So Indiana has ditched the relatively non-competitive eastern Collegiate Water Polo Association for the sports top level league, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. Top programs like USC, UCLA and Stanford are in the MPSF.

https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/ne...ederation/

The game of Polo is so cruel to the horses.

(06-22-2018 03:06 PM)THUNDERGround Wrote:  The game of Polo is so cruel to the horses.

Especially making them swim the entire match












































What, you don't use horses in water polo? Who knew!!

(06-22-2018 03:06 PM)THUNDERGround Wrote:  The game of Polo is so cruel to the horses.

It's OK, they use seahorses

I suspect the real story here is that for women's water polo the MPSF needed another member to protect its auto bid into the NCAA tournament. With CSU Bakersfield dropping the sport last summer the MPSF was down to the minimum six teams in 2018, including San Jose State which is the league's bottom-feeder and could choose to follow Bakersfield's lead at any time. Adding Indiana pushes the conference's women's water polo membership back up to seven which provides a cushion in case San Jose State drops out.

It seemingly would have made more sense for the MPSF to add a seventh women's water polo team from the west, but it may not have had that option. There are only two other D-1 western women's water polo conferences. The Big West is stable with six conference schools playing the sport (three of which finished the 2018 season ranked in the top 10 nationally) and UC San Diego slated to be added as a seventh member in 2019. The Golden Coast Conference, which has eight members drawn from the WCC, MWC, WAC and D-2, was founded in 2013 as a water polo only conference and appears to be comprised of schools that have consciously decided they don't want to compete with Pac-12 powerhouses for NCAA tournament bids (one of the conference's founding members is San Diego State which came over from the MPSF).

Being unable to raid either of its neighbors, it looks like the MPSF's next best option was to recruit a P5 team from the eastern time zone. It will be interesting to see how this works out.

You only need 6 members. A 7th is a luxury.

Note: CSUB dropping is possibly a boon for SJSU as CSU recruiting standards are lower than UC or USC and Stanford. This should increase the pool of non-UC academic level talent they can recruit -- now given the lack of investment in recruiting that may be more theoretical than actual.

The MPSF is simply an organization for hosting Tournaments. What it means is Indiana sends it's women's team out to California for the Tournament, which is what, four days including the weekend. Maybe two or three lost school days at most -- pretending remote session participation is not yet at IU (it is).

This could also help Indiana recruit Californians at least for water polo, which I suspect is the real reason behind the move.

If you look at IU's schedule this year, you see they played a lot of West Coast schools already
http://iuhoosiers.com/schedule.aspx?path=wwpolo

(06-25-2018 05:24 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  You only need 6 members. A 7th is a luxury.

Note: CSUB dropping is possibly a boon for SJSU as CSU recruiting standards are lower than UC or USC and Stanford. This should increase the pool of non-UC academic level talent they can recruit -- now given the lack of investment in recruiting that may be more theoretical than actual.

The MPSF is simply an organization for hosting Tournaments. What it means is Indiana sends it's women's team out to California for the Tournament, which is what, four days including the weekend. Maybe two or three lost school days at most -- pretending remote session participation is not yet at IU (it is).

This could also help Indiana recruit Californians at least for water polo, which I suspect is the real reason behind the move.

If you look at IU's schedule this year, you see they played a lot of West Coast schools already
http://iuhoosiers.com/schedule.aspx?path=wwpolo

Indiana isn't planning to limit its MPSF participation to the season-ending tournament but rather will play a full slate of MPSF matches:

https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/ne...ater-polo/

However it's clear from this article that you're right about Indiana joining the MPSF to improve its program, both with respect to recruiting as well as competition in the pool.

As for SJSU, yes its recruiting could improve as a result of CSUB's departure and that could help the Spartans become more competitive in the MPSF. Or, SJSU could get fed up with going head-to-head in conference against big-money P5 schools and choose to follow SDSU over to the GCC.

And that brings me back to the MPSF's motive for inviting Indiana, which I still attribute to auto bid preservation in case of SJSU's departure. Look at what happened to men's water polo in the MPSF. The conference's five non-P5 members (including the SJSU men's squad) bolted in 2015 to the GCC, leaving behind just Cal, Stanford, UCLA and USC. To save the MPSF auto bid the remaining members resorted to adding a D-III program (Penn State Behrend in Erie, PA) and a club program (Austin College in Sherman, TX). The full story is here:

https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/ne...oins-mpsf/

It's a little mind-boggling to me that the nation's most powerful D-1 programs in any collegiate sport would be allowed to park a former club team in their conference solely to end-run the rule governing who qualifies for a free ticket to the post-season. But hey, it's the NCAA "in charge" here so why should I be surprised?

At least in women's water polo the MPSF is being proactive and adding an institutional peer that has a chance to be competitive.

If San Jose State leaves, I wonder if Michigan would leave the CWPA and make the MPSF an all Big 10/Pac 12 conference:

Indiana
Michigan
Arizona State
California
UCLA
Southern Cal
Stanford

At that point it might be easier to have it run by the Pac 12. The Mountain West or WCC could take over the GCC:

Fresno State
Loyola Marymount
Pacifc
San Diego State
San Jose State
Santa Clara

The MW/WCC hopefully would pick up at least Cal Baptist as an affiliate since the Lancers are moving to Division I. Azusa Pacific and Concordia Irvine could then join the WWPA, which is composed entirely of Division II members.

The CWPA and MAAC would then have the remaining eastern Division I members:

CWPA - Brown, Bucknell, George Washington, Harvard, Princeton, Saint Francis (PA)
MAAC - Iona, La Salle, Marist, Siena, Saint Francis Brooklyn, Villanova, VMI, Wagner