Summit League Signature Win?

[tmh8286]

Xavier has the talent and coaching to be ranked for the rest of the season. It could be a 3 or 4 seed in the NCAA tournament. ORU's win over the Musketeers will stand out as the best win in my opinion at the end of the year.

From a promo standpoint, SDSU's win takes the cake. That program had never had a win quite like that, and it seems to have really put them and Mr. Wolters on the map, which is of course great for the league to have another school being talked about alongside ORU and OU.

Time will tell - but I currently rank these two at the top. Due to the controversial nature of the ORU/Xavier game, despite my arguments elsewhere that it should be considered a ligit win, I'd put the Washington win slightly ahead of it.

[ManiacAlum]

I would agree that SDSU's win over Washington is the signature win, beating a 'name' major-conference opponent on the road, also since that is the first win of that kind for them.

Tennessee-- yikes. Seems like their entire athletic department is in free fall mode.

I've given up on trying to explain the Xavier game to anybody. People are going to put an asterisk next to it no matter what, so it's a wash. It's not like ORU absolutely needed a win like that to define the program. We did the best thing possible with what was handed us. Ran 'em off the floor and left town.

Don't sleep just yet on ORU's win against Missouri State possibly being the best "quality" win for the Summit. They'll have a chance to pick good wins in a better MVC this year.

[theeagleman5]

No question....ORU over Xavier due to all the national publicity.....however, the win over Missouri State probably more impressive from a basketball standpoint....

[Old Titan]

SDSU and Nate Wolters got a lot of grassroots play within the college basketball world, but ORU got more out-and-out publicity on ESPN due to the Xavier suspensions and the subsequent repercussions doled out Sunday by us.

In the long run, there's little question ORU's win over Xavier will mean more for the league (and, hopefully, ORU) in terms of RPI and such: the Musketeers should quickly return to form and the Top 10 once they get their starters back, while the jury is still out on whether the likes of Washington, Tennessee, or Valpo will even finish above .500 for the year, much less provide anything valuable in the way of RPI.

[89rabbit]

The world wide leader is showing the Summit League a little love:

http://espn.go.com/b...ague-makes-leap

Big Ten No. 1, Summit League makes leap

By Evan Kaplan

The top 11 conferences in ESPN Stats and Info’s weekly power rankings remained the same this week, but it was the Summit League that made the biggest leap.

For a complete recap of how we rank the conferences, click here and here.

The Summit League continued its strong movement from last week and moved up four spots in this week’s rankings, largely due to two major wins on Sunday. South Dakota State, which sits on top of the Summit League at 10-4, dominated Washington 92-73.

Despite playing a depleted Xavier team, Oral Roberts scored another big win for the league when it defeated formerly eighth-ranked Musketeers 64-42 in Cincinnati. The Summit League has been a strong conference all season, amassing a .561 winning percentage against all other conferences, the 10th-best mark in Division I. . . . . (read more)

[darrenj]

Nate Wolters is something else! SD st has a good one there. Good to see the conference getting a lot of good pub! Like to see Oakland win at Arizona tonight. Arizona is going to have a hard time with their guards.

[vcboy2000]

This is one reason I'll be sad to leave. ORU has placed a considerable amount of time and effort into raising the status of the conference. The other teams have done a great job in getting better recruits, playing quality OOC schedules and stealing wins over the years. The high RPI is evidence of this and also the closing competitive gap between the top and bottom league members. I'm glad we're getting to enjoy it this season, because next year we'll have to start from the ground up again. I still think the pros greatly outweigh the cons in this move: The possibility of securing better talent out Texas, saving money on travel, creating more regional rivalries, a presence in the region of our largest alumni and student recruitment base outside of Oklahoma, which could in turn generate more dollars to continue to bring sustainability and vitality to the University and Athletic dept, a great Baseball conference, and the improved chances of getting to the Big Dance in basketball.

[Old Titan]

Trust me, we'll ALL lose the warm fuzzies about the Summit League when any one of the following happens in the coming weeks (and you know at least one of them will):

1. We get hosed in the final minutes of a game in the Dakotas by a referee named Jorgensen who doubles as a gym teacher in Grand Forks.

2. Geoff gets knocked off the air when someone at IUPUI steals his power cord to hook up a space heater on Press Row.

3. On a Saturday night game in Tulsa, we draw bottom-of-the-barrel refs who look and act like the goobers in stripes on WWE pay-per-views.

4. Following another screw job on the road, we have to enlist the FBI and local authorities to find commissioner Tom Douple for any kind of response.

5. The streaming video of the game from Southern Utah has the same grainy quality as the first television broadcast of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

6. The student wanna-be announcers of the game from Western Illinois make Beavis and Butthead sound like Al Michaels and John Madden.

7. Our team arrives just minutes before their own home game in Tulsa after riding out a blizzard overnight in the Minneapolis airport.

8. Despite us winning 10 conference games in a row, Nate Wolters and Reggie Hamilton are named co-Players Of The Week in the Summit League for a record 7th straight time.

9. The preseason baseball poll comes out, and despite ORU being picked to win a record 15th (16th?) conference title, the preseason Pitcher Of The Year is a 150-pounder from South Dakota State who went 4-3 last year with a 5.73 ERA, and the preseason Player Of The Year is a 300-lb. first baseman from Western Illinois with more strikeouts than hits last season.

10. Someone other than us advances from Sioux Falls to the NCAA tournament. Again.

[ORU GRAD]

+1 OT

[OKC Eagle]

I think it is the ORU win at UALR. They don't just give away viral Youtube videos.

[theeagleman5]

OT does it again..... :rofl: ....and yes, I think I have seen some of the refs at Mabee Center working previous Wrestlemanias.......

[tmh8286]

I'd add one other to OT's list - Coach of the Year is . . . anyone but Scott Sutton.

[Old Titan]

I'd add one other to OT's list - Coach of the Year is . . . anyone but Scott Sutton.

Oh, you can count on that one: whenever we're preseason favorites and have followed through and won it, it's gone to someone who overachieved and finished in the top three or four. I think Zvosec at UMKC received it one year, then got fired the next.

But, when NDSU and Oakland were favored in each of the past thee years, it went to Phillips and Kampe after they won it all. Where's the logic in all that?

[jackit]

I just want to say how impressed i am that Old Titan can still type with all those tears in his eyes.Good grief,what a whiner.

[Old Titan]

I just want to say how impressed i am that Old Titan can still type with all those tears in his eyes.Good grief,what a whiner.

LOL- yeah, you're probably right.

I probably shouldn't be coming on your message board and complaining about the stuff I see written there.

OH, WAIT - this ISN'T your message board! It's the ORU message board!

And I guess that means the one coming on here and whining is YOU!

Congratulations: you're the latest inductee into the "South-Dakota-State-Fans-Who-Like-To-Come-On-The-ORU-Message-Board-And-Complain-About-What-They-See" club.

[oruvoice]

OT...Have you ever been to South Dakota? It's not like they have much else to do up there, especially this time of year. Cut 'em some slack.

[ORUalum]

best mid-major wins...LINK

Best win: UCF 68-63 over Connecticut. Also: Davidson 80-74 over Kansas, Cleveland State 71-58 over Vanderbilt, Oral Roberts 64-42 over Xavier, Indiana State 61-55 over Vanderbilt, Dayton 74-62 over Alabama, Wichita State 89-70 over UNLV, BYU 79-65 over Oregon, Dayton 86-70 over Minnesota, Harvard 46-41 over Florida State, Long Beach State 86-76 over Pittsburgh

[Old Titan]

OT...Have you ever been to South Dakota? It's not like they have much else to do up there, especially this time of year. Cut 'em some slack.

I spent a couple of days in Sioux Falls three summers ago, on some ranch-related business.

I was pleasantly surprised: nice little downtown, enjoyed the Old Courthouse Museum, had some (surprisingly) good tempura shrimp at a sushi bar near my hotel.

That being said, a lot of the SDSU fans who come on this message board are tools.