

That or maybe Valpo scheduled a home and home vs Santa Clara instead because they wanted another west coast trip soon. There's a million factors that come into play when scheduling, so calling out Valpo for the one year they didn't play each other is pretty silly.

[justducky]

I think wh may have thrown this out without his personal comment in anticipation of my response.

Yes I will get to it but later; and from time to time that Davis guy can accidentally be right!

[VU2014]

Somebody tell him that I'm sure his acceptance letter to Valpo just got lost in the mail and to not take it so hard 

[covufan]

I would like to think that this was more of a scheduling problem this year and not a snub to IPFW.  I think that Valpo is trying to create basketball relationships with other schools in nearby region (Ball St, Indiana St this year), and that IPFW will be on the schedule in future years.  IPFW is a good basketball program and an away game at IPFW takes the team away from studies much less than other trips.  It is a good fit for both teams and should be pursued in the future.

[wh]

I think wh may have thrown this out without his personal comment in anticipation of my response.

Yes I will get to it but later; and from time to time that Davis guy can accidentally be right!

Quite honestly, I put it out without comment because I'm not sure exactly what to think about it. Hoping others will add some clarity.

[IndyValpo]

I would like to think that this was more of a scheduling problem this year and not a snub to IPFW.  I think that Valpo is trying to create basketball relationships with other schools in nearby region (Ball St, Indiana St this year), and that IPFW will be on the schedule in future years.  IPFW is a good basketball program and an away game at IPFW takes the team away from studies much less than other trips.  It is a good fit for both teams and should be pursued in the future.

In his defense he did mention a desire to schedule other schools in the state.  Of course he failed to mention a Butler snub.

[Valpo89]

Regarding Santa Clara, I sat by a couple ladies who said one reason they scheduled the game is because Santa Clara has a 'local' kid on the team - maybe from Aurora? I haven't looked at the roster yet, but they were excited for the game. I believe a neighbor in Valpo is a grandmother or something. So that's a home game for Valpo while NOT having to make a trip to Fort Wayne so Tom Davis could blast the Crusaders for something else. He's got a nice, long history of doing that.

[valpo64]

I think Tom Davis spends most of his time looking in a mirror and loving what he sees.  For being an editor of a mid- sized Indiana newspaper, he lets his predudices  get in his way way too often when he reports.  I wonder when the last time was when he talked to anyone from Valpo about anything.  Let IPFW, or Fort Wayne or whatever they are called schedule their Stetsons, Spring Arbors, etc. While the IU thing was a once in a lifetime thing, good for them.  But TD's reporting of Butler and lack of saying anything about Valpo speaks for itself.  And now we can add IPFW, or Fort Wayne, to his list of preferencial, one-sided reporting.  He has no use for VU and that will never change.  As far as Indiana basketball is concerned, the Bulldog is "King of the Beasts".  I wonder if he even knows where Valparaiso is located in the State.

[StlVUFan]

Fort Wayne wins again, but is that a good thing?
(By Tom Davis of The News-Sentinel)
Mastodons having trouble finding games due to growing success
Sunday, December 18, 2016 8:12 PM.

From the article:

"The coaches understand the quality of our basketball," Coffman said. "But I'm not sure that their fan bases do. Even with the top mid-majors in the Midwest, they're not psyched to play us because they know it is a quality game, if they care about their RPI it is good for their RPI, but their fan base doesn't necessarily recognize that."
Take Valparaiso for example.
The Crusaders are a dominant mid-major program (9-2 this season) with a potential NBA Draft pick (senior forward Alec Peters). In 12 of the past 13 seasons, Fort Wayne and Valpo have played each other, however, when Coffman called to schedule a game this season he got a familiar answer (from most programs), but a surprising one from Valpo.
"They had Alec Peters back," Coffman said, "they knew that they were going to be good this year, we've played that game (12 of the past 13 years), and they wouldn't play us this year."

I'd be more impressed if Coffman or Davis actually gave us the reason Valpo gave for not playing them.

There is always a reason I will find perfectly valid for refusing to play someone (but one you rarely hear these days): "In order to play you, we'd have to bump someone else who is better than you are."  (This ignores an even better reason, of course: "We'd have to buy out someone we're already contractually obligated to play.")

There is of course 1 team that fits the bill: D II Trinity Christian.  So, I think IPFW has a case.  Southern Utah and Coppin State do not fit the bill since they were part of the MGM Grand event.  Anybody else on our schedule could arguably be said to be as good or better than IPFW before the season started, but -- and I say this without knowing the details of scheduling Trinity Christian -- we could have played IPFW instead of them.

Logistically, Valpo may have a case that they couldn't make that swap if it was going to be at IPFW, so who knows ("If we're going to have to play a game on consecutive days it better be a home game and a game where we can reasonably expect to rest our regulars some..." <giggle in hindsight>).

But instead, all we got was, "they refused to play us."  Poorly written.  You set us up with "a reason" and then didn't give it to us.  Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

[agibson]

Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

Color me educated. I'll have to reflect on that one.

Pragmatically, that maxim would have at least helped me on an American Lit quiz once upon a time. What color was that handkerchief, anyway? Was it in Young Goodman Brown?

[talksalot]

I sat by a couple ladies who said one reason they scheduled the game is because Santa Clara has a 'local' kid on the team - maybe from Aurora?

The Bronco STUD scorer...

23   Jared Brownridge   G   6-3   200   Sr   Aurora, Ill. / Waubonsie Valley

[StlVUFan]

Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

Color me educated. I'll have to reflect on that one.

Pragmatically, that maxim would have at least helped me on an American Lit quiz once upon a time. What color was that handkerchief, anyway? Was it in Young Goodman Brown?

The best I can infer is that Coffman and/or Davis know the reason but don't wish to spell it out publicly, which allows them to imply something nefarious without actually saying so.

[justducky]

I would like to think that this was more of a scheduling problem this year and not a snub to IPFW.

I would love to believe this but some of our past discussions about Ft. Wayne not being on our schedule suggest there may be more to the story. Some details about our long term schedule planning process could be helpful for us and for the Ft. Wayne press. A school that close and that competitive deserves the truth. Hopefully a good explanation will not force me to side with Tom Davis.

I think Tom Davis spends most of his time looking in a mirror and loving what he sees.  For being an editor of a mid- sized Indiana newspaper, he lets his predudices  get in his way way too often when he reports.  I wonder when the last time was when he talked to anyone from Valpo about anything.  Let IPFW, or Fort Wayne or whatever they are called schedule their Stetsons, Spring Arbors, etc. While the IU thing was a once in a lifetime thing, good for them.  But TD's reporting of Butler and lack of saying anything about Valpo speaks for itself.  And now we can add IPFW, or Fort Wayne, to his list of preferencial, one-sided reporting.  He has no use for VU and that will never change.

Lets remove IPFW from this conversation. They are not the bad guy and Davis is not their regular champion. Isn't this more of a rationalization of Butler practices? If your school (Butler) behaves with arrogant indifference then it is comforting to believe that this might be a common practice at every level of competition.

Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

I have no idea what this maxim is about but everything else that StLVUFan said is exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I think I am his evil twin. 

[FWalum]

My comment on the News-Sentinel web site:

I understand why Tom picked Valpo to highlight in this article, at least they have actually been a consistent opponent on the Fort Wayne schedule since FW became a D1 program. He should have done a little more digging like I did when asked by the Fort Wayne athletic department to talk to Mark LaBarbera (VU's AD) about why VU would not schedule FW this year. The simple reason is that VU was involved in a tournament in Las Vegas that allowed them to play (and beat) Alabama and BYU in conjunction with a West coast trip to play Oregon, all of which was happening during the OOC time during which VU normally played FW. Just like FW, Valpo rarely gets to play major conference teams on a neutral floor and they had to take advantage of that opportunity. Perhaps Tom should talk to his Butler contacts to find out why the Bulldogs stopped playing FW as soon as Dane Fife became the head coach, or why Butler quit playing Valpo after the 2011-2012 season, despite their long history of playing 103 times since 1936. In Tom's defense, this is the game within the game that the power conferences play knowing that they will never play Mid-Major teams on that team's home-court in order to maintain the illusion that they are sooooo much better and deserve the lofty rankings along with the majority of spots and higher seedings in NCAA tournament.

To answer Serious Cubs Fan's question about Tom's axe to grind against Valpo, besides being a Butler alum and ardent fan, as he should be, all I know is that Tom got into a tiff last season with VU TV announcer Todd Ickow that was not very pretty. Maybe Tom ought to realize that there are probably a lot more Valpo Alums in Fort Wayne than Butler Alums and then maybe he would actually talk to the Valpo SID and get some accurate information.

[zvillehaze]

Fort Wayne wins again, but is that a good thing?
(By Tom Davis of The News-Sentinel)
Mastodons having trouble finding games due to growing success
Sunday, December 18, 2016 8:12 PM.

From the article:

"The coaches understand the quality of our basketball," Coffman said. "But I'm not sure that their fan bases do. Even with the top mid-majors in the Midwest, they're not psyched to play us because they know it is a quality game, if they care about their RPI it is good for their RPI, but their fan base doesn't necessarily recognize that."
Take Valparaiso for example.
The Crusaders are a dominant mid-major program (9-2 this season) with a potential NBA Draft pick (senior forward Alec Peters). In 12 of the past 13 seasons, Fort Wayne and Valpo have played each other, however, when Coffman called to schedule a game this season he got a familiar answer (from most programs), but a surprising one from Valpo.
"They had Alec Peters back," Coffman said, "they knew that they were going to be good this year, we've played that game (12 of the past 13 years), and they wouldn't play us this year."

I assume Coffman was trying to point out the challenges they (and other mid-majors) have in scheduling quality games, but I don't agree with him calling out Valpo as someone who wouldn't play them.  As pointed out by others, there are many reasons that Valpo may not have wanted this game.  Maybe they needed more home games?  Maybe they couldn't find a date that worked?  Maybe they felt their schedule was already challenging enough?  Ultimately, Valpo doesn't owe them anything more than a "thanks, but no thanks".

I appreciate his frustration, but think he crossed the line in naming names.  A big part of scheduling is developing and leveraging relationships ... I doubt he helped his odds of playing Valpo in future years with that comment.

[bigmosmithfan1]

I've heard that VU had difficulty getting the Ball State game scheduled this year (nothing out of the ordinary, sometimes matching up dates can be trickier than most fans realize). And that was a contracted home game, so I wouldn't be surprised if a potential roadie not under contract at FW was pushed off to a future year while Valpo tried to load up its OOC schedule with the Vegas tourney and games at Kentucky and Oregon instead.

Davis often seems to be angling for the Butler SID job, so I'm not surprised he'd throw shade Valpo's way. When Butler joined the Big East, they immediately and unilaterally dropped their non-conference home-and-home series with Ball State (the two teams had played annually dating back to the 1930s, including many years in the late 80s through the mid 90s where Butler was an RPI drag on Ball State rather than the other way around). Not terribly unusual for a team to big-time an old rival like that, but Davis managed to float a column blaming *Ball State* for the series being dropped (even though Butler even admitted publicly it was their decision to end the series), for not proactively offering Butler more home games or a gilded throne or something. Take his statewide college hoops musings with massive grains of salt given his rabid BU fandom.

[a3uge]

It's funny, he could have made Valpo look bad by actually getting a no-comment statement from them. He's even bad at hack-journalism.

[justducky]

Ultimately, Valpo doesn't owe them anything more than a "thanks, but no thanks".

But we do owe them more and we are all hoping that an honest and adequate explanation was provided. Perhaps Coffman didn't hear the full story or has abbreviated it for some Tom Davis soundbites. As always I would rather believe the best until I know the worst and as I implied in an earlier post maybe there is a little fire under this smoke but probably not much.

[StlVUFan]

I would like to think that this was more of a scheduling problem this year and not a snub to IPFW.

I would love to believe this but some of our past discussions about Ft. Wayne not being on our schedule suggest there may be more to the story. Some details about our long term schedule planning process could be helpful for us and for the Ft. Wayne press. A school that close and that competitive deserves the truth. Hopefully a good explanation will not force me to side with Tom Davis.

I think Tom Davis spends most of his time looking in a mirror and loving what he sees.  For being an editor of a mid- sized Indiana newspaper, he lets his predudices  get in his way way too often when he reports.  I wonder when the last time was when he talked to anyone from Valpo about anything.  Let IPFW, or Fort Wayne or whatever they are called schedule their Stetsons, Spring Arbors, etc. While the IU thing was a once in a lifetime thing, good for them.  But TD's reporting of Butler and lack of saying anything about Valpo speaks for itself.  And now we can add IPFW, or Fort Wayne, to his list of preferencial, one-sided reporting.  He has no use for VU and that will never change.

Lets remove IPFW from this conversation. They are not the bad guy and Davis is not their regular champion. Isn't this more of a rationalization of Butler practices? If your school (Butler) behaves with arrogant indifference then it is comforting to believe that this might be a common practice at every level of competition.

Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

I have no idea what this maxim is about but everything else that StLVUFan said is exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I think I am his evil twin. 

Quote from: StlVUFan on Today at 12:59:17 PM

    Sort of like Chekov's maxim about the gun on the wall.

I have no idea what this maxim is about but everything else that StLVUFan said is exactly what I was thinking. Sometimes I think I am his evil twin. 

Google is your friend, but ...

I'm not an authority, but I've heard it often enough from people who should be, so here goes my cheap-seat understanding:

Anton (I think?) Chekov, a famous writer/playwright/etc., asserted that in any good story, "if you see a gun on the wall in Act 1, it had better be fired by Act 3".  In other words, don't put something prominent in your story and then never pay it off.  The gun in this example is featured so that the reader/audience can't possibly miss it and immediately begins to anticipate it will be used.  The writer who teases his audience like that and then does nothing with it is a moron according to Chekov.

Davis' "gun on the wall" was "when Coffman called to schedule a game this season he got a familiar answer".  He never gave what that "answer" was ("answer" in this case, means "Valpo said they wouldn't play us, because ...", not Coffman saying, "they wouldn't play us").

My guess of course is that Davis didn't get the answer because Coffman didn't give it to him.  So he shouldn't have intimated an answer he wasn't prepared to reveal.  Per Chekov, if you're not going to fire the gun, don't put it on the wall in the first place.

[StlVUFan]

Ultimately, Valpo doesn't owe them anything more than a "thanks, but no thanks".

But we do owe them more and we are all hoping that an honest and adequate explanation was provided. Perhaps Coffman didn't hear the full story or has abbreviated it for some Tom Davis soundbites. As always I would rather believe the best until I know the worst and as I implied in an earlier post maybe there is a little fire under this smoke but probably not much.

And of course, neither Valpo nor IPFW owes *us* anything, right pgmado (I'm agreeing with Paul, not being sarcastic)?

[justducky]

And of course, neither Valpo nor IPFW owes *us* anything,

Of course, just as we do not owe Valpo our unquestioned, unwavering allegiance.

[atkins]

At least IPFW was able to convince the then third-ranked Hoosiers to play at home -- the first time in 49 years.  The Mastodons' win was not a fluke.  IU actually played a good game, but IPFW was simply better that night. 

There is a minimal chance that we would eek out a win against IU on their floor or ours because we would not match up well against them, so hats off to IPFW.

Makes me appreciate URI even more for having the courage to show up in Valpo.