A-10 Xavier vs. Big East Xavier

[GoMuskies]

Reading through another thread, a comment from one of the posters caught my attention. He said that he would have loved having Tandy in our A-10 days but less so now that we're in the Big East as we're trying to compete at a different level. That got me thinking: generally speaking, I don't think of Xavier's A-10 squads are being significant different than Xavier's Big East squads. Maybe the highs have been a bit higher (and the A-10 lows were somewhat lower), but overall my hypothesis is that while Xavier' opponents have obviously gotten significantly better, Xavier itself is of pretty comparable quality to what we were in the A-10 days. And that's not an insult to Big East Xavier at all, as A-10 Xavier was really good.

So I've set out to test this hypothesis. As I'm typing this, I'm not sure how it's going to turn out. But I'm going to compare the eras using Jeff Sagarin's final rankings (and the current rankings for this year's team). Sagarin's rankings only go back to 2000, so we'll miss a couple of A-10 years, but those years were mixed enough ('96 and '99 bad; '97 and '98 good) that they probably would have been essentially a wash. So here we go!

A-10 Xavier

2000: 60
2001: 34
2002: 20
2003: 17
2004: 20
2005: 94
2006: 61
2007: 41
2008: 11
2009: 19
2010: 11
2011: 43
2012: 48
2013: 77

Big East Xavier

2014: 53
2015: 22
2016: 13
2017: 29
2018: 13
2019: 58
2020: 48
2021: 47

Average A-10 rank: 39.7
Average Big East rank: 35.4

Turns out that it was pretty close. Despite the seeding, Sagarin actually thinks we hit our highest highs in the A-10 (twice). Based on the NCAA Tournament experience, it's hard to argue too much with that. The lower lows were clearly A-10.

Overall, it's quite remarkable how consistent the program has been. I think we probably all know that intuitively, but it's interesting (to me, at least) to see it written out over a 22 season period. We've been spoiled with some great basketball. There have been some three year rough patches as bad or worse than the current one, but some NCAA Tournament success (the near miss against Ohio State in 2007; the run to the Sweet 16 in 2012) softened the impact of those stretches. It's getting to be about time to get back to top 25 basketball, though, like we've had in 9 of the past 22 seasons.

[drudy23]

People will point to recruiting rankings and all that, but I tend to agree with you.

Maybe we're "slightly" better in the Big East, but I look at the best teams over the last 20 years and only one of them is a Big East team. I'm more than confident our two prior Elite 8 teams could have competed fine in the Big East.

I don't see a significant difference in talent in the players we're getting overall. In fact, we have put more guys in the NBA that weren't from Big East teams. It's definitely provided more exposure and notoriety (and money), but the players seem relatively similar.

[GoMuskies]

Let's try it with KenPom (rankings only go back to 2002):

A-10 Xavier

2002: 23
2003: 20
2004: 21
2005: 81
2006: 54
2007: 32
2008: 15
2009: 20
2010: 18
2011: 38
2012: 53
2013: 78

Big East Xavier

2014: 52
2015: 21
2016: 14
2017: 31
2018: 15
2019: 65
2020: 45
2021: 58

A-10 Xavier: 37.75
Big East Xavier: 37.63

Ken thinks A-10 and Big East Xavier are virtual twins.

[markchal]

While it's comparable now, I think there is a lot more room for error in the Big East. Most seasons, once you get to conference play, nearly everyone you play is in the top 150. An off-night on the road at Georgetown or DePaul doesn't hurt you the same way an off-night at Duquesne would. Not to mention the TV deal/much better slate of home games.

There may be no tangible effect on our ranking yet, but the program sure is a lot better off in the BE (I know that's not quite the topic)

[GoMuskies]

Of course we're better off in the Big East. I just don't think our teams have been, on average, appreciably better...YET. And again, our A-10 teams were REALLY good, so it's a high bar.

[Drew]

Let's try it with KenPom (rankings only go back to 2002):

A-10 Xavier

2002: 23
2003: 20
2004: 21
2005: 81
2006: 54
2007: 32
2008: 15
2009: 20
2010: 18
2011: 38
2012: 53
2013: 78

Big East Xavier

2014: 52
2015: 21
2016: 14
2017: 31
2018: 15
2019: 65
2020: 45
2021: 58

A-10 Xavier: 37.75
Big East Xavier: 37.63

Ken thinks A-10 and Big East Xavier are virtual twins.

They are, its the conference family that got upgraded. No more Duquesne, LaSalle, St. Bonaventure, Richmond andddd Fordham.

[markchal]

Yeah, that's a good point. The program was operating pretty much at the ceiling in a lot of those A-10 seasons. Outside of a couple teams, our BE performance has been middling, so there's definitely a lot of room for improvement if we can get back to the well-coached, veteran-led formula.

[XUGRAD80]

They are, its the conference family that got upgraded. No more Duquesne, LaSalle, St. Bonaventure, Richmond andddd Fordham.

Exactly, that’s what I’ve been trying to say in other threads. X was the big fish in a pond of small fish. Now they are in with fish their own size, or even bigger. I don’t expect them to dominate these fish like they did those fish. Compete well, yes. Dominate, no. Not yet. CAN they get to a point where they are traditionally a top 3 team in the BE? Yes, I think they can. But they aren’t there yet.

[Drew]

Yeah, that's a good point. The program was operating pretty much at the ceiling in a lot of those A-10 seasons. Outside of a couple teams, our BE performance has been middling, so there's definitely a lot of room for improvement if we can get back to the well-coached, veteran-led formula.

Xavier has overachieved in the Big East. I think the past 2 years may be painting your perception. We had a 2 seed, an elite eight run then a 1 seed in three straight years.

[basket]

First off GOMUSKIES GREAT post!! Secondly, I agree with DREW that the last few years has spoiled us Muskie fans. I also agree with XUGRAD80 that XU isnt dominating/THE Big fish, like they did in the A-10. Nor does he think, right now, XU can dominate in the Big East. Well that is where I disagree. I think Xavier University CAN dominate in this conference. I think they could have last year, this year AND the years to come!! GIVEN the right leadership starting with the Presdient, AD, Coach(s), players and yes even US the fans! ALL of us have GOT to have the mentality that we can and WILL compete in this conference! The XU "family" has to "buy into" this philosophy! Im afraid if this does not happen we will have A LOT of medicore seasons to come!!

[XUGRAD80]

First off GOMUSKIES GREAT post!! Secondly, I agree with DREW that the last few years has spoiled us Muskie fans. I also agree with XUGRAD80 that XU isnt dominating/THE Big fish, like they did in the A-10. Nor does he think, right now, XU can dominate in the Big East. Well that is where I disagree. I think Xavier University CAN dominate in this conference. I think they could have last year, this year AND the years to come!! GIVEN the right leadership starting with the Presdient, AD, Coach(s), players and yes even US the fans! ALL of us have GOT to have the mentality that we can and WILL compete in this conference! The XU "family" has to "buy into" this philosophy! Im afraid if this does not happen we will have A LOT of medicore seasons to come!!

Now wait a minute...I DID say that they CAN get to a point where they are a consistent top 3 team in the BE. I just said that they aren’t there YET. Since they have only done it twice in their 7 years in the conference, I think that’s an accurate statement of where they currently are.

[bjf123]

Now wait a minute...I DID say that they CAN get to a point where they are a consistent top 3 team in the BE. I just said that they aren’t there YET. Since they have only done it twice in their 7 years in the conference, I think that’s an accurate statement of where they currently are.

Agreed. I think we can consistently be one of the top 3-5 teams in the Big East. Do I think we’ll get to the point of dominating it like we did the A-10? Maybe, but I’m not convinced it will happen.


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[GoMuskies]

Agreed. I think we can consistently be one of the top 3-5 teams in the Big East. Do I think we’ll get to the point of dominating it like we did the A-10? Maybe, but I’m not convinced it will happen.


The good news, as we all recognize, is that we don't have to dominate the Big East the way we did the A-10 to reach our program goals. We DO need the move to the Big East to elevate the on-court product a little bit more than it has so far if we're going to take that last big step.

[bjf123]

True. Finish in the top half of the Big East and you’re pretty much guaranteed an invitation to the big dance.


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[Xville]

I’m interested to know if recruiting has been better since x joined the big east. My initial feeling is that it’s about the same as it was before, but I have zero to back that up. Anything around that? :)

[XUGRAD80]

I’m interested to know if recruiting has been better since x joined the big east. My initial feeling is that it’s about the same as it was before, but I have zero to back that up. Anything around that? :)

Weren’t there last two X recruiting classes both top 25-30? Don’t believe X ever had classes ranked that high while in the A10. Also thinking that Bluett, JP, and Scruggs aren’t coming to X if they are still in the A10. So yeah, I’d say the recruiting has gotten a bump by joining the BE.

Here’s a pretty good list.....

https://247sports.com/college/xavier/Sport/Basketball/AllTimeRecruits/

[Xville]

Weren’t there last two X recruiting classes both top 25-30? Don’t believe X ever had classes ranked that high while in the A10. Also thinking that Bluett, JP, and Scruggs aren’t coming to X if they are still in the A10. So yeah, I’d say the recruiting has gotten a bump by joining the BE.

Here’s a pretty good list.....

https://247sports.com/college/xavier/Sport/Basketball/AllTimeRecruits/

So I just looked at national rankings from past Xavier years....wow....so Xs 2010 recruiting class was 18 in the nation....this just goes to show how imperfect recruiting is or at least was. Here are the recruits:

Justin Martin
Jay canty
Griffin McKenzie
Jordan Latham

Yikes.

2011 x was 20... a bit better here:

Jalen Reynolds
Dez wells
Dee Davis

[XUGRAD80]

Hadn’t realized that this classes were ranked so high, but yeah I agree that rankings should be taken with a grain of salt, even today. IMO there are probably 20-25 guys each year that are actual “can’t miss” players. Anything short of injury, academic, or desire problems and they are going to be impact players for any program. After that, it’s not a total crap shoot, but it’s close. How much those other players really want to be good, how hard they work, how well they take coaching is going to determine how good they become and if they are going to have successful careers. Good recruiters can spot those few kids out of the hundreds they see every year, and good coaches can help them to reach their potential.

[Masterofreality]

Let's try it with KenPom (rankings only go back to 2002):

A-10 Xavier

2002: 23
2003: 20
2004: 21
2005: 81
2006: 54
2007: 32
2008: 15
2009: 20
2010: 18
2011: 38
2012: 53
2013: 78

Big East Xavier

2014: 52
2015: 21
2016: 14
2017: 31
2018: 15
2019: 65
2020: 45
2021: 58

A-10 Xavier: 37.75
Big East Xavier: 37.63

Ken thinks A-10 and Big East Xavier are virtual twins.

The prior 2 seasons and this one have been well below the average rank in both KenPom and Sagarin.
Not encouraging.

[D-West & PO-Z]

Reading through another thread, a comment from one of the posters caught my attention. He said that he would have loved having Tandy in our A-10 days but less so now that we're in the Big East as we're trying to compete at a different level. That got me thinking: generally speaking, I don't think of Xavier's A-10 squads are being significant different than Xavier's Big East squads. Maybe the highs have been a bit higher (and the A-10 lows were somewhat lower), but overall my hypothesis is that while Xavier' opponents have obviously gotten significantly better, Xavier itself is of pretty comparable quality to what we were in the A-10 days. And that's not an insult to Big East Xavier at all, as A-10 Xavier was really good.

So I've set out to test this hypothesis. As I'm typing this, I'm not sure how it's going to turn out. But I'm going to compare the eras using Jeff Sagarin's final rankings (and the current rankings for this year's team). Sagarin's rankings only go back to 2000, so we'll miss a couple of A-10 years, but those years were mixed enough ('96 and '99 bad; '97 and '98 good) that they probably would have been essentially a wash. So here we go!

A-10 Xavier

2000: 60
2001: 34
2002: 20
2003: 17
2004: 20
2005: 94
2006: 61
2007: 41
2008: 11
2009: 19
2010: 11
2011: 43
2012: 48
2013: 77

Big East Xavier

2014: 53
2015: 22
2016: 13
2017: 29
2018: 13
2019: 58
2020: 48
2021: 47

Average A-10 rank: 39.7
Average Big East rank: 35.4

Turns out that it was pretty close. Despite the seeding, Sagarin actually thinks we hit our highest highs in the A-10 (twice). Based on the NCAA Tournament experience, it's hard to argue too much with that. The lower lows were clearly A-10.

Overall, it's quite remarkable how consistent the program has been. I think we probably all know that intuitively, but it's interesting (to me, at least) to see it written out over a 22 season period. We've been spoiled with some great basketball. There have been some three year rough patches as bad or worse than the current one, but some NCAA Tournament success (the near miss against Ohio State in 2007; the run to the Sweet 16 in 2012) softened the impact of those stretches. It's getting to be about time to get back to top 25 basketball, though, like we've had in 9 of the past 22 seasons.

Interesting topic, thanks for posting. I havent read ny of the other comments yet so someone may have brought this up, but I think the BE years are at a bit of a disadvantage at the moment because of the 8 years, 3 of them are with a new head coach (new as in first 3ish years).

If you look back at some of the bad A10 years a lot of them were in the first several years of a new coach taking over, except for Matta.

2005, 2006, 2007 weren't great, especially 05 and 06. Those 3 years were Miller's first 3 years. 11, 12, and 13 werent great and those were 3 of Mack's first 4 years. Mack's first he was left with a FULL cupboard.

Not sure if this is making sense or even accurate, but I would hop as the years go on in the BE with Steele at the helm and he continues to grow as a coach you will see those lower numbers again that you saw with our other head coaches after the first several years. I think we'd see much worse numbers in Steele's first 3 years if we would have been in the A10 still. Similar to some of Miller's early numbers.

[D-West & PO-Z]

Exactly, that’s what I’ve been trying to say in other threads. X was the big fish in a pond of small fish. Now they are in with fish their own size, or even bigger. I don’t expect them to dominate these fish like they did those fish. Compete well, yes. Dominate, no. Not yet. CAN they get to a point where they are traditionally a top 3 team in the BE? Yes, I think they can. But they aren’t there yet.

In the BE the highs will be much higher (in terms of great reg seasons like 2018, not tourney which can be a crapshoot) and lows will be much higher.

[xubrew]

Thanks for putting this together!

I hated the Atlantic Ten. Probably more than I should have. But, I liked a lot of programs that were in it at the time. My main issues were with the leadership, and in hindsight looking back on it now it may not have been that big of a deal. I hated that schools like Xavier and Dayton that basically had P5 level resources were playing basketball in the same conference as Fordham, who if you took out of the A10 and placed in the MAAC or Patriot League would still finish in the bottom half of the conference more often than not. Fordham and La Salle basically never even tried, and no pressure was ever put on them to try. They just took their share of the revenue that Xavier was largely responsible for generating, and kept doing them. Yeah, was never a fan of that. I still don't understand how Fordham seemingly got bigger NCAA Tournament payouts than Xavier did. But...I don't care anymore. It's in the past now.

I hated that they axed the A10 Network, which I know wasn't really a network but more of a production company that made games available, just when streaming was becoming a thing and instead inked a TV deal that actually prevented a lot of games from getting on the air, or if they were on TV they were on high premium networks that almost no one got on their packages.

But...those Xavier A10 teams were legit. They were certainly Big East good. I don't think I have to convince anyone here of that. Some of the other schools really were too. Nothing that A10 did kept us from reaching our ceiling. Saint Joe's had some great teams. So did Temple. Dayton had underachieving teams nearly every year, but the rivalry with them was good at the time. You had to be good to win as much as Xavier did in the Atlantic Ten. Half of it was crap, but the top half of it did generate some pretty good teams.

[Xavier]

I know the move to the Big East is better overall for the school and athletic department. I think an argument could be made that if Sean would have stayed, Xavier would be more equipped to become a Gonzaga level by staying in the A10.

[boozehound]

So I just looked at national rankings from past Xavier years....wow....so Xs 2010 recruiting class was 18 in the nation....this just goes to show how imperfect recruiting is or at least was. Here are the recruits:

Justin Martin
Jay canty
Griffin McKenzie
Jordan Latham

Yikes.

2011 x was 20... a bit better here:

Jalen Reynolds
Dez wells
Dee Davis

The 2010 class definitely goes down as one of Xavier's all-time bust classes. The 2011 class was probably a pretty good class if Dez Wells had finished his career at Xaiver.

[NOVA]

Was checking in to see how you guys were doing and thought this and the expectations threads were interesting. As far as expectations of a program, I think you have to take the coach out and look at the program and school. I think what’s so cool about the Big East is that every school is basketball centric, every school has some level of strong basketball pedigree and and every school has leadership that has made clear hoops is the flagship sport. So from that very pure standpoint, I think every school/program should have a realistic expectation to be able to compete for the conference every year. Now with that said, every school has its own unique strengths and weaknesses that can pit it at a further advantage or disadvantage. With X, I see the big positives being highly institutional commitment to the sport, superior arena situation, good basketball geography. Those are three huge pluses that, in my opinion , puts the expectations of top 5 in conference every year pretty realistic.

The original post regarding “expectations” focused around basketball budgets; I wouldnt get hung up on that. Marquette’s is higher because they pay fiserve arena rent. Nova is higher bc they have to make sure they pay an HOF coach a salary near the top. In general I would think that X would be prepared to pay the right coach higher salary if needed and again, I do think they have the resources to give the coach everything he would want. I don’t think any of our schools with exception of maybe UConn are going to sacrifice academics or build athlete-only dorms or things like that: I don’t think that is neccessarily needed in hoops to be successful. Yes I think some schools have larger endowments that may it them at a longer term advantage and X’s may be on the smaller side but it’s also a smaller student body so there is not as much overhead etc. I think the resources for all the schools in the conference for a sport like hoops are fine.

Final point on expectations and in my opinion, the most relevant on a year to year basis depends on the coach. I’ll use nova as an example. Jay is at such a level that we have top 10 expectations every year now and while the school and program have had consistent levels of success throughout its history, if an assistant takes over next year, those expectations will likely drastically change. When Lappas was coach, sure we had some good years but expectations were different. Not sure if Steele is the right guy or not; I don’t watch X nearly enough to form as accurate opinion like you guys can. But I will say a coach in the big East will almost always need a few years to get his systems and culture in place to compete consistently. In the A10, that may not have been as much of a need so a newer coach could win more games more quickly. So I would be patient. But I will say in my opinion, steele needs to get off the transfer hamster wheel. He’s not doing his frosh and core group any favors and they always seem like a lineup hodgepodge when I watch them. He’s recruiting well, so he should take the lumps that come with young players and watch them grow. Wright did this with his first class of foye ray sumpter and Fraser. Was frustRating for a. Kills of years but by their senior year, they were a 1 seed.

Good luck the rest of the way. No reason why X can’t be competing for the top spot on a regular basis.

[basket]

Nova GREAT points and those WERE my points EXACTLY!! I wish SOME XU fans would have YOUR forsight!!

[UCGRAD4X]

Nova GREAT points and those WERE my points EXACTLY!! I wish SOME XU fans would have YOUR forsight!!

Two things:

1st: he said something about watching young players grow (develop? improve?)...

2nd: he said "be patient" :sign-wtf:

That's not something we do. That's definitely NOT the "Xavier Way"!