“Money talks,” Chaney said. “Dayton will draw a bigger crowd even though it’s in the sticks somewhere.”
When Temple played its first game at UD Arena after that comment later that season, UD students were ready to “stick” it to Chaney. Students held a sign that read, “Welcome to the Stix.” Another sign read, “Howdy, Coach!” Students wore John Deere hats, playing up the country theme.
Chaney embraced the scene and endeared himself to Dayton fans by putting on a straw hat brought to the game by the students and taking photos with them in the stands.
Leibovitz, who will take over as Atlantic 10 Conference commissioner on May 4, was an assistant coach on Chaney’s staff then and remembers the story well.
“I remember that Coach Chaney took somebody’s straw hat, put it on his head and then took a bow at center court,” said Leibovitz on Tuesday during his introductory press conference. “So he had a lot of fun with it. One thing about Coach is that he loved the A-10, and he had fun with the fans. He had opportunities to leave the A-10. He could have been in the Big East. He could have been in the ACC. He never thought about leaving Temple or the A-10 for a minute.”
Leibovitz spent 10 seasons (1996-2006) on Chaney’s staff. The Owls reached the Elite Eight twice in that stretch (1999 and 2001) and played in the NCAA tournament five times.
Now Leibovitz’s job will include the goal of helping the A-10’s current 14 teams earn bids in the Big Dance. Twice in the last four seasons, only the A-10 tournament champion has earned an NCAA tournament berth.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
The potential expansion of the NCAA tournament to 72 or 76 teams could help. The NCAA is expected to discuss that topic again this spring after the NCAA tournament.
As a basketball purist, Leibovitz said he liked the 64-team field but grew used to the 68-team field. As A-10 commissioner, though, his priorities have shifted.
“I would put that aside,” he said, “and say that if expansion helps us get additional bids, that’s gold for us.”
The NCAA awards “units” of money from the overall prize pool to conferences based on how many teams make the tournament and how far they advance.
“There’s a lot of ways to make meaningful revenue for the A-10, but units is high on the list,” Leibovitz said. “So if expansion means that the first team out is an A-10 team and all of a sudden we’re in, I’d be a fool not to hope for that.”
The A-10 announced March 18 that Leibovitz, who spent the last three seasons as a senior associate commissioner for men’s basketball in the Big East Conference, will replace McGlade, who’s retiring after 18 years on the job.
In his previous jobs, Leibovitz twice attended the NCAA’s mock selection meeting and saw how the system of picking teams for the tournament works.
“We might not love metrics,” he said. “We might say, ‘Look at this team. They’re just as good as that team.’ But you have a room full of administrators that are trying to validate their decisions based on metrics. They’re in that room staring at a screen trying to differentiate a strength of schedule and the number of Quad 1 wins or a Quad 4 loss that eliminates someone. So I think that we have to maximize our opportunities. Of course, we want to brand the A-10 and continue to brand it — not that it’s well-branded now — but at the end of the day, we’ve got to perform. It’s a meritocracy. It rewards winning, and we’ve got to create opportunities to schedule in a smart way and win the games."
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