Quote from: jknezek on May 11, 2013, 09:12:52 am

W&L wins both the men's and women's Commissioner's Cups and takes the overall for the 11th straight year! Congratulations Generals on another fine conference year!

Shenandoah does better than I thought, finishing third from bottom overall and for the men, and in the middle of the pack for the women. E&H and Randolph sit at the bottom.

Does this make W&L the Mt. Union of the ODAC?   
Seriously though, congratulations and well done to the Generals' athletes and coaches.

I know you wrote it as a joke, and no W&L isn't the dominant force Mt. Union is, but it is worth a deeper look at why W&L does so well in these cups. Many people may not care, but since I'm a math guy I found the following interesting:

Like most of the ODAC schools W&L has a couple sports that they just dominate the conference. For example Men's and Women's tennis is usually pretty unattractive competition (Men: 32 of 37 championships, Women: 22 of the last 23). But I think the real difference is that there just aren't any sports where W&L is flat out miserable anymore. You used to be able to count on the basketball teams being pretty bad, baseball used to end up in the bottom of the field, but that's just not true anymore. The sports that W&L isn't competitive for championships they still finish mid table at worst.

If you look at the Cup table, the only men's sport where W&L didn't pick up more than 1/2 of the points available was Indoor Track and Field and they got 4 of 8 points while being 1 of only 4 schools to participate in every ODAC sport. On the women's side, basketball and golf finished under the half way point, with 5.5/12 pts in basketball and 1/3 in Golf, which is a second year program. Now W&L doesn't play softball, but I think Bridgewater is the only other ODAC school to play as many women's conference sports as the Generals. The Eagles don't play Women's golf, but play everything else.

Before anyone points it out, I'll say that participating in the most sports isn't an advantage. The Cup is awarded based on the overall percentage of points you earn in the sports you participate in. So winning 75% of your available points in 3 sports would place you in the same spot in the cup standings as winning 75% of your available points in 15 sports. So while W&L plays the most ODAC sports of any school in the conference, that doesn't give them a leg up on the Cup. Perversely, it may make it harder to win, as you have to pick up consistent sports in even more areas. For example, even though the Generals don't win an abnormal number of regular season titles, 2 on the men's side and 3 on the women's side, the real key is being consistently good, or at least not real bad, everywhere else.

All that being said, Lynchburg had a good run at the men's title this year and I think won it the last few years. W&L's women, however, have won 10 straight and 13 of the 21 commissioner's cups. When you consider W&L went co-ed in 1986, it didn't take too long to ramp up to victory and really have made a great run since.

Going to be interesting to see if Mount Union can continue to dominate under new leadership.

Yes, but give LK credit. He gave his son every chance to succeed. Going out on a high note, with the skill positions all filled for next year and I think mostly the year after, should give Mount a chance to repeat. If they can roll next year it will help with any recruiting wavering caused by LK leaving. I think over a long period of time, 10 years or so, we'll see Mount dragged back toward an upper-echelon pack of schools that will develop. I just don't think the kind of singular success they've had is sustainable for too much longer. That being said, I think they'll continue to be an elite school in D3 with a consistent shot at the title.

Well, proud of W&L's women's lacrosse team winning the ODAC conference, but it ensures 0 championships for Shenandoah in their first year in the conference (team sports. not sure if they had a track champion somewhere). While taking an 0 fer conference championships isn't too bad, taking an 0 fer conference wins in football, men's basketball, and men's lax is pretty miserable.

Be interesting where Shenandoah falls in the President's cup rankings, but I'm thinking the men have to be pretty close to the bottom and the women no more than the bottom third, combined they might hit the bottom as well. They are going to need to step up recruiting and coaching pretty much across the board (women's lax and baseball are the outliers) to compete in the ODAC.

Figured I'd finish this post up on Shenandoah's first year in the ODAC. They definitely had a better Spring than Fall or Winter, but still a mixed bag. On the good side, baseball finished tied for second in the regular season at 13-7, women's lacrosse finished tied for second at 8-2 in the regular season and is in the championship match, and softball finished at 10-10, solidly mid conference.

The bad, unfortunately, was very bad. Men's lacrosse tied football and basketball with an 0-fer, men's tennis went 2-8, and women's tennis went 2-9, both finishing second from bottom.

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Wasn't sure where to post this, but after the fall and winter seasons Shenandoah has had one painful welcome to the ODAC.

Complete failures in football and men's basketball (0 fer the conference schedule) were followed up with 7th place finishes in men's and women's cc, 11th in men's soccer with a 1-9-1 record, last place in men's indoor track, and 6th of 7 in women's indoor track.

This woeful record is somewhat balanced by the following: A 4-4 and 4th place finish in Field Hockey, a 4-7 8th place finish in volleyball, a 7-9 6th place finish in women's basketball and the only above .500 conference record, a 6-5-1 7th place finish in women's soccer.

As far as spring sports go, Shenandoah seems to have better hopes (at least in preseason polls) for high finishes in baseball and women's lacrosse. I was unable to access some of the other preseason information. Be interesting to see where Shenandoah finishes in the end of year ODAC overall athletic cups. Still, it can't have been a pleasant welcome so far to the a new conference.

HSC needs to be beaten down by somebody

HSC went 6-4 last year, 4-3 in conference. Catholic beat them by 13, RMC by 10 at HSC. I think HSC learned a bit of humility if that was needed. It was their worst year, by far, since 2006, the only other year in the last decade they didn't win at least 8 games. I expect HSC will be tougher to beat this year with such a recent bitter taste. If you wanted to get a beating in, last year was probably your year....

Should the ODAC expand ? Have an eight game coference schedule and only two OOC games.
Are there any reasonable schools to reach out to ?

The ODAC is already a particularly large conference in terms of other sports. For example, women's soccer has 13 members already.  It would be hard to expand further unless you were willing to take football only affiliates like Catholic. I don't see a real advantage to that. Finding 3 OOC games is not particularly onerous given the shear volume of teams within reasonable driving distance of the ODAC. At 8 members, the ODAC is already one above the minimum requirement for an AQ, so even if the ratio changes the ODAC should be fine. Further, there aren't many unaffiliated options close by, so you'd be poaching. The only league that would be susceptible to poaching, from my perspective, is the USASAC. Honestly I don't see an upside to a football team from that conference joining on a one sport basis, and there is really no reason to tender another full sport membership at this time. I'm not positive, but I don't think the ODAC is below the AQ in any sport at this time.

Since there is a little bit of time between now and games this weekend, I thought I would pose a question to you all.  What do you all think is the best D-III coaching job in the state of Virginia?  When I say best, take into consideration the following....location of school, budget (salary for coaching staff), facilities, financial aid packaging (most likely a guess), community and alumni support, etc.

How about ranking your best 7 jobs?  Choices are: Averett, Bridgewater, CNU, EMU, E&H, Ferrum, H-S, Lynchburg, Marymount, Mary Washington, RMC, Randolph, Roanoke, Shenandoah, VWC, W&L

I can only answer this by saying it isn't W&L. The facilities are average, forget about financial aid because it isn't going to happen for anything remotely related to athletics (or really anything but proveable need or academics), and community and alumni support is pretty low. There is also almost no history (early 80s) to build from. The upsides are the beautiful school and location, a decent budget, reasonable expectations, and loyalty to coaches that meet those expectations. But I don't think W&L would rank even in the top half of this list, as I think other schools support their programs much more enthusiastically.