Joe on utepia | The place for commentary for UTEP athletics

Memphis wants C-USA tournaments

UTEP has a major challenger for next season's Conference USA Men's and Women's basketeball tournaments. Memphis has come up with $750,000 in bait, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

The story said UTEP's bid is to be about $1 million, but Memphis officials think they can woo the conference using more than just money reasons.

This season's event was an attendance dud in Tulsa. It looked like UTEP would be a lock for next year's event. But as the Commercial Appeal story goes:

"When the Conference USA athletic directors met in Tulsa during the men's and women's basketball tournaments in March, University of Memphis athletic director R.C. Johnson was surprised to learn that Texas-El Paso was ready to bid on the 2011 tournaments.
Now Johnson will head to the league's spring meetings May 18 armed with his own bid. ...  (He) was granted as much as $200,000 from the Memphis Shelby County Sports Authority to help with the school's bid.

"That money will go with the $500,000 the U of M has, along with $50,000 from the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, helping the school put in a guaranteed bid of $750,000, up from the $500,000 it had guaranteed when landing previous C-USA men's tournaments ...

"Joining the Tigers and UTEP in bidding are Houston and Tulsa.

Johnson said UTEP is putting in a $1 million guarantee. But he is confident the Tigers' bid, while smaller financially, is more attractive.
"We have our location, our experience, and the facility (FedExForum)," he said."

Until Tulsa played host, Memphis was a long-time tournament host site. But moving the site around is the fair thing to do for the economies of C-USA  cities.

El Paso, though, will have a fight on its hands as some people in some conference cities have already said they wouldn't look forward to traveling so far to El Paso.

El Paso's strategy must be to borrow from the Sun Bowl Sunnies, who have always showed visitors the best bowl-game times they've ever had. C-USA needs to be convinced El Paso can do the same for its tournaments. We need a solid team to sell El Paso: City, county, Sports Commission, Convention and Visitors Bureau, hotels, restaurants ... give C-USA the Sun Bowl treatment and ask the Sunnies, who do it best, for pointers.

 

Basketball signing (being cynical, OK?)

UTEP has signed a good basketball player, 6-foot-6, 225 pound forward Michael Haynes from Heat Academy in Martinsville, Va. He'd also spent two years at Washington High in Chicago.

Nowadays these academies are coming right out and saying what they really are — basketball factories. Here's a mission statement from Heat (via Google):

"The purpose of HEAT Academy is to train high school and graduate players. The Academy will offer very intense and comprehensive training. Heat Academy places emphasis on the player becoming a more skilled basketball player. This will increase options for college scholarship offers."

It used to be these academies tried to pass themselves off as academic institutions that just so happened to field a basketball team. An example is the infamous Lutheran Christian Academy in Philadelphia, as exposed by the Washington Post. In reality these places have been more for laundering a player's poor high-school grades. (I'm not saying this is the case with this recruit, but it's been obvious in past years).

The Heat site on the Internet had this, too:

"Personalized academic programs, SAT/ACT prepatory classes, accredited college prep programs, small classes and courses eligible for college credit."

And with all that, Heat Academy also helped Haynes average 19 points and eight rebounds last season. The academy had a 36-4 record and was ranked fourth in the country by USPrepBasketball.com.

 

 

, a 6-foot-6, 225-pound forward from Heat Academy in Martinsville, Va., has signed a national letter of intent to play basketball at UTEP in the 2010-11 season, UTEP athletics officials said Tuesday.

He also played for two years at Washington High School in Chicago, leading the team to back-to-back appearances in the city championship game. He averaged 12 points and 17 rebounds in his first season and 17 points and 22 rebounds in his second, according to UTEP athletics officials.

Some posters off track

Clearing up some issues on conference expansion:

1) You can't say UTEP will look better to other conferences when it gets Tier 1 status. At best that's more than 10 years off. At best! Tier 1 requires attracting multi-millions of dollars in grants yearly, and they have to be grants for research. It would mean almost a new staff of profs. It would mean adding many doctorial programs and granting way more doctorial degrees than UTEP grants now. Those are the rules. Don't talk about Tier 1 in the same breath as UTEP sports.

2) The Pac-10 would not take both Utah and BYU unless, for some reason, it HAD to take BYU. It would likely be Utah and Colorado, giving the Pac-10 the Salt Lake City and Denver markets for TV revenue purposes. Utah and BYU are the same market. No, Fresno is a Las Cruces, and Fresno State doesn't have near the academics as Pac-10 institutions.

3) I've never heard that other Mountain-area schools look down on UTEP because it's on the border. In the past, though, it was not wrong to say UTEP/El Paso was poor and UTEP wasn't as good an academic institution as some members of the Mountain West. UTEP's academic picture is improving and now its athletic facilities are as good as most, and better than a lot of same-size schools.

4) Don't throw around UTEP attendance figures like they are in stone. UTEP releases numbers at games, but those are not the audited numbers. There were NOT 37,000 people, on average, at UTEP football games last season. And basketball attendance was dismal until late in the season.

5) No, UTEP can't call a big conference and ask to be admitted. C'mon, already. It doesn't work that way. The gist of my previous post was that if the big conferences go to 14 or more members, they will pick and choose from the lessers, and they will look at a school's money (city's economy), it's academics and its geography. They will look for schools that fit into their conference. The leftovers, as UTEP was when the Mountain West bolted the WAC, have to scramble. As big conferences have expanded over the past 20 years, the leftovers have been relegated to lesser and lesser status. UTEP has scrambled from Border Conference to the purgatory of Independent, to the old WAC, to the leftover WAC and then on to Conference USA, which was gutted at the time because basketball powers Louisville, Cincinnati, DePaul ... left for the Big East.

Remember, too, travel doesn't just mean getting a football team and two basketball teams to a different city. It also means getting your soccer, track, tennis, volleyball, softball ... teams to other cities.

There is a magic elixir for UTEP. It's YOU. If El Pasoans were like Cubs, Red Sox and Lobo basketball fans, and came out to the games no matter the team's record, then UTEP would be a jewel for bigger conferences. When Phoenix boomed, the Pac-10 came and got Arizona State and, for balance in scheduling, added Arizona, too. El Paso in the 1950s was bigger and better than either Phoenix or Tucson.

You want big-time college athletics? Be big time.

Big Ten rumor, I hope not true

There's some speculation the Big Ten, which actually has 11 members, may expand to 14, or even 16 schools. Dread that happening.

The trend is supposed to be 12 schools, for future playoff purposes involving TV. Fourteen is too many (note old WAC which cracked up into the Mountain West and the leftovers). Sixteen? I think anything over 12 would be the eventual demise of the UTEPs, New Mexico States and even New Mexicos of what's now NCAA Division I-A. Yes, Fresno States, Utah States and even SMUs, Rices and Tulsas. There are quite a few schools out West and in the Southwest that would be hurt.

I don't see Houston as anybody's catch. Houston is a pro town, not a college town. Note that when Houston and Basketball Coach Tom Penders parted ways in March, Houston AD said he gave a lot of credit to Penders because he didn't have much money to work with.

I hope its a false rumor the Big Ten could be intrested in taking from the Big East: Pitt, Syracuse and Rutgers. That would be 14 Big Ten schools. The Big East would be down to six football-playing schools. It would have to add. Only Memphis of Conferfence USA would seem to have the bankroll to move up to the Big East. Memphis could join old conference-mates (Conference USA defectors) Louisville and Cincinnati there. Memphis would have to up its spending on football, but there's a lot of money in Memphis.

What if other conferences go to 14 - or 16 - schools? Does the Pac-10 rob from the Mountain West (Utah) and the Big 12 (cellar-dweller Colorado), and go to 12?

Note the Big Tens and Pac-10s will go for "academic" institutions only; The Big 12 has the same thinking. What if the Big 12 goes hunting, or has to replace Colorado (or Missouri having gone to the Big Ten?)

And when the better schools from the mid-major conferences get promoted, the leftovers get kicked down even more in the BCS and national TV pictures.

Schools and cities with a lot of money stand the best chance in expansions.

The Chicago Tribune is reporting sources close to the Big Ten as saying expansion talk has been accelerated. Not good.

Just wondering(s)

Just wondering(s):

Is UTEP planning to announce the contract details of new basketball coach Tim Floyd? We know UTEP has only X amount of cash money to offer. Free use of nice cars is never a problem. The car dealers in El Paso are quite generous. The BB, FB and ADs usually get two to use. And a nice deal on a house. TV deals can be lucrative (note the NY Yankees). My suggestion is never heeded. Somebody deed the Athletic Department 10 acres and somebody build three nice houses on it - and dig a nice lake in the middle. Stock it with bass. Now that would be a nice perk.

It was a funny, in a weird way, how the Trevor Vittatoe deal unfolded. First the record-setting star q'back was suspended from the team for unspecified reasons. On the day his penance was over, it was announced that, oh, well, he's going to miss all of spring ball contact because he just had an operation.

On that note, Coach Mike Price has always been a tad mysterious about the status of players. Are they being disciplined or are they really hurt. How about the Tyler Ebell mystery a few years ago? The star RB was, all of a sudden, too injured to play for the Miners, but was OK immediately after the season to play in a senior all-star game.

And one more note: It seems like spring is the time for (real?) injuries, and lots of them. Again, the Miners have only a semblance of a starting unit for their scrimmages.

Basketball recruiting & congrats to Keitha Adams

Yes, I've been on a one-week vacation.

Regarding UTEP men's basketball recruiting: The roster is full, and probably over the limit (13) right now. But look for new coach Tim Floyd to make adjustments. He'll probably keep names of any potential new guys as secret as he can for now.

Note that the "5-8 rule" in the NCAA is being yanked. Some think it was put on the books because of Floyd supposedly overloading while he was at Iowa State.

Here's the "Google" on what it was: The “5-8” rule allowed a basketball program to award up to a maximum of 5 scholarships in one year, and 8 during a two-year span. The maximum number of scholarship players one team can have is 13, but thanks to the “5-8” rule schools were often kept well under that number.

This info from Mark Brunner, associate director for UTEP Media Relations:

UTEP's Keitha Adams, UTEP's winningest women's basketball coach ever (139 in 9 years) has been named to the 21st class of the El Paso Commission for Women Hall of Fame.

Previous leader Sandra Rushing had 123 wins in 11 years. Adams replaced Rushing.

Brunner notes "12  of the 18 major individual career records at the school are held by players who were mentored by Adams. Additionally, four of the seven members of UTEP's 1,000-point club were recruited and coached by Adams.

"With four Miners (Krezel, Natasha Lacy, Piekarska & Claudia Porras) signing pro deals following their senior seasons, Adams has now mentored 14 players who have gone on to star at the next level ..."

Players staying

Worries by some that UTEP would lose Arnette Moultrie and Randy Culpepper to the pros proved false - because there was no way either would leave.

Neither would have been drafted by an NBA team, and I think the departed Derrick Caracter may find out he's no LeBron in the eyes of the pro scouts. Somebody, though, has the 6-foot-9 talent convinced he'll go in one of the two rounds that comprise the draft. That's not a lot of college guys going to the NBA in a given year, plus foreign players are often picked. I say Caracter doesn't make the first round and he's 50-50 for the second round. He's got a good chance of playing overseas. Does he have Stefon Jackson's phone number over on the Bosphorus?

Culpepper, at 5-foot-10 (but can leap/sky), is not the ball-handler type, so point guard is out. And the NBA is full of shooters. Plus, Culpepper is going to get his college degree. That's big. He deserves a lot of congratulations for that. He's a winner. Culpepper will be a success in life. He'll have a good senior season under new Coach Tim Floyd.

Recall Moultrie entered this past season as a soon-to-be college superestar, who would leave for the NBA after this past season. So said some. That was the thinking last year when he was a 6-11 freshman, and then went on to play last summer on the Under 19 U.S. team.

But, if you recall, Moultrie had only a few real big games as a freshman. The talent was there. You could see it and sense it. But he was not dominating most nights.

This season Moultrie didn't have nearly the great year some predicted. Some said he listened too much to people other than Coach Tony Barbee. Maybe that's why he took those 3-point shots at wrong times. To impress the NBA scouts? Again, with Caracter the go-to guy under the hoop, Moultrie had only a few real big games as a sophomore. The talent was there. You could see it and sense it. But he was not dominating most nights

Moultrie is, indeed, NBA material if he learns how to use his height, good speed and talent. Floyd is known as a coach of "the basics," and is certainly a big-name coach. He'll be a great mentor for Moultrie, he'll add "smarts" to Moultrie's "game."

And that's why Moultrie is wise not enter the NBA Draft this year.

First new basketball recruit

It sure didn't take Tim Floyd long to replace Derrick Caracter's 6-9 presence in the UTEP basketball frontcourt.

Several recruiting Web sites are reporting that Floyd is set to sign 6-9 McDonald's All-American Loof Lirpa to a scholarship agreement this weekend. Lirpa is presently enrolled at Canterberry Prep School in Vermont. His native country is Macedonia, where he finished our equivalent of high school last May and spent the summer on the Macedonian Under 19 Select Team that played a series of games in Western Europe.

UTEP has signed four other freshmen-to-be under the Tony Barbee coaching regime. Because of the coaching change, they will not be bound to their scholarship agreements here.

Lirpa is expected to play behind returning Miner big-man Claude Britten, who will be a senior next season.

Insiderecruiting.com is reporting that Lirpa should be a mainstay in the Miners' starting lineup by the start of the Conference USA season. He averaged 19 points, 14 rebounds and 5 blocked shots at Canterberry this season.