How does Southern Illinois keep putting together teams that get good seeds and make good runs in the tournament? It seems like they are in the Sweet 16 or better every year.
I’m tired about hearing excuses from teams in bigger conferences complaining about how impossible it is to compete in recruiting against Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Texas and all the other traditionally good programs. Don’t worry about trying to steal their players. Go after the guys that are playing for Butler and Southern Illinois and the other great “mid major” programs. They find a way to field teams that can beat the “bigger” programs and then have a little fun in March.
There is no reason a recruit would prefer to go to Butler or Southern Illinois because of the location and those programs do not get the exposure that even the worst teams in the Big 10 get.
So once a Big 10 coach realizes that he can’t steal the recruits from Kansas, maybe he should go fighting for the recruits at the successful smaller programs.
And I don’t buy the argument that the coaches are better at the mid major programs. Most of the coaches in the Big 10 seem to have come from mid major programs.
Whether Butler and Southern Illinois have the firepower to beat Kansas and Florida is something we can talk about after their games this week. What is certain is that these programs seem to find ways to consistently put teams on the court that could beat Iowa, Michigan and several other Big 10 schools and I would like to figure out why that is.