Commentary: CAA basketball inches its way to the top

Jim Swing
Assistant Sports Editor

It was George Mason in 2006 and now VCU just five years later.

Surely, anybody could have called the first run a fluke, but after watching the Rams run through the 2011 NCAA tournament with ease it begins to stir up some questions.

Can the Colonial Athletic Association really be labeled as a “little guy” anymore?

Certainly the term will be matched with any mid-major conference, and the CAA is still indeed a mid-major conference.

But the tides are beginning to turn.

For the past decade the CAA has been on the radar for featuring schools that are most capable of the ever so lovable upset in the NCAA tournament, but this year things were taken a bit further.

VCU tore through teams from five of the six perennial power conferences – winning by a margin of 12 points – en route to the CAA’s second Final Four showing in half a decade.

And that goes without mentioning the Patriots’ dismantling of Big East power Villanova in the first round.

When these upsets occur, everybody and their mother acts shocked and taken back, but for those who have followed these teams from the CAA all season long it comes as no surprise.

Teams from the CAA combined for 11 wins over schools from the power six conferences this season, a number that comes as a major wake up call to the college basketball world.

VCU alone accounted for seven of those wins, including victories over two of the Pac-10’s top four teams (UCLA and USC).

Granted there are still the lower tiered teams in the conference such as Towson and Georgia State that may never make noise, but the higher tier without a doubt makes up for it.

Some might contend that Butler has done for the Horizon League what teams like ODU, GMU and VCU have done for the CAA, but that argument doesn’t hold very much water considering the Bulldogs are the only perennial power in their conference.

On Selection Sunday the CAA earned three bids (GMU, ODU and VCU) into the NCAA tournament for the first time in conference history, something nobody saw coming, especially those on the panel at the ESPN.

Talking heads such as Dick Vitale, Hubert Davis and Jay Bilas continued to verbally attack VCU’s inclusion into the NCAA tournament and everybody saw how that went.

Analyst continue to fail to give teams from the CAA the credit they deserve even after sending two teams to the Final Four in the past five years.

The tides are changing by the year and the CAA is inching its way closer to the top of college basketball whether fans and analysts like it or not.

But after all the madness, the question remains: When will the CAA no longer be labeled as a “little guy”?

Will it take winning a national championship – which GMU and VCU came dangerously close to – to finally put the CAA on the map for good?