Atlantic 10 Lacrosse

[Farfromgeneva]

Fairfield’s prior coach had some success but there were major issues the last few years. It’s a very solid program who could’ve won the MAAC this year while being pretty young all over the field.

They could have, the league was very down this year. But St. Bonaventure (40), Marist (43), Manhattan (48) all had better RPI’s than Fairfield (51). They would not have been the favorite in their home conference in any season going all the way back to Brecht’s best Siena years.

Fairfield was rumored for the new A10 all season. It’s apparent they’ll be staying in the CAA for now.

I mean we all are loyal to our conferences, for some reason that never made sense to me, their artificial (this very conversation proves that) and there's no value in association, but you'd be hard pressed to sell me that they wouldn't have won the MAAC in 2014 - 2016 when I look at the MAAC AQ reps and Fairfield those years before Copelan started having real culture problems in his program. They beat Quinny by 6 in 2016.

[Farfromgeneva]

In a prior life doing national CRE finance I had to get to Carbondale IL to see some student housing and my choice was flying from NYC to either St Louis or Paducah KY and drive 2hrs. I chose Paducah…on the return flight there was this multi hour delay so I’m chatting up the stewardess in the 3 bay county airport. She said one of the landing tires had a flat and they needed to get someone from Memphis because they didn’t have any maintenance folks there. A person who worked for the airport did apparently suggest to them and offer a can of “fix a flat”. Guess how much I drank on my flight back?

And if you thought that was a sh!tshow, just wait till you see the student housing in Carbondale.

(I mean, I'm assuming. Maybe it was actually really nice? I have some experience with the rental market in Athens OH, though, and am envisioning something quite similar.)

There's a mix of trashy, garden style B- quality assets mixed with insitutional REIT ones. But it doesn't matter as Southern Illinois has something like 22,000 students and 4,000-5,000 beds on campus - demand far outstrips supply and land is cheap there. Surprisingly large number of hotties around campus too given it's in the middle of nowhere and like 4hrs from Chicago...

Not dissimilar to cashing out this monster of a person who owns multifamily throughout the tristate area names Ruby Schron (Cammebys Intl) on the four towers connected to the GW Bridge. 968 units rent controlled, CMBS loan early mid 2000s made where the cash out proceeds were only limited by the optics on securitization despite the fact that I was naseuas having to walk through (for reps and warranties lenders have to see the property) and there was a $1MM immediate need reserve in the existing loan being refinanced from 6.5yrs earlier where he hadn't spent one dollar of said reserve. Didn't matter, those $500/month units would stay full forever thanks to the rigidity of rent control laws in NYC so no need to haircut or mark to market it at all. Urine in hallways, exposed live wires in pools of water in the basement/underground common areas, etc.

[JustPassingThrough]

Correct, there are no limitations. In fact, the opposite is true. The conference elevated men’s lacrosse to a core sport in 2015 with plans to encourage members to increase funding. St. Bona’s willingness to go fully funded was said to be a reason Mearns left his alma mater, Canisius, to undertake the rebirth of the Bonnie’s program.

Fairfield did leave for better competition. It’s unclear why Commissioner Ensor allows this. Not sure it’s worked out for Fairfield. They haven’t made a NCAA tournament, and at least 1 MAAC team has probably had a better RPI than Fairfield going back a decade plus.

Thanks for the clarification. I've wondered now and again about the status of Fairfield's exemption, what the politics are behind it, etc., and was hoping someone who knows the conference might post about it. Sounds like maybe even people who follow the MAAC closely are sort of confused by it too.

I'd sort of vaguely assumed it went back to Loyola staying independent for mlax back when the MAAC first started sponsoring the sport. Once they'd been letting Loyola do that for 6-7 years or whatever it was before Fairfield decided they wanted out, the MAAC may have felt like they either had to let Fairfield go or else force Loyola in, and the latter idea was a non-starter at the time.

Agreed that it's not super clear what Fairfield is gaining from skipping out on the MAAC at this point. If they're serious about trying to join the CAA as a full member, then I guess it makes sense to want to stay there as an mlax affiliate. Except that the CAA just chose Monmouth over them anyway, so the strategy doesn't really look so hot in that light?

Serious question: is the CAA even interested in non-football schools right now? The four recent adds all have one thing in common, which is scholarship football.

I doubt Fairfield wants full CAA membership. Without football, to what end? It becomes a lot of travel across a bunch of sports (baseball, soccer, volleyball, women's lacrosse) that generally have success in the MAAC while staying close to home. Plus, MAAC is a pretty good hoops conference, which the school has invested in. One other non-MAAC program: Fairfield field hockey won the NEC, losing in OT in NCAA opener to Delaware.

Mens lax was happy staying in CAA is my understanding, other than conference growth means fewer OOC games unless you get to two divisions.

[Homer]

But it doesn't matter as Southern Illinois has something like 22,000 students and 4,000-5,000 beds on campus - demand far outstrips supply and land is cheap there.

Had something like 22k students. They've hemorrhaged enrollment over the past decade -- it's literally half that now. Honestly, it's ridiculous. Maybe they should start men's lacrosse. I'm not even kidding.

[Farfromgeneva]

But it doesn't matter as Southern Illinois has something like 22,000 students and 4,000-5,000 beds on campus - demand far outstrips supply and land is cheap there.

Had something like 22k students. They've hemorrhaged enrollment over the past decade -- it's literally half that now. Honestly, it's ridiculous. Maybe they should start men's lacrosse. I'm not even kidding.

I’m getting old in to my 4 handle now that was around 15yrs ago. That’s really bad. Was under the impression it aggregates all the kids in IL that couldn’t go north to other IL schools. Had pretty good basketball back in the day I recall. Did remind me a lot of sections 4 in NY state geographically and culturally around there and that area is losing peeps in droves.

Guess it’s a good thing the banking world lives by YBGIBG

[gymman1031]

Do you think that, due to better competition, St. Bonaventure is really going to surprise people in recruiting and, therefore, be a contender more often than some people think?

[Farfromgeneva]

Mearns is good at cracking Canada but…Dobson had 27 saves in a two goal MAAC semi final win and 3/5, 5/7 top scorers are graduating.

Any benefit from the new conference is going to be offset by a rough next two years battling Bart at the bottom, though for my boys I hope the latter can pick off a few games from UMass, St Joes, Richmond, HPU in 23&24.

The (lack of) depth will be killer. Bart moved from a decent but not killer PL in 05 coming off a decent run to get an At large (beating Army, Bucknell 2x, Cornell and PSU with OT loss to a top 10 OSU) and started 05 in the ECAC 5-0 and ranked 13th or 14th only to finish 7-7 once they hit quarter finalist level UMass, GTown, Loyola, Fairfield etc in conference. Kerwick talked about building depth by waiving in talent with a pulse regardless for culture and he was gone in 08 despite two PL AQs and an at large within a decade…

[xxxxxxx]

Looks like a geographic nightmare, UMass to Richmond to High Point lots of miles.

[harflax]

Looks like a geographic nightmare, UMass to Richmond to High Point lots of miles.

High Point is in the middle of no where. It is about 90 minutes from the Raleigh airport.

[Farfromgeneva]

Looks like a geographic nightmare, UMass to Richmond to High Point lots of miles.

High Point is in the middle of no where. It is about 90 minutes from the Raleigh airport.

Greensboro has an airport. Charlotte is also 1.5-1:45 drive to the triad area. Practically lived in the Greenville-CLT-Triad-Triangle route for 4-5yrs for work about a decade ago.

[JustPassingThrough]

Looks like a geographic nightmare, UMass to Richmond to High Point lots of miles.

High Point is in the middle of no where. It is about 90 minutes from the Raleigh airport.

Greensboro has an airport. Charlotte is also 1.5-1:45 drive to the triad area. Practically lived in the Greenville-CLT-Triad-Triangle route for 4-5yrs for work about a decade ago.

High Point to Philly is 7.5 hours. St Bonaventure, UMass, and Hobart will all be long road games. Although SoCon travel to Air Force and Bellarmine was probably no picnic.

[Farfromgeneva]

Looks like a geographic nightmare, UMass to Richmond to High Point lots of miles.

High Point is in the middle of no where. It is about 90 minutes from the Raleigh airport.

Greensboro has an airport. Charlotte is also 1.5-1:45 drive to the triad area. Practically lived in the Greenville-CLT-Triad-Triangle route for 4-5yrs for work about a decade ago.

High Point to Philly is 7.5 hours. St Bonaventure, UMass, and Hobart will all be long road games. Although SoCon travel to Air Force and Bellarmine was probably no picnic.

You think they’ll drive with a college President who built a campus to emulate Disneyland? All with debt.

I think the prior guy was making it sound like a burden was on the NE teams but apparently they haven’t tried to get to Olean NY which is about the same as getting to Bath NY where my dad grew up. Mode of transport in that area is tractor. At least Greensboro for years hosted the mens ACC BB tourney and ha some infrastructure even if the end of the US furniture industry decimated that region.

It’s all whining to me because Hobart has been in conferences with Air Force and Denver (not totally overlapping), Mt St Mary’s, hell Hobart to Providence is far. I spent months of 2020 at 39-40 driving from Atlanta to Binghamton. HPU and Bart should be happy this is a stronger conference than the ones they are leaving. For Bart back to a stronger one, for HPU they’ll see what it’s like to have a tougher back half of the season than historically.

[10stone5]

St. Joe’s,
definitely ramping things up with the A-10 move,

a real fine 2024 pickup, a 6’7” well over 200 lb defenseman
from the same school as Luke Weirman, hopefully the same
drive, will be doing a PG year at Malvern,

https://www.insidelacrosse.com/recruiti ... commitment

[gymman1031]

I still think St. Bonaventure is going to surprise people the most in the near-future.

[BIGDAWG]

Once URI gets d1 lacrosse I predict a championship within 5 years.

[GeneralBart]

Is URI even thinking about adding men's lax??

[Farfromgeneva]

No

[10stone5]

St. Joe’s 2023 roster is up including freshmen,
Tucker Brown is back for 1 more year,
so Hawks again are going to be formidable,

https://sjuhawks.com/sports/mens-lacros ... sort=class

[Laxbuck]

Steven Dwyer, transfer from Wagner not listed but just an oversight. Solid addition

[10stone5]

Great opportunity for the two Wagner kids to expand on
their education, and have a chance for NCAA tournament
play with SJU.