Originally Posted by UACFlyer
First, in the nine year period beginning in 2000 Xavier has played in seven NCAA tournaments, Gonzaga in nine and Creighton in seven,...not bad.
xubrew's discussion of other programs is interesting; but all the schools he mentioned are large public institutions;.....not a fair comparison to Dayton.
The "type" of school matters a lot when it comes to athletics. It's no accident that only a handful of the 120, or so, schools that play FBS football are private schools, and that very few of them are competitive. Even ND with its "infinite" resources struggles.
It's more than fair to compare the Flyers with the likes of Creighton, X, Gonzaga and the private schools of the Big East and A10. But, beyond those it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.
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i was just making the point that even among the big state schools in the bcs, not many of them are consistently good. hardly anyone is regardless of size, shape or conference.
no matter how broad or how narrow your study is, you'll find that very few teams are consistently good. there are several that are consistently bad, but very few are consistently good. if your definition of consistently good is being in a position to get an at-large more than half the time, gonzaga, xavier, creighton and butler are the only ones that really come to mind, and all of those programs have gone through cliffs and valleys, and there is no reason to think that any of those teams have reached a point to where they'll never have to rebuild because they're always reloading.
i remember when tulsa was awesome. they have less than 2000 students, but for an eight year period they were consistently better than any of those other schools minus maybe gonzaga. correct me if my facts are off, but between 1994 and 2003 tulsa went to the second round six times in eight years (it may have been more than that). three times they went to the sweet sixteen, and once they made the elite eight. xavier has only been to the sweet sixteen three times in their entire history, and gonzaga has only been four times. tulsa went three times in a six year timespand, and would have gotten there again had they not blown a a second half lead against wisconsin in 2003 and lose in the final seconds. six years later, tulsa is nowhere to be found. getting there doesn't mean you're going to stay there. not many teams experience that kind of success all of the time, and it isn't just the non-bcs schools that come and go. washington was outstanding about three years ago, and washington state was awful. things have changed. arizona state is looking pretty good all of a sudden. texas tech has been all over the map. virginia has been all over the map. wake forest has been up and down. the non-bcs private schools aren't the only ones that have a hard time maintaining consistent success. EVERYONE, no matter what conference or how big the school is, has ups and downs.
