r/CollegeBasketball

ROSEMONT, Ill. -- Longtime Michigan State coach Tom Izzo knows that some think his roster-building strategy is outdated in today's college basketball, but he applies another term to the approach.

"I get called old-school a lot; I think it's right school," Izzo said at Big Ten media days. "I have no interest in thinking this is an old-school way of doing it. We're doing the same things that I did for 25 years, putting the players first, putting relationships over transactions. I don't know what people want, but the relationships to me are going to be very, very important, and I don't plan on changing that."

Izzo, who is entering his 32nd season leading Michigan State, has looked at how other teams have built their rosters, joking that he does so "to satisfy my fans." Michigan State's roster includes transfers like center Anton Bonke, who will play for his fourth college program in as many years, but Izzo continues to build around players he recruited, such as guard Jeremy Fears Jr., the Big Ten preseason player of the year.

"I look at different options and different ways to do it, but it'll be a cold day in hell before I have 12 new guys," Izzo said.

Izzo led MSU to a national title in 2000 and eight Final Four appearances, although he's also in his longest drought without a Final Four, which the Spartans last reached in 2019. In-state rival Michigan in April became the first Big Ten team since Izzo's squad to win a national title, using a roster heavy on transfers.

But Izzo, 71, is committed to prioritizing "relationships over transactions" and puts his energy into retaining players like Fears and high-flying forward Coen Carr. Izzo said he doesn't like elements of how college basketball has changed but made it clear he still loves his job.

"I'll be here till I die or something," he said.

Jackson was a McDonald's All-American and highly regarded recruit, but injuries and an inconsistent role kept him from really breaking through at Kansas. Last season he averaged 4.8 points in 17.8 minutes, but shot 37.2% from three and showed flashes of what made him such a highly regarded prospect.

Cooley has been unusually bullish on him, particularly his defense, athleticism and leadership.

With Altman retiring this week, some Arkansas folks recounted what they know of his 14-hour stint with the Hogs.

Let's go

The NCAA Division I Cabinet approved a rule on Wednesday that will prohibit men’s basketball coaches and their staffs from attending games involving other teams.

That rule will apply to NCAA Division I preseason, regular-season and conference tournament games.

Under the men’s basketball umbrella, team-specific staff members would still be able to attend NCAA championship as well as other postseason games.

This exception to the aforementioned new rule would be in place because the NCAA championship or postseason contest would be part of an event in which the team whose coaches are involved are also competing at the time.

We need to turn D1 sports into a tiered and regional system, give caps on athlete spending per sport (with heavy punishments on the institution for circumventing the cap), and provide opportunities for promotion/ relegation if universities choose not to spend as much.

That's the overall summary, but it's clearly a much more simplified version of how this would go.

1. The Tiered System - Each sport has three tiers for conferences (think of it as high-major, mid-major, and low-major) that become delineated because they determine the cap. The formalization of this system is new, not the notion of how we view these conferences -- but it forces all schools to be in one unified tier based on all their sports (with football membership being the exception)

2. The Cap - Based on the tier a school is in, we set their cap for spending in that sport. Basketball and football wil obviously have the highest caps (and I'm not going to pretend to have the answers to know exactly what the numbers should be for every sport). The key to the cap is that there are also spending floors required to put the roster together, and those are set at 75% of the next tier down's minimum.

So think of it like this:

^(High-Major: $12M cap, $3.75M minimum spend)
^(Mid-Major: $5M cap, $1.125M minimum spend)
^(Low-Major: $1.5M cap, no minimum spend)

The system this creates allows for universities to choose their own spending habits, and their conferences are built on the backs of aligning schools based on their spending habits.

3. Regions - The Division III model of regions (and in basketball utilizing regional rankings) stands out as a potentially interesting idea that forces conference choice to be more about geography within tiers as opposed to pursuit of conference sweeteners or deals.

We end up with six regions: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, and West

Regions help specify which conferences a team can join if they are looking to move up or down a tier. Each region has some balance (at least at the outset, which is all the NCAA can control) between tiers, and we end up with a system where the NCAA necessitates a minimum of non-conference games within your region. All of this helps cut down on travel costs, restore the fan experience, and could potentially streamline the process for "buy games".

4. Conference Autonomy - Schools end up signing contracts with a conference, of which they are therefore a member. When contracts expire, they can move up or down into different tiers, or look to negotiate with other conferences within the same tier.

The major piece to this, though, is that conferences get a lot of say for membership rules. They can raise the spending minimums, punish members for infractions beyond NCAA, and determine how rev share of conference contracts is divided among members. Rev share -- division of conference-based tv contracts -- will be what makes these conferences attractive to members.

5. NCAA-enforced punitive rules for exceeding cap - Very punitive measures. Suggestion would be a 10-year ban on postseason competition + lowering of spending on that sport to 75% of the cap.

Penalty for failing to hit minimum spending threshold is more delicate, but likely just a fine from the conference to pay that money back into rev sharing.

How it looks (for basketball)

Eight "High-Major" or Tier 1 Conferences:

1. Big East (10 teams): UConn, BC, Syracuse, Providence, St. John's, Rutgers, Seton Hall, Villanova, Temple, Georgetown
2. ACC (10): Duke, UNC, NC State, Wake, Maryland, West Virginia, Pitt, Virginia, Va Tech, Clemson
3. SEC (10): Georgia, GA Tech, South Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Florida, Florida State, Miami, USF, UCF
4. Big South (10): Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Miss State, Tennessee, Vandy, Memphis, Arkansas, LSU, Tulane
5. Big Ten (12): Penn State, Michigan, Michigan St, Ohio St, Cincinnati, Xavier. Notre Dame, Indiana, Butler, Purdue, Illinois, Northwestern
6. American South (10): Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, TCU, Houston, Baylor, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, SMU, North Texas
7. Big North (12): Wisconsin, Marquette, Minnesota, Iowa, Iowa State, Missouri. Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, Creighton, Colorado, Colorado State.
8. Pac-12 (12): BYU, Utah, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, Washington State. Stanford, Cal, USC, UCLA, Arizona, Arizona State

Six "Mid-Major" or Tier 2 Conferences:

Note: many of these conferences are built either based on football membership or by clustering non-football schools. Having a FBS football program mandates that a school stay in Tier 2 of other sports. A few programs (UMass, Army, Navy) will compete in Big East football to make that an eight-team football league, and Air Force + Hawaii would compete in Mountain West football

1. Atlantic-10 (12 teams): UMass, Northeastern, Rhode Island, Fordham, LaSalle, St. Joseph's. St Bonnies, Duquesne, George Washington, VCU, Richmond, George Mason.
2. Conference-USA (12): Delaware, James Madison, Liberty, Old Dominion, East Carolina, Coastal Carolina. App State, Charlotte, Marshall, Middle Tennessee, FAU, FIU.
3. MAC (12): Buffalo, Ohio, Akron, Kent State, Bowling Green, Miami. Toledo, EMU, CMU, WMU, Ball State, Northern Illinois.
4. Missouri Valley (12): Dayton, Belmont, Murray State, Loyola Chicago, DePaul, Bradley. Saint Louis, Illinois State, Northern Iowa, Wichita State, Drake, Oral Roberts.
5. American (10): Western Kentucky, UAB, LA Tech, Southern Miss, UTEP, Rice, UTSA, Tulsa, Texas State, Sam Houston State
6. Mountain West (12): Gonzaga, Boise State, Nevada, UNLV, Utah State, Wyoming. San Diego St, San Jose St, Fresno St, Sacramento State, New Mexico, New Mexico State.

A bunch of Tier 3 conferences house the rest of the teams. Not going to do a full breakdown here, and I would expect that many institutions would use this as an opportunity to reshape their athletic department & move to D2 or D3 (as has been common lately)