Hello all, the Mid-Major Madness team is here to answer all of your mid-major-related/adjacent questions this offseason!
If you guys like this, we’ll do more of them throughout the offseason and season.
If you don’t like it, we will still do it.
Mid-Major Madness Mailbag time
Lance Hartzler: As Mid-Major Madness’s resident West Coast Person, I feel obligated to call out a gem of the desert: The Pit in Albuquerque, New Mexico, home of the New Mexico Lobos for the past 60 seasons. The stadium’s namesake comes from the spark of genius as builders placed the court deep down in a literal 37-foot hole through southwest desert sedimentary rock. This makes for one of the best basketball environments regardless of level. And that shows in the program’s home record.
New Mexico is an astonishing 697-143 (.817 winning percentage!) since the Pit opened its maw in 1966. If you find yourself on a journey in the American Southwest, make the Pit Pilgrimage. Plus, your favorite team can try its luck at Ramp Ball.
Sam Federman: The Palestra is the heart and soul of Philadelphia basketball. I’ve never been when it’s packed to the corners, but even with a modest crowd for a Penn game, it feels very loud and the history echoes through the building. It’s the Cathedral of College Basketball for a reason. Also a huge fan of Rose Hill Gym in the Bronx. Similarly old, similarly loud.
For arenas that I haven’t been to, I’m also pining for a trip to The Pit one day. High Point, VCU, Dayton, UNC Wilmington, and the Pyramid at Long Beach are also on my bucket list. In terms of conference tournaments, Arch Madness is on the bucket list.
Ian Sacks: The Palestra and The Pit are easily the first two choices that come to mind with this question. So, I’ll look elsewhere since Sam and Lance have already covered them. I’ll pick two in the middle of the country: Dayton and Saint Louis. There’s a reason the First Four has been at UD Arena every single year. It’s a great 13,000-seat venue, and the Flyers usually have it rocking. Plus, have to give a shoutout to the band. One of the best college bands I’ve seen at a game. As for SLU, when the Billikens are great, and they often are, Chaifetz Arena is rocking. Saint Louis was a perfect 19-0 at home this year. Keep in mind also that there’s no NBA competition in the market.
Lance Hartzler: This is a FANTASTIC question from a friend of Mid-Major Madness, national college basketball reporter from CBS, Matt Norlander. We can go a few different directions here:
Sam Federman: There really aren’t any good options at true mid-major levels at the moment. If Rick Byrd isn’t a (Naismith) Hall of Famer, I surely wouldn’t expect Kampe to get in (sorry, Lance). But I have a few opinions:
Ian Sacks: First off, I would love to see Kampe in the half of fame. It needs to happen. Just to go with one name that has not come up yet, I’ll go with Gordy Presnell, the women’s basketball coach at Boise State. It’s a name you may not know but should. He’s one of a handful of active Division-I head cosches with 750 career wins and is closing in on 800. He’s the only active women’s mid-major coach in that category. He’s entering his 40th year as a head coach and had led the Broncos for the last two-plus decades (across soon to be three different conferences).
Sam Federman: I don’t like framing mid-majors as a stepping stone, so I’ll change this question to name some ascending young mid-major coaches… Eric Olen (New Mexico), Ryan Ridder (Mercer), Takayo Siddle (UNC Wilmington), Flynn Clayman (High Point), and Matt Braeuer (Stephen F. Austin) come to mind.
Lance Hartzler: I generally agree with Sam, especially on this stance; I prefer to avoid framing my beloved mids as stepping-stone gigs. I’ll slightly reframe the question as well: my top five under-the-radar / not-talked-enough-about coaches… Jace Coburn (Portland State; was in the running for the Arizona State gig before Randy Bennett was hired), Alex Pribble (Idaho; led Idaho to the NCAA Tournament last season), Kaleb Canales (Weber State), Brian Wardle (Bradley), and Joe Pasternack (UC Santa Barbara).
Ian Sacks: Eric Olen (New Mexico) and Bob Richey (Furman) are my first two picks here. They’ve both made immediate impacts and are rising stars. Ben Jacobson (Utah State) is another name to keep an eye on. There’s something in the water in Logan, Utah, and he’ll be the next to find that out. Phil Martelli Jr. (VCU) has had a bunch of success at both Bryant and VCU. Ryan Miller (Murray State) is someone else to keep in mind. Showed a lot of promise in his first year as a head coach. Alisa Kresge (Richmond) is a name to know on the women’s side. She took over as the leader of the Spiders after a successful stint with Vermont and was a baller at Marist.
Sam Federman: Because of the transfer portal, nobody truly knows what their roster needs will be until after the season, which makes it harder to commit to recruiting high school players heavily. Most of the traditional recruiting process for high schoolers happens before their senior season, with tons of interest in grassroots and scholastic events over the summer. In the past, if you knew that you stood to graduate a point guard, a wing, and a big, and that those would be your only three departures, you could – as early as sophomore or junior year – start really scouting the market for those guys, and zero in on a few that you like so they can be signed before their senior year. Now, teams can guess what they’re losing, but won’t truly know. A lot of high schoolers are still signing, but plenty of programs are going overseas to fill those spots too, if they need extras late in the process.
Lance Hartzler: It probably isn’t super good that players who have played professional basketball for years in Europe, and are generally 22 years old and older, are being recruited into mid-major programs. One can argue that these guys with pro experience can elevate the quality of play, but what about when we see players with literal NBA experience skirt between the rules? Sorry to give a non-answer, but I’d like to see some consistency in rule enforcement before developing a firmer opinion. Seems bad, though!
Ian Sacks: The whole system is crazy these days. There are so many different ways to have success and the rules, especially surrounding eligibility, are changing every five minutes. We’ve seen programs have success with heavily imported teams (Illinois at the power-conferwnce level and UT Martin at the mid-major level just to name two). At this point, you have to go anywhere you can to make the best, most cohesive roster you can.
Sam Federman: Spend orders of magnitude more money on their rosters. Those schools are baseball and football schools. Basketball isn’t as big a deal to them, and that’s okay. It’s a tremendous league to watch and usually very competitive, but the odds of it ever becoming a league on the level of the A-10 or Mountain West are low.
Lance Hartzler: Tremendous luck, and to pray that you can be what the MAC (Miami and Akron, we love you) was, and what the Missouri Valley Conference should have been (Belmont, we are sorry).
Ian Sacks: With the tournament expanding to 76 teams, the Sun Belt will have a much greater chance at getting multiple teams in because the access is that much greater. Hahaha.
Honestly, pray. Pray for a team to run through the season and then get picked off in the conference tournament. It seems as though that is the only route for one-bid leagues to send multiple teams dancing.
Sam Federman: You’re correct that Chris Wright has been incredibly successful at the NAIA levels. I think any conversation about him requires a few levels of nuance. He has a history of taking talented players with checkered pasts and straightening them out while winning a ton of games. If you can get the right level of buy-in, like Wright did with Anthony Roy among others, it’s a very good strategy for an under-resourced, lower-tier program. I’m a tad skeptical, but mostly optimistic that this is an excellent hire for Alabama State.
Sam Federman: Unless something drastic changes, LIU will have the most talented roster in the NEC every single year. I’ve had my doubts about Rod Strickland (and still do), but last season proved that he could get his team over the hump. I’d say that the Sharks are the clear favorite in that league once again. Vasean Allette and Daquan Davis are just too talented to be NEC players, but there’s certainly a reason why they didn’t end up at a higher level.
Sam Federman: Davis is on one of the hotter seats in the northeast, if you’d ask me. Bill Herrion had the Wildcats consistently finishing with a winning record in America East, and Davis hasn’t accomplished that in any of his three seasons. Whether New Hampshire cares enough/has the money to get rid of him should they have another season hanging around the bottom 30 of KenPom remains to be seen, but he certainly hasn’t earned an extension of his original, presumably five-year, contract.
Tanner McGrath: Ah. A question right in my wheelhouse.
The problem with New Hampshire is that I really have no idea how much it cares about its basketball program. Durham cares about hockey, football, or even skiing. As such, I thought it was an insane move not to renew Bill Herrion’s contract, who somehow kept the Wildcats above water (typically in the top four of the league) season after season by coaching up untalented teams that ground out games and won the shot-volume battle. Sure, he may have had a glass ceiling (AE Tournament semi-finals), but did the administration really think they could do better?
And, if so, was Davis really the guy who could get the Wildcats over the hump? Over his first three years, he’s failed to implement his fast-paced, run-and-gun system, instead veering off course mid-way through each season because he seemingly built awkward rosters. Although I don’t mind this year’s projected roster (I like the returning trio of Tyler Bike, John Squire, and Davide Poser), I don’t really see things going much differently.
But that raises the question: What does this administration expect or want from its basketball program? I genuinely don’t know the answer to that question, and thus, what Davis’ future holds. If Davis wants to reach or surpass Herrion heights, he (like every other coach in the AmEast and other low-major conferences) needs to copy Jim Ferry at UMBC and relentlessly scout the Division-II levels. The Wildcats did bring in transfers from JUCO and NAIA, which is a start.
