Check out this link out to learn more about the Big Sky exploring its postseason tournament format for men's and women's basketball.
And here are some added thoughts from Idaho State women's head coach Seton Sobolewski on the Big Sky postseason tournament possibly moving to Vegas (or other locations), how many teams he hopes will make the tourney moving forward and what some coaches argue is a recruiting disadvantage for the Big Sky.
Idaho State women's coach Seton Sobolewski on changing the Big Sky postseason format:
"I have mixed feelings about it. It’s nice when you win the conference and you host. That home-court advantage is awesome and I think you bring something really special to your community and your university when you get to host. I think when the champion hosts, you have a better chance to have good attendance than not, especially of Idaho State hosts, if Montana hosts, if North Dakota hosts. You’re actually going to play games in front of people.
“Neutral site, if it’s like in Vegas, I don’t think the attendance is going to be very good. I don’t think there’s going to be many people there to watch, but I think that it’s a special experience to take a team there toward the end of the year and go to Vegas or go somewhere. The neutral site is nice to have in the sense that no one has a real home-court advantage. It’s nice logistically to know where you’re going to end up going. When you plan ahead, your travel is a lot easier. Getting officials, especially if you hold it in Vegas, getting officials would be a lot easier. So there’s a lot of good and bad to it.”
More from Sobolewski ... on how some coaches have said that not having a neutral postseason tournament hurts recruiting:
“I enjoy being unique and different. Some coaches complain about how not having a Vegas postseason tournament hurts them in recruiting. But I haven’t had one recruit who asked me where we’re playing the postseason tournament. I’ve never had a recruit tell me, ‘Oh, I’m not interested in going to your school because you guys don’t play in Vegas.’ So, yeah, I don’t know.”
“There’s been quite a few coaches in our conference who have mentioned that. They feel like it hurts them in recruiting sometimes because say you’re recruiting for a kid against a WCC school or a WAC school, which both have Vegas postseason tournaments, so a kid may not choose your school because of that. I don’t know if that’s true, like that’s really happening or is that coach just trying to leverage to influence people to have a neutral site conference tournament. I think that people like me and (Montana coach) Robin Selvig and (North Dakota coach) Travis Brewster, we’re always going to like the opportunity of hosting a postseason tournament because of our attendance.”
Is it important for a one-bid league like the Big Sky to protect its top seed?
“I think it is. I think it’s important to put your best foot forward. I think it reflects well on your conference if you can actually go into the NCAA tournament and win a game or two. I definitely feel like it reflects positively on your conference. But on the flip side of things, from a spectator standpoint, it’s kind of fun to have that what if? What if the seven seed could be a Cinderella? Those things are fun to watch and root for. So again, kind of the same situation there, there’s some mixed feelings.”
Fans would generally favor letting everybody in to the postseason tournament (in the 2014-15 season, eight out of 12 Big Sky teams will qualify for postseason play). ... Is that something you’d like to see? Or do you like the idea of only letting in eight and making it somewhat a competition to make the tournament field?
“I would like to see everybody go. ... The Pac-12 does it. Not that we’re the Pac-12 but we have 12 teams in our conference as well. I like the format of all 12 teams playing and there’s a couple byes involved. One and two seeds get one or two byes. The third and fourth seeds each gets one bye, you know, I like that. I like that format.”
Sobolewski discusses some numbers that have been thrown around in regards to hosting a postseason Big Sky tournament at a neutral location. All the numbers are preliminary:
“I think there’s also a money issue involved with the Big Sky. I don’t know about the dollar amount. I was told, I’m going to say this but I may be wrong, it may cost as much as $250,000 to put on a neutral site postseason tournament. So there’s also a cost involved. There’s also the issue, there was some profit sharing going on when you go to host a conference tournament. So say for example, Montana hosted the conference tournament. Well, their take would be split up amongst all the Big Sky schools. So there’s actually some money coming in when you would host the tournament. ... Where as if you play at a neutral site, you will lose money for sure. You’ve got to come up with money to cover your costs for hosting a neutral-site tournament. So I think that also plays into it.”
NOTE: The women's postseason tournament in the Big Sky does have revenue sharing. The men's tournament is set up slightly different. In its current format, the men's tournament generates revenue every year. Some of that money is siphoned off to a fund that the Big Sky uses to help teams in the league pay for things like hosting Division I nonconference opponents.
I think a thing about the neutral site people would argue is that ... you guys (Idaho State) had to bus (16 hours). So it’s kind of an advantage for the schools who can afford to fly. This might even the playing field (playing at a neutral site):
“I would think that it would help you save some money if you knew ahead of time where you were going to the postseason. But I think the figures are way different. I think you’re talking of savings of $12,000 to where the conference tournament costs a quarter of a million dollars. I don’t know. Maybe you save 10,000 to $12,000 dollars times 12, now you’re really saving some money. ... You’re still losing money at the end of it when you add up those two figures.”
“With us going to North Dakota, it wasn’t a money issue. It’s just a logistical issue. When it came to us buying plane tickets, we couldn’t get all of our team on the same flight. So we would have to have two different flights and two different groups of people to get them all the way to North Dakota. ... For us, it definitely wasn’t a money issue. We drove because we could actually get everybody there at the same time. We could take managers and we could take other people. I’ll you what, going out to North Dakota this year, Montana missed their connecting flight. Or they couldn’t get everybody on their connecting flight from Denver ... to Grand Forks. So they had some problems. They had to catch a later flight and we were able to avoid all that by busing. That was kind of our strategy with it.”
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