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Post by rc on May 28, 2023 21:56:18 GMT -6
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archsimon
arm chair Grad Assistant
Posts: 241
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Post by archsimon on May 29, 2023 7:16:33 GMT -6
Lots of teams finished middle / bottom middle of the pack with only FB and MTEN scoring above 2.0 points. Easily the worst season collectively experienced by ACU athletics at the DI level, and possibly ever because even when FB or a MBB / WBB had a down year there was always track or tennis or golf or baseball excelling in the postseason.
Flush it. Onward.
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Post by acutrackfan on May 29, 2023 8:46:02 GMT -6
I love it when we do well in the commissioners cup, but reality is that ACU will always struggle in the standings for a variety of reasons:
-There are 20 sports where the WAC sponsors a championship and ACU does not field teams in 4 of them - men's soccer, M/W Swimming and diving, and women's golf. The women's golf team launches next fall, but I certainly don't see the other 3 being added - ever. Perennial Cup winners GCU field teams in 19 of the sports, football being the lone exception.
-T&F has an inordinate impact on the Cup standings -- 6 of the 20 sports are T&F related -- M/W XC, M/W Indoor T&F, M/W Outdoor T&F. As long as ACU is giving well less than the NCAA max in scholarships for both genders, it will be tough to make top 3, although NOT impossible. GCU picked up 1/3 of their points (22 of their 66) on the 6 T&F sports. ACU picked up 7 of our 26 points on the T&F sports. As much as I love T&F, I realize that for national recognition purposes the budget money will need to be poured into men's basketball and football first, with baseball and women's basketball close behind. I do believe that the T&F team may someday get up to the NCAA max in schos (12.6 for men and 18 for women), but ACU was not even at the D-2 max when we transitioned to D-1 which is now 10 years ago.
-The WAC Cup scoring system is screwy to begin with -- 6 points for 1st, 5 points for 2nd, 4 points for 3rd, 3 points for 4th, 2 points for 5th and 1 point for any place 6th or below. That means you pick up a point in the Cup standings, even if you do not score a single point at the conference track meet. Seattle has one of the worst D-1 outdoor T&F teams I have ever seen in person -- in both genders. But outdoors, they still received 2 points for getting dead last in both genders at the outdoor track meet. I was surprised that the men's team scored at the track meet at all (they did score a whopping 2 points), but I had expected the women to do a bit better than they did -- their women scored 3 points.
-ACU will have a scoring advantage in football -- only 5 WAC teams field teams and ACU got 5.5 points for tying for the championship in football. I have no idea whatsoever how the points will be figured going forward with this new United Athletic Conference thing.
This is my long-winded reply to end up at the exact same place Archsimon ended up -- "flush it, onward".
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Post by bogeyman on May 29, 2023 9:02:52 GMT -6
Are there any sports besides football and women's golf (maybe women's basketball) where we might be better next year?
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Post by acutrackfan on May 29, 2023 9:13:09 GMT -6
Good question. We have a new XC/Distance coach, who I met this past weekend. I do think he is going to be a very good recruiter of distance runners. I think the men's T&F team could be better next year and possibly the women's team as well. But, this is still in the middle of T&F recruiting season (the NLI window is open until August 1), so it will be hard to know about the T&F teams until the end of summer.
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