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Sunday, June 24, 2001
Mid-con is an engaging alternative
Conference’s basketball focus would suit A&M-CC
By Darrin Scheid
Caller-Times
The first time they spoke, it wasn't much more than a fisherman casting his line without any bait on the hook.
   Southern Utah associate director of athletics Kathryn Berg called the Mid-Continent Conference in 1995 and asked commissioner Jon Steinbrecher if the league was interested in taking a school from pretty far west.
   Southern Utah was in a bind. Its scheduling agreement with a few other independent schools was starting to fizzle. "The answer was, 'No,' of course," Berg said. "We understood. We are very aware of where we're located."
   Two years later, Steinbrecher called Southern Utah. The Mid-Con was in a bind. Three of its members all announced they were leaving.
   Southern Utah accepted an invitation and joined the Mid-Con in 1997.
   "We were very excited, and the travel didn't bother us," Berg said. "We had been doing it all the time anyway. The year before that, our women's basketball team played three home games because scheduling was so tough."
   Texas A&M-Corpus Christi would like to tell its own version of that story sometime within the next two or three years.
   A&M-CC is searching for a home to place its 14 men's and women's sports. Islanders athletic director Dan Viola said the university's first choice would be an invitation from the Southland Conference, but if something doesn't happen pretty soon, the Islanders could look outside the geographic region.
   The Mid-Con, although an expensive on the travel budget, might be the perfect fit.
   The league doesn't offer football. Its membership includes mid-major basketball power Valparaiso, Western Illinois and last year's NCAA Tournament team Southern Utah.
   If the Mid-Con decided to expand to 12 members and split into north and south divisions, A&M-CC and UT-Pan American could be attractive. The other way would be the Mid-Con's need to add. One defection could leave the Mid-Con with seven schools.
   Islanders athletic director Dan Viola said he has not spoken with anybody from the Mid-Con about membership.
   And currently, Mid-Con members say there isn't any need to expand, especially to a school so far south.
   "Right now, it looks like we're going to have eight members," Missouri-Kansas City athletic director Robert Thomas said. "That's a good thing. I guess there is always informal, casual talk among the members about possibly going to nine. But who really knows what the best number is. Right now, we're happy with what we have.
   "And the travel doesn't bother us. We have to make that trip to Southern Utah, but you know, they have to make that trip out this way every week. They are very committed."
   The Mid-Con has undergone so many changes in the past few years, it's almost unrecognizable to what it was 10 years ago. In the past decade, there have been 30 schools come and go. The latest to leave was Youngstown State, which announced last month that it will move to the Ohio Valley Conference.
   With the latest arrivals - Oakland and IUPUI - the Mid-Con has become a league of big cities in the Chicago, Detroit and Indianapolis area. The furthest school south is Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. Oakland is the furthest east.
   Although the travel is mostly by plane, Viola points out that most of the cities are big and have easy access.
   "It's not that expensive to get a flight into places like Chicago and Detroit and Kansas City," Viola said.
   Despite the schools being stretched across the country, the Mid-Con has continued to perform in its marquee sport, men's basketball. In 1990, the league sent three of its members to the postseason in men's basketball. Valparaiso advanced to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in 1998.
   Last season, Southern Utah received a No. 12 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
   Men's and women's basketball at A&M-CC would bring a new arena to the table by 2004.
   "There is so much change right now in our world, you never know what can happen," Thomas said. "All you can do is hope to be in the right place when the dominoes fall."


Contact Darrin Scheid at 886-3747 or scheidd@caller.com

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