The only bubbles I see is the ones I make sitting in the bathtub.
I thought the decline of the conference to mid-major might make a difference with this team this year and next. It won't.
What is your obsession with conference labels? That's all you ever
harp on post about, "major v midmajor". Is that how you qualify success? ESPN listing your team's conference among the "majors" on Selection Sunday?
Xavier has been a midmajor forever, and yet 3/4 of the highmajor schools would trade places with them in a heartbeat if it meant they could be as successful as XU has been.
The new conference makes plenty of money, the programs in it are stable, and recruits are choosing BE schools in high numbers... there is nothing on the conference level that is holding St Johns back, or making it any easier. Success is all relative. A good year in the old big east may have been being in the top 4 or 5, now in the new conference it means finishing top 3. So what, who cares?
The label is irrelevant, and I think you're the only one stuck in 2005 when conference affiliation mattered. Now every game is on tv , exposure is no longer an issue, and so many little known teams have had success in the tournament that Witchita and San Diego State are being talked about as much as Michigan and North Carolina. Everyone in the country knows who the good teams are by February and it doesn't matter if they're in the MAC or the Big 10. That wasn't true 10 years ago.
The only label I care about is whether the team is "good" or "bad".