Welcome to The Holy Land of Hoops

Today or tomorrow is the 9th anniversary of the creation of the Holy Land. A great run with way more ups than downs. We've connected with a ton of awesome people here at the HLOH.

This has been a nice safe haven in what has become a really weird world. I mean, the HLOH began a week after Sandy Hook.

Also that week, my kids picked out a 3-month-old rescue cat to adopt... she's still around. Also, in Nov 2012, a brown bear literally lumbered thru our backyard, broke into our coop, took an egg and killed one of our Rhode Island Red hens.

Highlights over the last nine years:
- 2014... the Friars win the BE Tourney.
- 2016... Villanova wins the National Championship.
- 2018... Villanova again wins the Nat'l Title.
- 2020... UConn re-connects with the BE.

That's a pretty dang long time. I won't lie, there have been times that I have wondered, "why am I still operating this board?", but I appreciate that so many people find it a useful place to have some dialogue about basketball and other common interests. That is the point, after all. Thanks to everyone for participating.

I hope you all have a blessed Christmas and a safe New Year's.

Great crew over here …have really appreciated this forum. At some point we need a HLOH BET get together. Maybe 2023.

Great board. Great mods. Great community. Great fans. Great conference.

Second all of this. It’s a great community that revolves around a great, unique conference.

I like browsing old threads from that first month or so. I just found a post from a Siena fan on Christmas 2012 at noon, in the "16 Team" thread on Page 1.

Thanks for creating this board. best board for Big East Hoops.

So I was looking back at the first page....

how about this doozy- Asking who the best coach in the new conference would be.... Just amazing thinking this was a very valid thought back in 2012. Now it seems obviously insane in 2021.

If you had to pick one for your program who ya got? I respect the hell out of Brad Stevens at Butler. Would also consider Jay Wright at Nova and maybe Buzz at Marquette.

What is really good- still 4 coaches from when the league reformed 40%.... compare to....
ACC- 7/15(and soon to be 6/15- 40%)
B12- 4/10(40%)
B10- 3/14(21.4%)
P12- 2/12(16.7%)
SEC 2/14(14.3%)

So retaining the coaches at a rate similar to the ACC and Big 12 and much better than the other 3 conferences.

I can't explain as an aging 2-time alum of Creighton, who held season tickets as a student or booster for nigh on 40 years now, how much fun the last 9 years have been, from the 3 - 4 months leading up to CU officially being extended an offer to join the BE, to the last MVC season anticipating the move to the BE, to the actual games. Other than taking a while to get a piece of a conf. crown and to parlay the BE conference strength and recruitng to finally making a run to the S16, it has been more than my 30-something self dared dream of during the dark ages of the Rick Johnson era of the early '90s, when perhaps 1,500 of us regularly dared venture into the bowels of the old civic auditorium to watch some of the worst basketball in D1 (back when the annual CYO night literally doubled the attendance at a game), and the board of trustees was seriously considering dropping to DII. This has been fun, and HLOH has been no small part of it. Thank you all.

And what better way to have started it off than a New Years eve 9:00 p.m. tip against Marquette and a wire to wire beatdown in front of a raucous crowd of 18,250.

cu blujs wrote:I can't explain as an aging 2-time alum of Creighton, who held season tickets as a student or booster for nigh on 40 years now, how much fun the last 9 years have been, from the 3 - 4 months leading up to CU officially being extended an offer to join the BE, to the last MVC season anticipating the move to the BE, to the actual games. Other than taking a while to get a piece of a conf. crown and to parlay the BE conference strength and recruitng to finally making a run to the S16, it has been more than my 30-something self dared dream of during the dark ages of the Rick Johnson era of the early '90s, when perhaps 1,500 of us regularly dared venture into the bowels of the old civic auditorium to watch some of the worst basketball in D1 (back when the annual CYO night literally doubled the attendance at a game), and the board of trustees was seriously considering dropping to DII. This has been fun, and HLOH has been no small part of it. Thank you all.

And what better way to have started it off than a New Years eve 9:00 p.m. tip against Marquette and a wire to wire beatdown in front of a raucous crowd of 18,250.

Amen to all of this. It's been the best time to be a Jay- great history and a league we only dreamed of came true.